The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 04

The bishop struck him across the face. "You may not speak to me that way."

He stood his ground. "What you just did...it's a bad thing." It was a revelation to Miguel only as the words came out.

The man balled his right hand into a fist and struck his son again: a direct hit below Miguel's left eye, sending him immediately to the floor. "That is not from me," he said solemnly. "That is through me." (But Miguel could hear a sudden change in his father's voice. There was confusion and shock in it, at what he had just done. It had been years.)

"You're wrong," Miguel protested, scrambling back to his feet, tasting his own tears at the corners of his mouth. "It's only you. You did that to me with your own hands."

"Get out," said his father. "I never want to see you again. I don't know why you were put here. You are a stranger and I want you to get out of this house."

Miguel knew that this meant the end. His eyes swept the room as he left, scooping up careful memories of his favorite belongings (Dark Side of the Moon poster, denim-upholstered banana chair, boombox, Singapore Airlines model 747-400, blurry photo of a small Miguel grinning with his sisters outside a red brick school in San Justo), all of which he predicted—accurately, it would later turn out—were to be lost forever. Time to run again.

He cascaded down the stairwell, and as he stepped into the front hall, he froze, feeling the heat of his mother's gaze at his back. He turned around. She was at the other end, twenty feet away, and even from such a distance Miguel could see that her eyes were red from crying. Her sadness and confusion hit him in a focused beam. She clutched a white tissue to her chest, then lifted her other hand in a weakened, silent farewell.

--

Miguel woke up early in the afternoon. He lay motionless for a moment with his eyes closed. The kid. He could hear no telltale sounds and guessed that Gabe must be gone, which had always been the most likely outcome, hadn't it? Of course it had. It was nothing to sneak out of this apartment; Miguel rarely even locked the door. If he opened his eyes and glanced to his left only to find an expanse of empty bed, it wouldn't surprise him at all. He wouldn't miss a fucking beat. Miguel became so resigned to Gabe's absence, so comfortable with being alone once again that he nearly jumped when he opened his eyes.

Slowly, he sat up. Two feet poked out from beneath the bottom end of the comforter, along with part of a surprisingly hairy leg. Miguel's eyes followed a vague trajectory up the stitching of the blanket to where the kid's naked upper body was exposed to a shaft of afternoon light, pouring in through a gap in the bedroom door. Such incredibly smooth skin. Every detail jumped out at him now. Gabe's pectorals were small but well-formed, nipples no bigger than dimes, dark. His collarbones were pronounced, like poles against the fabric of a tent.

Miguel crept as softly as he could to the bedroom door, whisked through, switched the thermostat to manual mode and turned on the air conditioning. He closed the blinds and cranked shut a small vent window near the floor. He dropped a Radiohead CD into the player and set the volume to low. He started the coffee maker.

After a few minutes, Miguel climbed back into bed. He tried to make his movements as delicate as possible, but Gabe stirred, and then his eyes opened.

"Oh, hi," he said with a look of discomfort and mild alarm.

"Hi," said Miguel.

Gabe rose quickly and fetched his clothes from the floor. He threw them on. It was obvious that he'd overslept. His intention was, had always been, to leave.

"Any chance I can talk you into a cup of coffee?"

"No," said Gabe. "I should be going."

"Are you in a hurry?"

"I should just be going, that's all."

"Fine."

"I've stayed long enough."

Miguel sighed. "Okay."

"Well, what? Are we supposed to just spend all of our time together now?"

Miguel paused. He gathered all the patience he could and said, "No. You can spend as much or as little time with me as you want."

"I'll let myself out," said Gabe. He maneuvered through the gap in the door. A second later he peeked back through. Miguel thought he could detect an apology in Gabe's eyes. "I'll see you tonight."

"Okay, said Miguel.

—

Miguel's mind raced as he stormed down the familiar streets of his neighborhood. Here, massive old oaks rubbed branches against massive old palms, as the grass grew green and lush beneath. Hundreds of townhomes just like his parents' snuggled cozily up against the sidewalks. They had rented theirs at first as a temporary measure so that the Bishop could be close to his ward. The house quickly endeared itself to them. When the owner had suddenly put it up for sale, Miguel's father made a strong offer.

