42opus

is an online magazine of the literary arts.

28 April 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 1

Streetsmart Loca and the Pomegranate Theory

We're at the zoo. It's hot, must be ninety-six degrees, and we've been in the sun all day. I want some water, or maybe a red snow cone like the ones those two little girls are licking. I'm getting a headache. But Wallace won't let me leave the high lookout next to the gibbon cage.

"Look," he says, "they're making out." He points and I follow the line of his finger. The larger of two long-armed, silk-furred primates has his arms around the smaller one and they're rubbing their heads together while sitting side by side.

"Wallace," I say, "I'm thirsty."

"Yeah," he says, nodding, "it's a hot day in the desert today. My god, look how their fur shines in the sun. It must be jet black. Blue-black, like a woman's hair in a painting."

I sigh and hook my arms over the metal railing. At least we're in the shade for the moment.

Most of the time, if you listen to Wallace, what you hear seems logical enough. It's when you put all the strings of sentences together, after you've known him a while, that he stops making sense.

An old lady and a little boy cross the wooden bridge to the lookout. The boy bounces up and down. Thrown off balance, the old lady catches herself by grabbing the rope rail. She's about five feet tall. She's wearing an animal print blouse, lions and tigers and zebras. A matching print sun visor encircles her white curls.

"Don't be a Tigger!" she says to the boy. He stops bouncing. I guess that he's about eight. He has blond hair that sticks straight up on top, and I can see his pink scalp through it. He has an elastic band around the back of his head to hold his glasses on. He gapes at the gibbons, his mouth open.

"They've got hair everywhere because they're naked," he says to the old woman. To me, he says, "The zoo is a good place to notice things. Have you been here many times?"

"No. This is my first time," I answer, trying to muster some semblance of friendliness and failing. Funny how kids expect grownups to get excited about things, too. I don't get excited about much of anything these days.

"I'm always noticing new things," the little boy says. "Right, Grandma?"

The grandmother smiles. She has pale lips, chalky skin.

Wallace folds his arms over the black metal rail and leans toward the boy. My mouth is dry.

"Oh, yeah?" says Wallace to the youngster. "Like what kinds of things?"

The boy closes his mouth in a pause for thought, then shows his soft tongue again before he starts to speak. "Did you ever notice that hair grows where the sun shines?" the boy says to Wallace. He sounds like a lecturer.

"Nelson," the grandmother says, a good-natured warning.

Wallace readjusts his elbows on the rail, lowering his face so it's close to Nelson's. "Really?" he says.

"Yeah!" says Nelson. "That's why hair grows on the top of our heads. And the monkeys, they go naked in the sun and so they grow hair all over their bodies."

The grandmother catches my eye and laughs with wet lips. Isn't my grandson cute, the laugh says.

"These are apes, not monkeys. They're small apes. And people have hair where the sun doesn't shine," Wallace says to Nelson. I elbow Wallace in the back. He ignores me. "You obviously haven't crossed the line into puberty," he tells the boy.

My headache kicks in, full force.

"Let's go, Wallace," I say.

"We'll go in a minute," he tells me. "I just want to finish this discussion. Life is all about compromise, Loca."

I don't use my first name, which is Susan. I am Loca de Luca, the resident sunbaked blonde on the premises of Streetsmart Roadworks, Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you ever come by the shop, you'll drive around back by the garage door because the storefront is always dark and you'll think gee, maybe they're closed. When you get to the back, though, you'll see me on my knees in an oil slick, wrench in hand. My hair will be the only clean thing about me. I come from northern Italian stock, the tall, fair, arrogant sort. I'll look up without smiling. You'll think: what a dusty black-handed pretty-even-with-crows'-feet but cold unlikable bitch. Maybe she's not firing on all cylinders. You'll stand there uncomfortably for anywhere from five to thirty seconds. Finally you'll ask, "Um, are you guys open?"

That's when Wallace will come out of the backroom, the paint hangar, I call it. He'll wipe his hands on a turpentine rag and he'll smell like noxious chemicals. He'll give you a big grin and a waggle of his rug-like brown eyebrows. You'll like him right away because his face is cleaner than mine and he looks glad to see you. You'll expect him to ask if he can help you. He'll walk right up to you and you'll extend your right hand for him to shake. He'll put the paint rag in your palm.

