The One Percenters (7 page)

Other games such as Crazy 8s are too simplistic. Spades is a good in-betweener. You could spend your whole lifetime playing it and still be learning when you die.

But rummy is a good talking game. It doesn’t require much effort or concentration, and it has a nice pace to it. I got lucky on the first hand; I drew three fives.

“Isn’t it funny how you can’t
not
think?” Cristen
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studied her cards as she asked the question.

“Come again?” I was hoping the five of diamonds was near the top of the pile. I like to get off to a fast start. “Well, it’s very difficult to clear your mind. There are complex techniques just for doing so. Your brain is always on, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I often wonder, who’s in charge, you or your brain?” I figured Cristen was just humoring me. She knew full well that psychology is a pet topic of mine. I don’t study it deeply or technically, but I do like to try to figure out what makes us all tick.

“I guess it’s kind of like the idea of, if you theoretically cut out a chunk of brain and then another chunk and another, how far could you go and still call yourself human? I mean, what
is
human? Our brains?

Our souls? Our emotions?” Truly, I’d love to know the answer to that.

“And another thing. We don’t even control our minds, it would seem. I mean, if I were to suggest an image to you, there’s no way you could help but imagine it.”

“Try me.” I felt up for a challenge from the slut.

That was now my pet name for her. Of course, I never said it aloud, but it made me laugh inside. Slut. Slut.

Slut. What a funny word.

“Okay. Don’t think of a walrus with a lacrosse stick shoved up its butt.”

I laughed and tried to think of a big bowl of gelatin. A big bowl of blue gelatin. A big bowl of boiling, blue gelatin. A walrus with a lacrosse stick up its butt.

Damn. I just could not get away from the image.

“That’s not fair. That’s too graphic. I almost
wanted
to picture that because it’s so laughable.”

“Fair enough. Let’s try another.”

“You’ve got the damn five of diamonds, don’t you.” “Hush. Don’t change the subject. Here’s an easy, nondescript one. Don’t think of —and had she said “a bowl of blue gelatin,” I would have left for Vegas immediately—an orange cup.”

Big bowl of gelatin. Big bowl of blue gelatin. Big
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bowl of boiling, blue gelatin. Big bowl of boiling, blue, bubbly gelatin. Uh, oh, running out of ‘B’ words. Big bowl of boiling, blue, bubbly, orange cup. Damn.

“All right, you win.” I really wanted to beat her little test, hoping that I was more than just a sheep.

Alas, I am not. To top it off, she laid down the two, three, four, and five of diamonds. We were doing more talking than playing, but now I was forced to change my strategy. I hate when that happens. Having to drop the idea of four of a kind, I instead would go after a high straight. I had the jack and king of clubs.

“So I guess you’re right. We’re too smart for our own damn good. Care to distract me some more?”

“Hey, if you can’t talk and play cards at the same time, you’ve got bigger issues to worry about than rummy. Could you grab the pen behind you? I’ve got a scratch pad right here.” She reached toward my nightstand, and continued talking.

“All right, I got another one. How do blind people know if they’re straight or gay if they can’t see what people look like?” Obviously she didn’t have much faith in her hand if she had to resort to such distraction tactics. I felt confident.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s kind of internal. Or maybe they go by pheromones.”

“Well, if it
is
internal, that would prove that orientation is preprogrammed.”

“I think most people assume it’s a nature thing anyway. I guess you could argue that the blind take the orientation of their parents, go with what they are taught as a kid. Kind of like, it’s easier to go with the flow.” I reconsidered a moment. “That doesn’t work, though, ‘cause it’s not always the case. At least I assume it’s not always the case. Besides, you’re overlooking the fact that it’s more than the look. It’s the essence and the touch and the mind of the person as well. I sure wouldn’t find you all that attractive if you had the mind and the smell and the touch of Joe Ironworker. Male and female is about a lot more than looks.”

