Read This With a Clean Conscience

Saturnino de Brito would sometimes meet Lal Arifa in any city square during humid summer days, somehow convincing her that the best idea at that moment was either to go tumbling by the Hudson or go back to her apartment and engender undying animal acts, which often initiated a rumble in the sky.
“Have you heard of Madame Blavatsky?” de Brito asked on more than one occasion.
“Was she not responsible for bringing some wicked power to the nazis?” Lalla asked. They had this conversation before, but they never brought up that fact. It was more like an exchange to move the dust particles floating in the window-filtered sun.
De Brito’s reply came out like static as a loud pair of Nikes arrhythmically clomped up the stairs. “What?—Erishan!”
Erishan Tanaka came through the hall with a huff and a mauve steel bicycle over her shoulder like one of those guys on the street balancing buckets or baskets from a single pole. Over her other shoulder hung a messenger bag with a double-bagged sack of groceries tied to it. “’Sup.”
“What’s up Erishan!? Ogenki desu ka” de Brito said partially in jest. Is that not how I interpret it though?
“Hey, what’s up Niner. Comment ça va?”
“Ya wernt in classe today. Just kiddeen I wasn’t eether.”
“What are you guys up to?”
“Nothing.” the two replied simultaneously.
“You guys wanna smoke?”
“Nah. I’m straight.”
“Word. Let’s match. Brother Kenna came by last night.”
“Aw that fool? He got some weird scar on his face from dat tribal shit, right?”
“He’s from Mali. His grandmother did that. It’s an honor for him.”
“Damn. That cat’s skinny.”
De Brito hailed from Cabo Verde, where he said many of the mothers would check their babies’ bottoms after giving birth to make sure that the newborn did not sprout a tail. I suppose it was a most common fear among Cape Verdean mothers, but second to knife attacks as those were more common.
After one of De Brito and Lalla’s late afternoon/early evening sessions, Lalla pulled out a Pacific-centric world map that was no less than four feet wide and three feet tall. She carefully unrolled it before De Brito as though it were a sacred scroll that she perhaps discovered serendipitously down some alley or on some lower eastside sidewalk chillin’ in some free pile. She weighted each corner with one shoe, one roll of packing tape, a colored pencil box, and a book of human anatomy. I imagine that De Brito felt claustrophobic from looking at all that canned expanse. Once again he saw oceans between them. She pulled a pair of black shoestrings—with which she failed to properly lace her kung fu shoes—from her closet. She placed one aglet tip at the cluster of Cabo Verde (off the west coast of Africa) and the other at Aringay (on the west coast of the Philippines). Island people.
“Look,” she said, “you came from the same latitude as me, ma cherie mon amour.” Actually, it was about a degree off with CV being at 15° 6′ 40″ N
and Aringay at 16°23'N.
“Of course, babe. But I grew up in Lyon,” he said.
In response, she took the other shoestring and placed one aglet in Lyon at 45° 46′ 1″ N and the other at 47° 36′ 35″ N in Seattle.
She said, “And that’s where I grew up.” While traveling abroad, she would write down responses from people she met when she told them, “Soy de Seattle.” Some of the common ones were:
“It rains a lot there, right?” or “The home of Nirvana!” or “Kurt Cobain!” or “Quello è da dove il Jimi Hendrix proviene” depending on generation and interest. Others would just go on what they saw in postcards and mention the Space Needle. It always surprised her, however, that no matter how widespread Starbucks became all over the world (sometimes claiming up to three stores on a single block) people would not know that Starbucks nació in Seattle.
“Oh tha’s dope tho,” Erishan said stepping into the doorway. “Ahm ‘bout to cook some rice tho.”
“Thas right!” de Brito said.
“You know that’s the only thing Bruce Lee ate with green tea.” (At least in the movies.)
“You love that guy,” De Brito said.
“Hell yeah! A composite of him and Tupac would make the bombest man,” Lalla replied, “Hey speaking of China—Shan, did you know Niner’s going to Beijing?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Ahm goin to circus school.”
“Dope.”
“I’ll make some saluyot, string beans, and squash flowers while y’all discuss the influence of Fritz the Cat, Madame Blavatsky, and Krishnamacharya on the state of the modern world,” Lalla said.
“You think too much,” de Brito said.