As she sat, one finger playing with a splinter, she was so tired in her bones, all she could think about was crawling back to her mattress.
The clouds opened and a dull facsimile of a sun made its first appearance. She felt turned topsy-turvy, as if the clouds were underfoot and the leaden earth above her.
Ava’s phone wasn’t smart. She realized she needed the internet, though she and Tess had already tried finding Serena that way. She stood in a rush and felt faint, had to sit again and rise carefully with one hand on the back of the bench. And breathe, but she had a plan: Get back to base station, nap, hydrate, fire up the laptop Tess said she could use. It was a plan. Not much of one, but it would have to do until she found something better.
***
Serena served dinner to dozens who stood in line waiting for a place at the feast. Though Weezie had joked that potatoes were the meal’s protein, the stew they served had all sorts of things in it that smelled good and tasted better. It worked like that every day. Many of the faces at table appeared as forlorn and worn down as the ones she had once studied in a book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with photographs by Walker Evans that brought to mind the songs of Woody Guthrie. One family of five bowed their heads in prayer, their clothes so tattered and dusty that Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath came again to mind. “Thank you for the soup kitchen meal,” their wrinkled and emaciated patriarch, a tiny man who looked like Charles Manson but had kind eyes, said to her when she stopped to greet the family.
“This is what I call a Grand Food Hall,” she answered, “but we do sometimes serve soup. You’re welcome anytime.”
In the middle of the meal service, Weezie had to motion to a big, burly biker in a sleeveless leather vest and hair pulled back in a braid to escort a troublemaker from the dining room. He was shouting at an Asian woman in a wheelchair who appeared to have dementia because her eyes were like saucers and her mouth hung open in what Serena took to be either shock or derangement. The troublemaker, his face contorted in rage, screamed out obscenities; he wore a long, greasy suede coat, even though it was humid and hot inside the hall, and the biker grabbed him quick from behind when he reached under it as if going for a gun.
The biker, with assistance from two other diners, roughly escorted the guy from the hall. Serena heard him continue to shout: “You fuckers! I’ll be back, you fascist fucks!”
Otherwise, everybody who came to eat was grateful, their eyes haunted by loneliness and homelessness. Most people, when they get fed, feel good. Serena thought of Ava, who was no doubt dead or so far gone on pills and meth and synthetic junk that she might be better off dead. She shook her head fiercely to clear it. If she stayed employed at the Lost and Found Ministry, one day Ava might walk in the door and stand in line for a hot meal. She had to admit that these were her kind of people, that she herself was homeless.
Tulsa, she thought, blowing out a sigh as if filling a balloon with air.
When she complained after cleanup to Weezie that the town was shut down, he made a face. “Some of that shit is seasonal,” he said. “That Dylan place opens when it wants to. You a fan?”
“My Nana was a big fan. Maybe the biggest. I think of her when I hear him sing.”
Weezie nodded with sympathy. The two had already become friends; he often invited her to sit for coffee with him in his office. He had lived for a time in Fargo and knew the place inside out. He talked about The Riots as if they were an everyday occurrence there, but the city had been peaceful enough, especially in winter, which kept the riffraff out.
“Only two seasons in Fargo,” he said. And winked. It was a very old joke.
“Yeah, I know. Winter. And road construction. Not so much of that these days.”
He liked to call himself President Weezie. “You’re my chief of staff,” he said, making it clear that she could take her good time finding a more permanent place to lay her head. “When I think of Dylan,” he said, shaking his head, “I think of a beautiful turd. If I was Bob Dylan, I would laminate it, frame it, title it, and put it on a gallery wall in London; his estate could include outtakes in one of his bootleg albums.”
Serena stared at him.
“I mean,” Weezie said, “he’s been dead for how many years? You know the urn with his ashes is on display in that museum? And yet new bootlegs come out every damn year. Did he ever sing a note without recording it?” Serena was glaring at him. He shrugged and held out a hand. “No offense to your Nana; I’m kind of kidding around, one Fargoan to another?” he said. “Anyway, Cain’s a different story. They’re open every Sunday afternoon for a big shindig. Music, dance, jams. We can go this Sunday if you’d like.”
She laughed. “You mean a date, Weezie?”
His big ears turned red. “I’ll dude myself up,” he said. “You do the same.” Her glare again. “Or not. Doesn’t matter. People come and go any which way.” He pointed a finger. “What do you say?” He froze like a mime with his odd face and big red ears cocked as if listening for a sound he would never hear.
