previous: The Gang of Three

12: Rain, Rain, Go Away

I dreamed I was playing with the L.A. Philharmonic. One of the percussionists who sit there for hours on end only to eventually plink a triangle or glock a glockenspiel. I was in charge of the cymbals, responsible for one big crash. Right before it was due I lost count of the measures and freaked out. Then Michelle Obama came out of the wings and crashed the cymbals and saved my ass.

Only it wasn't cymbals. It was thunder, and it was outside, and it was accompanied by a gushing of rain.

I jumped up and lowered the bedroom window partway. While I was up Gina went into the bathroom. She came back and sat up in bed and said, "I was dreaming I was working on a movie crew, and I had to do explosions, and there was this big one, and it turned out to be the thunder."

"Same with me. Only cymbals. How do we do that?"

"Do what?"

"Take a real sound that suddenly happens and build it into a dream that has a whole backstory and make the whole thing happen in the half a second between the sound and when we wake up."

"The mysteries of the human mind. You feeling better?"

I considered. "Yeah."

"Because I was kind of worried."

"I'm fine."

"Guy fine, or really fine?"

"Somewhere in between. Closer to really."

"Good. What time is it?"

I took a look. "Twenty to four."

"Go back to sleep."

She took her own advice, but I couldn't. I lay there for three quarters of an hour and then I gave up and went in the living room and turned on the TV. I found an episode of I Remember Television, and they had the Cisco Kid on, and the characterizations were only mildly racist. I rode with them for a while and then I shut the TV and made tea and went outside. I sat on the patio and watched the rain.

I'd told Gina a little white lie. I was closer to guy fine than to really fine. Closer to ignoring stuff that was bothering me rather than dealing with it. It wasn't really about Jessica's forced entrance into the John Santini repertory company. It was about the homeless people.

I would do my best, as a typical urban citizen, to ignore them. When stuck at a traffic light with some unfortunate with a cardboard sign making his or her way down the line of cars, I'd suddenly get involved in a magazine when they came near. If one called out when I passed by I'd suddenly lose my hearing. Sometimes if I spotted one who passed some complicated test I'd devised in my head, I'd give them a buck or two and feel righteous for a while, until I came across the next one and all I had was a five and that was out of the question. Then I'd think about their legions for a while and then I'd find something else to think about.

Lately I'd been spending a bit more time on the legions. Feeling a little more guilty about not helping out more. Not enough to actually do something about, but enough that I'd noticed. Since I'd hit fifty, more things interested or concerned me. Some little, others big. Some of them were pleasures—the mug of Yunnan in my hand, made with loose tea I wouldn't have bothered with a few years back—and some were problems. One day they'd creep up on me and there they'd be, demanding attention.

When Jessica went into her spiel about why the house-the-homeless plan wasn't likely to work, some switch clicked. Suddenly the hordes on the streets meant something more to me. I could even pinpoint the moment it happened: when she was talking about how so many of the homeless were mentally ill, and I remembered Nathaniel.

I sat there for over an hour. A little overwhelmed, a little hopeful. The latter because I'd realized that, ultimately, it didn't matter whether I gave one guy a buck and not the next. Whether I gave the old woman in the doorway the respect to look her in the eye when I said, "No, not today." Oh, it might mean something about the worthiness of Joe Portugal, and how I felt when I looked in the mirror, and what would happen when I faced the final judgment, if such a thing existed. But none of that was important. What mattered was taking steps to help the homeless as a group. Something that most people, at least those who weren't loaded like Robbie Strauss, didn't have an opportunity to do.

But I could. I could find Frankie Roja and deliver him to John Santini and play a part in putting the unlikely building program into motion.

"Easy enough," I said, and I looked up at the sky, which was still dark as doom, and said, "Hope you're paying attention up there."

In response, an impressive crack of lightning crossed the sky in the west, followed by the biggest peal of thunder yet, and the rain came down harder. Down the block, a car alarm went off.

Inside, so did the phone.

It was a little early for telemarketers. My father? Possible. He'd see one of my commercials at six in the morning and call me up and tell me my hair was cockeyed.

The phone stopped mid-ring, and I heard the ghost of one end of a conversation. Then the door opened and it was Gina with the cordless in her hand. "My dad?" I said.

"Your new girlfriend Jessica." She handed the phone over. Stood there and watched me.

"Hi," I said to the phone.

"I think I know where Frankie is."

"Where?"

"Vegas."

"Why would he be in Vegas?"

"His sister. She's a showgirl."

"And?"

"And she's in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Gangster kind," she said.

next: Road Trip