The Santa Monica sunlight was aggressive.
Reflections from Richard's Old Gold cigarette package blinded
the obese city pigeons that flapped down and demanded bits
of scone at the outdoor café. Considering the nature of Beauty,
Richard squinted through the harsh light with his one good eye.
His plaster white fingers numbly scouted the
edges on the pack of Old Golds. His knuckles sprouted long white hairs
that stood erect and swayed, caught by the static from the
cellophane. Richard sat at the right hand corner of the street
café at his favorite table. Facing the street diagonally, he was at
the perfect angle to watch people amble down Third Street.
Beauty, the most recent edition of his favorite
person, sat across from Richard. This season Beauty went by the name
of Donnie. To Richard he was Beauty, just as Richard regarded all the
boys who had come and gone as Beauty.
In a face consumed by a crazed gray beard, two
piss-colored nicotine stains smeared under each nostril, the black
patch over his right eye was a pothole in Richard's weathered face.
One callused index finger tapped twice on his brand new eye patch,
testing its strength. Earlier that morning his doctor ordered him to
wear the patch and take some little pills until the eye stood up
again.
The eye fell three nights ago while watching a
videocassette with Beauty. Richard carried desultory memories of that
night. Beauty ripped the plastic from a large box of red licorice.
Richard put his arm over Beauty's naked shoulders. A car alarm whooped
and clanged, the sound rose up and around his red brick apartment
building.
A half hour into the teenage update of Dr. Faust
set at a girls soccer camp Beauty pleaded he rent, Richard noticed a
fuzzy darkness descend in the film. Half the soccer camp was clouded
and Richard could no longer make out the infantile features of the
female lead. An unshaved forty-year-old man playing the ingénue's
teen lover also was partially obscured by this new darkness.
Richard went to the bedroom mirror and was mildly
surprised. His right eye
was drooping. In truth, it was barely open at all. The little that
could be seen of the eye was not comforting. It was a jaundiced
sliver, no pupil visible. A
pregnant bead of clear fluid dangled from two eyelashes.
He glanced helplessly back at his teenaged lover
sliding thick tubes of red licorice over his fat lower lip before
devouring them. Beauty's hairless chest heaved with muted laughter.
The boy was obviously absorbed in "Dude Faust."
Beauty's perfect reflection dancing in his good
eye, Richard lit a cigarette. Beauty could ruin him, but Richard loved
Beauty too much. The thought of turning Beauty out to fend for himself
was just too painful. Beauty needed a protector and Richard would
gladly shoulder that delicious responsibility. He resigned to face his
oozing eye quietly.
~
It took three days of facing his oozing eye, and
more particularly three days of Donnie's reluctance to kiss him, for
Richard to go see the doctor. “It’s a complication of your
diabetes,” the doctor said and then gave him an uninspired stop
smoking speech, the pills, and an eye patch. Richard chuckled at the
doctor's remedies. He knew an ineffable judge had fingered his eye. He
would wear the patch to comfort Beauty, but putting a patch on it
would be as useful as putting Neosporin on stigmata.
Richard left the doctor's office to meet Beauty
for breakfast. He arrived at the café, self-conscious of the
patch gleaming and new from its package. Donnie raised an eyebrow at
the patch for a moment, and then quickly pretended there was nothing
at all different about Richard. Beauty ordered an omelet and Richard
got coffee.
Richard grew up in a strict Catholic family.
Although he had repeatedly and flagrantly stepped all over the
religion of his youth, Richard decided to fall back on ancient
remedies. If Beauty made his eye fall, maybe Beauty could prop it up
again. Medical science turned him into Long John Silver, after all,
and that was not an auspicious beginning.
Richard eyed Beauty eating his omelet.
"Donnie, pray for me. Pray for my eye."
Donnie flashed Richard a too cute saccharine grin
perfected in bus stop restroom mirrors for lovers like Richard. It was
a grin built to soften unsavory requests. "I can't pray for
that."
Richard huffed and tapped a cigarette from its
package. He had difficulty lighting the cigarette with the eye patch
on, his lighter wavering a few inches to the left of the cigarette
tip. He resembled a street performer miming drunken pirate
incompetence.
He adjusted, stabbing the cigarette into the
heart of the flame, and said, "You won't pray for me. You won't
pray for your sick mother in Mexico. How can somebody with an angel
face like yours not pray? What a waste."
Two trains of smoke billowed from Richard's
nostrils. Donnie waved his hands and coughed. Donnie didn't want
Richard's smoke getting in his new clothes, so he pushed his chair
back and issued one more impassioned protest cough. Ignoring Beauty's
coughing, Richard gulped more Old Gold.
Donnie pushed the carcass of his omelet away and
took a professional wrestling magazine from his backpack. He flipped
the pages of the magazine, admiring the photos of enormous men
throwing each other through the air like giant, sculpted babies who,
suspended in astounding poses, made a fool of gravity. Donnie thought
of the controlled, colossal nature of professional wrestling as a
miracle, a testament to real beauty in his world.
"I'm not a waste. I don't pray for mom
because she made herself sick with the smoking. That's why she don't
get my prayers." Beauty coughed for effect. "God had nothing
to do with it." Beauty coughed again, a protest against the
swirling smoke wreathing his head.
