Holly guided Penndel’s wheelchair down the sidewalk, pushing it with purpose, jerking it around as if no one was sitting in it. The rubber wheels crinkled and stalled against shards of broken glass and rusting metal, along with pieces of red brick, the hallmark of St. Louis construction. Resilient weeds emerged from the cracks in the sidewalk. The sun had disappeared hours ago. Only a few streetlights illuminated their path.
Penndel’s building and his fire-breathing, computer-melting smelter was located several blocks from Grand Avenue. The humidity, even in September, clung to their clothes like steam to a shower curtain. They’d been to dinner with a couple, new to the neighborhood, who had completed the conversion of a twelfth floor penthouse loft space with a small balcony area large enough for a table and eight chairs.
“You know we’ve become a third world nation when the city tries to save money by cutting electricity use for streetlights,” Penndel said, making small talk.
The distance they had to go was enough for a relaxing walk, short enough to be embarrassing in taking a car, except the six blocks were mostly abandoned. Once they left the Grand Center entertainment district, the remaining pedestrians and street life dwindled to zero.
Across one street was the Fox Theatre and Powell Hall, bookended by two restaurants, mostly empty when the theatre crowd wasn’t around. As they passed the theatre and musical icons, Holly wished she’d had the money to buy season tickets to the symphony. Farther down the boulevard, a jazz club harkened back to a speakeasy of the Roaring Twenties, and filled the street with woeful blues.
Still, the entertainment district of Grand Avenue felt grossly underutilized once performances concluded. Suburbanites filed into secure parking lots for eight to fifteen dollars or more, saw their show, then beat a path for the Interstate, leaving behind the homeless, the drunk, the drugged, and the well-to-do SLU students, plus a few urban pioneers like Penndel.
Holly didn’t speak until they reached the entrance to the building. The conversation at dinner hadn’t gone well.
“Girl, you shut down back there like someone choking on an insult stuck in their windpipe,” Penndel said.
Holly responded like dry tinder baking on the forest floor, just waiting for a flicked cigarette from a negligent camper. She stepped in front of the wheelchair, placed her hands on the arms, and leaned in toward Penndel. “Don’t ever, ever mention my heritage without my permission.”
Penndel lifted himself up partially. “What? What did I say?”
“I don’t want some fucking charitable attitude toward me, nor an inhospitable one because of where my parents might have been born. And I don’t want people looking at me funny because they don’t know the difference between Syria and cereal, except one is somehow linked in their minds to 9/11, and every other geopolitical incident in the Middle East.”
“Well, given our host’s world view, I doubt we’ll be seeing them again anytime soon, anyway.”
Holly leaned into his face. “That’s not the point, Penndel.” She knelt down so they were eye to eye. “The point is that the connection I have to Syria is that my father left that country to come here and make a better life.”
“Man, where were you when the ethnic pride was handed out?”
“Fending for myself without it, thank you very much.”
They faced off in the darkened entranceway to his building. The front of the limestone block church down the street, abandoned years earlier, glowed from the brightly lit underground club next door.
“Holly, your father is from Syria. You are part Syrian. Don’t you think at some point you have to acknowledge that? Quit running away from your gene pool.”
“What the fuck do you know about my gene pool?”
Penndel looked at her, bewildered.
“Penndel, your gene pool is irrelevant to things happening in the world. Mine has been ‘relevant’, not by choice, by virtue of birth. Not just relevant. Strong enough to elicit reactions I don’t even grasp, ancient embedded religious beliefs, Christians and their apocalypse at the end of of the world, the birthright of the Jews, the divisions between Shi’a and Sunni, the stories they’ve told themselves for two thousand years, even the damn oil we extract from there to run our cars and our military here. The damn place has been the birthright of Anglo and European colonists for centuries, and I’ve had it up to here with the assumptions that come with mentioning that damn country and the whole fucking region!”
They rode the old freight elevator up to the loft, where Holly flicked the light switch like it was wired to a bomb she wanted to set off.