Oil-based cerulean with a metallic sheen will come off the rag and coat your skin. Thick color will glue itself to your fingertips and the mount of Venus. You'll look from your sticky hand to Wallace's face and back, and you'll be too puzzled to anger right away but you'll be getting there fast.

"Smell that," Wallace will say, gesturing at the rag. "That, my friend, is the ambrosia of the gods and the jewel-like seeds eaten by Persephone, my blessing and my curse."

You won't know what Wallace is talking about. You won't know whether to drop the rag on the concrete floor, hand it back to Wallace, or just hang on to it. You'll hang on to it.

I'll stand up. By this time you'll have forgotten about me, so I'll startle you when I ask, "Were you looking for service or a paint job?"

Later, when you're gone, I'll ask Wallace why he can't wait until customers know him better before he starts in with that speech. He'll check his hand to make sure there's no paint on it and then he'll put his arm around me. He'll stroke my back between the shoulder blades, sweet and slow. He'll rest his forehead against mine. "Lovely Loca," he'll say, "why shouldn't I say what I mean?" He'll kiss me.

Then I'll tell him I want him. I'll tell him that since it's nine on a Wednesday morning, there won't be another customer for hours and the owner won't be in for at least forty-five minutes. We could shut the paint hangar door and no one would ever know. Wallace will pull away from me.

"That's why they call you Loca, and me Wallace," he'll say as he returns to his work. I'll work again too, and another customer will show up two minutes later, just to prove him right.

The smaller gibbon races along a tree limb. The bigger one chases her. He catches up to her in a far corner and they sit still, cuddled together. We can barely see them through the leaves.

"Let's move along, Nelson," the grandma says. "The monkeys are resting now."

"They're not monkeys, Gram," says Nelson, mimicking Wallace. "They're a kind of ape. Only small."

When he calls her "Gram," I think of graham crackers. I wonder if he eats graham crackers with milk after school, and if the name makes him think of his grandma.

The boy turns away from his grandmother. He squints at Wallace and repeats his question. "What do you mean, people have hair where the sun doesn't shine?"

Grandma catches my eye again and I think she's pleading. On weekends, I'm clean, and she must think that since I look good and I'm keeping my mouth shut I must be sane.

I cup a hand under Wallace's elbow. "Come on," I say. "I'm thirsty. Let's get something to drink. We'll sit in the shade." He shakes me off.

"You don't have pubic hair yet, do you?" he says to Nelson.

"What's pubic hair?" Nelson asks.

"It's hair that grows near your genitalia," Wallace answers.

"Nelson, we'll be late," says Grandma, her voice shrill and tight.

"For what?" the boy says with a note of irritation. He doesn't look at her. Wallace and the little boy try to stare each other down. In a long moment I wait to see what they'll do and I think about Wallace's mind. He doesn't think in circles; he thinks in long labyrinths. Somewhere, deep inside one of his labyrinths, this contest between a man and a child is justified. I want to go in with a ball of twine and lead Wallace out but I don't know how. Wallace looks away from Nelson and stares through the trees at the gibbons.

The little boy crosses his arms and sticks out his lower jaw. "Are you afraid of me?" he asks.

When I met Wallace, I'd been working for Tony Garcia at Streetsmart for almost three years. Tony was a classic bike buff who'd ridden a 1961 Moto Guzzi Galetto past the swamplands near the barracks where he was stationed in Florida, before Vietnam. When I met him, Tony rode another '61 Galetto like it, in perfect condition.

Our paint guy quit one morning in June with a phone call saying he was heading north to work a fishing boat off the Alaskan coast. Tony put an ad in the paper. He ran off our first job applicants. Tony's quizzing scared a kid who'd never heard of Triumph. He rolled his eyes at a man who talked about his engineering degree and his plans to find a "permanent" job designing and simulating motor parts. Tony flipped the bird behind the back of a clean-cut fellow who showed up in Dockers and a white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

"Loca," Ton