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He would not go to sleep. They wanted to know whose idea he was. They no longer knew why they'd agreed to him in the first
place, to bringing him all this way out West with them to play in a band or appear in crowd scenes. They'd only gone to harness
racing to tell Rick goodbye. They found him at the fence--he had to get his bad eyes in close so they could see the tote board. He
was always squinting. He had this motto: "Make it happen or it happens to you," and he was partial to young trotters. Nobody else
played them as they are prone to break into a gallop and disqualify--"Just like me," Rick said. Roger didn't get any of it but he liked
the names of the horses. She tried to explain the program to him, told him not to start cheering until the stretch. Roger forgot but
Rick made the perfecta happen to himself in the fifth race. At the mutuel window he offered to pay all fares if he could come along.
They couldn't have known that only that same day he'd kicked his father down a flight of steps. There was a warrant out.
 "But he's not a bad-looking boy," older people like Roger's mother would say. She gave him a hundred dollars before they left.
Rick sat across the aisle from them in the back of the bus, consumed by need. He thought she was with both of them. "What's
mine is yours and yours is mine" was another thing he'd say, but he rarely had anything of his own and after Iowa she made Roger
her sole purpose. He just couldn't finish. The kid in front of them kept peeking through the space between the seats. He made
slurping sounds and Roger told him to shut up. "Then put your jacket over her head," the kid's mother said.
"Be sorry for them," she whispered.
Rick got even, drove Roger crazy smoking and drinking in his seat, pounding on the bathroom door when Roger was inside.
And he'd brought a deck of cards. Things came his way. In St. Louis a dealer came aboard like he'd craved one up, a friendly,
well-spoken guy who'd left a kilo of something and his little finger in New York. He kept one hand in his pocket. He was going back
home to California to start over, and Roger asked him what it was like there. The dealer summed it up in one word, one of those
-ocracies, but by the time Roger found himself near a dictionary the suffix was all he had left.
Arizona, and Rick was still getting even, getting everyone in the back of the bus stoned and drunk except for Roger. Some
broken-down insurance salesman threw up discreetly in his briefcase. By the time they hit the mountains they'd all passed out.
Roger climbed alone. Rain developed, turned into a snowstorm and the driver had to turn the heat on. Then they drove above the
clouds on top of the storm, where the sun hung in a clear, pale blue. The other side of the mountain was green except where it
was burning--you could hear it roaring faintly as they rode down past it through the sudden night the smoke made. At the bottom
everyone woke up to the same air-conditioned desert they'd gone to sleep in. Roger felt like he'd survived their dreams, gone
white-haired with them somewhere inside.
Rick left the rest of his perfecta in Las Vegas and by the time they got under the palm trees Roger had to take the motel out of
his hundred. The manager thought he was the oldest--she didn't even ask for an ID. In the parking lot was an old flatbed truck with
plywood siding, piled high with what was either a junk dealer's haul or all someone had to show for it. It was parked by a door that
was always wide open and you could hear Spanish and a guitar. The occupants went barefoot to and from the truck, adding
something or taking something away, in and out of the Spanish, in and out of the guitar. Somehow, everything didn't come
crashing down.
Their door wouldn't latch. They hadn't been there an hour and Rick was already being himself, letting some dirtbag in off the
street to use the shower. Roger kicked him out, said there wasn't enough showering for him. Sand all over the carpet now but Rick
had gotten what he wanted and they were tired of him. They just wanted each other. He had his own bed but he wouldn't go to
sleep. He lay on his stomach watching the NBA playoffs, smoking a pipe he'd made out of tinfoil and a toilet paper tube. Roger
hated the base ingenuity of it, and the smell. It was just like him.
You could see he just wasn't going to fall asleep and they stopped waiting. Roger knew he wasn't going to even try and hate
himself for it later. Rick started jumping on his bed.
"Two on one," he said, but Roger was pretty old-fashioned back then and he didn't want to accidentally touch anything that
might haunt him later. He pretended Rick was talking about the basketball game. Rick said he was sorry, but being apologetic only
meant he was mad.
"I'm having a nicotine fit," he said. "Where's the key?"
They couldn't answer. Couldn't even notice him leave.
Alone, they jumped up and down on the beds themselves for a while, waiting for the next time. She read the want ads. They
needed volunteers for sleep research at UCLA. Wired your dreams to a stylus and graph, paid by the hour. She took a Swiss Army
knife no one knew she had out of her backpack and set about fixing the door latch. She was ingenious in ways Roger wasn't
prepared for. The beach was close but neither was interested; not even the ocean could get between them. (Or maybe the water
was just too cold. Or maybe we were just waiting for the rest of ourselves to arrive.)