“I bet they must really enjoy making love—

heightened senses and all. I bet you we can’t even imagine the level of pleasure their bodies reach, because
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we’re not so in tune with our bodies.”

“Never thought of it, and it’s about
time
I got the queen.”I laid down the straight. I had already set down three nines. The hand was out.

“All right, Ed. What’s that, 55 points?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled at me. I smiled back. The world was smiling.
Smile
. It’s a comforting, warm word.

Smile. Nobody loves you.

The great bologna mystery had been solved the week before. Cristen bought it en masse so she could feed the birds behind her apartment. I argued that it was probably not particularly good for their health, but she retorted that it was probably not particularly good for ours either. I couldn’t argue that.

We ended up together till 4:00 p.m. We both felt very comfortable, and neither of us had anywhere in particular to go, and let’s face it, Sundays are the perfect do-nothing day. It’s a time for coffee and danish and dozing off. It is a day for rest, so says God. And who the hell am I to question Him? We watched a black-and-white flick on channel 47. It was grainy, simply-plotted, and terribly enjoyable. You have to love movies that don’t take themselves too seriously.

You have to love
people
who don’t take themselves too seriously.

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Not much happened that week. I worked. I slept. I ate. Really. Not much.

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Saturday. I window-shopped at an outdoor mall. In truth, it’s a strip mall with a whole bunch of vendors on the sidewalk in addition to the stores. You might have assumed that anyway. The moms and the pops are long dead and buried, and it’s a strip mall world. I was really quite enjoying myself, and I even managed to pick myself up a stereo. Well, not a stereo, per se, but one of those boom boxes that were all the rage in the ‘80s. It was marked down thirty percent and had a 3-CD deck. The guy who sold it to me was a real cutup.

He looked like a cartoon character, with his long, blond sideburns, beady little eyes and strong jaw line. He was also an incredibly massive man.

Like many incredibly massive men, he wore an incredibly undersized tee shirt to assure himself that the world would know that he’d put his time in at the gym. As a general rule, I don’t like anybody who can bench press me. I suppose it’s just jealousy. He wore sneakers, and one of them had a loosened sole that went

“Schlup, Schlup” when he walked. It was very annoying.

It reminded me of a joke I heard as a kid, something about an elephant and a puddle. Like I said, though, he was a real card. He was also one of those guys who believes the moon landing was an in-studio thing.

I spent a lot more time in that store than I had intended. He kept jawing away, and to his credit he made me laugh quite a bit. I guess the store didn’t get much business; he seemed awfully lonely. Finally, I was able to take the receipt from his hand and sneak in a word edgewise. I thanked him for his time, and headed out the door.

I wasn’t three steps out the door when an incredibly skinny woman ran me down from the right.

I had my head turned and was standing still when she plowed into me. My newly purchased radio fell to the ground, and there was an audible crack. Instinctively, I hit the woman. Now, generally I’m not a woman-hitter
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other than the bitch I mentioned earlier; bitches don’t count. I’ve never hit a girlfriend, and really, I didn’t mean to hit this woman either. It just happened. I was having a good day, it was sunny, all systems go, and then—wham-bam-boom—this woman crashes through me like I didn’t exist. Who the hell do these people think they are? They’re the same damn people who yell at the bank tellers and hold up the grocery line counting pennies. Frankly, I’m glad I hit the sorry twig.

Somebody needed to.

I left the radio where it sat on the ground, assuming it was beyond repair. I was halfway to my car when I decided I wasn’t leaving without a radio, so I went in to see Studly Gotmuscle again.

“Problems?” He was wadding up paper and chucking it at the wastebasket. There were a dozen or so misses staggered on the floor.

“I need another radio. Same kind.”

“You giving it as a gift? We have gift cards, you know. Certificates too.”

“No. No gift. I just need. .”

It was then that the door opened with a start.

The stick was back with some guy who I can only assume was her boyfriend. He had three inches on me, and about thirty pounds.

“Who the hell do you think you are, hitting a woman?!”

