What You Could Have Won Read online

  ‌Zoot

  It’s not long before the Handyman is looking over at her shelter too, but he doesn’t yet realise that it is only I who can coax her out.

  ‘Hey Chirp,’ I whisper, ‘quit catching cups, get out from them dreamers, and see this.’

  She stays silent so I speak up. ‘Come on, peola, you love this sun.’

  ‘I thought you said no Zoot.’

  Bingo. I roll up the Italian paper, push it under the flap and speak through it: ‘Welcome to the Hellenic butt-nekkid volleyball competition where wigs are curly and asses are furry!’ I make a sound that suggests a distant but raucous crowd.

  ‘It’s volleyball,’ she says sourly from under the sheet, ‘and nude guys. The prize is rice pudding. And you’re the peola.’

  I change tack. ‘What’s that, ma’am? Yes, there is a dwarf on the team. Who is the dwarf? Ma’am, you just asked the question on everybody’s lips back home.’ I look over to the Greeks, where the dwarf just about kisses Gigi. The volleyballers cheer as if playing this game was all they ever wanted to do.

  ‘Henry, can we please do this later?’

  ‘But I need help with the rules. You are Greek, aren’t you? For instance, can a cat hoof it?’

  ‘G-man, you know that ain’t in the book.’

  ‘OK, ma’am. Can a cat whack it?’

  ‘Whack it with his foot? Sure, or his hand or his head. But whack ain’t in the book either.’

  ‘Shheeeit. Buddy G done did that with his dukes.’

  ‘His arms. That’s digging,’ she says.

  ‘I dig. Now what other rules are there to this piece of shit homo-erectus pussy-ass game?’

  She peeks out then and I get to my knees, pretending I have binoculars. ‘Baby, his nuts nearly jus’ bust loose! Damn! They gonna take a lickin’. His little pecker be red an’ swellin’.’

  ‘Pecker is not in the Zoot,’ she says. ‘I ain’t buying that.’

  ‘Gigi is breakin’ it up. Check it.’

  ‘Gigi? Who the hell is Gigi?’ She pokes out her head and Gigi looks over. ‘Either him or the dwarf,’ I say.

  She takes off her glasses and squints peevishly.

  ‘Oh I get it,’ she says.

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘This is all about the party.’

  ‘Ain’t you still my barbecue?’

  She reaches out for her glasses laying in the sand, pale yellow, patterned like bamboo, but I rake them towards me to pull her out in full view. ‘I did not know dwarves did that!’ I say in a shocked whisper, holding the glasses to my chest.

  ‘This sho’ better be a hummer. Boot me them cogs.’

  I pull the glasses further away from her and she warns me, ‘Don’t play me cut-rate, Jack, or I’ll stay home this early black.’

  Out of the shelter at last, she keeps her eyes closed until she’s put on the giant sunglasses while I keep it rolling.

  ‘I would give fews and two to film these cats. That dwarf’s ass? It’s tighter than Plymouth Rock when he eats that sand. Them some fraughty issues.’

  She lifts her glasses and wolf-whistles faintly. ‘Geez. Where his dry goods? I won’t be able to clock him in the dim for shame.’

  Gigi looks at us and Gigi smiles. Gigi beckons – Come and play! – and I know he means her and she comments without any edge at all: ‘Gigi is gammin’ for that dwarf.’

  My heartbeat deepens in my chest.

  ‘You plum crazy? Gigi ain’t that way.’

  The sun pulses.

  ‘You killin’ me,’ I say.

  I shade my eyes and we look again at the game.

  ‘That gate be swingin’,’ she says.

  ‌Picnic (No Picnic)

  Dwell Time had found your apartment and was standing right there in your doorway pointing to a package in a brown paper bag gripped between his thighs. Reacting to your focus, he patted his pocket and you recalled what a terrible gift his attention was. In the few hours since you met at the Perlman gig, you had been strung out with doubt. You had written down your address scratchily enough that it could be misread.

