Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html)

On summer mornings San Francisco
is often shrouded by a heavy fog. It billows through the Golden Gate
and moves insidiously about the city, transforming familiar places and
ordinary objects into things of beauty, mystery, or—in certain
cases—evil. It hangs thick outside windows, slips under doors, and
permeates the consciousness of those on the raw edge of waking. An
untroubled rest will then degenerate into tossing and turning; pleasant
dreams grow nightmarish. When the fog's victims open their eyes, they
are already aware of a curious deadening of spirit, even before they
face the gray day.

I was one of those victims on a
Saturday morning in July. Long before my alarm was due to go off at the
unholy hour of seven I woke and lay contemplating the shadows that
gathered in the corners of my bedroom. Finally I reached for the rod
that controlled the mini-blinds on the window above my head and turned
it. The light that entered was murky; I sat up, saw mist decorating the
branches of my backyard pine trees like angel's hair.

I sighed, turned off the alarm
before it could ring, and,flopped back against the
pillows. The flat, dull feeling I'd awakened with deepened. There had
been a dream ... of what? I couldn't remember, but its aura persisted—
distinctive, depressing.

I focused on the day ahead, but
its prospects weren't too cheerful, either. Hank Zahn, senior partner
at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am staff investigator, had
asked a favor: that I help him clear out the flat of a client who had
been killed in one of a recent rash of random street shootings.
Although it was not the way I cared to spend my Saturday, I'd agreed
because I sensed that Hank—one of my oldest and closest friends—needed
my presence. And there
was
one bright spot: he'd bribed me
with the promise of lunch; that plus Hank's good company was a winning
combination.

Lord knew I could use some good
company. This morning's low-grade depression might be mostly
fog-induced, but the last month had been lonely and bleak, the five
before it not much better. I had to find some way out of these
emotional doldrums— The doorbell rang.

Uneasiness stole over me, the way
it does when doorbells or phones ring at times when they're typically
not supposed to. I got up, grabbed my robe, belted it securely as I
went down the hall. When I got to the door, I peered through its
peephole.

Jim Addison, the man I'd been
seeing up until a month ago, stood on the steps—and he was drunk. At a
little after seven in the morning, he was obviously drunk.

I opened the door and stared. Jim
listed against the porch railing, a foxy little gleam in his blue eyes.
His sandy hair was tousled, his clothing was rumpled, and he reeked of
cigarette smoke.

He said, "All-night jam session."
Jim was a jazz pianist who played on weekends with a group at a small
club near the beach. "Can I come in?"

I hesitated, wondering how
quickly and easily I could get rid of him, then decided humoring him
was the best approach. (Get rid of him . . . humor him . . . What had
once been a pleasant relationship had come down to that.)

"For a few minutes." I let him in
and led him down the hall to the kitchen, where I went directly to the
coffee-maker and filled it with water. He went directly to the
refrigerator and looked inside.

"Got any wine?"

"There's half a bottle of
Riesling on the shelf in the door." While I whirled beans in the coffee
grinder with one hand, I reached into the cupboard with the other and
passed him a glass. I'd become used to Jim winding down his day while I
was just beginning mine, although he didn't often unwind to such excess.

When I got the coffee going and
turned, I saw he was just standing there, holding the empty wineglass
and frowning. "You hate me, don't you?" he said.

I sighed. "Of course not." It was
the same question he'd asked when I'd told him I didn't want to see him
anymore— and in each of his numerous and persistent phone calls since
then. My answer was true, although I'd long ago wearied of reassuring
him. Jim was a nice man with a good sense of humor, a talented and
dedicated musician, and I liked him a great deal. In fact, it was
liking him so much that had made me decide to end the relationship.
It's unkind to use someone you care for to get over someone else whom
you think you love.

He regarded me for a moment and
then his lips twisted disgustedly. "Sensible and rational as ever,
aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to—"

"You're always right, you always
know what's best for me, for you, for the whole fucking world!"

"That's not true." If I were so
sensible and rational, would I allow myself to go on missing a man whom
I hadn't heard from for over six months? Would I
have allowed myself to fall in love with that particular man in the
first place?

Jim slammed the wineglass down on
the counter so hard that it shattered. My gaze jumped to the gleaming
shards and then to his face, mottled with rage. It was the first time
I'd ever seen him angry.

"What do I have to say to get
through to you?" he demanded.

"We've said it all before."

"No, I don't think so. Not yet,
we haven't!" Abruptly he turned and went down the hall; the front door
opened and slammed behind him.

"Great," I said. "Just great.
What else can go wrong today?"

I expelled a long breath and
leaned back against the counter; behind me the coffeemaker wheezed and
burbled. For a moment I considered whether Jim—this new angry Jim whom
I didn't know—had a potential for violence. Well, I decided, we all
did, didn't we? I'd have to wait and see what he did next. And on that
less than encouraging note, I went to turn on the shower.

