Chapter 6
The 1/9 station at South Ferry never had cops watching the turnstiles, so it was no problem for Rai and Z to get on the train headed uptown. Rai could feel a thrill pumping her legs, so she didn’t even sit down. The ads that she had always hated now fascinated her, so she pulled Z from car to car with her eyes above peoples heads, reading each text and thinking how she might change it to make people think. From time to time an idea passed through her head, but Z only knew because she would whisper “cool, fucking cool.”
By the time they pushed their way off the train at Columbus Circle, Rai was almost skipping. She knew that her mood flowed like a roller coaster, so she wanted to squeeze every bit of joy she could from the moment. She ran up the labyrinth of stairs and emerged at the corner of Central Park. Z followed more slowly; he knew where she was going. As always, their destination was the softball fields near the carousel, home of the summer corporate softball leagues that infest New York. Z was irresistibly drawn to games between different factions of the bourgeoisie. He liked to heckle.
When Z had found out about the leagues, back in June, he thought he had discovered the perfect medium to preach against capitalism. He would stand at the top of the half-full bleachers and shriek, “Now that’s a strike against corporate hegemony!” any time a batter whiffed.
Fortunately, some time in the fifth inning of the first day he did this, an older man stepped up beside Z. A black man, or Z would not have listened. “You should take advantage of that voice, son. Right now, you’re just makin’ an ass of yourself.”
Z was offended. “I’m getting my message–”
“You’re not. People know how to tune you out. You have to be specific.”
“Huh?”
“F’rinstance. The team at bat is McCauley Reed. They just got the new RJR contract.”
“The tobacco people?”
“Yep. And I know for a fact that some of them feel plenty guilty about it. Why don’t you try that?”
Z liked the suggestion. He tried everything from “Lucky Strike!” to a vulgar limerick comparing the size the McCauley Reed collective phallus to a cigarette. Inevitably, he also used a couple of didactic slogans on marketing to kids or dumping in the third world, but those didn’t get much of a response. The limerick, on the other hand, earned a huge laugh from both bleachers.
By the end of the game, the McCauley Reed attorneys were furious, and the old black man’s firm had pulled off a surprising upset — he was, indeed, a senior partner. His advice to Z had not been disinterested. Z had earned himself a reputation.
Z came back the next day — this time without Rai, who, embarrassed, had decided to sneak into the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead — to find several people willing to feed him lines, gossip, and insider trading secrets. Once again, he angered the stronger team into a series of errors. This pattern continued all summer until Z had become a fixture at the fields. He’d learned which lines got a laugh and which bred anger. He’d also learned that a lot of quotes may have sounded great in the Communist Manifesto but fell flat in Central Park.
As Z walked toward the bleachers, two black attorneys sprinted toward him in order to vilify the other team.
The first, out of breath: “Smith Engleman represents Nike sweatshops in Indonesia…”
The second, puffing: “Peabody Griff is legal counsel to Wackenhut. You know, the private prison company…”
Everyone had learned the arguments that pushed Z’s buttons.
Rai tapped his shoulder and pointed at the bleachers across the park. “I’m gonna go talk with Mike. Come get me when you’re done.” She strode straight across the lawn, ignoring the fact that it was the shared outfield for four diamonds.
From halfway across the field, Rai made out Mike on top of some low bleachers. She waved. His eyes probably didn’t work as well as they once did, but even an old man would be able to recognize her black skirt and yellow blouse in the middle of the outfield. As always, he waved back with an enthusiasm incongruous for his years. She marched past the first baseman, oblivious to the nasty looks the outfielders threw at her, and leapt up the bleachers. She embraced Mike almost hard enough to knock him off his seat.
“And a pleasure to see you too, my dear,” he smiled, catching his breath.
Each day that spring, Mike had come to sit by the fields, and one day he’d caught Rai hiding from Z’s hysteria behind a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. With the discovery that both loved Alyosha, they fell into deep conversation. Despite facial features and refined manners that convinced Rai he’s been born in Paris, Mike turned out to be Russian. He was actually quite handsome, in the way of a retired uncle who has seen so much of the world that he can find every new experience amusing.
