Busta Rhymes is Gone

“Hey. I wanna ask you an important favor. Just say yes.” 

Adams was out of breath. He was a smoker, and the only time his lungs burned like this was when he had to sprint to catch a train. For the last ten minutes he had been hopping around a patch of ivy in his backyard calling out the name of the dog he was watching, Busta Rhymes. He was watching the dog for his friend, Pete, who was out of town.  

“Say yes, it’s important.” 

Mark tensed up. Adams was always making requests that felt like demands or threats. No hello dude how have you been niceties or are you busy now, just straight to favors. He wanted to tell Adams to take a goddamn etiquette class but he had just had a huge burger and was too tired to fight so through gritted teeth he let out a slow, “Yes.”

“Cool. You said when your mom died you put all her knick knacks and crap into your basement. Can you bring like a bag full of her crap over here but right now? Like right now. ASAP. It’s super important. Just any crap of hers that you don’t mind losing. Shit you were gonna donate or burn at some point. It won’t make sense over the phone…”

“Dude, come on.” Mark felt within his rights to pump the breaks.  

“No, dude!” Adams shouted. “Now’s not the time. Busta Rhymes is gone! Okay? Pete’s Busta Rhymes. I’m tossing him a damn tennis ball and he just vanished into this little bunch of weeds in my backyard. I’m going crazy! He just dropped into the ground like he fell down a well. Now please just get over here and bring your mom’s crap. I have an idea.”

*

Mark’s mom’s crap was crap but it was cool crap. He brought over to Adams’ place an overflowing laundry basket of stuff his mom had acquired at dozens of yard sales. There was a papier mache bald eagle with its wings spread and an American flag streaming from its beak. It was a foot and a half wide. Mark liked it in an ironic ‘Merica kind of way but he wasn’t ever going to bring it out of the basement, not even for the hipster July 4th barbecue that his friends threw every year. Nor did he want to put it online for sale and have some xenophobe display it on their porch like a trophy. There was a huge brass key as long as your arm that must’ve been gifted to someone at one of those ridiculous key-to-the-city type ceremonies. Mark lived in a sleepy crime-free suburb an hour west of Chicago but he had fantasized about clubbing an imaginary intruder over the head with the key. Also in the basket was the type of crap that accumulates in anyone’s home, almost to one’s surprise, filling closets and shelves somewhat mysteriously, the fruit of conventions and events where junky swag is given. Like there was a pink regulation-size NFL football which read, “Touchdowns for Ta-Tas! Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Crush Breast Cancer!” Even among the oddities Mark inherited from his mom, this was strange. His mom had not had breast but blood cancer, Multiple Myeloma, so there was never any issue with her ta-tas, and, as far as Mark knew, she had never watched any football, Cowboys or otherwise, in her entire life. 

“All right, man, look.” Adams was still short of breath. “I was chucking a tennis ball, Busta Rhymes was fetching it, right? He’s loving it. I am too. We’re out here like ten minutes, fifteen tops. I chuck it way up, a pop-up, but it also went deep. Busta starts running back. He’s smart. The ball’s coming down back where the ivy is, so he gets there in time and right as it’s coming down he leaps and turns mid-air and catches it like a champion and then, then he just drops into the ground like it was a goddamn portal! I run over and he’s gone, there’s no ball, no Busta, nothing. Just weeds. I’m stomping on the ground shouting BUSTA, BUSTA RHYMES. Nothing.”

Adams’ idea was to chuck a bunch of the crap Mark brought at the area where Busta Rhymes was swallowed up to see if the ground would re-open, and then jump in to rescue Busta. Mark awkwardly heaved the unwieldy papier mache eagle at the area where Busta vanished but it just hit the ground head down, talons up. Next Adams took the big key in both hands above his head like he was at one of those stupid ax throwing places and flung it, letting out an unnecessary yell like some pro tennis player who grunts when he hits the ball. It bounced off the ground like a skipping stone. Adams raced after the key and started stabbing the dirt with it. 

“Stop, stop!” Mark implored. “Just think.” He didn’t really care about the dog, and loved the idea of Adams trying to explain to Pete that his dog had disappeared into the earth, but he hated trying to think when someone was talking or doing something distracting. The fight that ended his last relationship happened while Mark and his ex were driving with two friends to a birthday party. It was dark and they were going through a part of Chicago that felt sketchy. Mark drove while looking at directions on his phone but was lost. Karolina, his ex, was talking and music was on. Mark couldn’t think. Karolina asked something to the couple in the backseat, it started with Could you imagine.... Mark blurted out, “Could you imagine not talking for like five minutes? I’m trying to find this place.” Karolina went silent, and stared out the window the rest of the way, her eyes teary. Mark apologized, tried to, several times at the party to no avail. Normally Mark disliked that he was so sensitive to distraction but around Adams he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to tolerate it. 

“Okay, I got it. I’m gonna be Busta.” Mark said they had to re-enact the scene. “You’re gonna chuck the football way up over that spot and I’m gonna go deep and then whip around to catch it.” Adams loved this. He clapped his hands in a wide flapping motion like he had just heard a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance. “If you go in, I’m tearing ass right after you and diving in,” Adams said but Mark held up his hand as if to silence a dumb child. “No. You stay here. Call the Ghostbusters. Whatever. If we both disappear how will anyone know what happened?”

They cleared away the junk from their previous throws. Mark and Adams lined up, running back to QB, and Adams took a deep breath like there were just seconds on the clock. “Go!” Adams shouted as he rocked back on his heels, firing the pink sphere at the sun. Mark kept his back to Adams but eyes on the ball. At the last second he took flight, twisting around to catch the ball and bam -- the ground opened.