  ‘I didn’t sleep,’ you said, fully ready to jet-pack out of this.

  ‘Highs are just comedowns you haven’t met yet,’ he said, stepping back, his palms open and pious, the doorway around him a square halo of clear blue Bed-Stuy sky.

  Any humiliation over what you had confessed was replaced this morning by a desire for the easy slick and flow of last night. It was appalling that you were willing to hand over the ten hours of longing just like that. Longing that began with him walking away despite your body from the waist up leaning out the open window of a moving cab.

  Deploy emergency craft! had started on a silent loop. You prayed that he had just a little more control than you did.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ you asked.

  ‘Jimp sleeps under his lab bench because he works so very, very late. We live one block away from the unit!’

  Whatever this guy is telling you, you were the reason that he was ditching the lab today. You hoped he’d borrowed the jacket. The casual clothes he was wearing sat awkwardly on him, his shoulders under the leather screaming We do leisure! Pulling open his jacket, he nipped the jade silk of the lining at the bottom of the pocket until a hip flask nosed into view. You did not want to waste one more second worrying whether Dwell Time was really as precious as he had made himself out to be.

  From between his legs, he handed you the brown paper bag with a stiff arm and, unable to stand the wait, he waggled it. As you took the bag and pulled out the book to scrutinize it, the shock of him (it was him) turning up at your place ran fresh through you and you were glad of the book’s solidity in your hands.

  It was called The Zoot. The cover was a pointillist rendition of a black man’s face: his eyes were cabasas and there were bongos for his nostrils; saxophones in gold switched back on themselves, edged with their own black silhouettes. These were the waves of his hair. Cymbals formed his earlobes. You sniffed the cover.

  ‘I never saw anyone read like that,’ he said.

  ‘Fifties books,’ you exhale, wondering if they’d ever make a cover like this now.

  It’s been analyzed to death since but that book, right away and irreversibly, fused you so that any way out would set you asunder. You’re silent as Henry tells you how he almost chose an occult handbook but he’s glad now of his choice, and this confirms your suspicions from last night: your fear that this kid-like enthusiasm that he so wants to hide will knock you down and take you over. In letters detailed with piano keys, you reread the subtitle, A Lexicon of Jive, and it helped you ignore a worry with a wingspan: this book that belonged to neither of you might possibly become a token of love, but equally could curse you.

  He snatched the book from you saying, ‘You are going to learn with me.’

  You looked into his face expecting self-consciousness but detected zero and you wondered if your head was weaving as it sometimes can when you’re bombing.

  ‘Like now?’

  ‘You still high, sister. Damn right, right now.’ His voice was raucous, the delivery entirely without qualm, but during this otherwise pitch-perfect performance he kept his forehead and his shoulder leaning against the jamb of the door.

  ‘You want to come in first?’ you say, thinking clearly for the first time since he arrived. Ironically, now you could sleep.

  ‘Right on!’ he blared. ‘I knew you was hicty,’ and he chest-bumped you (he chest-bumped you right where your tits were).

  You could still feel the meat of his chest though he’d gone sassing down your hall – you were saying it’s my fucking hall buddy but your nipples were coming up with their own slogans – and you checked out his back while he strutted, holding his lapels, elbows touching the walls of the narrow corridor. Following him you saw that with his build, the shoulder seams of his jacket would struggle under pressure.

  He was in your kitchen before you were. Your kitchen was small and very unclean.
br />   ‘So how long will you be in New York?’ you asked him from behind.

  ‘Until my boss runs me out of town,’ he answered.

  ‘Is he a sheriff?’

  ‘He’s a power-mad cigar-smoking narcissist prone to rages and hazing rituals.’

  ‘So better than a sheriff?’

  You saw then that he was afraid but he was never going to let you know what he was afraid of and you swept away the implications of this.

  ‘Lucky for me, I was spotted by a shit-hot plastic surgeon over at NYU.’