Mike — né Mikhail, but he didn’t want to seem too Russian — had come to the United States the year before. He worked as the night security guard for an apartment complex in Queens. Rai suspected, without any evidence, that the menial labor came as some sort of debt to the Russian mafia: he was just too smart and literate to be doing it otherwise. For him, the encounter with Rai was a blessing. Not only could he interrupt his solitude with long chats with a cute girl, he got to teach an enthusiastic pupil. He would suggest books, and she would eagerly read them. Then, they would sit by the side of the field, listen to the crack of the bat, and talk about Myshkin and Onegin and Chichikov. Since Z had no interest in any Russian authors except Lenin and Trotsky, the conversations with Mike were a great release for Rai, and perhaps the only chance she had to talk about big ideas without reference to the promised revolution.
“I got it figured out.” Rai was not one for the social niceties of greetings and small talk.
“It?”
“It. The whole meaning of life thing.”
“Indeed? I congratulate you.” Mike’s tone was confusing. Rai never knew how much of it was teasing and how much was the Russian accent.
“And y’know what?” she barged on. “It’s a whole lot simpler than I though.”
“Then you will be able to tell it to me? In words that I can understand?” Mike’s English was surprisingly good, but he got less of Rai’s slang than she might have thought.
“Yeah. Sure.” She paused to create the drama she thought the announcement required. “The meaning of life is… saving people from their own fucking stupidity.”
Mike held back a laugh with some success. “I think I do not understand.”
“OK, listen: I came up with this great plan. Or we did, me and Z. We’re gonna teach the Muggles philosophy.” She felt a childish contentment flow into her body.
“I am sorry. A Mu… a what?”
“Muggle. There’re these books about a little kid who’s a magician, and everybody who’s not magic is called a Muggle. I thought it was kinder to most people than calling them ‘those fucking idiots’ all the time. Muggles are just average, boring, stupid people. Like almost everybody.”
“Indeed.” Mike barely cracked a smile, but Rai knew he was laughing.
“Yeah, well you come up with a better word.” She returned to the subject she really wanted to talk about. “Yeah, so like, most people are fucking idiots, right? But it’s not their fault, not really.” Condescension dripped from her voice. “They’re capable of so much more — well they could be if I did something besides sitting around on my ass and reading all the time. So I’m kinda hoping this’ll wake people up and make ‘em think about stuff, y’know? Like why some people don’t have a place to live and why everybody’s starving in Africa and shit.”
“Very noble.”
“And y’know what? It feels good. Really good. Like I know what I’m doing with my life, like it’s meaningful or some shit. Yeah, you’re right on. It’s kinda noble, huh? Using my gifts to help the less fortunate. Charity for the poor in knowledge.”
“Indeed. I feel privileged to be in the presence of an Albert Schweitzer for our time.”
Rai was not about to admit that she did not know who this Schweitzer was, so she barreled on. “Yeah, so if you know of any cool quotes, y’know, the kind that’ll lift people up out of the mud of ignorance, tell me. ‘Cause Z’s got lotsa shit in here–” she waggled the little book that Z had left with her when he went off to heckle “– but most of it’s not exactly right for the job, y’know?” She opened to a random page and read. “‘Spengler, who showed how useless the humanitarian and bourgeois ideologies of the early days of the bourgeoisie had become for present day entrepreneurs.’ Walter Benjamin. What the fuck’s that about, huh? Like it’s gonna transform the life of some stockbroker commuting from Jersey.” She flipped to the back of the book, where Z scribbled his romantic, poetic quotes. “‘I like it when you are calm, for it is as if you were absent…’ Pablo Neruda. God! Not bad enough that it sucks, but it’s sexist, too. Silent women, absent women! Make us disappear!”
“This is not something I worry about.”
“Huh?”
“You becoming silent. Or calm.”
She chuckled. “Yeah. Not exactly the shy daisy, huh?” She slid the notebook back into the pack. “But if you run into anything cool, tell me and I’ll plaster it around the city.”
“Of course.” He bowed his head like the butler in an English film, then interrupted the subsequent silence with the question that really interested him. “So what are you reading, my dear?”
“Reading? Oh, yeah. Lermontov. Didn’t I tell you? Pechorin’s under my skin, I gotta say. Weird shit. I’m even dreaming about him.” Mike had suggested Rai read A Hero of Our Time, and Rai was happy to share her enthusiasm for the book. Finding people impressed with her reading habits was easy, but to find someone who actually shared them was special.
“Indeed? And in these dreams, is he as dashing as Lermontov describes?” Rai loved Mike’s voice. Even when he spoke of the most serious things, it had the tone of a joke, a sort of playfulness she had never heard from anyone else.
