Stanzi—Monday Night—Box Bet Bug Bin
I get a burrito because it’s easier to eat while walking and that’s what Gustav wants to do—obvious from the fact that he begins his journey home before the bush man and I can leave the restaurant window. Gustav got a Styrofoam container of tamales and the bush man gets dos pollo enchiladas and I’m envious because that’s what I would have gotten had we gone into the restaurant and sat down like normal people. I do not say this aloud, but the minute I think it, the bush man taps me on the shoulder and gives me his container of enchiladas. I give him my burrito and say thank you. He tells me I’m welcome en español. “De nada.”
When we get to Gustav’s garage, Gustav climbs into the invisible cockpit to eat by himself, and the bush man says good-bye and continues on to his house. Or his bush. Or wherever he will eat my burrito.
I sit on the upturned paint bucket and balance the Styrofoam container of enchiladas, rice, and beans on my knees and attempt to eat them with a white plastic knife and fork and Gustav asks, “Why do you even talk to that guy?”
“I feel bad for him.”
“He’s crazy,” Gustav says.
“He gave you the helicopter,” I say.
“That doesn’t make him sane,” Gustav says. “He only gave it to me when I told him I couldn’t stand to be alive here anymore.”
I don’t say anything to this. He must be exaggerating. Maybe it was during his string theory/snowshoe episode last year.
“I don’t even know if the thing will fly or not,” Gustav says. “He might have given it to me because he wanted me to take my mind off other things.”
“Some people would say we’re all crazy,” I answer. He shoves most of a tamale into his mouth and chews for what feels like an entire minute. I add, “But we’re not, of course. I mean, not like that.”
Gustav looks at me with a mix of sadness and curiosity in his eyes. “You really have his letters?” he asks. “You really have kissed him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“That’s not an answer,” Gustav says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He just wants to be loved. He just wants to give his letters away. They are superior letters. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Everyone wants to be loved,” Gustav says.
We eat the rest of our meal in silence, and when Gustav is finished with his tamales, he picks up his tool belt and goes back to work on his cockpit. I ask him what he’s working on and he says he’s fastening the control panel now that all of the gauges and switches and dials have been tested. He tells me we’ll be ready soon.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he says.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tuesday would be the ideal day of the week for us to go,” he says.
“I know.”
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” I answer.
This time he doesn’t press me for more than Why not? This time he knows what I mean when I say it. He knows we are not lettered A, B, C, D, or E. He knows we are not mice in a school-shaped plywood maze. He knows I sometimes don’t want to be alive here anymore, either.
“You really think… tomorrow?” I ask.
“I think so,” he says. “I have to give it a short test in the morning.” He looks down at something under his feet—presumably pedals—and says, “After that, we can go.”
“I don’t understand how we can go to an invisible place,” I say. “Is that all the bush man told you?”
“It’s a hotbed of genius,” he says. “That’s what he told me.”
“But you told me he said it was invisible.”
“He did. But he’s also crazy, right?” Gustav answers. “Just imagine a place where you never have to feel like you’re in kindergarten again. No assessment, no holding back, and no bullshit.”
“Is that what he said it is?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what I imagined.”
I stand there for a minute and try to imagine what hotbed of genius looks like to me. I see me curing the world of guilt. I see no more trips with Mama and Pop. “Okay,” I say. “My parents must be wondering where I am. I spent the day with China skipping school.”
“I wish China could come with us,” Gustav says.
“She can’t see it,” I say.
“Not even on Thursdays?”
“No. She was lying.”
“Huh,” Gustav says. “She’s spending too much time with Lansdale Cruise, maybe. China usually tells the truth.”
I don’t think anyone usually tells the truth, so I don’t say anything.
“What will you bring?” Gustav asks.
I think for a moment and say, “My dissection kit and a lab notebook and my goggles and a change of clothes. Does that sound good?”
“Will you be wearing your lab coat?” he asks, and points to my lab coat.
“Of course,” I answer.
“I thought you might leave it here,” he says.
“Why not?” he answers.
I put my empty enchilada container in the trash can in the garage and say, “Good night, Gustav. I’ll see you and your lovely red helicopter tomorrow.”
He waves and says something about his tachometer.