For nearly four years, the most formative of Miguel's life, he had called these streets home. He was keenly aware now that each quick step forward was a step away from all of it, from his whole life as he knew it, forever. He could pass easily underground and catch a train south (straight into downtown, where he was bound), but he was frightened by how quickly it would whisk him away from this place he knew he could never return to. Walking was all he could bear.

His neighborhood abutted Koreatown. After crossing the broad avenue that was an informal border between the two, he turned back. His home—his parents—stood lightyears away already. The distance grew like a tumor inside him, alternating locations between his chest and stomach at will. It wasn't thoughts of his parents that weighed heavily on him now. It was instead the thought of returning to school, of seeing Daniel's face...knowing they would have to interact daily, must work together to end off the year properly. He shivered in the heat.

The crowded shops and restaurants of old Koreatown soon surrounded him, lining the bottom floors of a hundred steel-framed mid-rises. He pressed his way through as the crowd grew denser. The dreary stucco facade of Sung Electronics came up on his right. He actually smiled a little when he remembered. A few more steps confirmed that it was still there: a small color television, jammed in the window display between two larger sets. Miguel had kept an eye on the TV for weeks. It was a simple Sony model with one speaker, framed in white plastic. The tag listed it as a kitchen unit, but he had intended to place it on a shelf above his desk, next to his bed. There was no built-in VCR, which made it more affordable. Originally he had asked for the TV as a birthday gift, but his parents said no. He then asked permission to save up for it himself, and they had reluctantly agreed.

The TV looked strange to him now, like something that had always been meant for someone else. Suddenly, he could not imagine what it would feel like to desire such an object—something so small and pitiful, so useless. And yet, all that money Miguel had saved lay in a debit account his father had helped him open a few months earlier. One hundred ten dollars. It would be best, Miguel decided, to have it as cash.

He located an ATM after walking another half an hour south. His watch read well past nine in the evening. He slipped the card inside and went to make a withdrawal. The machine displayed an error: insufficient funds. He checked the balance: zero dollars, zero cents. Miguel was alone in the narrow vestibule. He stared at the empty, pixelated digits, trying to understand, then slowly rested his forehead against the shimmering plastic face of the machine. More than a minute passed. The adjacent office had long closed for the day, but Miguel knew that no one there could have helped him anyway. The money was gone.

He continued walking. The thought grew louder now, though it had been with him all along, whispering from a far corner of his mind, ever since he had burst from the front door of his parents' house and into the heat of the night: He had nowhere to sleep.

He was not entirely cashless; thirty-five dollars nested in the folds of his brown leather wallet. It meant he would not starve—at least not right away, and luckily for Miguel, his appetite would not catch up to him for some time. He picked up his pace as Koreatown slowly faded to the northern reaches of downtown. It was the only part of his journey south that he knew to be unsafe. Better to pass through quickly before it got too late. The buildings surrounding him now were mostly clad in brick. Many were formally abandoned, presently under varying degrees of informal occupation. A dirty and thin woman rested against the stoop of a boarded-up shop. She wore a torn black tank-top and sat with her legs splayed open over a soiled, intricately-designed quilt. She was injecting herself. As their eyes met, she jerked the needle from her arm and held out her hand. Miguel looked away.

By midnight Miguel reached the center of downtown Las Sombras. He stood still for a moment with his eyes closed, hoping to absorb some of the energy that supposedly emanated from the heart of the city. Beneath these busy avenues lay the web of caverns and tubes that formed Central Station. He had only visited central downtown a few times before. The buildings crowded in tightly, uniformly imposing, reaching incredible heights. He remembered coming once during the day on an errand with his mother. "The sun never shines here," she had complained. "And even worse, at night, no one ever goes to sleep." He had looked up then and witnessed a small arc of blue sky. "The sun must shine," he had reasoned. "At noon."

He was exhausted. Sleep felt like the only thing Miguel had ever truly wanted in his whole life. He knew people slept on the floor of the station, so he located an entrance and stepped down underground. It was cooler down here. He figured it would be best to sleep where others slept. After some half-delirious wandering up and down the busier connecting halls, he found a quiet, dim hallway where a woman with light, frizzy hair dozed next to a large dog. He felt safe, close to them. Maybe the woman, or more likely the dog, could offer him some amount of protection.

