The Ave is down and dirty on a summer afternoon, an afternoon stinking with decay and stagnation and sadness. What could be sadder than a summer Saturday afternoon alone? Death waits in the wings, naked. Time is the enemy. He did not come here by choice. His parents and God (?) and the girls who disdained him sent him here and left him to stand mumbling on the corner.
To ask strangers directions to places he actually knew.
To look at himself in windows with loathing.
To fart on purpose whenever possible.
To die alone in a basement.
What was God thinking?
God is the enemy.
Get that straight right off the bat, a brickbat on the head
Like Krazy Kat. Krazy Kat! Crazy, hell, he was righteous. Brickbat-Krazy Kat! Brickbat-Krazy Kat!
Turning this new-found mantra around, he goes into the Bartell drug store. He needs something but he can’t remember what.
Knock Three Times plays on the music. A silly song, written for silly people, people he has nothing in common with, except that he was here in this very world, maybe even in this very store when the song was new and when the Ave had hippies and nice shops and things. When the Ave and everything else felt new. Hearing it now, a silly song way out of its time, reminds him keenly of all the years gone, all the years lost. Of his failure. When did he last hear the song? Years earlier, possibly, when he might have done something differently. Years earlier, when he might have plotted out a course for success. It impresses him that some strange agency has brought him and this silly song and the pharmacy, all relics from a distant time, together. He almost smiles.
Knock Three Times, why?
Why not?
You got a better idea?
If you ain’t gonna show…
Show what? Show and tell? Now that’s more like it.
All he ever wanted, show and tell, or share and tell. Same difference. Who doesn’t want somebody to show and share things with? He is a sharing kind of guy, dammit!
But no.
Sharing not allowed.
And so.
How about knocking three times on somebody’s head?
The thought amuses him.
Then arouses him.
Does the store sell baseball bats? Plastic ones, maybe?
He moves slowly down the aisles, looking from side to side. He sees plastic toys and gewgaws, things wearing a look of desperation and ultimate doom underneath their bright colors, but no bats. He smiles tightly: just as well.
Darling darling.
Words that never crossed his lips.
Knock three times.
Uh-uh-uh.
Darling darling.
Show what?
Don’t be so existential.
Shit, existential is.
Isn’t it?
Oh, yeah: toe spacers. He walks with deliberate motion, swinging his arms slowly and widely, down the aisle to Foot Care where he finds a variety of foot products.
But no gel toe spacers. The space where they should be hanging is empty. Out of stock. Shit, even these?
Goddamn it! he yells into the indifferent aisle, the aisle that is now letting him down, just as his parents and God (?) and all the girls that looked past him let him down.
Why do they have to go and fucking change shit all the time!
The head and face of a young Asian woman peers from behind the pharmacy window.
No foot spacers! I need foot spacers!
A muffled “Sorry.”
Everybody’s fucking sorry anymore. He shrugs and says Sorry and heads for the door. He opens the door and emerges into the light and yells, for no particular reason except sudden inspiration:
BINZEN!
The Ave shuffles and farts on the eternal march to oblivion, ignorant of ten minutes ago, kids staring at their phones, unable to survive even one minute without them, gaping gawping fish out of water, evolution, working its wily wonders, in a century or less to embed phones in our skulls and neutron drives in our feet. BINZEN? Where did that come from? It felt right, that’s where from. Spontaneous ejaculation. Hey, everybody’s doing it, why not? All society is now in a state of spontaneous ejaculation, starting at the very top. He is just following orders. Only: What would the young man who was him forty years before think, seeing the older man he was now, emerging from the pharmacy and yelling BINZEN?
Crazy fuck, that’s what.
We are all crazy fucks.
He crosses the Ave, which some people call University Ave, which he hates, when it’s actually Way, and enters the alcove of a place that used to be some other place, someplace nice, a store where you could buy nice clothing when there used to be lots of nice places on the Ave where you could get nice stuff and eat stuff that wasn’t Asian, but that was a long time ago and nobody cared about that now. Now, it’s all Asian, and since China is the main force of Asia, today’s watchword will be BINZEN! A Chinese version of banzai, maybe? He does not know Chinese but BINZEN sounds Chinese. Chinese is good, Chinese is the future, America will be part of China and that will be a good thing, the Chinese are tough, industrious, hard-working, no-bullshit. Groups of young Asian women pass, he considers asking them what BINZEN means, but he does not wish to frighten anyone, and these delicate little creatures who probably barely understand English would definitely be frightened by a loony-looking old white guy with hair sticking up in sad wisps, the kind of white guy who might have thrown them in jail or kicked them out of the country not so very long ago. And anyway, whatever it means, it means something to him, something original and potentially profound:
BINZEN!
