Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“Like Eartha Kitt?”

“No, like you.”

Cassandra, who takes me in her arms sometimes, dark nest scratching my back. We spoon, chaste, warm one another. But not tonight.

“Sorry, but I’m not getting down on the floor.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Cassandra, who wears tube socks like debutante gloves. Who has a horizontal scar under one eye that only makes her more beautiful.

3:56 A.M.

My wife, who figured if we went and talked to a woman with a suspect degree and scented candles and paid two hundred an hour, it would get better. If we sold her mother’s house and took a cruise up the Adriatic and toasted with glasses of Retsina on various balconies, it would all become clear. Who thought there were zones of unexplored erogeny whose erogeny wasn’t forever dissipated by calling them “zones.” Who thought a triple-A Duracell would power a reawakening between us somewhere along the magnitude of Loma Prieta and the rise of Cthulhu.

My wife, who eventually gave up and said, “Fine, leave,” put me on the Greyhound with a packed lunch.

The diesel groaned away from Florida, packed, a welter of sweat and raw dumbness, a box full of tight hats. Six days of sandwiches and bourbon, a thousand miles of gravel. Texas then Chicago, highway pickets and billboards and dirty snow, Boulder then Salt Lake, sixty seats and sixty feet and two bumpers. The port of Oakland as it rose behind steel containers labeled in Chinese, and then cold Market Street, which lay unloved between the spread legs of downtown San Francisco.

Schoolgirls slapped each other’s lollipops to the sidewalk, Hey, bitch, hey!

Traffic accelerated through the yield.

The sidewalk was oddly impacted with gum, a black-pock Braille. There were posters with warnings about a new flesh-eating disease, a guy bumming change with a canoe missing from his thigh, a big chunk gone pink, marbled deep to bone.

I had two drinks in a bar where some men were painting an Aztec warrior on the wall, slept in an all-night laundry for a week, across ridged orange seats bolted to the floor.

“Hey, buddy, you can’t lie there.”

“My sweater is on spin.”

“Beat it.”

I took pictures at random, shutter exposing actual film, a place downtown you could rent darkrooms by the hour, the guy at the desk offering two hundred for my grandfather’s Leica.

A Rasta with paperbacks laid out on a blanket said, “You need a place to live?” and when I said, “Yeah,” closed his eyes and said, “Try the grocery that sell the green drinks.”

Next to the juicer was an index card taped to the wall, CHEAP ROOM.

It said, HI! DO YOU PREFER TO LIVE AS A COMMUNITY?

No.

SHARE MEALS AND CHORES AND EXPERIENCES?

Not really.

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT?

Than what?

$260 A MONTH. COOK ONCE A WEEK. NOT SCARED OF VEGAN, WICCAN, OR AIDS.

I moved in the next day, found a job as an attendant to a man who was very rich, who had one of those illnesses where you’re perfectly healthy.

I wheeled him to clothing stores and movies, made him grilled cheese and sliced oranges, indexed his receipts and wiped his chin.

I met my roommates, went to baseball games alone, froze, spilled beer.

I locked my door at night, unlocked it in the morning.

Did the chores I was scheduled to do.

By then it was obvious I was never going home.

Or maybe even getting up again.

5:20 A.M.

At first light I can see out the window. It’s an odd angle, from the floor, a view of eaves and gutters and under-roofs, a line of grimy flats. Pink-green. Orange-blue. A love-me trim. For half a block, I can see the gauze of curtains, tops of heads behind them, peering out for the mail or the bus or someone vaguely familiar to wave to. I can see the reflection of televisions, hosts and scores and a cartoon ferret distended across a white plaster ceiling. The horns of insulted cabs play call and response. A traffic light changes too quickly.

Brake, curse, a trail of weary threats.

Upstairs, a faucet turning.

Someone coughs, three times.

If you lie and watch long enough, along the curving ridge of Guerrero Street, every description will have an action to complement it. Every reason will have a reason not to.

Soon, Johnny will come in with breakfast on a tray.

Thursday will be Friday and the morning’s noises, laughter, anger, orgasm, will thrum along my spine.

There’s a new pool hall just off campus. The door guy has a shaved head, warns Adam to take it easy on the cues and then keeps his change.

“Don’t sweat it,” the cocktail girl says. “He just got out of prison.”

Adam pretends to line up a shot, checks her out. Nerd glasses, no tats, cheap silver rings on every finger.

“Me too. We were probably on the same tier.”

“You hang with the Aryans?”

“Muslim Brotherhood.”

“What you in for?”

“That’s a question can get you shanked.”

“C’mon. Ponzi scheme?”

“Mann Act.”

She laughs. Adam drops a twenty on her tray.

“What happens if I order a drink?”

“I’ll bring it.”

“What if I don’t tip?”

“You will.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eve.”

On Friday they go see a saxophone player and slam tequila, end up in the corner of a dumpy Mission bar, kiss along with the beat and through the changes. Adam winds his hand inside Eve’s skirt, plays with the elastic band of her underwear, her uniform being just about the cutest thing in town — black top, black mini, HI, I’M YOUR SERVER!

People try to flag them, order drinks. It’s a kick.

And then it’s a month.

And they still don’t hate each other yet.

Eve’s just south of pretty, hair cut in an architectural sweep, silver hoops and red cowboy boots. Foot up on the rail, knocking them back. She exudes a complete lack of bullshit, guys staring into their ice thinking how lucky Adam is, thinking screw the models and heiresses, a girl who can laugh deep and raw, who can incorrectly quote Proust while slamming a double Jim Beam and then lean across the felt for a killer cross-side bank, is almost certainly worth her weight in pure uncut Turkish hashish.

“Give me a sense of humor over chocolate and flowers,” Eve says, racking the balls after another win. “Any day of the week.”

Dudes along the rail laugh, raise their drinks.

“Tonight we will not sleep on the petals of the roses I will never buy you,” Adam whispers, kisses behind her ear.

THERE ARE MATINEES. Eve likes them dim, with rubber monsters. Adam is a sucker for subtitles. They trade music. Dissonant classical. Nina Simone. Mountain with Leslie West. They talk politics, talk literature, declare the ironic cowardly on a blanket in her blanket-sized backyard, mojitos and carrot sticks and a Dixie cup of ranch dressing.

Eve bats her eyelashes.

“Well, should we go upstairs?”

They’ve been chaste so far. Why? Because it’s hard work. Because it’s more fun to be exasperated, pant in the hallway, force each other to unlatch and say goodnight. Just like their parents had to. Like their parents’ parents. Let other people give in to carnal stupidity, the ease of obviousness, all the way home on a bus full of gangbangers like he just shoplifted a crow bar.

When it finally happens it will be a thing of beauty, a revelation.

Adam rolls in the grass, pretends to consider.

“Yeah, okay.”

Eve’s apartment is full of fem textbooks, Steinems and Dworkins and Paglias. She spells women womyn , worships PJ Harvey, breathes a combo of dirty and oh, darling into his ear, switches between position and era and arbitrary gender designation.