Donnie thought Richard was stupid, like some
simple farmer, like his mother. In this land of miracles, where well
fed men flew, mocking gravity every night, Richard had all the
advantages but he filled his lungs with poison and relied on prayers
to get him through the day. Donnie knew Richard was inundated with
guilt. It resonated in the old man's every move. Donnie also
recognized his own sick mother's murky suspicions in Richard. The only
difference between Richard and his mother, he realized, was a border.
Donnie tried on a smile, another weapon in his arsenal, one of the big
guns.
Beauty's smile hit Richard like a tumbler of
whiskey, numbing his groin, a pleasant, sickening disorientation.
Beauty, True Beauty, should come with a warning: True Beauty may get
inside you, run riot, and make your eyes drop. Take in modest doses.
Richard looked away. He turned his eye toward a
troupe of performing street dogs. One dog flew effortlessly through a
hoop held high above the concrete. He marveled at the dog's abilities
and wished he could fly into the air. Loaded with his sin, he was
incurably frozen to the ground.
Donnie looked up at Richard and bit his lip to
keep from laughing at the misty eyed - one misty eyed - fool. Richard
looked like an old gay pirate, watching little dogs, lip quivering.
Donnie had a new idea, but he must strike while the lip still
quivered.
"Richard, I need shoes."
Richard didn't respond. He was watching the dogs
do slow motion back flips to "Candle in the Wind," by Sir
Elton John.
"Richard?"
"Yes, Beauty?"
"I need shoes."
"What about the pair I got you… when was
that...a month ago?"
"No, not Payless shoes. I need good
shoes."
Richard's eye itched. He snubbed his cigarette in
Beauty's half eaten omelet, resisting the urge to gouge the eye with
his fingernail.
"We'll see, Donnie. We'll see."
"My boss said that if I don't get
Adidas, he'll fire me."
"But you're a dishwasher. Why does he care
what kind of shoes you wear?"
"He told me I gotta get Adidas."
"He told you what brand to buy?"
Donnie nodded, his brown eyes tinted with
manufactured sincerity.
Richard mindlessly fished out another cigarette
with a long, crooked finger.
He could afford the shoes. Richard had the money
for all sorts of trinkets for Beauty. He lived comfortably on the
residuals from a thin book he wrote on Elvis Presley. Written in 1955,
it was the first book about Elvis and had become a valuable
collector's item. Richard had a large stock of first edition prints
that he siphoned off for rabid Presley fans. Making money in such a
strange way gave Richard a thick mixture of pride and guilt. But
Beauty needed to learn the good things in life cost more than a sweet
smile. That was why
Richard insisted Beauty take a part time job at a local diner. Even
Beauty should do a little work.
Donnie had to change his tactics.
He went back to his magazine. Donnie knew that a young man
reading was an image sure to influence a manic bibliophile like
Richard. He studied a photo of a busty woman wearing what appeared to
be a child's ballerina outfit. The woman smashed the head of her
opponent into the midst of her grand cleavage. This was the land of
miracles, indeed.
The female wrestler's cleavage bulging in his
imagination, Donnie flipped the magazine closed. "I'll pray for
your eye."
"I'll make you a deal. If you pray, I'll buy
you the shoes.”
Beauty smiled.
He had his shoes.
“If the eye gets better fast,” Richard said.
"I'll pray hard."
~
That night Richard futilely scrubbed at his
blotched teeth. Donnie knelt down on his side of the bed, making sure
that Richard could easily see him through the open bathroom door. He
bowed his head and arched his shoulders, his face drawn into a mask of
private, soul plumbing faith. Donnie's prayer was a mixture of
memories from a Mexican church and desperate children praying in
Hollywood movies.
Richard spit a massive gob of toothpaste into the
sink and saw Beauty in the medicine cabinet mirror. Donnie’s head
was bowed low, his lips barely moving. Beauty looked so pure that
Richard wanted to stop him, to bring him up from his knees and run out
to get the Adidas without another word. Beauty was so intent, but his
prayers were wasted.
Richard knew that he had already gone too far.
There was no way to save him or his eye. He had made his choices, as
evidenced by the beautiful teenage runaway kneeling at his bed. There
were no miracles in a life that traded money for Beauty. Richard knew
the hell that awaited him; he had seen it many times.
Richard's hell wasn't about pain; it was a supremely confusing
place, a place (like his life) where he constantly searched for
meaning, hopelessly searched for a lasting Beauty.
Donnie's eyes squeezed shut. A kind, wise face
drifted in his imagination. He didn’t see the face of God; he saw
George Washington. Donnie often stared at dollar bills - a talisman of
incredible power. He’d
stared so long and hard he could photographically reproduce the first
president's portrait. Gazing into Washington's calm, sleepy eyes,
Donnie implored Washington for the shoes. With Adidas, he could ask
out the brown-haired hostess at work who always touched his forearm
softly when she spoke to him.
