4
The next day dawned bright, promising to be as hot as yesterday, and I was out of the apartment at ten, before Serena or Diana had risen. I was thinking of two things: one, that maybe the Blind Guy was at his bench in the park, and two, how good a chocolate-filled roll from a favorite panadería would taste.
I’d first seen the Blind Guy several weeks ago and still thought of him that way, even after learning his name, Joe Keller. He’d drawn my attention the first day I’d seen him, for two reasons. First, he’d looked enough like CJ—young and tall and loose-limbed, with curling red hair—that my heart had briefly skipped, until I’d realized it was highly unlikely that CJ would be sitting around an East L.A. park by himself. Second, I’d seen the white cane that immediately marked him as blind.
The cane was the reason I went over to talk to him that first afternoon.
“Hi,” I’d said. “My name’s Hailey.”
“Joe,” he’d said.
“Look, I could lead up to this by making small talk first, but I won’t. The thing is, this neighborhood is one where maybe you want to bring a friend if you’re going to hang out. I know it probably seems like a lot of nice people, kids and mamis with strollers, but there’s a lot of gang activity here, too. In fact, the bench you’re sitting on is pretty marked up with gang graffiti.”
I’d gone on, “And while I’d like to say that gangbangers have scruples about jacking the elderly or the disabled, mostly they don’t. They see someone like that, by themselves, and it’s like the rest of us feel when seeing something we need in a store marked half off. It’s like, ‘Hey, I can’t pass that up.’ ”
His face had been inscrutable, with the dark glasses adding to that impression. When he didn’t respond right away, I’d said, “I’ve offended you, right?”
“No,” he’d said. “You might have, but then the analogy, the half-off discount, really redeemed it.” A small, sardonic smile had lightened his expression, and then he’d said, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re young, female, apparently alone, and, from the sound of your voice, white. How much are you discounted for those guys?”
I’d smiled privately, wanting to say, A piece of me is gonna cost them, but I hadn’t. Instead I’d said, “You have a good ear. I am white. Blond, even.”
“Oh, good. I like blondes.”
“But you’re blind!”
“Just on principle.”
I’d laughed, even though my act of Good Samaritan-hood was going very differently from how I’d expected it to. “Well, great,” I’d said. “The world can always use another man of principles. By the way, you personally? Very much red-haired.”
“I’m a redhead? Jesus, nobody tells me anything.”
I’d taken a seat and stayed awhile, long enough for him to tell me that he had an elderly, chronically ill uncle in the area whom he came around to care for, and that he liked to walk out and get a little sun while the old guy was napping.
He’d asked me how much I knew about the gangs in the area—did I have friends in the life?—and so on. I’d evaded his questions, just telling him that I came around to visit an old friend from junior high, not elaborating. I’d had a suspicion that he was leading up to asking me for a source to buy marijuana from, but then he never did.
The second time I’d seen him, I’d asked him if he was a student—he dressed very casually—but he’d said, “I’m done with school,” somewhat flatly, so I hadn’t pursued it. Nor did I ask him what he did for a living. He was clearly able-bodied, and I heard both intelligence and a certain amount of education in the way he talked. Yet he seemed to have a lot of free time, and I wondered if he was on disability. But again I didn’t ask, afraid again of offending him.
When I arrived at the park today, I saw the Blind Guy from a distance, red hair like a flag, eyes hidden as always behind the shades, his face tipped up toward the sun. His skin was pale; he didn’t freckle, like a lot of redheads would have.
When I was close enough that I knew he could hear my footsteps, I said, “Hey, it’s Hailey.”
“Morning,” he said. “Have a seat.”
I maneuvered around his outstretched legs to get to the open space on the bench. He had long legs; I figured him for about six-three, standing. “Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, but I can always eat. What’ve you got?”
“Something from the bakery,” I said, opening the bag. “You like cinnamon rolls?”
“Because you want the chocolate for yourself?” he said. “You thought I wasn’t going to smell that, did you?”
“You want the chocolate one instead?”
“No, it’s fine, whichever.” He held his hand out in my general direction.
I reached into the bag and drew out the cinnamon roll but then stopped, distracted. On the back of the bench, just between us, someone had scratched the message INSULA 187. The exposed wood looked pale and splintery, therefore fresh. It was new.
I had seen threats against the sucias in general and Serena in particular, but never against me personally. This was Trippy’s handiwork, made all the more striking because the park was dead center in the middle of Trece territory, where a member of Tenth Street shouldn’t have dared to go. Serena was right. This was a sign of true dedication to a grudge.
“Hailey?” Joe prompted me.
“Sorry,” I said. “Distracted.”
I took the cinnamon roll out of its wrapper and gave it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, tearing off a small piece. “I thought maybe I hurt your feelings, teasing you like that.”
“No, it was funny,” I said. “How’s your uncle?”
“About the same,” he said.
He’d never been talkative about his uncle’s illness, and I’d never pressed him on it. So we sat for a moment, eating in silence. The breeze played with his hair, and he brushed it back. His hair was redder than CJ’s; my cousin could almost be called a strawberry blond.
“Joe,” I said, curious, “what color are your eyes?”
Immediately, he put up a hand, palm outward and fingers spread in front of his face. “Hey, you’re not reaching for my shades, are you?” He sounded alarmed.
I pulled back. “No,” I said, surprised by his reaction.
He relaxed a little and put his hand down. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s a thing with blind people. Some of us are sensitive about our eyes, like deaf people are about their voices. I usually know someone awhile before I go without sunglasses around them.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I am,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed you were going to try to take off my shades. The other thing is, blind people get used to folks touching us without warning. People think it’s okay if it’s well intended, like when someone just takes your arm and pulls to show you which way to go. I don’t like it.”
“I wouldn’t, either,” I said.
“I don’t think you’re like that,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
Then, for a minute, I wanted to tell him about my tumor. Because then I could say I understood what it was like to not want people to think of you as an “asterisk” person. If I told people about my cancer, I’d never just be Hailey again. I’d be the girl with the deadly little poison pill deep in her brain. Or maybe it’d come off like one-upmanship. So instead I said, “If we keep running into each other, eventually I’m going to say something stupid about you being blind. It’s inevitable. I mean, you’re probably giving me too much credit.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He shifted position slightly, touched his white cane. “Listen, do you have a phone number? I’m not hitting on you,” he added quickly, “but it’d be nice to know someone in the neighborhood, just in case I get stranded after the buses stop running, something like that.”
I had a brief idea of his hands on my stomach, the way riders hold on to you when they’re riding pillion. “Sure,” I said. I dug into my backpack, found a pen. “Hold out your hand,” I said. “I’ll say it out loud, but I’m also going to write it on your palm.”
“You do know how being blind works, right?” he said quizzically.
“I know, but this’ll help you remember. It’s tactile reinforcement. We learned about it in school.” I ran the pen point back and forth across my own skin, along the base of my thumb, to get the ink to flow. “Hold out your hand.”
He did, and I recited the numbers slowly as I wrote them. “There,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“I should get going.”
“Are you going to work?”
“Not right away.”
“You’ve never said what you do for a living.”
“Oh,” I said, “the usual dead-end wage-slave stuff.”