The alcove is filthy and full of the leavings of sad cases and the caked-on crud of cockroaches and the buried vibrations of Ed the Tuba Man, who played here sitting on the tuba case and holding his battered Mirafone German-style tuba and sending his vibe into the cold, uncaring world. Ed’s BINZEN. Maybe DNA from some of Ed’s spit is ground into the pavement.
Nostalgic for his high-school band days, not so far behind him at that time, he had revived his sousaphone and joined the concert band at the community college, thinking it might lead to something in music. He carted his sousaphone to the first evening rehearsal and sat down next to a guy who said in a tuba-like bellow HI THERE! and shook his hand like a water pump. I’M ED—HA-HA-HA! He would subsequently learn that Ed was a veteran of the band, he had played in the Seattle Youth Symphony and Cascade Symphony, and that he liked to assert his seasoned, first-chair primacy.
When he flubbed his first note, Ed said DON’T YOU KNOW WHERE B-NATURAL IS?
Sure, Ed. So every now and then, discretely, he would flub a note on purpose.
Ed would sigh and go, PLAY WHAT’S WRITTEN, OKAY?
He would giggle and Ed would go, I’M NOT LAUGHING!
Afterward, Ed would race him down the boulevard, honking and flashing his lights on and off and pulling abreast of him, laughing demonically. Sometimes Ed would propose meeting at PEEZA HUT, and they would eat pizza with every kind of meat on it and talk about the difficulty in connecting with girls.
At last, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the band gathered at the Mural for the end-of-term concert. The director wore a white leisure suit, everybody was cheerful, they played In a Persian Market and High School Cadets and the overture to Egmont, he and Ed side-by-side in majestic unison. He had told people at work, and between numbers he peered around wondering if any of them had shown up. But none of them came. Even his parents, who always came to his high school band concerts, didn’t come. Anyway, who even cared about that kind of music anymore? The sun slumped toward the horizon, the musicians packed up and drifted away to drinks and fun with friends who did come, or home to wives and families, or back to empty apartments and basement rooms. Ed gave him his water-pump handshake, he lugged his sousaphone to the car, went home to his parents’, and never played again.
The next time he saw Ed he was playing in the alcove. Ed guffawed when he saw him, HA-HA-HA! You should bring your horn and we can play some DO-ETS!
I don’t play anymore, Ed.
Okay, FINE! Ed told him he made ten thousand dollars a year busking.
Impressive, he nodded. But it was still defeat: from Youth Symphony and Cascade Symphony and community college band to an alcove paved with piss and chewing gum, people hurrying by, faces creased by tight smiles of disdain. And even then, ten thousand wasn’t much to go on. But after all, how many jobs were there for tuba players?
Music let him down.
Ed was murdered by a gang of dumb kids, at a bus stop, not far from the Mural where they had played side-by-side in the sun.
Cockroaches. Cockroaches should be squashed.
Squash three times.
He hopes Ed is playing his tuba in heaven and has found a girlfriend.
A car sits motionless at the intersection, blink-blink-blink, waiting to make a left off the Ave onto 45th. A overhead says NO LEFT TURN. The intersection used to be a gold mine for the motorcycle cops in their shiny black boots, racking up the illegal turns, bim-bam-boom, Didn’t you see the sign? He shouts, Hey! No left turn! NO LEFT TURN! The car continues to sit blinking, holding up traffic, the head in the window staring, clueless, mouth gaping. He walks out into the intersection and points up at the No Left Turn sign. HELLO! CAN’T YOU READ? The driver gapes at him, backs up and swerves around him, nearly colliding with an oncoming vehicle, and guns away to the west. Cockroach. FUCK YOU JACKASS he yells, flips the car off, stalks to the sidewalk. A guy smiles at him and says, Righteous, dude! Yeah, whatever.
