Your Place in This World (flash fiction)

A version of this first appeared in Third Wednesday Magazine

“Tommy, you got a Bardo?”

“Washington, Ramirez, Pucinski. Yep, we got him.”

A laugh from behind startles Steve. The joy in it reminds him of his Mom. He was only four when she died, but he remembers her voice, how playful and musical it was. “Pure country,” people used to say. Nothing like the hard Chicago talk—with rocks in the consonants and the threat of throwing them at you in the vowels—that came out of Ernie and everyone else in the neighborhood.

Steve turns to see a man in tatters mumbling between giggles, searching the walls as if he’s lost something there.

“Hey you, warming center’s down the block. Get moving,” the desk sergeant orders.

The laughing man’s eyes land on Steve as he makes his way to the door. The two rest their gaze on each other a moment before he sets off to giggling again and walks out of the precinct. Eager to hear more of the joyful laughter, Steve almost follows him.

“Bail is two bills. Got that on you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, pulling a wad out of his pocket.

The desk sergeant accepts the rubber-banded roll and eyeballs the boy.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Steve Bardo.”

“Let’s see some I.D. Why aren’t you in school, anyways?”

There had been a birth certificate a long time ago. Steve saw it once when he was little. Baby Boy Bardo, it said. He thought it was a special document—one just for babies—to show what sex they were. He figured the real one would come when he was older. Truth was his parents never legally named him. He was a full-year-old when his Mom saw Bullit starring Steve McQueen and took to calling him after the movie’s leading man. Before that, he was either “the kid,” or Ernie’s favorite—an initialism from the birth certificate—“Triple B,” or just “TB.”

“I got a pass from the principal,” Steve says, handing the sergeant a note written by Ernie’s girlfriend, Loraine.

The sergeant reads the bogus letter, shakes his head, and asks, “Which school you go to?”

“Schneider,” Steve answers, hesitatingly.

“Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

“Mr. Napoli.”

Within his first month at Schneider, it became clear to Steve’s teachers he couldn’t keep up with classwork. As such, he’d earned the label “learning disability” and was moved from Mr. Napoli’s room to a special class in the basement that didn’t have a regular homeroom teacher. A large group of different-aged kids—fifth to eighth grade—were in that basement class for special reasons too. Along with the learning disabilities were “bilinguals” who came from foreign countries and “social adjustments” who yelled a lot and threw chairs. Steve understood the bilinguals needed English, but what the rest of them were meant to learn remained a mystery.

“Pull the guy, Tommy,” the sergeant says resignedly, returning to his desk and handing the cash to a younger cop.

“Your count is off by three bucks,” the younger cop says, flipping through the bills.

Steve pretend-searches his pants for the three dollars he’d hoped would go unnoticed. The young cop smiles at the would-be con.

“Gotta find your place in this world, kid. Otherwise, the wrong kinda place’ll find you. Catch my drift?”

Steve moves to the window and watches the heavy snowfall turn parked cars on Western Ave. into white lumps. The clang of a metal door a few minutes later lets him know Ernie is on the way.

“If I see your kid here again I’m calling DCFS,” the young cop says, marching Ernie into the lobby.

“I hear you, officer. I’m going back to A.A. anyways,” Ernie replies, with a wink aimed at Steve.

Six months earlier, Ernie had brought the kid along to the court-ordered meetings. Steve figured the church basement groups were like social adjustments or learning disabilities for grownups. Though whatever they taught down there didn’t take hold for Ernie, Steve had come to realize something important sitting in the bowels of God’s house. There were different floors for different folks and Ernie and him belonged on the bottom. They were basement people, not meant to be upstairs praying in the real church, studying in the real school, or working in the real office. Coming to this realization brought a certain amount of relief for Steve. For one thing, it stopped him from struggling with homework, trying to get back into Mr. Napoli’s class. But what it didn’t do was show him how to fit in down there, how to become a good and proper learning disability. Ernie, on the other hand—whether he was in the hole at the state pen, living in a dingy basement “between places,” or sitting in the cellar of St. Therese’s sipping 12 Step coffee—was a bonafide bottom dweller who knew how to engage every aspect of lower level life.

“I knew you’d come through for the ol’ man, Triple B,” Ernie says with a canned laugh, steering his son toward the door.

Over time though, Steve began to suspect that nobody really fit in with anybody anywhere in this world. It didn’t matter if they were basement people, upstairs people, or even penthouse people. What gave it away was the huge effort they put into acting and sounding the same, the desperate maintenance of acceptable words and actions, the tight boundaries they dared not cross lest they be forced to face the reality of their non-belonging. But the most painful part for Steve, the thing that clued him in every time, was the fake laughter.

“Got any cash left?” Ernie asks as they step into the cold.

Steve shakes his head.

“Fuck. I’m dog-sick. Loraine’s ass better be on the street.”

Passing the warming center, Steve runs to the window and looks inside.

“They got coffee and rolls,” he says.

“Grab ‘em quick, TB. We gotta get moving.”