“I didn’t hit her.” I lied. “She plowed into me and broke my radio. That’s why I’m back in here in the first place.” “Are you calling Missy here a liar?” His tone was deadly, and his voice was loud. He had one of those creepy spider-web tattoos on his elbow.

Mr. Workout stepped in from behind the counter.

“Sir, please keep your voice down. You’ll upset the other customers.” There
were
no other customers in the store at the time, but I wasn’t about to point this fact out. I felt it was in my best interest to keep quiet.

“This doesn’t concern you, freak.” I can only imagine that in his anger, Mr. X forgot who he was talking to, because my new best friend
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stood up and approached him.

“Now it does. I told you to quiet down, and I’m not going to ask you again.” It was a string of words I had heard time and time again, and it was becoming tiresome. I was hoping they’d get right to the good stuff; I needed a distraction.

Well, fortunately for me, boys will be boys. The boyfriend was now all into it with the clerk. They began trading insults. Apparently his girlfriend’s problems took a back seat to his own situation. While they were circling and eyeing each other like cobra and mongoose, I quietly slipped out the door, now feeling quite content to leave radioless.

I guess it’s only logical that people act like animals; after all, we
are
animals. But it’s especially humorous to see two guys arguing, sizing one another up. Equally funny is when a man and a woman flirt—the equivalent of the goofy courtship dance among some birds, I presume. I guess anger and lust are the only motivations powerful enough to persuade us to drop the facade we call humanity, if only for a few minutes to fight or fuck.

The incident at the storefront got me to thinking.

Specifically, I imagined that moment when you are nearing someone who is walking towards you on a sidewalk. Obviously, someone has to move laterally.

Now, sometimes you both move, and fall into that left-right-left, am-I-avoiding-you-or-are-you-avoiding-me situation when hopefully you both end up wearing smiles. Most of the time, though, most of the time it is I who gives way. And I got around to thinking right there or then about why that is. Is it just that I am an extraordinary person, or is there something more to it?

Do I come off as a pushover, as submissive even? And if so, how would people sense this without even talking to me? It’s not as though I’m undersized or anything like that. My next thought was pheromones, but I was doubtful that they could be picked up on so quickly from a distance, especially on a crowded sidewalk.

Still, something’s going on here. The future is now, and the rules are all changing.

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Technological advancement has changed the world, and not only in the way you’re thinking. It’s more than just practical. Now even the weakest, the dimmest, the least charismatic can rise to the top, or be bred into the system with a big bank account. Evolution can no longer thin out the crowd, and it’s only a matter of time until nature bites back big-time. Think Black Plague.

Think AIDS by air. We have taken away nature’s biggest tool, and she’s one pissed-off bitch. Make hay when the sun shines, because it’s only a matter of time.

A man on a bus once told me the worst-case scenario for humans would be curing cancer. I didn’t solicit the opinion; the guy just liked the sound of his own voice. I asked him why he felt this way. He said it’s no good to have everyone living to 150. The world can’t support it; the economy can’t support it. Nature needs a means to an end, and we’re robbing it of that. It’s all leading up to a big ol’ natural ass-whoopin’ of humble Homo Sapiens. Eat your vegetables, kids. You’re gonna need all the fight you can get.

My pondering of the sidewalk avoidance percentage [S.A.P.] goes right along with this. Somehow nature still has us hierarchied, but hell if we know how it’s determined. Someone probably has life figured out, but that someone is hiding out deep in a far-off cave, afraid of the reality of ignorance in the world.

Shortly before Cristen bought the farm, I decided to take a trip. I’m not sure that I ever really
decided,
actually. It was more of a subconscious effort. One morning I woke up and started to sweep my apartment.

Two hours later, I’m on Route 3, music blaring, a light drizzle coming down. I didn’t know where I was going, but I
did
know where I was heading. I had known for months. Finally, I had broken down, even if I didn’t care to admit it to myself.