“Sure,” she said. “Cool. I’m in.” She was touched when he made it clear she was welcome to live and work at the nonprofit for as long as she wished, but she wanted her own place—a house or even an apartment, however narrow and tight, with a window that had a lightweight, bright-colored curtain for privacy. Books, an old comfortable couch free of bugs or lice, food in the fridge. A bottle of cheap wine open on a table with a bright yellow tablecloth. And a special friend she could invite at her leisure to visit.
That wasn’t much to ask, was it? To find somebody to build a house with?
“I have some paper to file,” Weezie said brusquely. “Can you clean up the bulletin board out front, make sure it’s all up to date?”
“Sure.” She stared at him. “You all right? We all right?”
He grinned. “Yes,” he said. He nodded. “One must fasten one’s gaze. That’s all.”
***
“Watch for a parking spot,” Tess said. They were downtown, in the Arts District near Cain’s, and Tess wore a fashionable sheath in black and gold complemented by silver shoes with heels.
Ava laughed. “We’re fashion boats,” she said. It was her first real outing since her relapse.
“It’s social hour on Sundays at Cain’s,” Tess said. “Everybody who’s anybody shows up. Be my date. Behave yourself.”
The comment irked Ava. “There,” she said, pointing. Tess swerved, drawing an irritated blast from somebody’s horn, but then took her time to inch back and forth into the parking spot. “If I wasn’t so brain-dead, I’d do it for you,” Ava said. “I’m a parallel parker nonpareil. First-place finish in the parallel parking Olympics.” She felt all right. She was in tight jeans and a long-sleeved black lamé pullover tee that had the word “lamé” embossed on the front.
The clothes, of course, had come from Tess, and Ava, studying herself in the bedroom mirror, had wondered, keeping her voice idle like a car engine in neutral, if Tess would mind lending her the turquoise earrings to go with the outfit. T-u-r-q-u-o-i-s-e. Left hand, 5; right hand, 4.
“The earrings suit you,” Tess now said, the two of them crossing the street to Cain’s, where a shaggy-haired man with a painted guitar slung over one shoulder was gabbing with another man in a speckled sports coat and tie holding a sax above his waist as if he might stop at the entryway and play tunes for spare change. The wind was high, and Ava felt free for the first time in weeks. She’d taken the cure. It’s getting me through, she thought.
Inside, Tess spied a friend—a dude with a ten-gallon hat and Western shirt with metal buttons who gave her a hug, whistled appreciatively at the both of them, even winked, and took Tess aside to chat her up about something that sounded like business, but not before asking them both what they were drinking. “Chardonnay,” Tess said.
“The same,” Ava said.
Tess gave her a look with lips stretched and a slight shake of the head but left it at that. There was a wooden stage on the near side of the long room where musicians gathered and a bar at the far end with stools. Ava studied the sparse crowd, though it was increasing by the minute, until Tess tapped her on a shoulder with a glass of fizzy liquid. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I switched it for ginger ale.”
Ava did mind. Very much. She wanted a drink. Bad. She felt good. A vodka tonic would be just what the doctor ordered. Chardonnay had been her compromise.
Tess was still her counselor, though, if also landlady and lover, so she nodded and sipped the fizz without complaint. “You’re a functioning adult,” Tess added, making Ava squirm: TMI. “I’m not taking that away. I just didn’t know what to do, off the cuff. If you want the wine, I’ll fetch it.”
Ava squinched up her face. “I’m fine,” she said. She wasn’t. Every muscle in her body tightened. She wanted more than a drink. D-r-i-n-k. Right hand wins, 3–2. A-p-p-e-t-i-t-e. Left hand wins, 5–3. She recalled something from television, a game show, Wheel of Fortune. Spin the giant wheel, pick a letter, spin again if the letter can be found on the board.
She wasn’t sure how long she lost herself in the fugue state. When she became aware again of where and who she was, she was bare-handed, her empty glass of ginger ale—had she been so thirsty?—placed on a nearby table. Several musicians on stage were playing bluegrass. “I’m Working on a Building.” She wagged her head in time to the rhythm. R-h-y-t-h-m. Left hand loses, 4–2.
Somebody said something to her. Ava heard the sentence but was so deep inside her head, it didn’t compute.
