Shoes

YOU FLOCK FROM THE BASEMENT WITH A SLEEVE OF DUSTY CUPS. Mo is reading the newspaper at the marble counter which looks like an altar. Little is sacrosanct here, though Mo was told by the previous owner that Janis Joplin performed in the basement during the hippie sixties—whoever she was, Mo says. But this is the eve of the millennium, the bunker-size basement now a stockroom. Mo’s the new boss, an affable Persian behind a black muslin-style beard, who does what he wants. Like hiring the minimum-wage you on the spot. But you’re still in a spot. Even with tips. It’s a slow weekday; coffee bakes in the pot, and you wonder how this empty beat cafe makes rent. You’re a month behind the homeless out front, huddling in the rain, plotting. You could give a crap about them.

You prop the sleeve. “Mo, look.”

“Beeg boner,” he says. “Beddy, beddy beeg. Beeg as Buraq.”

“Barack?”

“Muhammad’s horse!”

He means Muhammad, the last great Islamic messenger, who rode a great white horse with wings into heaven—as opposed to you who rode bad horse-racing wagers without a wing and a prayer to the poorhouse. Mo is named after Muhammad, who God sent to Earth five hundred years after Jesus to reaffirm the same message dating back to Abraham in the Old Testament: believe in the one true God and live in peace.

“A piece of my heart?” you say.

“What’s that?”

“What Janis Joplin sang.”

“I love the Janis,” he says and rolls his kohl eyes jammed with other concerns. Mo’s Shia but doesn’t do Salah or Mosque, but neither does your Catholic ass go to Mass. He speaks Farsi and enough English. He’s short and girthy as a cherub. Married with kids in Tehran, says he’ll bring them over when it’s safe among the western infidels.

“Infidels?”

“The unbelievers.”

You joke, “All you people named ‘Mo’?”

“Just the good-looking ones.”

You cough instead of laugh, then ask, “What are you reading?”

“Looking at shoes on sale. These loafers,” he says, pointing at his feet, “are beddy, beddy old—a gift from a lady friend.” His eyebrows worm like a struck typewriter ribbon. “She needed work done but could not pay. These belonged to husband. Beddy, beddy dead.” The brown patent leathers are tattered, toes curled as Turkish slippers, and stiff as rigor mortis.

“What kind of work?”

“Gigolo,” he says.

“Beddy, beddy funny.” Disgusting, really.

He’s not laughing and looks crazed as a terrorist.

You ask, “You get much work that way?”

“Many old ladies paid me enough to buy café. You must have the money.”

Old ladies, you think, expecting virgins. Maybe that’s the afterlife. Now he smiles big as a sleeve of cups. You think of saggy and wrinkled-clitted clients veiled in black lace.

“I havethese shoes since before the war.” He kicks the counter, scudding the brick floor.

“War?”

“Iran-Iraq war. I was an officer in the Revolutionary Guard.”

You recall images from the news: sand-blown desert, gas masks, old wooden rifles, Saddam Hussein, burning oil wells, scud missiles. You have no idea who started the war. You have no idea how you’re gonna pay rent.

Mo continues, “Eight years it lasted. It seemed like a thousand. It was so stupid and terrible. We were so scared. I even prayed to Jesus.”

“You believe in Jesus?” Surprised, you don’t know what you believe in anymore.

“Yes. We just think he was a prophet and not the savior. Anyway, at night before we slept, I have to count the men.”

“Count?”

“The enemy,” he says, “would sneak into the bunkers and kidnap soldiers. Or slit their throats. Or just shoot them in feet. ‘I keeell you,’ they would say.” His eyes go monstrous. “Then they would take their shoes.”

“Why?”

“Hard to run in the hot sand with no shoes, let alone wage war.”

“You ever get kidnapped or lose any shoes?” Not that you’d ever want to walk in or out of them.

“An angel saved me when I was asleep.”

“You believe it those too?”

“Yes. Mine had wings and said to wake up. The enemy was one step away. He raised a dagger. I pretended to sleep, then shoot him in face.” Mo lifts his shirt, revealing the walnut-grip handle of a revolver in his pants. “S&W. Beddy, beddy old and nice. It’s Russian.” He rolls his Rs like my God-fearing Mexican mother. “RRRussian.”

You tell him to remind you not to piss him off.

“Keeell you,” he says and smiles.

In a while, still no customers. The homeless encroach on the door, looking for day-old pastries, maybe a fishes-and-the-loaves act. Coffee in the pot stinks. Mo dumps it but doesn’t start more. He folds the newspaper, shakes his head. “Too expensive.” Then he says he knows a guy down the street who will trade shoes for coffee.