The man is in his trench coat again. He says, as if he’d never met me before, as if we didn’t have bear-tea or trade dinner entrées, “Wanna buy an A?”
“I already have an A,” I say.
He digs around behind the bush. “How about a C?”
“Do you have a W?”
He roots around again in the bush and comes back with two Vs. He holds them side by side and they form a child’s exaggerated W.
“That’s two Vs,” I say.
“I know.” He pulls his trench coat open and searches the inside pockets. His nakedness is so normal to me by now I don’t even notice it. “I have an M,” he says, and hands it to me. He is joyous about this. He is thrilled that he has an M.
“Do you make any numbers?”
“Numbers!” he says. “Ha!”
I turn the letter M over in my hands. It is smooth and cold. I ask, “Is this marble?”
“Granite.”
“I’ll take this M,” I say. “As a good-bye present.”
He squints at me and grins. “Is Gustav finally going?” He is more excited than he was when he found the granite M in his trench coat pocket. He holds up his index finger. “Wait,” he says, then runs from the bush to the front of his house, and I hear the storm door slam and the sound of someone running up or down a set of wooden stairs.
In a minute, he is standing in front of me again. He says, “I wish I could come with you. I’ve seen it. It’s perfect.”
I have no idea what the dangerous bush man is talking about. “What’s perfect?”
“They say there are no departures,” he says. “But they lie. I’ve been there. I came back.”
“If it’s perfect, why did you come back?” I ask.
“Because nothing is perfect,” he says. “Perfect is a myth. I want you to remember this. Perfect is a boldfaced lie. It’s a ham sandwich without ham. It’s a blue sky on Mondays when it rains on Wednesdays.”
“Okay,” I say, because we could stand here all night talking in crazy bush man circles. “Can I pay you for this quality M?”
He looks sad that I’ve asked. Hurt, even. “It’s a gift. You can’t take it with you because it’s too heavy. But it’s a gift all the same.”
“Can you see it?” I ask.
“The helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“Of course,” he says.
“Which day?”
He occupies himself with arranging his letters in order of texture behind the bush. When he leans over too far, his scrotum is just visible through the slit in the back of his trench coat. He stands again. “What do you mean, which day?”
“Which day can you see it?”
“Every day,” he says. His face finishes his statement. It says, Why would you ask such a stupid question?
“I can only see it on Tuesdays,” I say.
He acts as if he doesn’t hear me and reaches into his innermost trench coat pocket. He produces what looks like a map. It looks very used. It looks old. Yellowed. He says, “There is only one of these. Gustav will know what to do with it.” He grabs my shoulders and says, “This is the only one. Do you understand?”
I take the map and tuck it under the elbow that is braced against my side because it’s still holding the granite M. I feel dejected because we’re not kissing. It makes no sense. No one should want the dangerous bush man to kiss them.
I open the map and look at it by the light of the streetlamp. I can’t understand the markings or the drawings, really. All I can see are two lines of text. At the top it reads THE PLACE OF ARRIVALS. At the bottom it reads THERE ARE NO DEPARTURES.
I wonder if this is all a joke.
The dangerous bush man says, “Do I look like I’m joking?”
I wonder if I was talking my thoughts aloud.
He says, “No. I can hear them.”
I think about how I want him to kiss me.
He grabs me by the shoulders and kisses me softly on the forehead. “You go sleep,” he says. “It’s a long journey.”
I nod.
“Don’t show anyone the map except Gustav. Not even when you get there,” he says. “Especially when you get there.”
I walk home.
When I get to the front door, I put the M and the map in my backpack. I check my phone and see it’s nearly eleven o’clock and I guess Mama and Pop will be waiting up to ask me where I was all day.
But there is only a note.
Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.
I don’t know why they leave that note about going to bed. I checked a long time ago. They’re not in bed. They’re in another three-letter-word-that-starts-with-a-B. They are in a box. They are in a bet. A but. A bug. A bin. They are in a bog. They are in a boy. A bit. A ban. A bap.
Or they are in a bar.
More specifically, they’re at Chick’s Bar, which is just down the street from our house. Two hundred and twelve steps, to be exact. Architects built the community this way. With bars. And playgrounds. They’re near each other so parents can watch their kids fall off the swing set from their barstool and then try to sober up on the way to the hospital for clavicle X-rays.