Panorama City by Antoine Wilson Page A

the knock. I came out to Aunt Liz poking her eye at the peephole. She waved me over to stand behind her, she wanted to display to whoever was at the door that there was a strong and able man in her home, she wanted to employ my guard dog capabilities, her words from a few days earlier when she was talking about how nice it was to have a young man around her home, meaning me. There was another knock, and once I was in place she opened the door and gave the visitor an icy Can I help you? I was behind the door at first, so I couldn’t see who it was, but the voice was familiar, I had heard it before, the voice said that he hoped he wasn’t disturbing her but he was looking for a friend of his, an Oppen Porter, we’d become acquainted, he said, on the bus down through the Central Valley. By then I stood next to Aunt Liz, watching Paul Renfro teeter uncertainly on the front steps. He did not look good, I admit, he did not look respectable in any way, he did not look even as good as he had on the bus, he appeared to be wearing the exact same clothes except dirtier. I told him how nice it was to see him, I told him I’d gotten a job at the fast-food place, I told him I was settling in quite nicely, all things considered, then I asked how he was, I invited him in, I could see that he was exhausted, I could see that he needed us, that he needed our support. Which was not what happened, of course, because at the moment I invited Paul in, Aunt Liz uninvited him, she apologized insincerely, she apologized in that way that people begin with the word
sorry
and then spend the whole rest of their breath erasing it, ending with, in this case, a declaration that Paul, she called him Mr. Renfro in a way that was somehow less respectful than just calling him Paul, a declaration that Mr. Renfro was not welcome in her home or on the premises of her home, then she apologized again, this time on my behalf, stating that I had not understood the nature of the invitation, that essentially I hadn’t meant to invite him here, that I was not always capable of making the most reasonable choices, which in fact was the whole reason I was living with her. Surely a man of Mr. Renfro’s stature, again every word that came out sounded like its opposite, could understand the delicacy of the situation. What choice did Paul Renfro have? He made a half bow, she closed the door in his face.
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    I understand now that Aunt Liz could sense, just from Paul’s presence, that she was dealing with someone who possessed vast intellectual powers, that her citing his shabbiness and strangeness was just a smokescreen, that when it came right down to it she didn’t want to get in any kind of argument with his superior mind. Aunt Liz said that I had to be more judicious, that was the word she used, about who and how and when I spoke with people, and more careful about making friends, especially in Panorama City, people were not to be trusted. She repeated to me the phrase This is not Madera, again and again. And as sorry as it made her to say it, her words, Panorama City was no longer the haven it had been when she’d first moved there, before all of the elements arrived. But she was going to stay the course, she said, decent people would be back soon. Which made no sense to me, Juan-George, I could see already that Panorama City was full of decent people. Only the people in the milky blue house would turn out less than decent, or decent in their own way, but not of like mind, which is only to say that there are many different reasons for letting a lawn grow in a wild state of nature, not all of them philosophically sound.
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    C: Your Aunt Liz is right, you know, about the people down there. When Juan-George listens to these tapes, I want him to know that. I want you to know that, my little
toronja.
    O: I was there, I was there for forty days and the people were decent. I mean there were a few exceptions, of course, there are always