Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“Need some help getting up?”

The floor is splintered in circles, lacquer worn away. Someone plays the old piano, a barely realized minuet.

“No, thanks.”

“Listen,” she says, trying to smile and falling short. “I don’t want to pry, but is this something that could involve the cops?”

Susan, with the three best rooms, a hoarder. Floor to ceiling boxes, beads, bolts of fabric, doll heads, gears and wires, newspapers stacked and snipped, paper-clipped articles about Squeaky Fromme and Victor Mature and Shirley Chisholm.

“I doubt it.”

She looks out the window. There’s broken machinery in the garden, compost unattended, a small patch of cement yard, more cigarette butt than cement. The fog settles around a city that believes its own clichés, practically crop-dusted gray.

“Listen, I don’t want to pry, but if you’re just going to lie there, how are you going to pay rent?”

11:22 A.M.

Irene, who wears a fedora and studies Foucault. Irene, with random scraggly hairs that will never flourish into a beard. Irene in a Che shirt, toasting her birthday with a hammer-and-sickle cupcake that arrived packed in dry ice. Irene who steals kerosene for the generator, siphons it from a barrel behind the French restaurant with a length of rubber hose. Irene who burned a VR FOR VICTORY insignia into the front lawn, said it stood for Volta Redonda, the Amazonian hamlet she intended to machete her way down to by Christmas in order to found a Utopian colony based on the precepts of Eldridge Cleaver.

“Direct action is the only sane response,” she says, and then gives the Black Power salute.

NOON

Terry and Trish who thumbed from North Carolina, the sounds of rutting from the room above. Terry with his three-string guitar, two-string drawl, black turtleneck. You can take the seed out of the hay but not the hay out of the seed.

“Don’t you wanna eat a hamburger? Don’t you wanna get up and see a matinee? Damn, boy, are you even alive ?”

Terry, sweating and chewing his crank-lip, clomping around me in circles, the white-boy duckwalk, pretending to play Chuck Berry on a broom.

Trish, long and straight and auburn, who carries scissors in her purse “just in case,” a smile that says she can’t wait. Trish, standing in my doorway in a T-shirt and panties. “I could get you a blanket.”

“No, thanks.”

“I could rub your shoulders.”

“No, thanks.”

Trish, throwing things at Terry’s head, a good aim, his dented skull.

“That woman thinks she’s Orel Hershizzer.”

Trish with a laugh like a tubercular mule.

“That is so funny, HEE HAR .”

Terry, who had to be bailed out, blood on the door.

2:36 P.M.

Bryan, the rumor, the roomer. Bryan with extensions piled like an understudy for Carmen . Bryan in bare feet and loose pants, taut, halfway between dangerous and not.

“Monday’s my recital.”

“Wonderful.”

Bryan sweeping into my room to stretch, one leg extended, mastering the Alexander technique in a crouch against the wall. He contorts, twists, a spasm of muscle, suddenly over me.

“For real, though. What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it, like, some kind of boycott?”

I don’t answer, watch him pirouette, lower into an impossible split.

“I guess this means you can’t make my recital?”

“I’d like to. But probably no.”

Bryan, twirling away to his room full of plants, his radio, banjos or drums or ululating Arabs. Bryan disappearing for a week then coming back reincarnated, insisting his new name is Ariel.

3:09 P.M.

Highguy, who wants to start a techno band with two laptops and four grams of coke. It’ll be called Storming Kabul. He’ll be Ace Storming and I’ll be Billy Kabul. He’ll be vocals and I’ll be drums. He’ll be right back and I’ll be waiting.

4:17 P.M.

Sasha, elaborately dreadlocked, bored, in bangles and cheap jewelry, the real stones in some Manhattan safe box that will open on her thirtieth birthday. Sasha, who squats at my side, shows yards of white thigh, wants to really talk , wash her feet in the Euphrates.

“You ever wonder if there’s a purpose?”

“Yes.”

“You ever wonder what happens after?”

“Certainly.”

“You ever wonder why we’re even here?”

“Many times.”

“I don’t mean in this house.”

“I know what you mean.”

She arranges her skirts, runs her finger around me like a chalk outline.

“Is it yoga? Meditation?”

“Om,” I say.

She laughs, then stops, worried it was the wrong thing. Her shirt falls away, shoulder draped with a ruinous tattoo, an enormous lizard playing the stand-up bass, the idea of some drummer who dumped her over the phone.

5:05 P.M.

Tom, who’s on a tight allowance after Susan cashes his SSI. Tom, who smokes like it’s his only tether, who runs out of Bugler midmonth and then will roll anything, lint, leaves, dust, hair. Tom, who talks to the sconces, berates the wainscoting, describes the damask. Tom, who giggles into his jacket sleeve, an ancient blue pinstripe, who paints canvases of stacked eyeballs in intestinal caverns, more Gacy than Van Gogh, more Manson than Warhol. Tom, who got lost in the park and lived for a week off a jar of salsa. Tom, who knows he’s not allowed in my room but likes to peek in anyway.

6:54 P.M.

Red and Miriam, married. Miriam over forty and Red maybe twenty-five. Red, with an ancient Volvo and greasy handshake. Red who took me to an apple festival where we polished off a sack of Royal Galas and watched clog dancers spin in bonnets.

Miriam embarrassed. “Red’s got an old soul.”

“You don’t need to explain.”

“I’m not trying to.”

Miriam, round and vaguely menacing, who claims to be a nurse, who has a room full of tinctures and concoctions, a gynecological exam table from the twenties. Straps and wires. Studded leg stirrups.

“It’s an antique.”

Miriam, prepared to inject remedies, insert vitamins. Spansules and suppositories. Aminos and lysines and B12.

“I can start you on a course of antibiotics right now.”

“I’ll pass.”

She shakes her head, repacks her tools. “Suit yourself.”

“I won’t come crying,” I say, half a beat before she says, “Don’t come crying.”

The stairs creak, with her weight and all its intent.

9:01 P.M.

Gareth, pale and ropey-huge, shaved head and thick Buddy Holly glasses, like a Marine in Da Nang in 1962. Gareth, whose own little slice of anarchy is refusing to scrub the pans and then taking his shirt off if it’s such a problem. Gareth, whose favorite tangent is on the evils of sampling, but also how Minor Threat was so overrated. Gareth, who has read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance three times and can quote thoughtful passages. Who is positive global warming is a hippie conspiracy and that London skins have a secret and one day he’ll fly to Kings Row and learn what it is.

Gareth, whose obliviousness is like cologne, a pent boy in a soldier’s body, a walking slogan misheard or dimly understood, curiosity masturbated into submission.

Gareth, wound so tight he’s practically backwards.

Gareth who stares, shakes his head, slams the door. Twice.

MIDNIGHT

Cassandra, mixed-race, whip-tight, a bike messenger in riding shorts. Cassandra smelling like a dray horse, rubbing my forehead.

“My mother has a new husband. This one’s white, too.”

“Rich?”

“She lays around all day in a satin robe.”