When he went to lie down, she opened an eye and said in a coarse, gritty voice, "Get the fuck away."

Miguel tried to imagine she was speaking to someone else.

"Do you hear me or not? I swear, I'll sick him on you." She sat up and stabbed a finger toward the lean Rottweiler, who now sat alert.

"I don't have anywhere else to go."

"Get the fuck away," repeated the woman.

Miguel's vision turned kaleidoscopic as tears flooded his eyes. "I said I don't have anywhere to sleep. I'm all alone."

The woman's face changed. "Fine. Just stay right there, then. Don't you dare come an inch closer."

Miguel nodded up and down a hundred times. Tears ran in thick streams down his cheeks. She lay back down without another word. He tried to keep still, the back of his head resting against cool concrete. He turned on his side to face the wall. He could not stop crying. He made his sobs as faint as possible so as not to bother the woman or her dog, and before long, sleep mercifully took him over.

When Miguel woke up several hours later, they were long gone. He made his way up to the surface, where he was immediately swarmed by thousands of people in business attire, stepping frantically, impatiently around him until he moved off the sidewalk and onto an adjacent square of grass.

He was all alone. His mind, still foggy from sleep, drifted back to his final encounter with the TV. The fucking TV. It had been the object of fixation for weeks, and now? Utterly forgotten. What other pillars of his life, which he had believed to be unmovable, might now so easily calve away? School would be starting soon. That very moment, all the people making up his painstakingly curated social circles were gathering in a giant old building, miles away. He didn't care. The sounds of the city resonated all around him. Miguel's life suddenly felt so small, so detached that no matter what he chose to do, no matter his next move, it wouldn't have even the slightest effect on any person he had ever known. Not Daniel Lin, not his other friends, not even his parents. Of course, they hadn't forgotten about him yet. But they would, in due time. He fucking pined for the day. He was alone now, Miguel Gonzalez, his thoughts, his memories. Nothing else, no one else. He released a long, bellowing laugh into the thick morning air.

—

That night, Miguel noted the new sedan's unusually cautious approach, so slow as to suggest the unease of its driver. But he couldn't be sure until the kid had finished pulling into the warehouse. The car's big engine rose to idle and then snuffed out. Miguel tried to get a look through the windshield. It was still too dark to see. He secured the place, flicked on the lights. The trunk lid was released, springing partway up. The kid stared straight ahead into nothingness. He wasn't getting out of the car.

So that's how it's going to be, thought Miguel. Mentally, he prepared his appeal: Don't forget, Eddie wants us to get more familiar. Is this about last night? If this is about last night, we can forget all about it. Not one fucking word about how you wanted me with you in bed, how you reached out and touched my hand... Nope, no sweat off my back.

Miguel resisted a powerful desire to walk over and rap on the passenger window, to speak his piece. Instead he kept silent, began performing his duties like the loyal, steadfast worker he was. If he had figured anything out at all, it was that the kid didn't like to be pushed. Miguel could work with that.

Halfway through unloading, as he prepared to carry an armful of labeled goods deep into the stacks, he heard the sound of a car door clicking open. He looked over, and there Gabe stood.

"I was just wondering," came the kid's deep, slightly hoarse voice, "if you've ever tried it before."

"Tried what?"

The kids eyes fell to the package in Miguel's hands.

"Oh, this?"

"Well, have you?"

Why did he feel a sudden urge to lie to the kid? Maybe because the truth itself was harder to believe: In his entire two years of vagrancy, after all his brushes with users of every imaginable type, in every imaginable state of dependency, he had never once used the substance himself. The one he now handled in massive qualities, most days of his life. Alcohol, occasional bud and cigarettes were all Miguel had ever wanted or needed to get by. In fact, he couldn't even remember feeling tempted.

He cleared his throat. "It's not the safest thing around."

"I didn't ask if it was safe."

Damn, this kid was bold. No mystery where he got that from: Miguel caught the same flare of intensity in Gabe's eyes now that he had witnessed so many times in those of his mentor. He liked it very much. "I've never tried it. Haven't even given much thought to it, if I'm honest."

Gabe looked away. "That's hard to believe."

"Why?"

The kid sighed, looked back at Miguel. "Maybe we should sometime."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind." Gabe reopened the car door.

