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Authors: Paul Di Filippo

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BOOK: Roadside Bodhisattva
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Angie nodded solemnly. “Well, maybe I could use your help at some point.” But then his face went back to being grim. “Where are you two staying?”

I figured Angie was worried Ann was putting us up in her own apartment. But Sid managed to sidestep that issue.

“Miz Danielson was kind enough to offer us the old trailer. It’s not the Waldorf, but we’re grateful, right, Kid? Just look for us there with the racoons and skunks. Say, Angie, what are you doing about lunch?”

“I usually close the garage at two for half an hour and they send me something over from the diner.”

“Great! I’ll try to finish the mowing by then and we can chow down together and talk Detroit iron. I’ll carry our grub over.”

Angie paused to consider this offer for a while, before he said, “Okay.”

“C’mon, Kid, let’s get a move on.”

I picked up the container of gas and we headed back. Out on Route 1 cars and trucks zipped past us like all the drivers had the most important appointment in the world to keep. Someone threw an empty paper cup from his car, and I noticed how much roadside trash had drifted onto Ann’s property. A lone shoe, a burger carton, a weathered porn magazine, a bucket smeared with dried red paint. Picking up that crap, now there was a chore that needed doing.

I was feeling kinda unsettled after our meeting with Angie, and I knew it had something to do with Sid, but I couldn’t say why or what, so I trudged on in silence. There was stray sheet of junk metal in one lane of the highway, and the cars in that lane kept running over it with a loud whump. The sound was annoying, and I started to get irrationally angry about it, until I finally realized what had pissed me off about Sid’s actions.

Once we had walked far enough away that Angie couldn’t hear us, I said to Sid, “You’re a liar and a hypocrite.”

Surprisingly, Sid did not get pissed off, but instead smiled broadly and said, “How’s that, Kid?”

“First off you insult a guy by using a jerky nickname behind his back. Then to his face you’re all respectful and feeding him ‘I’m your best friend’ stuff. Then there was that crap about growing up in California and working for some famous car guy until you were eighteen. But you told me you ran away from your prep school around age sixteen. Both those stories can’t be true. So all that bullshit you just shoveled out makes you a liar and a hypocrite in my book.”

“Kid, didn’t you ever try getting on someone’s wavelength and using their own language in order to smooth out the bumps in the dialogue between the two of you? You know, synchronizing your rap with his.”

“That sounds like the same kinda Buddhist crap my parents were always handing out. Preaching through skillful means.”

“’Skillful means’ I like that phrase.” Sid repeated my words once more, then chuckled. “Maybe that’s what I was doing. But it’s not crap. It’s using your wit and ingenuity and insight into the habits and patterns and prejudices and needs of people to lead them in a good direction they don’t necessarily want to go in. Back at the diner, I could see that everyone was tense about me and Malatesta getting into some kinda brawl. So to cut through their anxiety, I cracked a lameass joke about his name. The stunt worked, and they all breathed a little easier as you and me strode off High Noon style. Then, when I got face to face with Angie, I switched tactics. I went all non-threatening, letting him be the alpha dog. I sussed what he was passionate about, and made myself into a mirror for his interests. Maybe I had to stretch the truth of my autobiography a little to cover all the bases, but so what? Who did I hurt? No one. Did I lie in order to rip him off or get some personal advantage over him? I don’t think so. In fact, I made my life a little more tedious in order to keep the peace. Now I have to spend my lunch break with the surly mook, listening to his boring gearhead chatter, instead of with you and Ann and the others. So yes, maybe by your strict standards I’m a mendacious two-faced son of a bitch. But that’s not how I see myself. And your opinion of my character is not going to keep me awake nights. However, maybe if you fart as loud and frequently as you did last night under the tree, that will do the trick.”

“Fart! I don’t fart in my sleep!”

Sid clapped me on the back. “No, Kid, you don’t. But as soon as I said you did, you forgot all about my supposed sins, didn’t you? That’s skillful means! And it just goes to show how fleeting moral indignation is now, don’t it?”

