Bye People., Chapter One.

Bye people

A Novel

hooshang danesh

1

Bye People Copyrights 2009 by Hooshang Danesh All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

First Edition

2

Table Of Contents

3

First Chapter

I drove. She would push her head out of the passenger sides' window and shout: "Bye People.' Then recollect herself inside the car and giggle to herself, and say: "shit" wearily, slightly as though she had been up to no good, and punishment might have been fore coming. The people she shouted at were mostly the bus riders at bus stations. Hispanics who would look at her puzzled, and in wonderment, for her flashing head of red hair and her unrehearsed language- for almost no one spoke English on these streets. From time to time, she would shout: "Hi people," in a different tone, this one slightly more friendly, conciliatory, and still leave the look of confusion on the foreheads of the bus riders who saw the big sweeping Cadillac, and the shouting head as just another strange break in their ennui. I would drive the big ship-like Cadillac, grayish-colored and with good -1-

4

measures of dust and dirt on it, looking neglected as an untamed horse, shooting straight on the road, for my apartment, ripping through the air like a minor storm, leaving behind a momentary vacuum, that sucked the dirty, smoggy air in, encouraging the car onward. And I would laugh uncontrollably, and consider her shouting: Bye People, funny, a departure from every days routines: A distinct feature of her Autism. Or a sign of enthusiasm for me. Apart from this and a few more eccentricities she had no other signs of "developmental disability" or "retardation"- or “Autism”—“schizophrenia”-or half the other labels it could have been called by. The group home she lived at was a two-story stucco building in the middle of practically no where, in an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. There were semi-trucks parked parallel and neat, around dusty old hotels with signs that must have been inviting to truck drivers. Signs like: Adult Cable, Jacuzzi, privacy. The signs might have read: prostitutes too, but I suppose that would have been against city ordinance or something. -2-

5

These tall signs littered the view of the mountains in the north of the city. Where you could still see some white caps of snow. Thumbing their dirtied noses at the heat below. There was a large shopping mall hidden from the main road, like a bruise, minutes walk from the group home, where the 100 or so residents of the group home could go for walks or windowshopping. There was a Payless shoes, a Walmart, a Ross and a few more generic stores. There wasn't much real shopping done by the residents of the group home, cause they were all on Social Security Disability, and almost all of their benefits were deposited directly in the pockets of the group home owners. An amount around 900 dollars or so, each, for a bed in a two-beds to a room hotel-like room, and three meals a day; meals which tasted like hospital food, dry, stale, and tasting as though produced in some cardboard kitchen – tastes each and every resident knew. For almost every one of them had been in a mental hospital at some point in their lives. -3-

6

They were Bipolars, Schizophrenics, or on rare occasions, high-functioning Autistics like my girl (why do I call her my girl!). Her housemates were all restless, shrill, and by turns languid or hyperkinetic, and they argued over cigarettes and change for soda and candy in colorful dispensing machines which occupied shrine-like postures in the dinning room area. According to Pam(my girl), there were all sorts of drama going on all the time, dramas she claimed being above of, in a diva-like posture, something that turned out to be wrong later on. But at the time she really looked forwards to times when I picked her up. She longed to get away from the group home, she was the only Autistic there, she said, and not mentally ill. But at the time, there weren't much else she could have had. Group-homes as a rule are all too expensive and run by shady characters who make money out of the ill and disabled. And out of the general national confusion over how to best take care of them. -4-

7

Government paid the disabled no mind, (they apparently have had no lobbyists) but give them a measly check every month, which barely paid for shelter and meals, and washed its hands off them,like they were lepers, or FDR had tricked the entire country into taking care of them by some sorcery. Perhaps that explains Pam’s fits of: "Bye People" out of the cars' windows. May be I was right to think of them as a sort of exuberance or momentary release from some long-standing injury. May be she felt catapulted from some prison, some intolerable state of being. She had been introduced by a friend of mine, who liked to fix me up for no good reason, but to arrange or control things. She liked to project a sort of normalcy around her, as though it soothed every exhibition of otherwise within her. And my aloneness was a thorn in her world that spelled normalcy with a curious must, yearning for pairing and accompaniments. It was as though I couldn't convince her of my adequacy, -5-