  ‘Plastic surgeons need psychiatrists?’

  ‘Frank doesn’t give me what I deserve. I have to collaborate with outsiders. And, of course, that takes me away from his lab.’

  ‘And what exactly do you deserve?’

  ‘ReThink is a simple, cost-effective way to re-engage damaged minds by reprogramming eye movements. Frank has the hardware, the eye-tracker. But Frank would be in tremendous trouble without Gregor’s plastic surgery fuck-ups to provide him with data.’

  At the description of Gregor’s patients, a gulch appears in your shared landscape but you won’t have it; you leap the cleft clear.

  ‘So Frank’s the enemy?’

  ‘Frank is a very jealous man.’

  You were glad of the mess of the kitchen so you could make busy with your hands. Silently, you began to put off your imaginary US tour.

  ‘So how is BirdBoy? You see him today?’

  ‘Jimp is charged with testing BirdBoy. It is I who have the privilege of testing the nameless controls.’

  ‘And you’re not happy about that.’

  ‘I found him,’ he said before you had finished.

  The silence that follows gives you a chance to do the right thing.

  ‘What’s not to celebrate, right?’ you say.

  ‘BirdBoys do not grow on trees. And don’t worry about Frank,’ he said. ‘I have my own plans.’

  You were thinking about revenge though the word hadn’t been mentioned. You wanted to believe that he was sore about real injustice and not another paranoid disaster. With effort, you reasoned that he felt safe enough to say these things to you because he had already imagined a future which you would be in.

  Your quest now was a simple one: you must show him it was you that he’d always wanted. You displayed piece by piece what you had in your fridge while he unstuck his leather elbows from the counter to fold them high on his chest. Who had already spent hours strapping him into the tracker? he asked. Not fucking Jimp under the bench. And why does Frank have a problem with Europeans? It just so happens that Frank and Jimp were both Canadian. You lay out fridge distractors: fearlessly crass vintage bullshit. You wanted the Twinkies to do some talking. The trailer park was dead / long live the trailer park! You filled your tote with clues and put the bag over your shoulder asking him if he was all set, but at the end of the hall you pulled up, scared shitless of what else you might reveal if alone with him again.

  ‘I should call Eric. He could bring Stacey?’ You reached for the landline.

  Henry got to the telephone first, pausing to smile before yanking the set clean off the wall. Outside, you both honked with laughter and you never mentioned Eric again.

  Within minutes of walking beside him, you picked up an intense nameless energy. His chat seemed kind of irresponsible and capricious and you noticed it encouraged you to match him in these dangerous qualities. Meanwhile, your blood was being filtered of overnight horror by his takes on what it was to succeed and how understanding language was key. You goaded him, saying that you didn’t need to be able to read to fall in love with a song, and succeed in what? He stood still in the street and recited unknown lyrics that force-fed you with tenderness. You laughed with an open mouth. He asked you why. You wouldn’t say.

  Back in step, your hands touched accidentally and you bummed a smoke to cope with the aftershock. A few tokes in and he brushed the outline of your panties with the back of his hand and you flinched as if stung. ‘Woah!’ he laughed and tucked the hair behind your ear. You would have to crush him.

  Reaching a small park, you both arranged yourselves as if you didn’t care what angles the other could see, lying on a bleached-out patch of grass beside a basketball court. You were glad to lie down because it’s hard to keep your moving body made of parts complicit in a lie and anyway, the court was way too loud and the newly laid superstuff on the floor of the court was so unnaturally blue that it stayed with you even out of view. You put on your glasses to save you (a Vegas Keno player, jungle green) and continued in this charade while the ball game went on not ten feet away, the rubbery court protesting in squeaks when players changed direction. Beyond your shades, the light somehow became brighter by a good grade, making lounging impossible. You moved, with no explanation, to sit on a bench a little too far away, wishing you had worn a hat and wondering whether, withdrawing in such bright sunshine, you could trust the feelings that were releasing in you. You reassured yourself that you could never feel this way if he didn’t too. Teetering was not your thing. Soon after, you were up on the ledge asking yourself if you’d really have to wait to show him what you are all about.