 

Back at the shed, Sid wheeled the ancient lawnmower out and worked on getting it ready to use. I found a rake inside the shed, figuring I’d rake up the clippings, since the mower didn’t have any catcher bag. I circled around the overgrown lawn, picking up any rocks and litter that might interfere with the mowing. The sun was hot, and I unbuttoned my shirt. But I didn’t take it off, feeling kinda self-conscious. But before Sid even got the machine running, Ann called me from the diner door.

“Kid A! C’mon inside. I’ve got a job for you here. We don’t need two men to do the lawn.”

I tossed down the rake, kinda angry at having to go work inside. I’d been looking forward to helping Sid outdoors.

“Hey now,” Sid said, buffing the grime off a spark plug, “that’s no way to act. Pick up that rake it stow it away properly. Then go inside and do whatever Ann tells you to. And do it with a smile, hear?”

“Oh, all right.”

“And remember, she just called you a man. Try to act like one.”

About a dozen people filled half the seats in the diner. The air was even thicker with good smells than earlier, and my mouth started watering. Sonny the chef was moving like some kind of skinny spastic tornado, but he seemed to be getting everything done pretty efficiently. Behind the counter Ann waited on the customers seated on stools, while Jasmine threaded her way from booth to booth, plates full of food stacked on her bent arms up to her elbows. I didn’t see Sue, and figured she was busy in the cabins.

Ann stopped a second to push some hair out of her eyes. “Kid, you’re going to bus the tables and wash the dishes from now on during breakfast and lunch times. You’ll find an apron in the back room. Yasmine will be there in a minute to show you what to do.”

I started to object, but then remembered how Sid had asked me to behave. So I cracked the best smile I could manage, although I thought it must’ve looked kinda sickly, and said, “Sure. Anything you say.”

The back room tacked onto the diner was about a quarter the size of the front space. Big metal sinks, an industrial-sized dishwasher, an oven, plastic drainracks atop counters, extra fridge and freezers, cardboard boxes of napkins and coffee filters, shelves to hold dishes and glasses, pans suspended from ceiling hooks, silverware in upright metal containers, a mop and bucket in a corner. The linoleum was peeling, the only window was a small one high up where a wheezy fan spun, and the back door was open with a screen door keeping out the bugs.

I found a grungy apron and tied it on. Yasmine came in carrying a big plastic tub full of dirty dishes and leftover scraps of food. She set it down with a crash next to the sinks.

“Thank Christ somebody else is going to be doing this dirty job! I’ve had it with pulling double duty. Okay, listen up. Food scraps alone go in this bin here. We
compost
.” Yasmine pronounced this last word the way my folks pronounced “nirvana.” “You arrange the dishes and glasses like this in the machine. Soap powder’s under the sink here. Don’t run the machine until you’ve got a full load, it’s
wasteful.

When she delivered this last order, Yasmine’s voice again went from businesslike to a kinda holy tone, like she was some kinda environmental priestess. The change in her voice almost made me laugh, because she looked the least like a granola kind of chick than anybody I could imagine. I had to bite my lower lip to stop from grinning.

Yasmine didn’t seem to catch my stifled smirk. “Pots and pans you have to scrub in the sink. Come out and bus the tables as often as you can. I’ll split my tips with you eighty-five-fifteen. Okay?”

“Sure.”

Yasmine left and I got busy. Soon I had a sink full of steaming water and soaking crusty skillets and baking dishes, and the diswashing machine was droning and spritzing away. I found a wire brush and began attacking the caked-on crud in the pots. Every few minutes I stuck my head out into the front to check on which tables needed clearing. When I saw people getting up I would dash over with my plastic tub and gather up all the leftovers and plates and cigarette butts and then slop down the table with a clean cloth.

When I was ten my folks and I had lived in a temple, and I had learned how to do this kinda stuff in the communal kitchen. It was nothing new to me, and even though I would’ve rather been outside with Sid, I gave the job my full attention. I guessed that growing up in a family of lazy Zen parents had been good for something.

