All Stories Are Love Stories (17 page)

By the time she and Dale met, Vashti was relieved and grateful to find him easy enough to be around, not least because he took to the idea of helping the baby try to survive. It was something good to do with his money, he'd said, which wasn't the most romantic statement ever, but it turned out it was exactly what she needed to hear at the time. A cynic might say that Vashti offered him the ideal child, unlikely to be a burden into his old age. But Vashti saw things differently. She saw the practical grace and hardness of a man who makes his living off the land and knows that, in an instant, life is gone, no matter what your attachment to it may or may not be. She had liked that. Eventually, it was what taught her how she'd be able to love him—matter-of-factly, the way you love a home or the land beneath it—not because of a spark of kinship, but because of how you can coexist peacefully with so much unsaid.

“It was peaceful,” she said finally, the word releasing from her. “He had heart troubles, then he was horribly sick, and then, all of a sudden, he wasn't sick anymore. He was dying. It's hard to explain the transition, other than to say that his pain took on a different purpose. Like it wanted him to stop fighting, told him to stop fighting, to just ride it out until it was over.”

Max wondered aloud if she missed Dale. She didn't, not really. Especially not there with Max, in the midst of a reunion that felt so complete, it washed other losses away, as
if she could be cleansed of them. She closed her eyes and imagined bringing Max back to where she'd been, walking the places of her life with him until he knew them, too. The hills that turned gold in the heat, looking for all the world like the pelts of great animals, their larger humps like those of bone, the smaller ripples like tendons and muscles, all of it covered with grass that was light at the top and dark at its base, so when the wind blew through, its undercarriage shifted with the light. Or the walls of hushed trees in the forests to the north, the corridors of looming stillness, Anita asleep in the backseat as she stopped the car deep among them to get out and fill her lungs with that peppery, nutty aroma, the smell of dirt condensing for centuries in shafts of sunlight. If only she could make such things in her kitchen, spread them out on a plate and feed them to Max spoonful by spoonful, filling him up with what he had missed, never doubting what could be recovered.

The first public service announcement flew out into the air after Gene crossed Market Street—an activity that usually made him feel he was crossing from one side of the city to the other, but which just then made him feel he was walking over the jagged seam that held the city together—and found himself at the outskirts of the Tenderloin. A disembodied, canned voice ringing out as dully and ominously as a foghorn warning ships of unseen rocks:

This is the City and County of San Francisco's Emergency Outdoor Public Warning System. We ask for your continued cooperation as we work to restore power and water to the area as quickly as possible. Residents and visitors alike are advised that a twelve-block section of Chinatown, at Powell from California to Jackson, at Jackson from Powell to Kearny, and at Kearny from Powell back down to California, has been blocked to pedestrian and vehicular traffic as a safety precaution that will enable our firefighters to direct all their attention toward the work at hand. We ask that you please refrain from using your cell phone or other phone services once they are back up and running, as we expect a larger than normal call volume at that time. Further public service announcements regarding temporary emergency shelter,
food, and medical care will begin shortly. Thank you for your cooperation.

A man shouted into the silence that came after the message and another answered, a tussle beginning over the last dregs of an already looted store, its insides out on the street. Gene watched, mesmerized by the endless carousel the men played at, the unexpected ways in which the world couldn't be slowed, even if it continued to spin unheeded.

Then it hit him: cell phone services! Gene almost dropped the man right there, but he spied a grimy doorstep and ducked under its awning, setting the man down hesitantly on one of two long, filthy stairs, promising them both it was only so he could check his phone. After lifting him back into his arms earlier, Gene had resolved to carry him only until he was sure he was dead, but the closer the man got to dying, the more anxiously Gene checked him for signs of life.

He fished in his pocket for his phone, but when he pulled it out and wiped off the grimy screen, the battery icon glowed red. Still, he couldn't help but dial and dial again until it blinked and went dark. Gene closed his eyes, trying to convince the anxiety rising in his chest that Esmerelda was there, that the neighbors would help, too. Gene knew for sure that they'd had a few gallons of water and some energy bars and a flashlight stashed away at one point, but he was pretty sure it had all been replaced with bottles of '08 cab from their last trip to Sonoma. Franklin had figured he'd rather be drunk when the Big One hit, anyway, that a happy drunk would be more likely to relax and wait it out than
someone more sober and responsible. Gene's chest tightened with thwarted impulses, with guilt he wasn't sure was misplaced. He couldn't even have supplied his lover with a decent earthquake kit? When had he stopped believing in his own inevitabilities? He stared down into the man's waxy face, wanting to stroke it with kindness. He couldn't help feeling partially responsible for his dying, and that reaching out to him in tenderness would be no better than the wolf nuzzling the lamb for comfort.

