“It’s hard,” Bruce said, “getting off.”
“Everybody here got off. Of course, some go back on. If you left here you’d go back on. You know that.”
He nodded.
“No person in this place has had an easy life. I’m not saying your life’s been easy. Eddie would. He’d tell you that your troubles are mickey mouse. Nobody’s troubles are mickey mouse. I see how bad you feel, but I felt that way once. Now I feel a lot better. Who’s your roommate?”
“John.”
“Oh yeah. John. Then you must be down in the basement.”
“I like it,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s warm there. You probably get cold a lot. Most of us do, and I remember I did; I shook all the time, and crapped in my pants. Well, I tell you, you won’t have to go through this again, if you stay here at New-Path.”
“How long?” he said.
“The rest of your life.”
Bruce raised his head.
“_I_ can’t leave,” Mike said. “I’d get back on dope if I went out there. I’ve got too many buddies outside. I’d be back on the corner again, dealing and shooting, and then back in the prison for twenty years. You know–hey–I’m thirty-five years old and I’m getting married for the first time. Have you met Laura? My fiancée?”
He wasn’t sure.
“Pretty girl, plump. Nice figure?”
He nodded.
“She’s afraid to go out the door. Someone has to go with her. We’re going to the zoo . . . we’re taking the Executive Director’s little boy to the San Diego Zoo next week, and Laura’s scared to death. More scared than I am.”
Silence.
“You heard me say that?” Mike said. “That I’m scared to go to the zoo?”
“Yes.”
“I never have been to a zoo that I can recall,” Mike said. “What do you do at a zoo? Maybe you know.”
“Look into different cages and open confined areas.”
“What kind of animals do they have?”
“All kinds.”
“Wild ones, I guess. Normally wild. And exotical ones.”
“At the San Diego Zoo they have almost every wild animal,” Bruce said.
“They have one of those . . . what are they? Koala bears.”
“Yes.”
“I saw a commercial on TV,” Mike said. “With a koala bear in it. They hop. They resemble a stuffed toy.”
Bruce said, “The old Teddy bear, that kids have, that was created based on the koala bear, back in the twenties.”
“Is that right. I guess you’d have to go to Australia to see a koala bear. Or are they extinct now?”
“There’re plenty in Australia,” Bruce said, “but export is banned. Live or the hides. They almost got extinct.”
“I never been anywhere,” Mike said, “except when I ran stuff from Mexico up to Vancouver, British Columbia. I always took the same route, so I never saw anything. I just drove very fast to get it over with. I drive one of the Foundation cars. If you feel like it, if you feel very bad, I’ll drive you around. I’ll drive and we can talk. I don’t mind. Eddie and some others not here now did it for me. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.”
“Now we both ought to hit the sack. Have they got you on the kitchen stuff in the morning yet? Setting tables and serving?”
“No.”
“Then you get to sleep to the same time I do. I’ll see you at breakfast. You sit at the table with me and I’ll introduce you to Laura.”
“When are you getting married?”
“A month and a half. We’d be pleased if you were there. Of course, it’ll be here at the building, so everyone will attend.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He sat in the Game and they screamed at him. Faces, all over, screaming; he gazed down.
“Y’know what he is? A kissy-facy!” One shriller voice made him peer up. Among the awful screaming distortions one Chinese girl, howling. “You’re a kissy-facy, that’s what you are!”
“Can you fuck yourself? Can you fuck yourself?” the others chanted at him, curled up in a circle on the floor.
The Executive Director, in red bell-bottoms and pink slippers, smiled. Glittery little broken eyes, like a spook’s. Rocking back and forth, his spindly legs tucked under him, without a pillow.
“Let’s see you fuck yourself!”
The Executive Director seemed to enjoy it when his eyes saw something break; his eyes glinted and filled with mirth. Like a dramatic stage queer, from some old court, draped in flair, colorful, he peeped around and enjoyed. And then from time to time his voice warbled out, grating and monotonous, like a metal noise. A scraping mechanical hinge.
“The kissy-facy!” the Chinese girl howled at him; beside her another girl flapped her arms and bulged her cheeks, piop-plop. “Here!” the Chinese girl howled, swiveled around to jut her rump at him, pointing to it and howling at him, “Kiss my ass, then, kissy-facy! He wants to kiss people, kiss this, kissy-facy!”
“Let’s see you fuck yourself!” the family chanted. “Jack yourself off, kissy-facy!”
He shut his eyes, but his ears still heard.
“You pimp,” the Executive Director said slowly to him. Monotonously. “You fuck. You dong. You shit. You turd prick. You–” On and on.
His ears still brought in sounds, but they blended. He glanced up once when he made out Mike’s voice, audibly during a lull. Mike sat gazing at him impassively, a little reddened, his neck swollen in the too-tight collar of his dress shirt.
“Bruce,” Mike said, “what’s the matter? What brought you here? What do you want to tell us? Can you tell us anything about yourself at all?”
“Pimp!” George screamed, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. “What were you, pimp?”
The Chinese girl leaped up, shrieking, “Tell us, you cocksucking fairy whore pimp, you ass-kisser, you flick!”
He said, “I am an eye.”
“You turd prick,” the Executive Director said. “You weakling. You puke. You suck-off. You snatch.”
He heard nothing now. And forgot the meaning of the words, and, finally, the words themselves.
Only, he sensed Mike watching him, watching and listening, hearing nothing; he did not know, he did not recall, he felt little, he felt bad, he wanted to leave.
The Vacuum in him grew. And he was actually a little glad.
It was late in the day.
“Look in here,” a woman said, “where we keep the freaks.”
He felt frightened as she opened the door. The door fell aside and noise spilled out of the room, the size surprising him; but he saw many little children playing.
That evening he watched two older men feed the children milk and little foods, sitting in a separate small alcove near the kitchen. Rick, the cook, gave the two older men the children’s food first while everyone waited in the dining room.
Smiling at him, a Chinese girl, carrying plates to the dining room, said, “You like kids?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You can sit with the kids and eat there with them.”
“Oh,” he said.
“You can feed them later on like in a month or two.” She hesitated. “When we’re positive you won’t hit them. We have a rule: the children can’t never be hit for anything they do.”
“Okay,” he said. He felt warmed into life, watching the children eat; he seated himself, and one of the smaller children crept up on his lap. He began spooning food to the child. Both he and the child felt, he thought, equally warm. The Chinese girl smiled at him and then passed on with the plates to the dining room.
For a long time he sat among the children, holding first one and then another. The two older men quarreled with the children and criticized each other’s way of feeding. Bits and hunks and smudges of food covered the table and floor; startled, he realized that the children had been fed and were going off into their big playroom to watch cartoons on TV. Awkwardly, he bent down to clean up spilled food.
“No, that’s not your job!” one of the elderly men said sharply. “I’m supposed to do that.”
“Okay,” he agreed, rising, bumping his head on the edge of the table. He held spilled food in his hand and he gazed at it, wonderingly.
“Go help clear the dining room!” the other older man said to him. He had a slight speech impediment.
One of the kitchen help, someone from the dishpan, said to him in passing, “You need permission to sit with the kids.”
He nodded, standing there, puzzled.
“That’s for the old folk,” the dishpan person said. “Babysitting.” He laughed. “That can’t do nothing else.” He continued by.
One child remained. She studied him, large-eyed, and said to him, “What’s your name?”
He answered nothing.
“I said, what’s your name?”
Reaching cautiously, he touched a bit of beef on the table. It had cooled now. But, aware of the child beside him, he still felt warm; he touched her on the head, briefly.