Outside I could hear the mower running, and every once in a while Sid would pass by the screen door, cutting a bright green passage through the jungle. He had taken off his shirt and tied a blue bandana around his forehead. I could see him, but he couldn’t see me. His chest hair was mostly silver, but he was indeed pretty trim around the gut for an old guy.

After forty-five minutes Yasmine brought me a big fat sticky bun. I had seen them under a glass cover on the counter out front.

“Here. This should hold you till three. That’s when we close.”

I dried my hands and grabbed the pastry. I took a big bite out of it, and talked around the sweet mouthful. “You guys don’t stay open later than that?”

“Nope. The motel business picks up around then, and Ann’s got to be free for that. Maybe if we could afford to hire some more help. Another chef, another waitress. But Ann doesn’t think we’d get enough dinner business to justify it. And there’s no way
I’m
staying past
my
shift. It’s a long enough day from five to three.”

“You get here at five?”

“Not me. I start at six-thirty. But Sonny and Ann open up then. Hey, that’s enough with the twenty questions.” Yasmine moved toward the door, but stopped to look back at me. Her raspberry-colored lips twisted into a slippery smile. “You’d better bring some disinfectant to clean out booth number six.”

“How come?”

“Kid with a leaking diaper.”

“Ee-yeuw.”

Yasmine grinned wider at my reaction. “Get used to it.”

Around two-fifteen I heard the mower stop. Sid came in through the back door. He had put his shirt back on, and now sweat was seeping through the cloth, making dark patches on it.

“How’s it going, Kid? You earned those delicate Palmolive fingers yet?”

“Sid, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But the job is fine. Carry water, chop wood, right?”

“Now I got no idea what
you’re
talking about. But so long as you’re down with the work, that’s great. I wouldn’t wanna feel I had shanghaied you into something
too
obnoxious.”

Sid passed into the front of the diner, and I could hear him joking with everyone. He came back before very long with two lunches in greasy paper bags. “Pair o’ cheeseburgers apiece for me and Angie, with double fries. We’ll get Cokes from the machine at the garage.” Sid winked. “Too bad you gotta wait another half-hour or so, Kid.”

“Yeah, too bad you don’t have beautiful women bringing you pastry like I do in here.”

“Zat so? Maybe we’ll have to negotiate a swap in our duties tomorrow.”

“Fat chance.”

By three, only a single couple was left eating. The guy was thin as a pencil and was polishing off the meat-loaf special, which featured a gravy-covered slab as big as book. The woman was drastically overweight and was picking at a salad. I had to chuckle.

Yasmine stood a bit off from their table radiating a kind of hurry-up-and-finish vibe. Ann flipped the sign in the window from open to closed, and started cleaning. Sonny was scraping his grill and skimming floating burnt bits off the fat in the deep fryers.

“Kid A, we can use some mop and bucket action out here.”

“Sure thing.”

At last Jack Sprat and his wife left, and we could sit and eat. Sue showed up, but not Sid or Angie. Sonny got busy with the tools of his trade, and pretty soon had whipped us up big plates of whatever we had asked for. I had the fish and chips, and after my hard work it tasted sweeter than almost any other meal I had ever enjoyed.

I sat in a booth with the three women, sharing a long seat with Sue. She took up more space than me on the seat, and her leg was touching mine. But she didn’t make any effort to move it away, so neither did I. Sonny sat at the counter with his back to us, not unfriendly but rather kinda shy and silent. The women talked about girl stuff, while I focused on eating. When we were all finished, we did a final cleanup of the joint. We all moved outside, and Ann locked the diner door.

Yasmine turned to me and opened her purse. She dug out a five-dollar bill and handed it to me. “A decent day,” she said, then headed for a beat-up Ford Escort the patchy brown and red of a rotten apple. “See you all tomorrow.” She got in and drove off, her engine sounding weaker than the lawnmower’s. Merging with the traffic on Route 1 took all the power she had.

Something crunched on the gravel, and I turned around.

Sonny was wheeling a three-speed bike from where it must’ve been parked. The hundred-year-old thing looked like it weighed a million pounds. He swung one leg over it, snugged his ass on the wide seat, and got ready to pedal off.

BOOK: Roadside Bodhisattva
10.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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