“OK, I didn’t exactly dream about Pechorin. More like I dreamed I was talking about him.” She ignored Mike’s unsuccessfully repressed laugh. “I feel like I gotta share the story, y’know, it’s so cool. And Z’s hardly gonna listen to me, so I guess I gotta work it out in my sleep, huh?”
Mike smiled again. “I am happy that sometimes you like my suggestions.” Two months before, he had recommended Anna Akhmatova. After Rai found a copy in the public library, she had stormed back, furious. She hated poetry, she had declared, and how did he dare tell her to read such self-indulgent bullshit? Mike still liked to needle her about the intensity of her response.
“It’s mega-cool. God, those mountains, and the roaring rivers, and the horses, and the natives, and the gunfights. If my life were that exciting, I’d be happy forever.”
“My dear, you have told me stories that–”
“That’s what Z says, too. Whatever. Fleeing Chechen tribesmen is just so much cooler than dodging the cops.” She flinched, then bobbed aside as a foul ball whizzed by. “And Pechorin! What a fucking character, huh? Now that’s a life. Stealing horses and playing cards and seducing bitchin’ skirts… Makes me wanna become some fascist Tsarist fuck, y’know? Don’t tell Z…”
Mike had learned the signs that showed that Rai was trying to get a rise out of him, so he overlooked her exaggeration. Even so, he would not allow such a gross misinterpretation of one of his favorite novels. “Helenushka, I believe you overlook–”
“I overlook everything. What fun is it to read if–”
Mike’s half-amused, half-paternal eyes quieted her. “Pechorin adventures because he is bored. He does many bad things–”
“And he’s still bored. I know, Mike. I’m no dumbfuck, OK? Pechorin’s a real bastard, but I like him. He’s got something.”
“Something, yes…”
“I mean, I’m hardly gonna argue that he’s no motherfucker, ‘cause he is. But really, who isn’t, huh? Pechorin’s got the guts to show what he is.”
“Perhaps I understand. Pechorin is brave, and dashing, and handsome. It makes sense to see yourself there.” He smiled to make sure Rai accepted the compliment. Mike was the first adult man she’d met since she left home who didn’t want to get into her pants, which made her feel authentically comfortable with him, and able to appreciate his charm.
Mike was comfortable with silence in a way that most Americans weren’t, so the two could watch the game together without a word, even though neither had much knowledge of or interest in baseball. One afternoon, under Rai’s insistent questioning about Mike’s deeply unRussian attachment to the sport, he admitted that he came to the fields for aesthetic reasons. No, not for the emerald grass, or the crack of the bat, or the symmetry of the game — the beauty many American men saw in baseball. What he loved was the absurdity of it all, the immense energy expended on nothing. Rai’s incomprehension of this explanation led to a month-long obsession with Gogol, Bulgakov, and other Russian masters of the absurd. She now felt she understood Mike better, but she still didn’t care for the sport.
A hugely fat advertising executive smashed a drive down the left field line. The ball seemed to have flown halfway to Fifth Avenue, but it was back in the infield before the runner could reach third. He got caught in a run-down — actually, a walk-down — and was quickly out. Mike smiled in a knowing way, and Rai laughed dismissively.
Afraid he would start to talk about the game, Rai returned to the topic at hand. “That’s not really it. The Pechorin thing, I mean. Sure, it’s great that he’s this courageous dude, and he couldn’t give a fuck what everyone else thinks… but it’s more like… I dunno. Like his world makes sense to me.”
“The despair? Where all there is is playing games, and telling stories about adventures, and duels–”
“Like I said, it makes sense.”
“– and seducing beautiful women?” Mike continued over her interruption.
“So the metaphor’s not perfect. But you gotta admit the parallels. His life is my life. Kinda.” Seeing Mike’s confusion, Rai tried to explain better what she meant. “Look. Think about those awesome insults, ‘cept you gotta hide ‘em so the other guy can pretend he didn’t understand. So he doesn’t have to challenge you to a duel, right? Same thing in hip-hop culture. Go a little too far, and you invite a duel — maybe with a blade instead of a pistol, but basically the same. And people got way too much time to talk about shit, whether it’s in that spa or on the street. We’re bored, so we whack off with words. Stories, games, cards, gambling. The street’s Russia. And I’m its Pechorin. Bored, hopeless, and laughing her head off.”