You’ve heard that secret tunnels run under these sidewalks and streets. They connect businesses and basements in the gulch, go down to the bay and Golden Gate. Some even run to China town. No telling the trade, human trafficking, and drug smuggling that have taken place over the last century, long before the Janis showed up and made repeat performances underground.

Mo railroads out the door and wields his gun at the homeless on the sidewalk. “I keell you! Get back, get out of the way, you homeless infidels!”

While he’s away, a bearded one sneaks in, shuffling along. He has paper bags for shoes, twined at the ankles. An army blanket cloaks his body. Even rain-soaked, he reeks of piss and ass as though he’s crapped himself—you know how that feels. The smell is overwhelming. Yet there’s something else, something salitter, an apparition. It’s Jesus in disguise, right? A test? But you gave up on that kind of visitation long ago. Even on the Parousia – the Second Coming.

Rainwater streaks his weathered face. With cracked hands, he peruses and nabs a barley muffin wrapped in plastic from a wicker basket.

“That’s not for you to take.”

As he puts it back, you recall a homily about the five barley loaves and two fishes—the Gospel of John where Jesus feeds the five thousand near Bethsaida. Besides foreshadowing the last supper and the act of communion, the priest said Jesus didn’t perform a miracle by multiplying all that food. The miracle was getting the travelers to share what they were already carrying. No one would ever be hungry if everyone shared. Radical hospitality, the priest called it, sounding hippie, preaching during the weekend parish fundraiser. If only you got that kind of information sharing at the race track. And if horses could talk.

The homeless guy swipes the tip jar but doesn’t get far; it’s chained to the counter.

You bluff and say, “If Mo comes back and sees you inside, he’ll kill you on the spot like God. Didn’t you see that fucking gun? He’ll annihilate you just to show the others.”

He doesn’t duck, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t do anything. He’s just ductile with yellow-crusty eyes and holds the jar like the Holy Grail.

“Jesus Cunt,” you say and grab the jar, spilling the swag on the counter. “Take it and get out.”

He slowly takes the two bills, then collects the five coins.

“Here he comes,” you say, bluffing more. “You’d better go. He’ll kill you.”

At the door, the homeless man stops, turns, says in a hoarse voice, “Thank you.” He bows as though to the tabernacle or like a servant to a master. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he says, leaving wet footprints. You don’t get it except for a vomit-inducing stench.

You open the register and take a dollar to spice the tip jar. You spot the only twenty in the drawer, pocket it. God knows if and when you’ll get paid. Then you realize Mo would know and shoot you. You recall the time you could have been shot – when your jerk-off  red-neck cousin shot his Russian-made Ak-47 machine gun above your head into the trees. You were a boy, working the apple fields at your uncle’s ranch. Scared out of your shoes, crapping yourself, you quickly hit the ground like a Muslim Jesus in the Julus posture praying East towards Mecca.

After the loud bullets stopped piercing the leaves and ripping holes in the sky, your cousin yelled: Jesus Cunt, that’s funny. He howled like Janis Joplin.

You unpocket the twenty, tell yourself that you haven’t gotten that low, on a number of levels, and put it back in the register.

In a while, Mo ducks in from the spitting rain, using a shoebox as an umbrella. He goes over, sits at a cafe table for two, and opens the box. He peels back the folded tissue paper, producing shiny black oxfords like sacred tablets to live by. He sheds the old loafers like worn horseshoes, puts on the new ones.

Off with the old, on with the new.

He knots the thick black laces with clear condom-like aglets, stands, and pivots a model. “Jimmy,” he says, “What do you think?

“The virgins will love them.”

“Beddy, beddy,” he says with a vulpine smile.

It is then that the homeless man with the paper bags on his feet slushes back in for a second time, hands in the air, soggy dollar in each. He looks desperate as you for one last bet at the track or surrendering to the enemy in a desert war. Or maybe he’s just shooing you–and not like a farrier.

“Infidel,” Mo yells, reaching for his gun.

“Cup of coffee,” the homeless guy stutters.

“Hold on,” you say. “Jesus, Mo! He’s got the money.”

Pointing the plum-gray barrel, Mo stares. His eyes are cross-hairs. He cocks, fingers the crescent trigger, pink tip turning white. You are stuck in a bad dream, unable to act, do even the minimum. After what seems a limpid millennium, he fires.

It’s the second shot, you believe, that wings, drawing blood through the twine and soggy paper bag. It’s like a nail in the foot, and takes a piece of your heart.