He’s got to get away from here, this sad stupid stinking Ave. Here, here, why always here? Where there are probably some who see him, who have seen him for years and years and think, Him again. Yeah, they should talk. He walks with a deliberate stride west down 45th, hoping to find the sun lowering toward blessed evening but it remains high, too high, mocking, It’s summer, fool, I ain’t in no ways tired! So where’s your girl, your money, your friends, your life, hah? HAH?
Fuck off, sun.
BINZEN!
He comes to a low brick wall and sits. The cars rush by, stop, rush away, stop-start-stop, a fucked-up way to live, he’s glad he doesn’t have to drive anymore, driving is for suckers. Get out and walk, suckers!
But they’re only doing what they have to do.
We are all suckers.
What the hell had happened?
The question slices through his brain then dissolves, a nanosecond of nonsense, signifying nothing.
Nothing signifies.
Girls, sex—is it worth it? In high school he was always conscious of them looking at him then not looking at him, remote, unattainable. He wasn’t bad-looking, he was nice, he was a good listener, he liked movies and bands. But the acne came and fucked things up and instilled in his mind the idea that the girls with the long sleek hair and nice skin were beyond him.
Girls let him down.
It’s fucked-up, the Bill Gates divorce. Why does it affect him so strongly. Impermanence, fickleness. Till death—or whatever.
Everything is whatever, anymore, even for Bill Gates, who doesn’t have all the answers after all.
Even fucking foot spacers let him down.
He thinks again about Ed, back in the alcove, and that he should have returned to the community college band and kept playing and had more Saturdays at the Mural next to Ed, blazing away in the sun. Maybe things would have turned out differently. But he let it go. He always let things go.
There is a buzzing sound. A guy on a bike is corkscrewing awkwardly uphill toward him, one hand on the handlebar, the other holding on his shoulder a boombox blaring rap. Can’t escape it, can’t escape anything anymore. The bike comes near.
He extends his right arm in front of him and waves it slowly in a wide circle. Quiet zone! he says. Headphones please! Quiet zone!
The biker pulls up and looks at him. You say somethin’?
Quiet zone! Headphones please!
Hey shut up, fool!
BINZEN!
What are you, some crazy fuck?
BINZEN! Quiet zone!
The guy thrusts the rasping boombox toward him, looking like he’s considering a violent response.
He got his ass kicked once, it only hurt for a few minutes because as usual he had on enough clothes to make a good padding. How much padding did Ed have on? He continues oscillating his arm in a half-circle around him and saying BINZEN! Quiet zone!
He does not make eye contact with the biker, but nods his head and gazes off into space. Let them think you’re crazy.
Crazy fuck, the biker mutters. He spits in his direction, jerks his bike forward, and labors away up the hill, the rap fading to a pitiful buzz of impotent anger.
Signifying nothing.
He lets his arm go limp. Reprieve. He might not be so lucky next time. Very true. Wind up like Ed. Must try to avoid these situations. Must prepare a bulwark to protect himself. He vows to consider what such a bulwark might be.
Meanwhile, Ed is dead, music is dead, his parents are dead, his youth is dead, his Ave is dead.
Can’t think of such things, they have no relevance now.
Now, a hot bath would be relevant.
Some new clothes.
A steak dinner.
Somebody.
Maybe a nice Chinese woman. Why not?
A face, that’s all. A simple little face.
A face is not a simple thing.
A word is not a simple thing. What word might have turned him down the right path?
Something as simple as Hello?
Very possibly.
More doors are opened with Hello than anything else. Hello is the magic word.
Open-Sesame.
And yet, he had said Hello, more than once.
And failed.
Well, okay. What of purpose now?
Purpose: a simple word. And yet.
Working his stupid job was okay, but it wasn’t true purpose.
It was all too much.
If you’re not born with it.
If you’re not shown it.
You’re
Lost.
The realization is a punch in the gut. Is this the big revelation?
And what is his answer—BINZEN?
Is that even a real word?
It is now.
What if the boom-box guy comes back looking for him? He makes an on-the-spot resolution to increase his vigilance. Double-down, as they said: adopt a more emphatic arm movement, swing his arms wide, creating as closely as possible partial-circles around, in front, and at the side, thereby defending his space. Signifying in no uncertain terms that this is someone not to be fucked around with by any cockroaches with boomboxes or make illegal turns or who call it University Ave or who otherwise shit on human decency. He proceeds downhill, swinging his arms wide, letting the momentum urge him on. It is a strange and exhilarating feeling, a new kinetic energy added to that of his legs, which frankly could use a little more help anymore.
