Dirty in Cashmere (5 page)

 

SIXTEEN

I walked the length of Van Ness Avenue in the drizzle, past McDonald's, the old Jack Tar Hotel and the former Galaxy movie house, my kicks slapping against the wet pavement.

I was in despair. My budding career as an oracle was over. As Heller put it, my skills were shoddy. I didn't have the grit to be a seer. I was kaput. The bullet pleaded otherwise, begging me not to believe 2-Time and Heller. What did they know about the mysteries of the cosmos?

I was inconsolable.

When I reached Doyle Drive northbound traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge was slow. I followed the pedestrian walkway onto the bridge, trekked another hundred yards and halted. I peered at the bay. Only a few miles off, the lights of Berkeley and Oakland were invisible, lost in the fog. The wind had a snarl, truculent sea gulls blitzed the sky.

I thought about jumping off the bridge. Because there was no room on this sad earth for an ass backwards oracle. No damn room at all. But jumping wasn't an option. Not yet.

Lost in my ruminations, I didn't see the two cops in yellow slickers creep up on me from behind. In a jiffy, they wrestled me to the ground. A Department of Public Health ambulance arrived and the cops plunked me in the back and cuffed me to a gurney. I lay still and pretended calmness while they interrogated me.

They wanted to know what I was doing on the bridge.

I told them I was an oracle.

My answer led them to conclude I was suicidal. So now I was off to General Hospital's loony bin. In the nuthouse, I'd have to downplay my strange ways. While the ambulance rolled through the streets to the hospital, I did inventory, prioritizing which of my idiosyncrasies I'd have to keep under wraps.

At General Hospital I was booked and processed. I was tested again, and came up negative. My clothes were taken away, even my boxer shorts. I was issued an oft-laundered polyester gown and a pair of cardboard slippers. An orderly escorted me up a passageway studded with surveillance cameras to a cell that was furnished with a steel sink doubling as a toilet. A bed frame was welded to a wall. I dropped onto it.

I was starved and jittery, my blood sugar nosediving. I'd been processed so late in the day, I had missed the ward's afternoon meal and wouldn't get fed until later.

I flashed on the night Frank Blake shot me, how he looked in the seconds before he pulled the trigger, his moussed blond hair, the tarnished silver hoop in his right ear, the cheap small caliber automatic pistol in his fist. I was asleep when the cell's door was unlocked and a burly, middle-aged doctor in a white smock breezed in.

“I'm Hess, your psychiatrist.” He announced his name in a congratulatory tone, giving me the impression I'd won the jackpot. “Let's talk, boy.”

I roused myself. It was a chat or a straitjacket. Hess squeezed onto the bed, deliberately crowding my space. He fired off an introductory salvo.

“You informed the cops you're an oracle.”

“I did.”

“Oracles were priests in ancient Greece. They made divine pronouncements. You're not an oracle.”

“Who says?”

“I do. Are you suicidal?”

“Hell, no.”

“The police said you were going to jump off the bridge.”

“That's their opinion, not mine.”

“Your medical records cite you were shot in the head.”

“Yeah, I was. Last winter.”

“You've been traumatized.”

“True enough. I've been catching hell lately.”

“Trauma lends itself to disassociation. The separation of the body from the mind.”

I didn't take the bait. The separation I experienced wasn't between my body and mind. It was between my mind and spirit. My mind forced me to do things I detested, like working for Heller and 2-Time. My spirit wanted to be free of earthly concerns.

“My mind and body are together. After all the shit I've been through? Nothing can tear them apart.”

“You need help. Medication is necessary. Your brain's chemistry needs readjustment. Anyone who claims to be an oracle is mentally ill.”

I didn't care for that.

“Do you want to remain hospitalized?”

“No, man, I don't.”

“Then admit you need help.”

“Okay,” I improvised. “I need help.”

“Wonderful. I'm going to prescribe a mild dose of Haldol. An injection.”

“Do you have to do this?”

“It's the first step. A big one. After the injection we won't put a seventy-two-hour hold on you. We're too overcrowded so you'll be released from custody. Just don't end up here again. Because next time, you'll stay. What do you say to that?”

Not understanding why, just knowing it was happening; the colors in the cell were bright and the air smelled keen, I augured the future, a tiny sliver of it. Next year Hess would divorce his wife, lose the house to her, pay huge alimony, and get in a car wreck. And because I wanted to get out of the fucking nuthouse more than anything in the world, I said what he wanted me to say.

“Thanks.”

 

SEVENTEEN

An hour later the 48 Quintara bus thundered west on Twenty-fourth Street, jouncing by Galería de la Raza, Sol y Luna Hair Salon, and Morena's Fashions before stopping at Capp Street. A drunk man in a smart gray suit boarded the coach and cut a path to the back, plopped into the seat next to me and began singing at the top of his lungs, launching into a bloodcurdling version of Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean” as the bus lumbered to Mission Street.