She confided that she'd brought some money of her own. She mentioned Santa Monica, whatever that might be like, and all
Roger could say was that he liked the sound of it.
They thought they'd get even and smoke some of what Rick had left behind. Roger took too big of a hit and it made him cough
so hard he pulled something in his back. His spine felt like a crooked bough. He lay back down on the bed, trying to hide it.
Meanwhile, the next time had come round again. He told her, "I don't know," but she sure did and she straddled him and told him
to relax. He cried out until he wasn't sure exactly what he was crying out about.
"Just take it easy and start over," she said. He didn't understand. He opened his eyes and saw that she was talking to Rick, that
he'd come back right in the middle of this time. He was still mad but in a different way. He had a story now and tears of his own.
Roger only managed to catch the end of it: he wanted to go back out and find a guy. He wanted Roger to go with him. He wanted
them to go right back out and find this guy.
"My back is breaking me," Roger said.
"You look like you're doing okay to me."
"I can barely move," Roger managed to say.
He didn't mind Rick calling him what he called him then, didn't mind him saying he'd go himself, and then going himself, but he
minded what she said, her saying she would if he wouldn't, deciding to worry about Rick because, after all, they were still friends.
He tried to describe to her his pain, the warmth he needed to float in for a while.
She said, "Sometimes you look so old."
She just wanted Roger to walk him around. Probably all he needed was to just walk it off. Roger threw his legs out in front of him
in the dark. Rick moved fast under normal circumstances and now he had a purpose. In order to make it less excruciating Roger
had to keep his back completely straight and try not to move anything above the waist. From a passing distance he must have
looked incredibly dignified.
It was still warm and he was sweating when he caught up. Rick barely acknowledged him "I'll knock him down and you kick him,"
he said.
"Where to?"
"Laundromat. There was a whole bunch of em." He hawked and spat. "You can use some of that shit you're supposed to
know."
"Mai gheri," Roger said.
"Your what?"
"Front kick. Back to basics." He only wanted to sound useful. "I thought you said just the one."
"There was a whole bunch of them first," Rick said. "At the laundromat. I thought they looked alright--they had these haircuts
like they played in a band. This guy at the cigarette machine said he cut everybody's hair in all the bands. He told me he had his
scissors back in his building. Thinks he looks like Bowie. Wait'll you see his before-and-after."
"Reverse punch," Roger said. "Seiken. Just keep your wrist straight. You've got weapons all over--hammer fist, the meaty edge
of your palm to the temple. A backfist will light up his head."Tetuicihi, he thought, but he thought he should conserve his wind.
Rick moved with his knuckles turned forward, away from the ocean. (I didn't know the area then and I know it less now. I could
name streets but you've heard them often enough if you haven't walked them. I don't remember a lot of people being out, which
seems wrong. I could be wrong but I just don't recall a lot of other people being out in the night beside us. Maybe we weren't in
the heart of anything then, but in its vicinity.)
Roger told Rick to snap it out and bring it back as fast. To not leave a piece of himself out there for someone to grab hold of.
"It looked more like a hotel," Rick said. "A dump in my opinion.The elevator was out so we had to take the stairs up to his
place."
Roger offered to kick him first. "Yoko gheri. I wouldn't have to be facing him. To the groin, the knee, your call. The weapon's
the heel, the edge of your foot." Definitely better not to move his neck or arms, especially when talking.
"All that way for a pack of cigarettes," Rick said. "How come you don't smoke? Everyone says you look older than me." The bars
and stores they passed were closed. It was supposed to be a twenty-four hour town.
They turned a corner. "Where next?"
"I sat down on the sofa. He says he'd have to look for his scissors. He said he'd smoke one with me first for walking all the way
to his place with him."
"Figures."
"Listen, I was rolling one up."
"You were sitting," Roger said. "Ikkajo. You could have covered his hand like you were returning his affection. Then you grab
his wrist and twist, apply pressure to the elbow. Your grandmother could do it, drive him right off the couch and bury his head in
the floor."
"My grandmother's dead."
"It always goes to the floor. Grappler's got the edge over a kicker-puncher. Soft style over hard. Ever hear of mountain storm?"
"I bet a decent boxer could beat all that crap," Rick said. "When's the last time you were in a real fight?"
