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By Root 763 0

by the week, by the month, and even by the day, to fellow illegals. He spoke about as much English as Biju did, so between Spanish, Hindi, and wild mime, Jacinto’s gold tooth flashing in the late evening sun, they had settled the terms of rental. Biju joined a shifting population of men camping out near the fuse box, behind the boiler, in the cubby holes, and in odd-shaped corners that once were pantries, maids’ rooms, laundry rooms, and storage rooms at the bottom of what had been a single-family home, the entrance still adorned with a scrap of colored mosaic in the shape of a star. The men shared a yellow toilet; the sink was a tin laundry trough. There was one fuse box for the whole building, and if anyone turned on too many appliances or lights, PHUT, the entire electricity went, and the residents screamed to nobody, since there was nobody, of course, to hear them.

Biju had been nervous there from his very first day. “Howdy,” a man on the steps of his new abode had said, holding out his hand and nodding, “my name’s Joey, and I just had me some WHEES-KAY!” Power and hiss. This was the local homeless man at the edge of his hunting and gathering territory, which he sometimes marked by peeing a bright arc right across the road. He wintered here on a subway grate in a giant plastic-bag igloo that sagged, then blew taut with stale air each time a train passed. Biju had taken the sticky hand offered, the man had held tight, and Biju had broken free and run, a cackle of laughter following him.

______

“The food is cold,” the customers complained. “Soup arrived cold! Again! The rice is cold each and every time.”

“I’m also cold,” Biju said losing his temper.

“Pedal faster,” said the owner.

“I cannot.”

______

It was a little after 1 A.M. when he left Freddy’s Wok for the last time, the street lamps were haloes of light filled with starry scraps of frozen vapor, and he trudged between snow mountains adorned with empty take-out containers and solidified dog pee in surprised yellow. The streets were empty but for the homeless man who stood looking at an invisible watch on his wrist while talking into a dead pay phone. “Five! Four! Three! Two! One—TAKEOFF!!” he shouted, and then he hung up the phone and ran holding onto his hat as if it might get blown off by the rocket he had just launched into space.

Biju turned in mechanically at the sixth somber house with its tombstone facade, past the metal cans against which he could hear the unmistakable sound of rat claws, and went down the flight of steps to the basement.

“I am very tired,” he said out loud.

A man near him was frying in bed, turning this way, that way. Someone else was grinding his teeth.

______

By the time he had found employment again, at a bakery on Broadway and La Salle, he had used up all the money in the savings envelope in his shoe.

It was spring, the ice was melting, the freed piss was flowing. All over, in city cafes and bistros, they took advantage of this delicate nutty sliver between the winter, cold as hell, and summer, hot as hell, and dined al fresco on the narrow pavement under the cherry blossoms. Women in baby-doll dresses, ribbons, and bows that didn’t coincide with their personalities indulged themselves with the first fiddleheads of the season, and the fragrance of expensive cooking mingled with the eructation of taxis and the lascivious subway breath that went up the skirts of the spring-clad girls making them wonder if this was how Marilyn Monroe felt—somehow not, somehow not….

The mayor found a rat in Gracie Mansion.

And Biju, at the Queen of Tarts bakery, met Saeed Saeed, who would become the man he admired most in the United States of America.

“I am from Zanzibar, not Tanzania,” he said, introducing himself.

Biju knew neither one nor the other. “Where is that?”

“Don’t you know?? Zanzibar full of Indians, man! My grandmother—she is Indian!”

In Stone Town they ate samosas and chapatis, jalebis, pilau rice….

Saeed Saeed could sing like Amitabh Bachhan and Hema Malini. He sang, “Mera joota hai japani…” and “Bombay se aaya mera