He strides down 45th, proclaiming to himself the new manifesto and preparing for a new life of self-assertion, when a woman emerges from the entrance to an office building and he swings his left arm into her bosom.
Her face becomes grotesque with fear, she jerks away.
Sorry! he says. Sorry. He shakes his head, looks away. The woman smiles faintly.
Is this a door, opening?
She clacks quickly away.
No.
Maybe there is another door somewhere nearby, a door hidden or hard to see but still there.
He must look harder, closer.
Doors are everywhere.
He focuses on the sidewalk, looks for faint outlines, tells himself, Okay, dude, remember the consequences.
How could he be so deluded? Revelation from lunatic behavior?
This whole spontaneous ejaculation situation needs to be re-examined. He knows he is on a dangerous path: a path toward becoming a full-time nut case.
Why does he do it?
It feels good.
Barbaric yawping, some old-time poet called it.
Yeah! Why the fuck not!
YEAH!
His echo dies, leaving him with nothing signified.
Okay, dude, this is where the rubber hits the fucking road.
Nut case the rest of your fucking life, or get back on track,
Center
Focus
Heal
A nice word, “heal.”
I can heal myself.
Don’t need this nut case shit.
That woman—she actually smiled, like maybe…
So, dude, pull out of it.
As Ed would say, STOP DRAMATIZING!
Stop fucking around
No arm-swinging
No binzen
Blind alley
False paradigm
Streamline
Pull in the arms, keep a low profile, fade into the landscape. Like in the eighties, when crackheads were everywhere, that damn cockroach at the bus stop, Hey, bro, nice hat. Can I have it? The kid grinned evilly at him, like he had a blade or a gun and was itching to use it. But another guy stepped in, Come on, man, stop fuckin’ around, and they shuffled away on some more important mission, leaving him to wonder how close he had come.
Where is the bike kid? He looks behind him, up the street, sees only cars and pedestrians. Still, there could be eyes on him from anywhere, anytime.
Invisibility is the best defense.
He will become invisible.
He eases onward, arms now close at his side. Become ghost.
Find purpose. Can we get some purpose, here! Somebody!
Purpose is not lunatic behavior.
It is finding doors, and opening them.
An ancient voice whispers: be not fortress
Be flower.
The sun glowers angrily. The cars rasp angrily. The air vibrates angrily.
He must counteract.
From now on: smile.
Smiles open doors.
Kindness, the best word of all.
He peers west down 45th. The traffic spins off into infinity, poor suckers (we are all suckers), going and doing fuck-all, but hey, that’s what we do.
Be nice.
Blue Moon would be nice, but it’s not even two o’clock. Shit.
In the near traffic lane, something moves. A small gray lump.
A pigeon.
The bird hops, struggles, a wing drags limply on the pavement. It is injured.
Doomed.
Cars blast by. The bird’s little head bobs, it is trying to find a way.
There is no way.
What can he do? Call the Humane Society. No phone.
The bird sees him, freezes, stares briefly into his eyes, then continues struggling.
He steps into the lane, waves cars around him, waving to real purpose, now. A car honks and swerves angrily around. The light turns red, he knows what he must do. He pulls off his jacket and holds it around the now-motionless bird, then encloses it. He gently picks the bundle up and hugs it to him, making sure the pigeon can’t fall through a fold onto the pavement. The bird struggles, is still. As the light turns green he steps back onto the sidewalk.
He is standing on the sidewalk with a pigeon in his coat.
Well, shit.
Got to call somebody, an expert. He crosses the busy thoroughfare and goes into the Shell station store.
A young woman in a headscarf stands behind the screen. She appears almost painfully erect to him, whose posture is a near-insult. He suddenly hates himself.
Sorry to bother you, but I have an injured pigeon—can you please call the Humane Society?
She looks doubtful. You have—pige-on?
Yes, here in my jacket, injured. Can you call the Humane Society? I don’t know what else to do.
Humane—Society? What is that?
Where they take care of animals.
Ah, really! Okay, I will try. She pokes at her phone, stared, Ah, yes, here. Humane Society. A faint voice answers, she says I have man here in my store with—what?
An injured pigeon.
Injure pigeon. He want to know what he can do.
I found it in the street, it can’t fly.
Can’t fly.