*

Busta Rhymes was feasting on some grisly strips of beef on a paper plate. The tennis ball, dirty and soggy, was at the foot of the counter inside a small Salvadoran pupusa take-out spot, El Torogoz, in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago. Mark sat at the only table clutching the pink football like it was pirate booty. He had studied Spanish starting in Junior High and stuck with it through High School and even did a Summer course in Segovia, Spain after his sophomore year in college but nothing came to him now. He suddenly called out, “hola” in a voice too loud for the tiny space, as if he was announcing himself to an empty house that might have spirits. The two Latino cooks behind the counter responded in unison, “hola,” without looking up. 

Mark was hungry. Though not lasting more than a minute, the portal trip was bumpy and exhausted him. “Pupusas. Dos.” He couldn’t believe how shit his Spanish was. 

One of the cooks sung out the Pupusa options: “frijol con queso, solo queso, puerco, mixto.”

“Mixto,” Mark managed. He stared at the cooks hoping to get some recognition that he was an alien in their shop, not just a goofy gringo but a gringo that had appeared out of thin air clutching a pink football. None came. Maybe this happened a lot. Maybe there were portals all over Chicago that spat out into ethnic take-out spots like this one. The pupusas at Torogoz were divine. Mark wished Adams had been there for that part so that they could agree it was the best food they’d ever had, the portal traveler’s munchies. He didn’t want Adams there otherwise, though, he would’ve talked too much for Mark to process what was happening. Mark put a green bank card on the counter and said “grah-see-ahs.” The cook who had sung out the pupusa options gently shook his head and pointed at a handwritten sign on the wall, “Solo Cash.” He waved his hand to indicate it was on the house. Mark looked at his phone. There were four missed calls from Adams as well as a text like you might send to a late-night booty call, “hey.” Mark thought of summoning an Uber but didn’t want to. He wanted to ride the portal back. It made him feel alive. And something about a 45-minute car ride back home with Busta Rhymes in his lap made him depressed. 

Mark stood by the door, his eyes darting about the space for clues or even a handwritten sign like el portal. “Salir,” Mark announced. To leave. Mark had taken Spanish back up on different apps three times in the last two years but always dropped it a few weeks in. He silently vowed right then that if he got to go back through the portal that he would master that damn language, never again speak like a caveman and that he would come back to El Torogoz with perfect Spanish and wad of cash.  

“Quiere regresar?” the one cook asked, do you want to return. 

“Por fah-vor.” Mark drew a big circle in the air with his finger. He had a look of innocence now. The critic in him for whom no friend, woman, TV show or film was ever quite good enough, had, for the moment, faded. Mark wanted to see the light, to believe, and to be made pure somehow. The cook finished packing an order of pupusas and wiped his hands on his apron. He lifted the counter top, came to the customer side, locked the front door and lowered the blinds. The other cook turned up the volume on a television on the wall where a telenovela had been on mute and turned the music system playing cumbia full blast. Mark picked up and cradled Busta Rhymes in one arm and kept the football in the other. One of the cooks held out his hands for the football, though, and Mark handed it to him. The second cook put a hand over Mark’s eyes and the other over Busta’s. Both cooks called out incantations in what sounded to Mark like an indigenous language. The cooks stomped and clapped and Mark wanted to stomp with them, to shed his white shame. 

*

“Dude! Dude! Busta!” Adams, with the end of a lit cigarette in his mouth, and an unlit one behind each ear, ran to Mark who was crouched with Busta in the spot in the ivy where they had previously disappeared. Adams tackled them both and loved on them, with Mark and Busta loving back.

“Dude. What. Happened.” Adams rubbed Busta Rhymes’ side vigorously. He badgered Mark for details but Mark was elsewhere. He spoke of the portal in vague terms making it sound both unique and unwelcoming, lying about his journey in order to dissuade Adams from ever going. He was keeping it for himself.   

“It was cool, man. I mean I would never ever go again. You can’t see anything. You can’t breathe, it’s dark and doesn’t go anywhere, just a blackhole. If I hadn’t have found Busta I would probably have died.” Mark wondered if Busta knew he was lying. A dog’s understanding of humans was already remarkable. What if something had happened to Busta during the journey that made him even more aware of human speech or, God forbid, gave him the ability to talk. He wondered if he’d have to poison Busta but then thought that the indigenous Salvadoran gods or whoever made the portal would know. Maybe they would understand it as a sacrifice. He didn’t want to think about murdering Busta Rhymes just now though. All Mark knew was that he would go back. The portal was his conquest, his treasure. He fantasized about super powers even as an adult, to be invisible, to time travel, to disappear. What had he done to deserve the portal? Was this how kings were chosen at the start of history, just average people selected at random by God to receive special gifts? 

Mark asked Adams to leave him for a minute. “I want to be alone.” Adams looked like he had just been told he was too ugly to touch but didn’t flinch. He asked Mark if he should go get some beers to celebrate the rescue of Busta. Mark nodded. “That’s not a bad idea, Adams.” As Adams walked away, Mark had the urge to tell Adams he loved him, because he did in that moment. Adams was the stepping stone making all this possible. But Mark decided the love in his heart was enough, that he didn’t have to cheapen it by saying it aloud. That’s what a lesser man would have done anyway. And Mark was the one who made everything happen in the end. He sat back in the ivy, running his fingers along the tops of the leaves, his baubles and pearls, until he felt Busta Rhymes staring at him. Mark half lunged at Busta, causing him to dart away. He called Busta back over and pulled him in tight and whispered in his ear, “Busta, Busta, Busta, Busta, Busta Rhymes.” Busta became soft under his touch. “You don’t know anything do you?” Busta snuggled up against Mark. “Good boy.”