Robert Lopez - Good People

ALLOW ME TO SAY a few words, he says, and then he says, People think backward. I say to the person next to me, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on, and the person next to me says, I don’t know what you mean. At this point I’m livid, I am beside myself. I think about starting a fire or setting off an explosive, but I don’t because that’s not a nice thing to do on a Sunday morning and I don’t have matches on me or kindling or anything that even resembles dynamite, so I remain seated beside myself. And it feels especially true, because at this point it’s as if I’m both the one who said I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the one who said I don’t know what you mean. It is exactly like me to be disbelieving and confused at the same time. So this is when I feel the disbelief and confusion at the base of my skull working its way up toward the top of my head and down my spinal column and all the way around into my guts. I can feel it spreading through my pelvic floor, seeping into organs and blood vessels. Now I am doubled over. Now I am on the ground, writhing, and I think, Why is this happening again. I think about how many times this has happened and in front of how many people. I can hear the people saying, This poor fellow, or I can’t stand to see him like this, or I think we should go home now. Once on the floor like this, writhing, making a spectacle, I realize I might also be the one who said, Allow me to say a few words, in the first place, which was clearly a mistake and probably how this whole mess got started.

THERE’S A WOMAN with her lip split open and it’s not my fault. People assume it’s my fault, but the truth is the splitting happened on a Thursday in front of strangers and dogs while on a boat. What I’m saying is, there were witnesses. It probably doesn’t matter it happened on a Thursday, but that’s when it happened. When things happen are usually important, though, so maybe I’m wrong about this part not mattering. It doesn’t matter what I think matters or not. What does matter is that I’m the one who had it happen this way, on a Thursday, in front of those strangers and dogs, in the middle of that boat, it was me, the one who split her lip open for her, though it wasn’t my fault, despite what people assume. I asked her first, I said, Do you want me to split your lip open for you? She could’ve said no, could’ve said I’d rather you didn’t, or Now isn’t a good time, but instead she said something about my mother. At this point, the strangers and dogs were on the opposite side of the boat, but that probably doesn’t matter, either. Then she called me names, some of them filthy, and I did what I usually do when she calls me filthy names, which is I look her straight in the eye like we’re playing poker and I’ve got a full house. She doesn’t like it when I have anything higher than two pair. This is when she called me a gentleman, said something about it being only Thursday. I asked her if she brushed her teeth with that mouth and she took a swing at me. Some of the strangers and dogs started paying attention to us while this was happening. We could hear them murmuring, see them pointing fingers. She turned toward them and made a crude gesture, one involving her breasts, which are sizable. This is how she conducts herself in mixed company so you can’t blame anyone for any particular behavior around her. When I say anyone I mean me in this case, you can’t blame me for what happened, not when it comes to someone like her, not when it happens on a boat on a Thursday in front of strangers and dogs. I’m not sure whose boat it was or how we came to be on it. We were always someplace surrounded by people and there was no accounting for any of it. Like how we met at a poker game. I didn’t even know how to play poker back then, but that didn’t matter apparently and it didn’t matter on the boat, either. Although I do believe we were on the boat to play poker. At least that was our intention, to play poker on a boat. We never did actually get to play on the boat, but that was our own fault. I remember the sea’s being rough, if we were on the sea, which I don’t think we were. It may’ve been a lake or a river or a river that flows out of a lake into the sea. I don’t know anything about boating, about rivers, lakes, oceans. The woman with her lip split open, she doesn’t know anything about this, either. I think this is an important part of what happened, though, maybe even why it happened. That we weren’t on solid ground, couldn’t keep our footing. People aren’t meant to sway, I don’t think. It affects them, people I’m talking about, us in particular. Something about the inner ear, which is too close to the brain, which controls this kind of behavior. The sky was everywhere that day, like water. I know more about the sky than I do the water, which is to say that I’ve been walking under the sky my whole life and only once or twice have I been out on the water. I think she said something about this right before her lip got split open. She said to look at the sky, she said it was everywhere today. I think I took this as something like a final straw, something we couldn’t get past. So by now, everyone, the strangers and dogs included, was hoping I’d split that lip wide open and so this is what I did. It’s the bottom lip that got split, close to the middle, but a shade to the starboard side. I learned about the starboard side from the captain when he told everyone where to sit and stand while the boat was in motion. But how I learned the word starboard doesn’t matter, out of all the things that don’t matter, this is the most or the least or however it should go. Some of the strangers laughed when her lip got split, others cheered, like I’d won a big pot and the lip had lost her entire stack. The dogs all barked and kept on barking while she was bleeding all over the boat like that. The captain went belowdecks to get ice so she could press it to her lip, to keep it from swelling up too bad, to stop the bleeding. Someone handed me a beer at the same time the captain handed her an ice pack. After that everyone went back to what they were doing before the splitting, which was drinking, talking, swaying. As for the woman who got her lip split open, she’s got stitches in there now. The stitches are supposed to dissolve at some point, but they haven’t yet. Though maybe she has to go back to the hospital to get them removed. I’m not sure what she said about the stitches. I’m not sure what people assume, either, but I’m sure it’s the worst. You can’t blame people for assuming the worst, and when I say you, I mean me most often. I don’t blame anyone for anything. What’s important is this is how she walks around the world now, under the everywhere sky, with her lip split open. I’m sure we’ll laugh about this someday, I’m sure this is something we can tell our grandchildren or tell people at parties on boats. We’ll be sure to tell them about the strangers and dogs, the captain, the splitting and all that. We’ll probably forget that it happened on a Thursday, which will be unfortunate, I think. It seems important, like it’s almost unimaginable for this to happen on a Monday, for instance. I’m sure someone will ask about the boat, but if we don’t know whom the boat belonged to now or how we came to be on it together, I’m sure we won’t know any better then.