One night when Marlene got dumped by some asshat with a pencil mustache — no doubt one of those hipsters from Portland — we sat on the top of her apartment building and cried and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. We made a silver and blue beer can pyramid with the empties. It was pretty big pyramid. Marlene was crying. A lot. I had no idea what to say or do so I just sat there like a lump. But a loyal lump.
Finally Marlene said, “When I was a boy in Rwanda my German father beat my mother within an inch of her life. He beat her because she’d been raped. Then he left forever. I nursed my mother back to health. I wore woman clothes. Her clothes. I wanted to be soft and good like nurses and mothers are. The next month I wore a dress into the township and four boys older than I shoved a truncheon into my anus and beat me within an inch of my life. I managed to make it back home, and my mother had a plane ticket for me. To go to live with my father in Germany. She said, ‘You and I are Tutsi. They are killing us everywhere.’ She said, ‘you will die here if you stay. Take that dress off.’ I loved my mother more than anything in the world. By that time she’d been repeatedly raped and had a scar from being burned across one eye. I remember thinking, is that the worst thing that can happen to a person? Death?”
Then Marlene stopped crying. The moon was big. Her rooftop looked lit up like a stage briefly. “I have the ability to make any passport. I can be anyone I like. Forever. Or make anyone into anyone else,” she said. Or he. Nothing bad that ever happens to me is going to be as bad as what happened to Marlene. And yet there we were sitting on her rooftop with a PBR pyramid. Just two people with gender issues. I never forgot that moment. How Marlene and Hakizamana were both there. Interchangeable. If need be. In moments of danger or love. We walked back into her apartment leaving the Pabst pyramid as testament to something.
When I arrive at Marlene’s, three things are true.
Thing one: Marlene’s door is already open.
Thing two: silver slickster bus perv is sitting at her kitchen table drinking a glass of Kirsch.
Thing three: Marlene is pretty much dressed exactly like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Pencil skirt, white silk blouse, seamed stockings, killer heels. I mean if Barbara Stanwyck was African-American? Spitting image. I almost laugh.
They look at me. I look at them.
Marlene says, “Ah, Ida. This man says he knows you. I told him I did not think so, but he says that you recently spoke?”
I shake my head no. You have to be ready to be anyone in moments of danger or love.
“Yes I told him that was rather impossible,” Marlene says, standing and walking to the fridge.
“But we do know each other, don’t we Ida?” Pervola says.
There’s not much else to do but go ahead and walk in. I do. I sit down at the table. I look at the ceiling. Marlene’s rummaging around in the freezer. No, she’s chipping ice with an icepick into a bowl. She comes back with a glass of Kirsch for me. With ice. She smiles.
“Ida, I’d like to make you an offer,” slickster says, then turns to Marlene, “perhaps you could help us communicate?”
“Certainly,” Marlene says. Under the kitchen table she puts her toe on my toe and gently presses down.
I shoot her a this guy’s a dillweed look. She looks down and under the cover of those mega eyelashes and slips me a yes he most certainly is look.
“I’m sorry I alarmed you on the bus,” he begins. “That was not my intent.”
I clench my ass cheeks. Marlene pushes down again on my toe.
“Look. No sense in pussy footing around. I’ll come straight to the point,” he continues. “I’ll give you $5,000 for your video footage of Freud. Cash. No strings attached.” His smile is smug. He sips his wine.
I watch his lip curl over the lip of the glass. Middle-aged people’s mouths are kind of creepy — you can see too much gum. And no one is successful at covering up bad breath.
In my head I go five grand? That’s like getting a birthday card from grandma. Five grand doesn’t get you shit these days. I tilt my head to the side, raise my hand up in a little fist with a thumb pointing up and pump it in the air at him.
He blanches. Then recovers. “Did I say five grand? I meant twenty-five.” He smug smiles.
Not even close, ass hat. I shake my head. I pull out a cig and light it. He eyeballs me. He looks like he’s thinking something along the lines of you little shit.
“I see, he says. “Perhaps you have a number in mind?”
I retrieve a Sharpie from my backpack. Slowly and deliberately I write a number on Marlene’s kitchen table. $500,000.00. I huff my Sharpie once for punctuation.
That seems to do the trick. His face beets.
His breathing through his nose is quick and hard. It looks like he has to will his mouth to say, “That. Can. Be. Arranged.” Teeth clenched.
I look at Marlene. I don’t know what she sees in my eyes but what I’m holding in those sockets like little messed up girl marbles is what the fuck is it with all the money? First Sig’s offer, now this? Did I go to sleep and wake up in money land? Is this what being an adult comes down to? You have to speak capital to break your cherry?
Marlene studies my face. Maybe she’s studying more than that. We’ve known each other since I was fourteen. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence — just getting through to the real part of your life — but it’s more than that.
Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it’s just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. Wanna know what we have in common? Dead dreams. Trust me when I say no adult likes to talk about that.
Plus how do you even know you adult humans have the right interpretations of your own lives? People are like books and movies. There are about a gazillion different interpretations. Deal with it.
I look at Marlene’s perfectly coifed blonde 1940s wig sitting so artfully on her head. Man that woman sleighs me.
“That is quite a lot of money,” Marlene says, then pulls a cigarette and lighter from her bra, lights the cigarette, and blows out the slowest coolest curl of white smoke — like you only see in black and white flicks. She turns to creepy dude. She blows a bit of smoke right at him and says, “Tell me, what business do you have with a girl who is, what is it,” she sizes him up like beef, “a quarter of your age?”
I love Marlene.
I love Marlene.
I love Marlene.
I reach down and into my Dora purse under the table and turn my H4n on.
“One must be careful,” she continues, “in this day and age.”
Silverfuck pulls out some paperwork from the breast pocket of his suitcoat and lays it out on the kitchen table like it means something.
“I’ve got a contract here. This is a real deal. I don’t have time to bullshit about children. My offer is on the table. I’m only making this offer once though.” He then pulls out a silver flask — man what is with all the silver with this guy? And drinks. It’s whiskey. I can smell it. I can also smell his godforsaken lunch. Shrimp of some sort. Ew. He holds the flask out toward me. “Ida? What do you say? You ready to make the choice of your life?”