He also prayed for a necklace he saw during a
trip to Venice Beach, a large gold marijuana leaf. The
shoes would give him the guts to ask the hostess who touched his
forearm softly out for a walk around Third Street. But with the shoes
and the necklace, the hostess might even walk with him to the yellow
motel around the corner where he could forget all the nights Richard
yanked at his penis and wildly mumbled about beauty.
The bed heaved. Donnie opened his eyes, replacing
George Washington with Richard climbing into bed in his baby blue
pajamas. Richard, a pirate in his PJs, stuck up his hand and held up
the bedspread, creating a little circus tent over his baby blue
midsection.
"Come to bed."
"I'm praying for your eye."
"Enough praying."
Donnie acquiesced, lying with his back to the
pirate. Richard wrapped his arms around Donnie's chest. Richard's
breath, fiery hot and saturated in Old Golds, licked the back of
Donnie's neck. Donnie imagined the gold marijuana necklace and the new
shoes as he pretended the old man's rank breath was the impossibly
pure breath of the hostess.
~
In his five weeks with Richard, Donnie trained
himself to wake every morning between 3 and 4 A.M. His eyes open, his
body motionless, Donnie checked the red digital clock on Richard's
side of the bed. Richard was apt to wake any time, so Donnie diagnosed
the old man's breathing. If Richard’s breath was shallow and
sporadic, Donnie would go back to sleep. If Richard’s breath was
steady and muted, Donnie would slink out of bed.
He had perfected each move. He crouched, moved
silently across the carpeted floor, reaching one hand up to the top of
the dresser where Richard's bloated, disorganized wallet lay. He took
the twenty dollars (his nightly average) from the wallet, and turned
to sneak back to the bed, planning to slide the money deep under the
mattress until he could pocket it in the morning.
He turned, and his heart stopped when he saw
Richard's eye.
Richard was awake.
The light from the street lamp twinkled in Richard's fallen
eye. The eye had watched and now accused him of thievery. Donnie
stood, peering into the darkness, waiting for a word, waiting for some
kind of response.
Seconds stretched taut as the two men locked eyes
across the plush carpet. Donnie's anger flamed. He would pound his
fists into the gleaming eye, kill the twinkling accuser. Donnie raged
silently. Richard expected
too much. A cheap pair of Payless shoes won’t buy everything; you
have to pay a fair wage. Donnie reached behind him to the dresser, his
hand curling around the heavy copper ashtray. He weighed the ashtray
in his hand. It was thick and satisfying. He held his breath and
waited for movement. Ashtray in hand, Donnie plotted. He would rush to
the bed and bring the ashtray crashing onto Richard's eye, blotting it
out, blinding it...
"Well?" Donnie whispered.
"Sngggggggggg," Richard responded.
Donnie nearly fell down. The old fool was still
asleep! Chest heaving, Donnie celebrated. He would not brain Richard.
Not tonight, at least.
"Punk ass diabetes eye," Donnie
mumbled. He set the ashtray down and moved confidently to the bedside.
He tucked the twenty dollar bill away and climbed back into bed.
Richard turned to face Donnie, hovering less than two feet away.
Donnie felt the eye watching him, working autonomously, recording all
his movements for later playback. Even with his eyes closed, Donnie
felt the swampy gaze. It was the gaze of something larger, something
ridiculously superstitious and backwards, something Donnie thought he’d
left behind with his mother. Where was the patch?
The patch would blind the eye.
He searched, his hands frisking Richard's soft
body. He traced the edges of Richard's legs, his torso, his bulbous
stomach. Then he found the eye patch. The strap trailed away
under Richard's thigh. He tugged at the strap.
It resisted. He silently counted to three and tugged hard. The
patch snapped back.
Fingers gently weeding through Richard's hair,
Donnie stretched the strap over Richard's head. He pulled back the
patch, positioned it over the enemy eye, and imagined snapping it back
hard. Snap it hard and kill it. Instead, he gently lowered the patch
over the swampy eye. Now he could rest.
~
Richard stood in front of the bedroom mirror. He
tentatively lifted the patch, creaking it open like a trap door, and
gauged the health of the drooping eye. It looked a little better.
Either the night air was good for it, the pills worked, or Donnie's
prayer had been answered. Richard knew instantly the prayer made the
difference. The eye still wept, and it was still mostly fallen, but he
saw an incremental difference. It wasn't as yellow, that's for
sure. Richard lowered the
patch.
"Donnie, wake up."
Donnie's eyes popped open as if he had been
faking sleep all night.
"You going to buy me Adidas, Richard?"
"See? I told you it would work. Why
don't you pray for your mother now? The eye is getting better. That
stupid doctor doesn't know you have to go with your heart. Eye patches
don't stand a chance next to the heart."
"Are you going to buy me Adidas?"
"A deal's a deal."
Donnie's response was automatic. "I love
you, Richard." He laid the groundwork: first, a trip to Venice
Beach and then a golden surprise. The marijuana necklace would be
gleaming over his new Lakers jersey by nightfall.
Richard, flushed with pure happiness, fumbled for
the cigarettes on the dresser. He briefly noted the ashtray was turned
sideways, but the lingering drunkenness of pure happiness quickly
wiped away anything else.
Richard lit his Old Gold. "Beauty will
save me after all."
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