Rai’s references to despair were one of the few things that could take the sparkle from Mike’s eyes. Though she seemed to believe her own words, she always said them so lightly and jokingly that it was unclear if she was making fun of herself or constructing a wall of bitter laughter against very real fear. “But Helen, Pechorin is an evil man. He seduces and abandons Bela. He ignores Maxim, once his best friend. He seduces Mary, then breaks her heart. He kills Grushnitsky in a duel. The book is wonderful, yes, but you must not identify with Pechorin.”
Rai didn’t like it when Mike turned serious; he wasn’t as much fun and he had a tendency to lecture. Worst of all, he was generally correct. “I’m not gonna imitate him, Mike. It’s just that we see the world the same way.” Again, she heard the defensiveness in her voice.
“Sometimes, when you believe you recognize yourself in a mirror, you begin to copy the reflection…”
“Sure, Pechorin and me both suffer from too much spleen. But I’m not gonna challenge somebody to a duel, or break somebody’s heart just ‘cause I’m bored.”
“And why not?” The corners of his mouth had begun to dance again; perhaps with his point made, his natural vivacity could shine through again.
“ ‘Cause that’s just not me.” She felt Mike’s eyes on her; it was not a judgmental gaze, but the look felt humorous or superior in some way, as if she were passing through a stage that Mike had overcome long ago and now could laugh about.
The wind shifted to blow Z’s voice across the field; she shook her head in feigned embarrassment. Mike noticed the gesture and changed the topic of conversation. “Your friend is a loud one.”
“God, yes. Sometimes it’s just too embarrassing. He loves to be the center of attention, even if they’re laughing at him. It’s so much better to talk to you.”
“He’s like the fool, is he not? The fool who wants to tell the truth, but cannot. But he is not a fool. It is not in his character, I think, though I have not yet met him.”
“Does he really have a character at all? He just puts on roles like lawyers put on suits. The Intellectual, the Marxist, the Seducer. It’s not that there’s nothing underneath…” She paused. “Actually, that may be exactly it. I told you how he doesn’t remember anything about his life before he turned fifteen, right? That’s fucked up. Maybe that’s why it’s always like he’s acting a part. A coupla of them are cool roles, y’know, that’s why he’s my best friend, but is there really an actor beneath the robe? I don’t know.” That was another reason he couldn’t understand Dostoyevsky, she thought. Z was all action, no reflection. All surface, no depth.
“You are hard on him.”
“I’m hard on everybody. Myself too.”
“You are often mad at him. I remember in July, when that woman took him to her apartment for a week. You said you never wanted to see him again.”
“He had a place to stay, so he ignored me. That’s not a good friend.”
“But you forgave him.”
“I’ll always forgive him. It sucks. Sometimes I wish I had a backbone and could just tell him to fuck off. But I can’t. Where else will I find someone like him? Who’ll argue about Sartre and Mandela and then rap 2Pac as a lullaby when I can’t sleep? Nowhere.”
“You are not jealous?”
“Jealous?”
“When he sleeps with other women.”
“Mike! You know he’s not my boyfriend. He can stick his dick wherever he wants as long as it’s not in me.”
Mike recoiled before Rai’s blunt language, but quickly recovered. “Yet he still makes you mad.”
“Of course. I hate having to sleep alone, and when he’s off fucking some blond bimbo, it’s just me and the tarp. It’s cold.”
“I wish…”
“You told me, Mike. Your bosses would kill you if you let anyone sleep in the guardhouse.”
“No, I was going to say that a guest would make it more difficult to read at night.” Mike smiled mischievously. A woman executive slid into second base as he let his voice trail off. “Tell me, Rai, why do you not go to college?” Rai loved Mike’s non-sequiturs, even when they confused her. “You are very smart, no? You get a scholarship, which means a bed, many friends.”
“They’d just make me read what they want me to read. Put me on a Career Path.” She capitalized the letters with her voice. “Imagine. Me, training to be an accountant.”
“Study literature, or philosophy.”
“I do now. And I get to read what I want.”
“But in college you have many people to talk to–”
“I have Z. That’s enough.” Rai spoke sharply, then caught herself. “And you, Mike. But I’m happy. And right now, I don’t need a bed. I have Central Park.” She waved her hand grandly toward the north like a queen showing the boundaries of her realm.
“But in winter–”
“Leave it, Mike.” She caught the hardness in her tone, so she pulled back to the teasing she so enjoyed. “I just found the meaning of life, and you want me to give it up? Just so some professor can tell me I got it wrong? Really!”
Mike knew her words were final, and that further persuasion would only invoke her stubbornness. He decided to save his arguments for another day.