As he heaved him back into his arms, the ache in his shoulders and back shot through and into his legs, and he could only stumble a few blocks up Taylor. Sensing defeat, Gene tripped and nearly fell into the alcove of a grimy building, weeping now with grief and frustration. His arms were slippery with blood and sweat as he tried again to lift the man, but he was too weak. The ground was so cold, dirty, and damp. It was a terrible place to lay someone to rest, but he no longer had much of a choice.

The skin on the man's face had slackened and gone gray. It was unexpectedly beautiful. Smooth like a statue's. Was that how art came to be, as a way for people to remember their dead before life could be recorded so easily? He slid a hand under one of the man's rough palms. The fingers were thick and soft with life, but they did not bend to Gene's touch. Lately, when Franklin was sleeping and Gene couldn't, he would slide his palm under his lover's, waiting until Franklin's fingers wrapped around his hand. When they finally did, Gene would close his eyes, amazed that he could be loved even in sleep. Gene wiped at his eyes like a child before
checking for a pulse. Nothing. Gene held his breath, perhaps in solidarity, more likely in grief.

Surely others in his position, like Sam, would have done the right thing despite the haziness of the data. Because a finding was a finding, and he'd held Sam back not because he thought the work was faulty, but because it needed “road testing,” as he'd put it, a way to replicate the kind of solid results that would bring in funding. It didn't matter that the smaller, riskier sample data pointed toward something of real life-or-death significance, as it turned out. Instead Gene had banked on his career.

Polite company. An image of his father waxing and buffing their wooden kitchen floors before anyone came over, even if they weren't eating together, came to mind. Scrubbing toilets, vacuuming the upstairs rooms where no one but the family went, as if to say,
Our dirt is not for others to see, for others to even suspect
. Then Gene went and immersed himself in rocks, sure that a world of actual dirt and disaster could bury the tendencies he shared with his father, the tendency to overwork and overclean, to worry about what others might say, to shun the intolerable. No, he was going to save the world by getting his feet dirty and shedding light on its darkest fears.

But when all was said and done, his desire for legitimacy had gotten the better of him. The pleasurable taste of acceptance slowly eased his hunger for rebellion, though now there was only the metallic tinge of smoke on his tongue. Because once he began to fully appreciate the mask and title of professor, the ability to walk into almost any room and be addressed
as Dr. Strauss before he was known as anything else, his conversion from meaning maker to approval seeker was complete. Somehow, on Stanford's prestigious and beautiful campus, egotism didn't seem so dangerous—even though that was the very place where it was at its most dangerous, its most normalized. He'd gotten sloppy, that was it. Returned to his twisted roots when his guard was down, far more concerned with his reputation than the good he might do with it.

Franklin would say he was being too hard on himself. Maybe that was what love was: teaching your beloved to see himself as he saw you. But would Franklin still say that, Gene wondered doubtfully, no matter what shape the inn might be in, whatever shape Franklin might be in? Just that morning, Franklin had dusted and returned his Japanese tea set to its corner shelf, closed the glass door on the transparent etchings of bamboo and plum blossoms before locking it with a tasseled key. The satisfaction on his face when he turned around would have made a more jealous lover uncomfortable. From a time long before they met to the moment they'd parted company that morning, all those small, careful actions Franklin invested in, creating a place where strangers might feel at home, had been laid knowingly in the path of not just likely but probable decimation.

Gene trembled as a wave of suppressed anxiety overran him. He crossed his arms and drew his knees toward his chest, but that only made him shake harder.

Before Franklin, love had always been more an idea than a possibility. That wasn't to say Gene had never been curious about it, but for most of his young life, he had held such
curiosity deep in his chest, well out of anyone's immediate sight. As armor, he instead greeted people with his professional demeanor and intellectualism, always quick with a witty comment but never quick to smile. Franklin liked to tell their friends that the only way to Gene's heart was through his head, and Gene had to admit there was some truth to that. Franklin had certainly captured his attention by regaling him with tales of what it was like to actually be there the night Harvey Milk was shot. Barely eighteen, Franklin had arrived with nothing but a pair of ratty sneakers and jeans shorts in August of '78, thinking he'd go shirtless in California for the next several months. He'd been taken in immediately by a matronly tranny, fed and clothed for the chilly San Francisco summers, and by November was already entrenched in the first real community that had embraced him, marching arm in arm down Castro with a boyfriend whose name he couldn't remember, the street thick from Seventeenth to Twenty-Fifth with their fellow mourners. Sure, Gene had read about that night thousands of times, but Franklin made him feel it—all those candles and the cold, silent San Francisco night air—in a way that took Gene's breath away. Sometimes he wondered if he fell in love with Franklin so quickly and irrevocably because he was falling in love with the city he lived in at the same time, smitten by what the man and the place suggested about the possibilities in Gene's future.

