The Fugitivities, стр. 8

Octavio’s impassioned hollers overcame the diesel motoring.

“We need to go south!”

“What, you want to get off in Sheepshead Bay?”

“No, I’m talking farther south, all the way south. Think big picture!”

“What, Florida?”

“No, man. I’m talking farther out. Past the Caribbean.”

“You want to go to South America?”

“To Rio.”

“Rio. If you want sand and bikinis, why not Orchard Beach?”

“Tss! No seas tan bruto…perdónalo dios, el caballero es flemático.”

“You’re losing me. Why Rio?”

“You remember my girl, Barthes?”

“Barthes?”

“Maggie Reynolds. Brunette, soccer team, she was the year above us. We both took lit theory our junior year. Every time she spoke, it was ‘Barthes this’ and ‘Barthes that.’ I used to tease her. The name stuck. Anyway, we had a thing, right, it was going pretty well too, but then we had to break it off when she decided to leave the city to work with favela children in Rio through one of those GlobalGiving NGO-type things. Anyway, the point is I have a plan. We go down there, we find her, we say what’s up, you know, and she gets us connected down there—she’ll have the whole place figured out, all we gotta do is take it all in. And she can put us up, I mean, she wouldn’t refuse me; we have history at this point, I’m talking romantic history!”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Jonah scoffed. “You want to go all the way down to Brazil to rekindle a flame. That’s romantic, that’s cool, man…Maybe that’ll be impactful on your life, but why do you need to bring me along? I’m not trying to play third wheel. Are you suggesting we’re going to get work with Barthes’s NGO or something like that?”

“Think bigger. We don’t go to Rio, we begin in Rio. We take on South America! Brazil! Argentina! Bolivia! Peru! The Andes! The Amazon! The Southern Cone! I’m saying, let’s get the hell out of here! It’s about having connections on the ground, man. Once we do, we make our own NGO. Needs Getting Obliged. Anyway, who needs a reason? This country is terminal—it doesn’t deserve saving. I wouldn’t wish a life in Castro country on anyone. But if you think Miami is a paradise you’re out of your mind! It’s a drugged-out swamp with a Gucci store. A resort-world run by reactionaries, real estate barrons, and cartel lawyers. The population is lunatic ex-Batistas and a mezclado of non-white refugees who basically do all the shit service jobs in the tourism hustle where the overlords launder their money. Come on, man, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about—it’s the same everywhere. New York is a joke, a punchline in a tired Diceman routine. Have you listened to the way people talk? The writing is on the wall. We have to get out of here, see something else before it’s too late! How can these people live—how can anyone live when it’s like you can’t breathe half the time?”

“But, so…what? You want me to just drop everything I’m doing and fly off with you,” said Jonah, watching the terminal pier come into view. “I think I know what you mean, but even if I agreed, I’m not sure running off somewhere else solves anything. Plus, I can’t just abandon my students.”

The water taxi slowed, coming around the bend into the part of the waterway that fronted the ruins and relics of the Gowanus. There was a plan, much discussed at Jonah’s school, to have large tracts of it converted into a furniture superoutlet. Furniture for the massive influx of white graduates fleeing the suburbs their parents had fled to, not for the kids in the Red Hook Houses, who had never gone anywhere, who had survived, and who now sat in Jonah’s classroom daydreaming about driving a foreign supercar, or having enough money to buy a pair of limited-edition sneakers, or nodding off because of their meds or because they only ate one hot meal a day in the school cafeteria.

“Who knows what is important? All my life, I feel like people have been telling me what is important,” Octavio was saying. “Everybody has a theory. God is important. Making money is important. Saving the environment. Ending racism. Changing health care. The church. It’s Marx, or the Media. But none of those things ever felt important to me. People just say they are. Barthes and all her friends and all of us—all of us. Come on, man, you know it’s all bullshit. Everyone wants what people have always wanted. They want to win. Why you think they sent us to that school? They only care that you’re successful. Famous and successful. To do that, you need to be someone other than yourself. So now you get good at simulating. You hide all your feelings and beliefs and desires, which you didn’t even know in the first place, and soon you can’t tell the difference. But it’s easier to believe in the you that does well in interviews, the you as corporate candidate, a good team player who knows how to display leadership and integrate criticism and bring the right kind of energy to the project and smile like the diversity hire they all hoped that you would be. And you must be right about everything because all these people want to be your friends, and you deserve to make more money in one year than your parents made working hard in a decade. And that’s if it all works out, and odds are sooner or later it won’t. How can we be part of any of this shit, honestly? Look at you. I mean, you’re doing good. But tell me the truth. Dime la verdad. Do you want to be a teacher for the rest of your life?”

Jonah looked out at the hazy undefined Brooklyn skyline, the endless tumble of warehouses and cranes that made up the Red Hook waterfront. The rest of life appeared sprawling and unknowable.

“I don’t know.