Chaper 12
Though twilight filled the lawns of the park, the dark of The Ramble was palpable by the time they crossed the bridge. Z reached down his hand to pull Rai up a slope, then led her deeper into the woods. Within a couple of minutes, they found a little stream, which lead up to a clearing in a stand of evergreens. Within minutes, the world had changed, and they might have been thousands of miles from the city, with only the dull light reflected off low clouds to remind them of New York. It was raining lightly.
“I’m worthless, Z,” Rai said without any of the defenses she had carefully built up.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
“I’m just telling the truth. I’m nothing. I don’t even have a good story to tell. Tolstoy’s never come back from the dead to write about me.” She managed to fake a smile before she told him about the writing class. “Sudan! Fuck. He stowed away across the whole motherfucking Atlantic Ocean. I’m nothing when I look at that. Just some boring little middle class American who’s got stuck in the middle of Wonderland.”
“Huh?”
“It’s like Alice in Wonderland,” she went on as Z pulled a backpack down from the crook of a tree, then opened it and removed a tarp. “Like going down the rabbit hole into a–”
“Does that make me the white rabbit?” Z handed her a corner of the tarp. His smirk should have been infuriating, especially right then, but it was exactly what she needed. “’Cause lemme tell you, I’m not a fucking white anything.”
“My metaphors suck today. Another proof I’m no writer. This isn’t Wonderland. It’s the only normal part of the city. That’s the other side of the looking glass.” She gestured around them, largely south toward the skyscrapers of midtown. With practiced motions, she tied a piece of twine to the tarp, then to a small tree at the edge of the clearing. Z had done the same thing, creating a sort of a tent. A light rain began to patter against the plastic. “So it’s not Dostoyevsky and it’s not Alice. So what story are we in, huh?”
“It’s not a story, Rai. Really, it’s not.” His voice was tender, completely unlike the words he would say to anyone else in the world. To hide from the rain, he held up the corner of the tent so she could crawl inside. She scrunched under the middle of the plastic, the only section without gaping holes, then made room for Z.
“But it’s gotta be. This whole fucking thing, I mean, they killed his mother and his sister. For nothing. And then there are people who have Mercedes in a world where people are starving. And I dunno, AIDS and girls who have to sell themselves and… and this fucking rain. If it’s not a story, what’s the point? If there’s not some author up there who’s gonna come up with a moral on page 500, or at least a witty narrator who makes you laugh at all the shit in the world, then what’s the fucking point?” She laid her head against his knees and tried to find a comfortable position, thinking all the while what a pain it was going to be to get the dirt out of her skirt. She hated when the rain made them hang the tarp. “Look, I know what you’re gonna say, and that’s fine. I mean, go justice, down with the fucking bourgeoisie, end oppression and give a lollipop to every kid in Somalia.” Her voice had gained sarcasm on top of the recently acquired melancholy. “But so they free Leonard Peltier. So what? Does it all make sense suddenly? No. That’s why it’s gotta be a story.”
She could almost hear his amused smile; not a cruel amusement, simply kind laughter at the foibles he loved. “Good night, Rai.” It almost made her feel normal, a reminder that she had survived these same doubts many times before.
“Yeah. A fucking good night.” She dug a thin canal to divert the stream of water that crept toward her. She looked once more at his scarred face, another symbol she couldn’t understand, then, as always, she lied down on her side, and Z wrapped his long body around her. It had taken months to train him that she needed warmth, not sex, but now he didn’t even try anything. She knew that most people could not believe that such a nocturnal arrangement did not lead to sex, but that’s how it was on the street. Her world was so oversexed — the men who invited her home, the constant lewd gazes, the tales of prostitution that filled The Place — that she needed an asylum. Z was good enough to provide it to her — however reluctantly.
“My story’s not good enough.” She wouldn’t let him sleep yet. “Not good enough to make up for all this. There’s no villains, huh? No fucking loonies that wanna kill my father the village chief. Or some evil stepfather. A story like that, and my life’s worth something. Fuck! I’m on the street, and I’ve never had to give a blowjob to survive.”
