Telegraph Avenue

the freaks and bodily horrors, sly, embittered, and cavorting. That was how Mr. Jones thought of old Mrs. Wiggins now, in that little house across the street.

“I might be the cause of this particular distraction coming your way,” Mr. Jones said. “Titus stays with Mrs. Wiggins. You know that house across the street from me?”

“Yeah, okay. She was Jamila’s, like, auntie.”

“I see the boy come out the house one day, something about him seemed familiar, you know? Boy had on a little sweater vest. Hair in order, crease in his jeans.”

“He does present a neat appearance, I will give you that.”

“We started talking.”

In those three words, Mr. Jones condensed a two-week history of passing nods. The boy coming and going on his bicycle at any given time of the day or night, Mr. Jones looking for signs of creeping doom on the child but observing, day after day, nothing of note except a small and fiercely maintained repertoire of button-downs and blazing white tees. Then, all at once, a blast of conversation, Titus drawn in by a burst of eerie parrot zitherings coming through Mr. Jones’s kitchen window, KQED having shown The Third Man the night before.

“Boy told me he wants to be a movie director,” Mr. Jones said. “Talking about Walter Hill, Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick. I’m thinking, well, all right.”

“He has taste.”

“Then he mentions how he likes Tarantino. So I told him about the class. Only when we got there, this one dude in a wheelchair.” Mr. Jones broke off, pressed his lips together. Took a deep breath, shaking his head in furious sorrow. “Says he has a bird allergy.”

According to Dr. Hanselius at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, bird allergies were, quote, extremely uncommon, unquote, and something in the lingering sting of humiliation that Mr. Jones had felt that night, a sense that he and the bird had been the victims of some esoteric form of bigotry, fed the anger that had been mounting in him since finding out that the Leslie wasn’t ready for tonight’s gig; since being thrown out of the Tarantino class; since the assassination of Marcus Foster or Dr. King; since 1953, 1938.

“Son of a bitch probably sleeps on a feather pillow every motherfucking night,” Mr. Jones said.

He looked at the bird, feathers giving off that faint parrot smell of scorched newspaper, in whom all his loneliness and outrage were distilled. Fifty-Eight screamed like a slide whistle.

“So I had to leave,” Mr. Jones said, aware that his explanation of his role in bringing Archy his son had fallen somewhat off track. “Titus stayed. And Nat’s boy was, like, sitting right there.”

“In the front row, right by the teacher?”

“Right down front and center. Guess the two of them, they must have hit it off. I thought maybe it could happen, boy might find his way to you sooner or later.”

“You mean you knew?”

“Not for sure.”

“But, I mean, Mr. Jones, how come you didn’t just tell me?”

Mr. Jones squirmed at the question. “Figured I already played my part. Might be y’all’s turn next. You and him.”

“Wow,” Archy said. “Huh. You are a cryptic old motherfucker sometimes, Mr. Jones.”

“I can’t disagree.”

“You move in mysterious ways. Did you tell them?”

Maybe that was when Mr. Jones began to realize that he felt offended. “Think I would say something to them, not you?”

“Must of taken some serious figuring between them, find their way to my doorstep.”

“That where Titus is now, your doorstep?”

“Figurative doorstep.”

“Not living with you?”

“From, like, one day to the next? Uh, yeah, ‘Hi, I’m your son,’ ‘Great, okay, you can move in’?”

Mr. Jones tried to find the flaw in this scenario. He loved Archy Stallings and had always tried to see the best in him. He was struggling to understand what would keep a man from taking hold of the unexpected blessing of a live boy, good-looking and correct, with commendable taste in film directors.

“I don’t move that fast, Mr. Jones, you know that. And like I told you, I didn’t say nothing about it yet to Gwen. I’m already number one on her shit parade due to certain lapses in judgment.”

“But you didn’t leave him with Mrs. Wiggins?”

“Nah, he’s staying with Nat and them for right now. Figured, make Julie happy. Have himself a little slumber party up in the attic.”

“That ain’t what you figured,” Mr. Jones said.

“No,” Archy agreed. “No, you’re right. It’s just, with the baby coming, and the Dogpile thing…”

“Distractions.”

“Yeah.”

“Getting you off your main focus.”

“That’s right.”

“Which is what, again?”

“Huh,” Archy said. “Hey, Mr. Jones? What’s wrong?”

Mr. Jones was up and out of his chair. He reached out a hand to Fifty-Eight, and the bird sidled up the gangplank to its inveterate perch.

“Mr. Jones, what did I say? Why you leaving? I’m not quite done, but I’m almost.”

“Just bring it to the gig,” Mr. Jones said. “It don’t work, fuck it.”

He started toward the back of the van, wanting—or feeling that at the very least he ought—to tell Archy about Lasalle, born and died April 14, 1966. Tell him about the two hours and seventeen minutes’ worth of the pride and the joy that Archy had been squandering for fourteen years. He went to the Econoline, slammed the doors on the empty cargo bay. Mr. Jones helped the bird onto the headrest of the driver’s seat, where he liked to ride, clutching the shoulder belt with one claw to keep its balance.

“Maybe you need to start trying to focus on the distractions instead,” Mr. Jones said. “Maybe then they wouldn’t be so distracting.”

“Mr. Jones! Hey, come on, now. What’d I say?”

Mr. Jones got into the van, started the engine. Even over the slobbering of its three-hundred-horsepower V8 Windsor, he could hear Archy repeating uselessly, “Mr. Jones, I’m sorry.”

“Pulling a Band-Aid,” Gwen said.

“Not even,” Aviva said.

“You promise?”

“I promise. Be brave.”

Aviva was flying the bravery flag. Feet planted side by side, flat on the gray Berber wall-to-wall. New sandals with straps that crisscrossed in epic-movie-style up past her ankles, toenails freshly painted plum. Suntanned legs shaved, shins shining like bells in a horn section. Gray linen skirt and white linen blouse, not new but tailored with severity and maintained with care. Blouse buttoned to a professional altitude and yet at the collar managing to betray a fetching freckled wedge of clavicle and suprasternal notch. On her lap, an abstruse tome entitled Acupuncture: Points and Meridians.

“‘Be brave,’” Gwen said. She tugged at the hem of the overworked black maternity skirt she had pressed into service for this exercise in ritual humiliation. Her shirt, though crisp and clean, was originally her husband’s and Hawaiian. But her hair was looking all right. Clean, springy, baby locks freshly twisted. Her hair was definitely equal to this morning’s ordeal, and in that Gwen found a modicum of comfort if not, perhaps dangerously, defiance. She cleared her throat. “If I was brave, Aviva, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“I mean long-term brave,” Aviva said. “Big-picture brave.”

“The cowardly kind of brave.”

“Right,” Aviva said. “As opposed to the stupid kind.”

This distinction accorded with Gwen’s experience and, to a lesser extent, her beliefs; and yet making it did