He felt rather than heard the footsteps stop behind him. He turned and looked up at the slight, serious face of a young woman with a river of straight black hair running down her
back. She was wearing fashionable glasses—cat's-eyes in thick red plastic—but the left lens had shattered, leaving a spider's web of glass covering one eye. Still, her one-eyed gaze penetrated him, ruthlessly demanding, as if he'd promised her an explanation.

“Is he?” she asked curtly, gesturing toward the body.

Gene nodded.

“And are you just going to leave him there? Like that?”

When Gene didn't answer, the young woman edged in beside him, slipping her hands into the nearest pocket on the dead man's coat. Gene was too startled to stop her. Was she looking for money? He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “He doesn't have anything in there,” he said sharply. “No money, no food.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” she asked over her shoulder.

“No.”

She nodded, rummaging around on the other side before twisting around to inspect Gene. “You just found him?”

“Who are you?” She didn't answer. Had he missed something? Already, she'd turned back to the man and pulled out his wallet. Gene didn't move to stop her. With thin fingers and manicured nails, she deftly unfolded it and sought out its contents, pulling out the license that was still secured within its clear plastic window. She held it up to Gene and pointed at it like an impatient teacher before a slow student. He squinted, trying to see in the dark. It took him a minute to recognize the photograph as the person he'd been carrying, flush with health and smiling an uneven smile that squinted into his eyes.

“Guozhi Liu,” the girl said softly, reciting the name aloud to them both. She hesitated, looking down ruefully at the man, as if she was thinking about something that she, too, might have done to prevent such an end. But before Gene could guess what that might have been, she started pulling off the dead man's jacket.

“What are you doing?”

She looked up at him as if he'd asked a stupid question. “You can't just leave him in this,” she said tersely, as if Gene had suggested the wrong attire for a dinner party. “It's red,” she went on impatiently, as if reminding a child of something he should have known. “He'll become a ghost. Here,” she said and handed Gene the wallet and a wad of dirty tissues she'd pulled from the man's pocket. He winced as she struggled to pull the jacket off the stiffening corpse, not sure if he was complicit in something right or wrong. Unable to think of what else to do, he peered at the man's license: 843 Stockton Street, San Francisco, California.

“Stockton Street,” he said aloud. “He lived on Stockton Street. I was taking him home.”

The girl nodded as if he were reciting instead of relaying information. She'd collected a pile of loose change and lint, the detritus of anyone's life.

She worked him free of his one warm piece of clothing, revealing a thin, white button-down shirt, now stained with dirt and blood. “That's better,” she said, sitting back on her heels. To Gene, he just looked too cold. Uncovered. But he didn't say anything. She tucked the offensive garment under her arm and gently plucked the wallet with the exposed
license from Gene's fingers. As she folded the man's hands over it, whispering to him in a language Gene did not understand, the ground rattled beneath them, arresting them both. It settled, and the quiet after was as earsplitting as the noise had been.

After a moment, she dared to move again. “There,” she said, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. She got to her feet.

“Wait.” Gene reached out as she stood. She had somehow known what to do. A perfect stranger. “How did you know to do that? How did you know what to do?”

She met his gaze for a moment. Her eyes were rimmed in makeup that had smudged, he saw now, so that they were amplified and encircled, comically alluring. “You're not from around here, are you?”

Fresh off the boat
,
are we?
How long had it been since someone asked him that?

“Not exactly,” he said. But who, in San Francisco, was ever from around here? “I mean, I am. I'm just not originally from here.” Why was he explaining himself? “But I've lived here for a while now,” he added defensively.

“And you've never been to a funeral in Chinatown?” She smiled ruefully at him, as if the expression contained what he missed, and she didn't have the heart to tell him that the experience couldn't be explained. “Funerals are the main attraction”—he couldn't tell if she was joking—“after the food. My grandparents lived a few blocks from him,” she added, lifting her chin in the direction of the body. “Probably passed
him on the street a thousand times. Anyway,” she said, taking a longer look at Gene, “you should get to safety.”

His heart flipped. What could she mean? If he could get to safety, he would have gone there already. His eyes stung with smoke and tears. “Where are you going to go?”