I struggled to prophesy his future, to find out if I could do it. My nerves twitched. I sweated. My bad leg had a spasm. I saw zilch. My powers, if I ever had any, were gone. The Haldol had done a number on me.

I changed buses at the next stop, climbed aboard a 14 Mission Express, took it to the Embarcadero and got off. From there, I did the Haldol shuffle to Mission Creek. I bumbled down a creekside footpath maybe twenty yards, saw a leopard shark with black and gold fins in the creek's shallows. The shark lifted its flat head out of the water and looked at me, making inter-species eye contact before abruptly submerging underwater.

It was a hell of a thing to see on Haldol.

Having no clear memory of how I got back to Guadalupe Terrace, though certain I'd had another seizure along the way, because now my left arm wasn't working for shit, I moseyed around the side of my house into the backyard.

Stuff left by the previous owner was stacked up by the fence. Lawn chairs, card tables with broken legs, a floor lamp, waterlogged photo albums and children's clothes, aluminum rice cookers, two of them, sneakers, high heels, galoshes, fishing rods, baseball bats, ping-pong paddles, prescription bottles, toothpaste tubes squeezed dry.

I knelt in the grass before the junk pile, unearthed a hand mirror from beneath a moldy bath rug. I held the glass up to my face, stared into it. A bellicose reflection glared back at me. Yellowed eyes. Slack, drooling mouth. Ashy skin. Scar redder than ever. Nobody I cared to meet.

I wanted to talk to God, but didn't know what to say.

“Ricky?”

I slowly rotated. It took forever, even longer. Barelegged and clad in a shiny black vinyl thigh-length dress, Spike was standing ten feet away from me. I coughed once to hide my shame.

“What's going on, girl?”

“You look like crap.”

“Yeah, well, I had a hard day, you know.”

“Where've you been?”

“I was, uh, at General Hospital. An emergency visit.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was in the loony bin. A little vacation.”

“You were in lockdown? That why you look all fucked up?”

I silently conceded the obvious.

“They give you drugs?”

“Haldol. They shot it in my ass.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“Completely. Worse than dead.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Not much I can do.”

“Why did they hurt you like that?”

“I scare people, I guess.”

“You don't scare me. You're mellow.”

Spike was extending a friendly vibe, but I couldn't navigate it. The chitchat exhausted me.

“I've got things to do. Sayonara.”

I did a zombie walk to the cottage. The journey was eight yards. The Haldol turned it into ten miles. My legs were in revolt. Primarily my left leg, which categorically refused to cooperate with any suggestion I made. Each step was involuntary manslaughter. The rain was beating on my head faster than a drum machine. By the kitchen I made a half-assed attempt to boost myself through the window, but couldn't manage it.

I perched on the sill. Steadying myself, I searched my pants for the grand Heller and 2-Time had laid on me. At least I still had that. I reached for the wad and cussed. Damn. It wasn't there. In slow motion I fumbled through all my pockets and came to a sodden, violent conclusion. Fuck. I'd lost the money.

 

EIGHTEEN

In Heller's unoccupied Woodward Street tenement cockroaches ran amok. Joining the festivities, a band of houseflies circled the no-pest strips hanging from the ceiling. The landline burbled four times. The answering machine erupted into a cheery salutation: “Hey, you've reached Rance and Mitzi. We can't take your call because we're evacuating from San Francisco and relocating to Mexico. No contamination down there. Leave a message after the beep.”

The hysteria in 2-Time's voice was out of control.

“Rance? Are you there? Pick up the fucking phone. Listen, man. Eternal Gratitude was burgled. We were robbed. Can you believe it? Me and Rita were out getting some food and when we came back to the club all our money was gone. Rita is wigging. She says if Bellamy hadn't left us, this wouldn't have happened. I know it's bullshit, but you try telling her that. Rance, I need to talk to you. I need your help. All right, buddy? I'm going to—”

The machine cut him off.

 

NINETEEN

Friday night I convened with Spike on her porch. I split a tab of Life with her. It was late, past midnight. Moonlight shellacked the leaves of the malnourished avocado tree in the front yard. Each leaf was alone in the light, apart from its mates. A shooting star, rarely seen over the city, arced in the sky, passing too fast to make a wish on.

I shut my eyes and visualized the radioactive elements that channeled through my blood. Cesium, plutonium, and strontium. How I kept testing negative, I didn't know. Spike held my left hand. Gently, not too tight. Her palm was soft, fingers warm. I addressed her, unable to sugarcoat the future.

“The cops are gonna come here soon.”

“To do what?”

“Take back these houses.”

“That's crap. Nobody wants this street. I'm safe out here. And I need this place. Don't you?”

“Oracles don't have homes.”

“Don't be an asshole. Everyone needs a home.”

The wind was singing in the telephone lines. I smelled the exhaust from the cars on Geneva Avenue. I heard distant gunshots near Mission Street, peppering the spaces where there wasn't any wind or cars.