The faint voice clips off perfunctory words, the attendant frowns. Nothing you can do? Okay.
He say nothing he can do. Sorry.
Yeah, sorry. Thank you for your help.
He supposes she has a husband, a family, a world all her own.
She smiles sadly. I hope is okay.
He walks back into the afternoon with the jacket lumped-up in his arms and inside the jacket an injured bird, a creature no one can help.
Now his.
So, what now? Wring its neck? The sun has softened, gone fuzzy around the edges. He hugs his hidden companion to him, checks again to make sure his coat is secure around it, says, Okay, we have to go to my place. He walks wide of the cars at the gas pumps, and turns back up 45th toward his room ten blocks away. He walks swiftly, head down, focused on the bundle in his arms, but also glancing around, watching. The boombox kid might be near. But nobody intrudes, no rasping music impinges, only strangers walking in their own worlds, oblivious, minding their own business and letting him mind his.
Civilization.
Everything becomes different. The light modulates, he is now acutely aware of the shade, the walking figures, the smell of the air. So, this is how it happens: how life shifts, drops something in your lap, something totally unexpected, challenging. Interesting word, “challenge”: here did it come from? Latin, Greek, Persian?
Now, the word’s bony, gnarly finger points at him.
CHALLENGE.
He feels the bird move. It’s okay, little bro’, I’ve got you, you’re okay. We’ll get you home and get you something to eat. He reaches the Ave and stops for the light. He looks down the street he sees the kid standing astride his bike, boombox on the sidewalk, talking to another kid. Prisoners of ANGER. Poor kids. Good luck, guys, have a good life. He looks away, praying the kid doesn’t spot him, listening in dread for and ANGRY cry, Hey! There he is! But there is no ANGRY voice, no grabbing hand. The light changes, he walks into the street, life moves on. No one follows, only the sun on his back.
He sits on the floor of his room feeding the pigeon warm chicken soup and small pieces of bread. I know this isn’t the best food for you, but it’s all we got. I’ll get you some seed tomorrow.
The bird laps it up eagerly, one eye fixed on him. When the soup is gone, it walks briskly around the basement room, head bobbing, looking fine except for the broken wing. What is this place? Why is it here?
Sorry about your wing, little guy, wish there was something we could do. He hesitates, then says what he must: So, you want to stay here? Live here, with me?
The words sound impossibly alien, unlikely. Inevitable.
This is what inevitable feels like.
With me.
This is what purpose feels like.
The pigeon stares at him a moment then resumes its exploration.
Guess that’s a yes.
He lies reclines on the mattress, considering. What are words, anyway? Or anyways, as some insist on saying.
Binzen: a word he plucked from nowhere. It might mean anything: toothbrush. Aarvark. Foot spacer.
But now, it means what he says it means.
Pigeon.
He lies down, eyeing the pigeon warily. He hopes it will not try to hop up on the bed, where he might roll over and crush it. Human surroundings are no place for birds. He will have to be very careful of where he puts his feet, how he moves, sits. He can do that. He—they—have made it this far. By now the bird would certainly be dead, lying in the road crushed beneath the angry sun.
But it lives.
A life he gave it.
He will have to go to a pet store and get bird seed and other bird stuff, a cage. Gonna cost some. Christ—pigeon poop! He gets up, fishes some newspaper out of the recycling bin, spreads it around the floor of his room. So, Mister Pigeon, can you maybe do your thing on the paper?
The pigeon shuffles over to the paper, hops on, gives a tentative peck. Drops a gob of white stuff.
Good pigeon! He wishes a woman, a woman for him, could see him now, sitting on the bed, a pigeon walking around the room, pooping on its fresh paper, Potty-trained already.
Damn craziest thing.
Binzen—pigeon. More than coincidence.
Fate.
He watches television on his little black and white portable. His new friend and roommate sits quietly on the floor nearby, watching the flickering images.
This is too much: we’re watching TV together. Me and a pigeon.
So, Pidge, he says, softly, what do you think? Sorry about your wing. Came close to buying it today, you know that? But here you are. This is your home now.
Poor thing; it will never again live with its own kind. Never make pigeon love.
Coo-coo, he says, softly. Coo-coo.
The bird says nothing, waddles over to his jacket, settles in, and folds its wings.
He pulls the comforter over him and sighs.
Two pairs of eyes meet,
Close.