"You'd have to teach him a kick or two. Teach him an ashi barai." Roger liked saying it; that last long i made your shinbone
ache. But he wasn't always sure of the Japanese.
"But I know mountain storm is yawa arashi," he said. "You could really plant somebody with that throw, sucks you in like a
tornado and spits you back out. All in the hips. Saigo put judo on the map with it. Took it from aiki. Slept on floorboards and ate
cold rice." He was suddenly choked up. "No one can even do it right anymore, it's not even in the curriculum."
Rick hawked and spat. Roger was barely keeping up with him. They crossed the street and he put his hands against his
kidneys.
"I thought it was right at the light," Rick said. "Where is it?"
But they didn't stop. "Yonkajo," Roger said, to keep his mind off his pain.
"Gesundheit, motherfucker."
"Control his center with nothing but one finger. You've never hurt so bad in your life. Shioda took out RFK's bodyguard, had this
big nigger on his knees."
"Too bad we don't have ten years to learn it. I personally did not appreciate his hand on my knee."
"Kick him in the balls with the ball of the foot. Palm-heel strike to the chin--I heard a guy bit his own tongue off."
"Yoko Ono!" Rick said. "Judo chop! Think fast, it's around here somewhere."
"You mean shuto, knife hand. To the neck, the collarbone. Sliver of bone at the top of the nose you can drive into somebody's
brain, so watch your control. Focus. Tape a sheet of paper to the wall and punch as hard as you can, only hit the paper, not the
wall."
The place was open twenty-four hours a day. If Rick hadn't said anything Roger would have walked right past, he was so
preoccupied with being helpful. Then he heard the tumblers and smelled the dryers. They looked through the windows. There were
people in there but no one looked like David Bowie. The door was propped open. They went inside.
"Some hangout, huh?" Roger looked around for a cigarette machine. "They were over there." Rick pointed to a closed Dutch
door across the room. "There was this faggot making change on the other side. They were all around him."
The people in the laundromat talked softly, smoked, drank coffee, folded their clothes. You could take them or leave them. They
looked maybe Mexican but they didn't sound it. They grunted gently, soft round stones clicking in their throats. It wasn't Spanish, it
didn't sound Arab. Back then what else was there?
Rick was loud. The place rumbled. "Yeah," he said, "yeah. Where's that pack of fags that was here just a little bit ago?"
Some of them didn't notice, or pretended not to. The ones who did looked at them and then each other, made more of their
dark foreign sounds to each other, not at Rick or Roger but maybe for their benefit.
Roger was thinking of the vulnerable points--the chin, the groin, the eyes, the knees...the hollow of the throat.
Rick said it then. Yelled it. Demanded. All you could hear were the machines.
"The hollow of the throat," Roger didn't mean to say out loud.
"Hollow of your ass." Rick turned for the door. Roger asked him where he was going. "I'm gonna hurt someone's feelings," he
said without stopping or looking back. "You coming?"
Roger reminded him about his back. He reminded him about the door back at the motel, how she was alone and anyone could
just walk in. Rick kept going, into the street, not stopping or looking back, leaving. He said something that got lost. The machines
ground it into something less than speech.
Roger looked around. He had nothing against them. He wanted something but had nothing but weak knees. He was just
grateful to not have to move for a while, and the budo was not what it had been; bushido, the warrior spirit, was a thing of the
past. You lock the elbow joint with the bend, not against it anymore, so as not to break anything. You have to laugh and smile and
love everybody, uke cooperates and lets himself be thrown.
*
They stayed there the rest of the week. The lady in the manager's office, who was nervous and suspicious to begin with,
became increasingly hostile. She mentioned bloodstains on the linen. She asked Roger if there was a problem.
"Too much starch in the towels," he said. "Like sandpaper."
"I mean a female problem," she said.
"Just you."
She suggested they put up elsewhere. They could try Santa Monica, whatever that would be like. Then Culver City. Malibu.
The ocean was still cold enough to turn you blue.
(The next time we ever saw him was back East. He visited us in uniform. He was stationed in a distant exotic land, surrounded
by hopeless squalor and the constant threat of terrorism, but he couldn't make it interesting. You could tell he was repeating
himself. He tried to tell us how good we didn't know we had it but he couldn't give it any weight. Some people can pull it off, tell
you what you didn't know you wanted to know, but he wasn't one of them. It wasn't his fault, just like it wasn't ours he went AWOL,
took a bow and arrow to the zoo and started shooting things.)
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