  ‘Startling trousers,’ he said, his eyes revealing a moment of intention.

  ‘Thank you,’ you said. ‘My Mom’s.’

  Emergency! No one wanted to fool around in mom pants but he saved you with his grin and flicking through the book he asked, ‘Where shall we start?’

  He patted the ground and you almost asked him if he would be as excited about this book with anyone else. How had you qualified, you wished to know? He opened the book wide at a page. You knew from experience that you must pretend that you cared about logic and sense but the signals from him made that hard to stick to. Radiating both hubris and shame, you opened a bottle; there were already two other drink options on the go.

  ‘How about B? Let’s start with barrelhouse,’ he said defiantly.

  You chugged from a soda can, and you saw plainly that Henry not only wanted to win but wanted to witness great losses as a result of winning. You must have known somewhere you were equal to it.

  ‘Barrelhouse,’ he boomed in his best English accent.

  ‘Big! Wide?’

  ‘Nope.’

  You bit your knuckles as you asked him to put it in a sentence.

  ‘You is pretty barrelhouse sister.’

  ‘You know I’m going to play the Bowery Ballroom.’ Using the future as a shield, you often defended yourself without thought. He made a hurrying hand movement to spur you in the game and your instinct flashed hot: you could not be enough for someone like him. What you wanted, Henry wouldn’t give, but he couldn’t resist potential. It was what you might become that had brought him here.

  He pressed you:

  ‘And barrelhouse?’

  ‘Beautiful! Talented. Talented! Gifted? Young? Black?’ You are ashamed that you are weighing up the possibility of more blow in those pockets. ‘Good in an argument?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘In a crisis?’

  ‘Nyet again.’

  ‘Gorgeous!’

  ‘Yep!’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, what does it say?’

  But you’d begun to breathe like a bison. A bison who could feel her eyelashes pressing against her shades.

  ‘It means free and easy, sister, free and easy.’

  ‘Not the same thing at all,’ you scolded.

  He fanned the pages a couple of times into your face until you thrust your chin over your shoulder.

  ‘OK, where to now?’ he said.

  With your face turned away, you lit a cigarette and when you pulled your chin back over your shoulder he plucked that cigarette from your mouth without asking. From your red sparkling tote, you pulled out a flimsy garbage sack. The first couple of items from inside it were revealed. You were mutely capable, like a magician’s assistant who was also the magician, and you cracked harissa olives and brandished an open palm over them. T
hen to show that you were not afraid of anyone, you pulled out a Twinkie and an Almond Joy; taramasalata and two flatbreads; a can of Coke; a can of Diet Coke; an unopened soft pack of menthol Newports; a small dusty bottle of pink cava and two toothbrush mugs. You threw the sole toothbrush in an arc behind you and it landed on the basketball court (he guffawed – it proved to you a common love of risk), then slunk out a cute, pineapple-shaped ready-mixed piña colada, a starfruit, some ginger cookies, a tin of canned meat with a winding key that came all the way from Lotus Falls, greaseproof paper wrapped around a cold calzone with actual bites out of it (you pretend to cut it with a candle – you wink!), then a useless but blood-red plastic knife turned up, a roll of toilet paper and a bottle-green ceramic candleholder in the shape of Aladdin’s lamp that belonged to the previous tenant. The finale was a large box of kitchen matches.

  He popped the cork on the cava and looked at your nose.

  ‘So your mother’s Greek?’

  ‘Grandmother.’

  ‘I want to know more about the songwriting. You brought those Psych zombies back to life last night. What was that last line?’

  You hesitated while you pressed the glasses to your eyes.

  ‘The thing I told you last night. That’s not stuff I usually keep for strangers.’