He was actually about to fucking get back in. Who the fuck did he think he was? "Hold on a minute. What are you getting at here? You really want to try it?"

Gabe paused with the door wide open. "I just think it might show a little fucking accountability, considering how many lives we're...you know...affecting by being a part of all this."

So that was the kid's angle. Miguel couldn't pretend he hadn't thought about it before. A thousand times over. "Look," he said dryly, "if you're still questioning the ethics of getting paid to keep fucked up people fucked up, then I've got some bad news for you."

Gabe scoffed. "I'm not questioning anything. I know it's not right."

Then quit, he wanted to tell Gabe. No one's forcing you to do any of this. But he stopped himself. "Wait," he said, letting a smile cross his face. "Is this your way of getting to know me better?"

"Fuck off," uttered Gabe in a breathy voice, and then he shut himself in the car, just like that.

"Oh, come on," Miguel groaned, setting down the package and circling around to the driver's door. He knocked on the glass, then gave up and spoke through it. "I'm just nervous again. Like before. I don't know what to say to you sometimes."

Gabe stared straight ahead for a long time. Then, without breaking his gaze, he reached out and pulled the interior handle. Miguel helped the door along. Gabe got out again and Miguel went back to work. He talked loudly as he moved back into the stacks so that Gabe could hear him.

"Look, I've thought about it too, all the time. But what's trying it going to help? You'll finally know how it feels for yourself, I guess. But you already know how it's going to feel. Pretty incredible is how it's going to feel—so incredible that once it's over, your whole life will become a waiting game until you can do it again. Nothing else with matter. Your family, your grades, your job, none of it will matter compared to getting high again." Miguel arrived back at the car. "It's going to ruin your whole life. You prepared for that?"

Gabe sighed. "I feel like I'm in a high school assembly."

"Scared straight."

"Do you really think that's how it is?"

"No. For every snow dox addict out there, there's ten people who've only tried it once. Shit, I've met a whole bunch of people who indulged a few times and still managed to stay away."

"So why haven't you ever tried it?"

Miguel paused. "Well, I guess I am a little scared."

Gabe looked at him sadly.

"I better finish up." He reached down in the trunk to gather up the last of the packages.

—

Miguel was surprised how easy it was for him to disappear. He slept mashed against subway station walls when it rained, couched in quiet alleys or beneath the boardwalks of his favorite beaches when it did not. On the third night, he acquired a blue wool blanket, a birthday gift to himself, and from that point on his sleep was satisfactory. The merchant who had sold him the blanket cast him a look of sympathy, handing it over for one-third the asking price. The look made him feel ashamed, but not enough to refuse.

(Miguel had been it in the markets, and if he had looked up from that particular stall at that particular moment, he would have seen Gabe—all fourteen years of him—four floors up, standing at the edge of the balcony with a book in his hand, gazing wistfully out at his narrow evening view of the ocean.)

Initially he feared that at any moment, some previously unseen force would scoop him up from the street, place him back in a desk, and the dream would all be over. But one unexcused week passed, and then another, and then it was the middle of June and school let out for the summer season. No one was looking for him. Miguel cried more than once over this truth, then came to view it as the bittersweet taste accompanying his freedom. One day, he looked up at the sky and realized it had been more than a month. How did he feel? He felt fine. And in that time, Miguel had drifted through many different parts of the city, bathing in the ocean, washing in municipal pool showers, sneaking onto transit, searching out the cheapest sources of food. In all his days of restful wandering, not one familiar face drifted into his vision.

Miguel liked being near the ocean, so when he fell in dire need of cash, he began working under the table at the vast network of docks lining the shores of the Bay of North Las Sombras. He landed a job gutting fish that flowed in on an endless supply, offloaded by passionless, leathery fishermen. His wage was very low, but it was more than he needed. He worked with a small crew in a rusting dockside shack, jammed in among a brown sea of sad structures.

He started early on a Monday, and young man named Peter immediately caught his eye. By skillfully participating in the crude banter of the other men, he gathered that Peter had moved from Sweden five years earlier, when he was sixteen. The young man retained a strong, charming accent. Peter was the only white crew member, and Miguel met his bright blue eyes many times over the course of the week. As the crew left en masse Friday evening, threading between stalls to reach the oily passageway out of the shacks, Miguel finally worked up the courage to speak to Peter alone.