“You don’t want that.”
“Of course I don’t. But it’s gotta be part of something bigger, Z. We gotta change the world.”
“It’s time, Z. We gotta bring back Marx.” Z was already doing his morning pushups when Rai stretched her head out of the tarp to make her announcement. He just grunted his agreement. “We gotta make people think about injustice and shit. Your revolution — that’s the story I’m looking for.”
“No shit,” he panted. “Fifty.” He stood. Exercise always brought out the details of the scars on his face.
“And y’know what else I think? I think it’s time we got in on that… those protests. The WTO shit.”
“Pansies. Cuntlicking anti-globalization protesters don’t know shit about shit.” He helped her to fold the tarp and tuck it into the crook of a tree. “Faggot-ass college kids flying ‘round the world on daddy’s dirty money. We want no part of that.”
“There’s nobody else doing anything. At least they’re in the streets.”
“In the streets. Whatever. We’re on the streets. That’s what matters.” He threw on his shirt and pointed east. “When the revolution comes, it’s gonna be done right. I’m gonna do it right.”
“Alone?”
“Hardly. Speak the truth and the people will follow.”
“Don’t be pretentious.” She pulled a thorn from her skirt before it could tear. “You just don’t wanna be part of something that somebody else started.”
“So? I’m no follower. Neither are you.” He had reached one of the little paths that meander through the woods, and it was now easier to walk. “So we’re gonna be in front.”
Rai didn’t respond for a moment. She was out of breath. “And where you gonna get your followers? No better place than a huge protest, right? You scream louder than they do, you know more. Then they’ll follow you.”
“I don’t want some punk-ass kid as my follower.”
Rai skipped over the obvious response. “Plus, we’d get to travel again. Hop a boxcar out to Vegas and join that Anti-Racist Action–”
“Just gangs pretending they’re about–”
“Z! What the fuck. You just wanna shit on every idea I have, or you wanna do something?”
“I wanna do something. But we gotta do it right. Smashing up Starbucks and Nike? What the fuck’s that gonna do? Nothing. We gotta hit them where it hurts.”
“And where’s that? And who’s ‘them’?”
“I’m working on it.” The stepped onto Fifth Avenue and headed downtown. The sidewalk was already crowded with suits on their way to work, but when Z snarled, they stepped out of the way. “That’s what it’s about, Rai,” he lectured as they turned onto 77th Street. “Make the man respect you. They don’t respect some pansy-ass white boy with a sign about sweatshops. Or Ariel Sharon or whatever. They respect fear.” He strode down the middle of the sidewalk, prouder and prouder with each suit that hugged the wall to stay away from him.
“You know what your problem is, Z? You just don’t like people.”
“What’s to like?” His combination of snarl and smile was indescribable.
“But like, how you gonna lead a revolution if you hate everybody? And why? That’s the big question, I guess. I just don’t get it.”
“History,” he responded pompously. “That’s what it’s all about. Fucking history.” He dived into the subway station on Lexington, so Rai never got to ask the questions she wanted.
It hadn’t been easy to get the big poster into the billboard in the Columbus Circle station. Rai had decided that it was time to be blunt, so she hadn’t even modified another ad. It was just a big red sheet of paper with the quote written in graffiti style.
“Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!”
— Karl Marx
Standing on the stairs that connected the 1/9 to the A/C, Rai watched at least two thousand commuters rush by. No one even glanced at the quote. “What the fuck!” she exclaimed after half an hour. “This is whack. Nobody’s got time for culture. Fucking America.”
“Pay some attention to placement next time. Like they’re going to read anything rushing down the stairs.”
“You saying it’s my fault that everyone’s stupid?”
“You’re telling me this?”
She stomped off up the stairs. Z knew that her hauteur meant that he was not to follow her.
Tolstoy Kicks Ass! 