Saturday, November 26, 2016

Dozing Off

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Rich & Poor In L.A.

- I don't know how you stand it.
- Then invite me to stay with you.
- My landlady won't allow it.
- Let her complain.
- She's my friend. 
- You pay rent, a lot of rent. A friend would let you stay for free. 
- We talk all the time. She lets me pay late.
- So if she's your friend she'll let you have a guest. 
- Why don't you get some job?
- I apply, never get an answer.
- Why not?
- I'm too old, have no employment history.
- You could wash dishes.       
- I applied. Rejected. Want to see the emails?
- You could work as a guard. Or a taxi driver. 
- I applied. No answer.
- Apply again.
- I've had enough. I have to go on with my life.
- What is your life? 
- What's yours? 
- I'm a graduate student in the Department of Middle East Studies, or was until a week ago. But who are you? What do I or anyone know about you? I do know you're a tutor of English: I was here when one of your students came for her lesson. A beautiful woman.
- Yes, She was my one and only, very wonderful student from one of the 'i-stans of the old Soviet Union. I couldn't quiet make out which when she told me. 
- Tutoring might be a good way out for you.
- Except that all my students quit. 
- Why?
- They don't learn unless they become friends.
- And they want to learn English, not make friends with you.
- They don't get what they want and quit.
- But not the woman from the former Soviet Socialist RepublicShe's stunning. Tall, thin like a fashion model. Exotic. Are you still teaching her?
- I'll tell you how that went. I kept her waiting for almost an hour at our first meeting. I hadn't forgotten the appointment, but with my year of accumulating sleep deficit sometimes the minute I relax I doze off. I woke at couple minutes before the appointed time, finding myself in the University library instead of the museum courtyard where I should have been. I sent a message saying I was on my way, sent several more messages updating my progress. I got there finally but by that time, furious at being forced to wait, she'd left the courtyard and was upstairs on the balcony considering visiting the museum galleries. She'd resolved not to meet me, and spy down from the balcony on my waiting for her in vain. But she got a look at me at the table in the courtyard, and "saw something". She changed her mind. 
- What did she see? 
- My ragged old multi-pocket coat over suit jacket, my "homeless fashion" as she later called it. 
- She told you this? Weren't you offended?
- No, it was praise from an expert. She was taking a course in fashion design. She made a lot of her own clothes: you should see the tender way she touches the fabrics when complemented on her work. So down she went to the courtyard and introduces herself. I explain I'd lost track of the time, express my pleasure at hearing of the far away place she was from. I'm reminded of a world of days gone-by where people thought it was possible to like each other, not just use each other for profit. She smiles at my innocence.
- And then she told you about your "homeless fashion"?
- No. That was a month later. We were sitting at three o'clock in the morning in her car that cost more than I've made in my entire life. 
-  She's rich?
- Married to and constantly embattled with a Ferrari driving criminal lawyer twenty years her senior.
- Battling over what? Money?
- Over his fault finding with ever little thing she did. That night, sitting in her car, three in the morning. She had been out driving. When her call came I was on my bike in Beverly Hills. She wanted to know if I was hungry, could she buy me dinner at the supermarket? Did I want to come to Westwood? What did I want? How about sushi? In fifteen minutes I'm with her sitting with in her car, and she suddenly turns to me, asks do I want to know what she thought of me when we first met? Sure. She says the state I was in was disgusting, is now still, why didn't I do something about it, go get cleaned up at a gym? She pauses, then asks like you did, wasn't I offended by her telling me this? No, I said, I was charmed. Why charmed? she asks. - Because you came down anyway. You thought maybe my appearance was just a disguise, not really me. - Your lessons are cheaper than anyone else's. - But I'm sitting in the car with you now at three in the morning. - I've got to go home. - You wanted me to come just to give me food? - Yes.
- She must like you to buy you sushi at three in the morning.
- Late night food deliveries were already an established custom with us. Once or twice every week when she worked she'd bring me dinner from the restaurant.
- She worked as a waitress? Why if she was rich?
- To be independent, have some money of her own. She was sending money every month to her sister overseas. Time passes. At midnight one evening I get a call from her: she's in Hawaii. She'd jumped on a plane after a fight with her husband. For the next couple of week she'd call every night about midnight and talk for an hour or more. She'd tell me about her day, the places she'd visited.
- Was the call her English lesson?
- No instruction. We just talked. She'd told me I was the only person she talked to besides her husband, and usually she and her husband were not on a talking basis. It looked like we were becoming friends. Sometimes when we'd be meeting at a cafe, supposed to go over her assignments for school, she'd change her mind and say no study for tonight, she only wanted to have dinner with me. I found things on my walks or bike rides she allowed me to give her: an illustrated history of typical costumes for all history the world over, a pair of sunglasses, designer jeans jacket, whatever came my way.
- And you don't know if you were friends?
- Friendship lasts only when friends are kept in each other's company by a shared home and the draw of philosophy. One or the other alone are not enough. Both are required.
- Maybe you were friends but not the lasting kind. What about you and me?  
- You got yourself suspended from UCLA. You'll be going home to New Haven soon.
- I suppose I will. Weren't your midnight phone calls and food deliveries a kind of home, your conversations philosophy? I think your student, friend or not, was falling in love with you. Lucky you.
- Luck comes and then luck goes. My life doesn't embarrass you because it doesn't reflect upon you, you're on your way out...
- Oh.
- She accepted me because she cared. But did I care about her? She began to wonder. Wasn't I really an embarrassing person who deserved the life he was leading? Suddenly it appeared to her that I liked too much the food she was bringing me. How make her understand I was eating to keep myself awake? Suddenly she thought I cared not enough helping her with her school work when it had to be done. How make her understand my hesitation was the very same reluctance I had in the beginning editing any writing including my own? She stopped calling. She replied to my emails that she was busy, didn't have time to meet. I got sad. I got careless. Reading on my computer - the new little computer she gave me - I dozed off for a minute sitting outside at Starbucks, long enough for my bike to be stolen only a few feet away. Sad, careless, without bike, I called her again. She repeated she was busy, had no time, no, she couldn't meet. I insisted, tell me what's happened. She repeated she had no time. No, I said, she had turned cold toward me. In anger she told me about my only wanting to eat, not wanting to work, thinking only of myself. She misunderstood me, I said. She could call on all my time, all day every day. She said she didn't want to hear from me and broke the connection. 
- You lost your student.
- I did, as always. I don't have anything more to say about this story.
- It's a terrible story.
- It's a beautiful story.