8

unless I hooked up with one of her friends. and so she bullied me, as though aloneness bred sedition and rowdiness. She'd tried to introduce some of her suspect young yuppie friends, but I had found flaws from just her reports on every one of them. There were women who lived lives dedicated to greed or cruelty, women who stole love from you, when all you had was love. But when she called me on her cell phone, I detected a sense of urgency. As if she had a full hand of cards for me, a triumph of sorts, and knew it. "But she is a high functioning Autistic." "What does that supposed to mean, do you even know what Autism is?" "Well she has finished high school, and some college, but has been raised in group homes all her life." "How do you know what that means, since when you're an authority on Autism?" I asked a bit annoyingly. "Don't get prissy on me, you know what it means." She snapped back. "She is a loner like you, doesn't that whet your appetite." -6-

9

"If she is anything like your other…" She interrupted me in mid-sentence, I was about to get eloquent on her, dislodging her the best way I could, I knew I had an edge against her in words, they came more readily to me than her. But her social skills were better than mine, in the finance world she existed, enticement is ripped by tenthousand knives, and a horizon of dogs. I missed her calls, but when the calls were made I was furtively lost. " She is like no one you have ever known, I told you she is a high-functioning Autistic, you're a Psychologist, go figure." I had to admit that a high-functioning Autistic, is quite an interesting find, but refusing my friends enthusiasm had become a well-worn habit, she'd sing the praises of someone and I'd get around it somehow, like a prelude to a mating dance made in mud-we'd had these discussions before. "You know I've been patient with you before, its just that you must control your Judaism, it turns you into an endless matchmaker." I figured since I was rightly a Psychologist, I should scour her at the depth of things, she was like a puddle -7-

10

That got all excited, grainy, and muddy with things, and there was no way avoiding Her. You could get your feet wet. Or had to walk slowly around her. "Patient, patient, you are anything but patient, you are indecisive." There she had dealt a blow. I could imagine her scowling at me. She had the face that looked ironic when scowling. I'd imagined her in front of the mirror practicing it for their staff meetings. One long thin brooding line of connected eyebrows. Eyes bulging their whiteness Shinning like pearls, adding to the surprise and urgency of her thin face. She could be right though. Even in my book of adequacy and normalcy, indecisiveness Was a fractured feature, like broken into many pieces mirror. or like a startled fish, Deep in water and not knowing which way to flow. It was indecorous, an indefensible Position almost. "What else is wrong with her?" I knew I was giving in, and she must have heard its notes, for she began to describe her ignoring my prodding. -8-

11

But she needn't sell her anymore, as though she was an object I was procuring, it wasn't at all like that but she was unaware of my feelings. The truth had been that my aloneness had put me on the path of least resistance. The old self-confidence of aloneness now just felt independent but begrudging. And in reality I was afraid to detach myself from anything that might finally be happening. It had been a while since she had phoned with a candidate. And I'd secretly missed her calls. "When do you suppose we should meet." There was no need pretending I was something that I wasn't. I felt like the canary in the coalmine, confiscated, even belligerent. And whether she was Autistic or not, didn't matter at all. So long as she wasn't one of Her uppity friends I was calm. And she'd been right. I was a Psychologist and knew better than to label anyone unfondly. And the world of an Autistic, is an entirely unknown territory, if you were a scientist you'd feel like Christopher Columbus. "What's her name?" "Marianne, Marianne West." I mumbled her -9-

12

name to myself as though its rhythm and post should reveal something deeper about her, some light of understanding, like a sound in my ears. But my friend was busy telling things about her that I couldn't have cared less about. Almost taking no notice of my having given in. Like she had to punish me still for my past dismissal of her so-called friends. Women she couldn't have been too close to, for they occupied a wide range of berth. All professionals. But I knew she wasn't easy to get close to. They could have been soldiers in a large army, people she had come across by some mistake. For she talked about them like a lieutenant talks of her charges. Or a goodwill ambassador taking charge. The emphasis on taking charge, more than Goodwill. Not like a gardener, but more like an absent parent. And refusing her has always been difficult. For the shadow appearance of goodwill. She reminded you of the sea, but being swallowed by the waves. It never was certain If the women were reluctant participants, or strong-armed into acquiescence. Either Way one felt a sense of obligation to her. Even if -10-