The Hondurans' bungalow was illuminated from within by hydro lamps leaking orange-white light into the street with the aplomb of a Halloween pumpkin. The rest of Guadalupe Terrace was scrolled in wearied blackness.

The bullet turned in my brain, something that had begun in the morning, indicating the Haldol was quickly wearing off. My oracular tendencies were resurgent, on the upswing.

Then Spike turned and kissed me. I didn't see that coming. It was the last thing I expected from anyone in the universe. I opened my mouth a tad and cemented my lips to hers, the kiss absolving me of the loneliness I'd felt since Vivian Raleigh. To her credit, Spike didn't complain about my insane breath.

The half tab of Life kicked in. My toes were numb, my sphincter was tight. Spike fluttered her hands, buzzed on the vaccine. “I'm seeing colors and patterns.” In a few hours tomorrow would come like a woman telling a man their love affair was the best thing that'd ever happened to her.

 

TWENTY

Saturday dawned with a cap of reddish clouds topping the skyline. A northerly wind was gusting hard, stripping the sidewalk trees of their brown and gold leaves. I was broke and hungry. So I went back to Eternal Gratitude to rustle up some work.

My thoughts kept returning to Spike and the emotional architecture that connected us. Last night she argued the bullet in me was inhibiting my spiritual development, and I had to get it extracted. Like I told her before, it couldn't be done.

The icing on the cake was the typhoon that'd bashed the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. More radioactive fallout had wafted over the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast. In the streets pedestrians now wore carbon filter face masks to protect themselves from airborne contaminants.

I rang the club's bell. Seconds later, 2-Time's gaunt, lined visage floated up to the door, as if he were surfacing from the bottom of an aquarium. He wasn't surprised to see me and shot me a knowing, weary look.

“What the hell, Ricky. Why don't you come in? Everybody else is here.”

Inside the club the sound of the rain pitter-pattered against the skylights. The house sound system played “Everyday People” by Sly & the Family Stone while 2-Time and I watched Tommy Doolan from the Department of Public Health inspect the premises. A thin man with a bad complexion, done up in a sherbet red suit from Macy's, Doolan walked the floor and stuck his nose into jars of Life. Thanks to 2-Time's misconduct, Eternal Gratitude was now under the Department of Public Health's jurisdiction.

Despite the downturn in his fortunes, a garrulous 2-Time was seemingly pleased to see me again and whispered in my ear. “Heller is a motherfucker. He came in here when me and Rita were gone and robbed us of every penny we had. Then I hear he's headed to Mexico. Him and that goddamn Mitzi.”

After he finished checking the club, Doolan called a meeting. Without any formality, he notified everybody, meaning Rita, 2-Time, and me, that until further notice, 2-Time was no longer in charge of Eternal Gratitude.

Doolan then asked me what I was doing at the club. I said I was an unemployed oracle and needed a job.

2-Time lost his temper. “We already did that. You didn't cut the mustard. You refused to make more predictions. You walked out. You fucked off. You're passive-aggressive.”

I'd learned to turn the other cheek when it came to 2-Time, but I couldn't do it often. Like now. “I know the future, asshole. You don't.”

“I remember we had a conflict about the future.” 2-Time's wry smile drew eloquent attention to the poetry of his missing teeth. “Because you were deficient. You any better at doing predictions?”

“I'm about the same.”

“Ricky?” Doolan intervened. “Do you know what an intern is?”

“Someone who works for free.”

“I'm offering you an internship with the Department of Public Health here at Eternal Gratitude.”

“Doing what?”

“Making predictions about the contamination.”

“What do I get out of it?”

“If you do well, you'll receive a wage.”

“A wage?”

“Right.”

“Not a salary?”

“No.”

“Any commission? Percentages? Benefits?”

“No.”

“Wages for an oracle?”

“Yes, but first, let's have a small test to see if you're for real.”

“Go ahead.”

“This is the test. Is there more contamination here from Fukushima than three months ago?”

I struck like a rattlesnake.

“Yeah, there is.”

“That's the correct answer. You've got the job.”

The job was sharecropping the future. I cleared my throat. “You've got to give me an advance. I need to eat.”

Doolan shoveled in his pockets, dug around, produced four tattered bills, reluctantly handed them to me. I snatched the money and headed for the door.

I never got there.

The landline rang and 2-Time picked it up.

“Eternal Gratitude. Offering the best Life in the city. Quality products. Lowest prices. How can I help you?” His face darkened upon hearing who was on the line. “You've got your fucking nerve calling here, man. Who do you think you are?” He paused to listen. “I don't want to hear that shit. What are you saying, you did what was necessary? Only an evil bastard would pull a stunt like that.” There was another pause. “You're here? Jesus Christ.” 2-Time put the phone down. He looked at Rita. It was clear he'd received tragic news.

“That was Heller. He's back from Mexico. He wasn't even gone for two days. Something's wrong with him, and I don't want to know what it is.”