13

her attempts at match-making were flimsy, all too vague and unsuccessful. How I had avoided the feelings of remorse and obligation to her before says a lot about the deceptions of aloneness: one feels invincible, like a god almost. It's a separate glamorous country. Everything shimmers in this voluntary, independent way. The will of man appears like an apparition unhampered and things twine like vines around a stump. And you always come back to yourself. Something dark and romantic, alone as death. "Are you still there?" Her voice drawled and woke me up from myself. There must have been an edge to her shriek, I never imagined her voice without its edge of a shout, but had it not been for its frightening tone, I may have just gone deeper into myself, forgetting her there> The way a lonely man gets lost looking at himself from outside in. "Yeah, I'm still here." "You sounded like you'd hung up on me." A current of quiet must have passed in between us, Perhaps the quiet had made her introspective -11-

14

too. And intolerable. Very few can tolerate quiescence in others or themselves. Which why I presume the city is so divided and so noisy at the same time. We tremble at the sight of dying garbage. The numbing vigilant growth of activity, and the desire of the eyelids to open.. "When do you want to meet her?" "Whenever she wants to meet." I would leave it there. "Wait a second. I'll ask her." She cupped the phone, and something muttered and got lost, like a stone thrown down a well. "She wants to meet today, can you make it this evening?" She was back to barking her orders, but I'd lost control while ago, suddenly aloneness had become too frightening and I would have met them there and then. Did she say anything else about Marianne? I probably hadn't been in the moment to hear it anyways. I confess, the whole affair, Was beginning to circle like a vine about myself. Even while attempting to climb out of Myself I'd been guilty of guile. And after two years of affair, I feel the guilt now. -12-

15

Its late in the afternoon. Almost the hour of our date. We're supposed to meet at a Restaurant called Spires. Though its only 15 miles away, I know it will take mean hour to get there. Surprise its only the big city traffic. You have to be a permanent traveler. The dismal rites of the freeways. Time wasted like powdered lumber. I dress casually, negligently, I don't want my clothes to drive me into any one's head. I begrudgingly look in the mirror, it really can't be avoided. My shaved head looks Barren and remote. My eyes swathed like tired boxers'. When stepping out into the sun, the air is closed like a cellars'. The sun feels closer to earth, than any place I've ever known. It has a sad crocodile face, a spider web's texture. To step into the car, I need to walk on brown littered-with-styrophone grass. The grass snaps under your feet. But its another sound that doesn't register. Like the police or ambulance sirens, there are people in other neighborhoods who can still distinguish in between them, here they are submerged in the consciousness, -13-

16

drowned like the chirping of the birds. Under shoes the last remnants of wind throb. The shake the crumbling houses around. It looks as though the skin of earth is pulling everything back into decay. Or like another earthquake could finish them complete. I feel like I am walking among ruins, or the fields behind the trains. I can see the freeway overpass from our street. It's a thick grey tongue, and the beast is Unseable its us. I think: Those who are dead, are only living in our heads. Its thinking About the freeway that makes think of death. It too is unavoidable. Like looking in the Mirror. The thoughts of my fathers' death circle around, like an empty church still Echoing with prayers. He'd not been a loner like I had been. I am strange with funereal Dreams. I blame it on the freeways. And in between them thee are no groves. Though the Names still suggest. No where a woman and man may embrace. I don't know why I am going on this date. My father has been dead for the total of thirteen months, I Have no grief, or am overwhelmed with it. Its apocryphal. Those who are dead, are -14-

17

still living in our heads. I hope its true. My father used to say: Son, never get married. He seemed burdened, overwhelmed by his own marriage to my mother. Why should I be thinking of marriage now though. Its only a date. And she is only human. What can become of a human relationship? It's the structures around that make you wonder. Like a small church devoured by the rays, the shape of what continues is withdrawn from the earth. Its like being caught in an angry ditch. It almost feels like giving up. Once on the other side of the road and safely in my car, I exhale like I've been holding my breath for too long. Whats' it about the air that makes me like this? It's the smell of sulfur, the entire Periodic Table. Like an old tablecloth put to dry, there is too much of free floating chemicals in the air and every being. And it feels like our presence has been diminished, shriveled lie old skin. It's the new science of tears, every other kid on school grounds carries an inhaler, imagine just that, feeling like you're running Out of air, because you came out of the class into the yard running, just running. And You're only 10 years old. It's the science of tears every -15-

18

postman, lawyer, seamstress and bandit, overcome by shortness of breath, by doubt and dressed in stealth mourning. Stealth, because there is no recognizing it, no admission, no sounds of keys, clothes and coins dropping onto the grounds. No sounds of 10.000 inhalers blocked by tightening airways that just don't like so much the entire Periodic Table shoved down their cells.

-16-

19