While I was washing my hair, the
dream I'd had came back to me. I'd been driving to meet Hank at his
client's flat in the Inner Richmond district, but after I crested Buena
Vista Heights and descended into the Haight-Ashbury, I found that
Stanyan, the northbound street on the edge of Golden Gate Park, had
disappeared. In my confusion I made a series of turns that led me deep
into unfamiliar territory, then suddenly I arrived at the top of the
hill again. Over and over I'd driven down into the Haight. Over and
over I'd found no trace of Stanyan Street.

Such frustration
dreams—repeatedly dialing a phone and hitting the wrong buttons,
missing a plane because I couldn't get packed in time—were nothing new
to me. I'd recently read a paperback on the subject and learned that
they're an indication that the dreamer is of two minds about reaching
the destination,
completing the call, or making the plane trip. But in this case,
despite the depressing nature of the task ahead, I couldn't understand
why I should feel such strong ambivalence—or why the dream had left
such an unpleasant, lingering aura.

Superstitiously I crossed my
shampoo-slick fingers against the possibility of the dream being a bad
omen.

By nine o'clock I'd had three
cups of coffee and done the
Chronicle
crossword, and my
spirits had risen somewhat. By nine-thirty, when I arrived in the Inner
Richmond (Stanyan Street still being there after all), I felt
reasonably cheerful.

The Richmond is a solidly
middle-class district on the northwest side of Golden Gate Park,
consisting mainly of single-family homes and multi-flat buildings set
close together on small lots. Once it was heavily populated by members
of the city's Russian and Irish communities, but in the past couple of
decades it has become the neighborhood of choice for upwardly mobile
Asians. While the Catholic churches and Irish pubs and the Russian
Orthodox cathedral on Geary Boulevard remain, everywhere there are
signs of the new residents.

As I drove along Clement Street,
the district's busy shopping area, I noted eight Asian restaurants
within two blocks: one Thai, one Japanese, one Burmese, two Vietnamese,
and three different types of Chinese. Produce stands with outdoor bins
full of bok choy and daikon radish, groceries with smoked ducks and
barbecued pork ribs hanging in their windows, banks and insurance
agencies with signs in both English and various Asian characters— all
these stood side by side with such longtime institutions as Green Apple
Books, Churchill's Pub, Woolworth's, and Busvan Bargain Furniture.
Eight out of ten faces that I spotted were Asian—reflecting the same
ethnic mix as the restaurants, and ranging from stooped old people
pulling shopping carts to young couples emerging from Japanese-
model sports cars. Clement
Street, I thought, was the perfect embodiment of the changing cultural
patterns of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, it is also one of
the worst examples of the city's congested parking and traffic. The
area was built up at a time when no one envisioned today's large
population of both people and cars, and consequently there are too few
parking lots and garages. Even at that relatively early hour, all the
metered spaces were taken and trucks double-parked while making
deliveries. Cars moved slowly, their drivers looking for vacancies at
the curbs; other irate drivers made U-turns, slid through stop signs,
and endangered pedestrians in the crosswalks. I waited behind an
exhaust-belching Muni bus as it unloaded passengers, tapping my fingers
on the steering wheel of my MG and giving mental thanks to Hank for
remembering to tell me it was okay to park in the driveway of the house
on Third Avenue— should I ever reach it.

After five more minutes of
creeping along Clement, I rounded the corner onto Third and found the
address Hank had given me: one of those two-flat buildings with a
garage and illegal in-law apartment on the ground floor. Its facade was
bastardized Victorian, mint green with mauve and tangerine trim—a
combination that would cause even a person of minimal taste to cringe.
Hank's Honda stood in the driveway, blocking the sidewalk. I looked
around, saw that most of the residents had left their cars in a similar
fashion, except for one enterprising soul who had pulled up parallel to
the curb on the sidewalk itself. So much for parking regulations, I
thought as I pulled in beside the Honda.

As soon as Hank came to the door
of the downstairs flat, I was glad I'd agreed to help him. There were
lines of strain around his mouth, and when he took his horn-rimmed
glasses off to polish their thick lenses on the tail of his maroon
corduroy work shirt, I saw that his eyes were clouded. Hank is a man
who cares deeply for his clients—too deeply, perhaps, to maintain
the distance needed when dealing with their problems. It's not that it
renders him ineffectual; it just causes him more pain than he deserves.

I smiled reassuringly at him and
stepped inside. The flat was chilly; Hank probably didn't want to waste
the estate's money by turning up the heat. A narrow hallway ran the
length of the building; at its end was a door through which I could see
a kitchen table and refrigerator. To my left was a small living room
with a bay window overlooking the street. I went in there and started
to take off my suede jacket. Then I stopped; I might soil it while
hefting cartons and furniture, but I'd be too cold without it.

Hank sensed my predicament. "I've
got coffee on," he said, "and you can wear one of Perry's sweaters."

"Thanks." I followed him down the
hall and into a bedroom that was even smaller than the living room. He
rummaged through a pile of clothing that lay on the double bed, then
tossed me a heavy green cardigan with a hole in one elbow and a raveled
right cuff. When I put it on, it came down to my knees; I rolled up the
sleeves to wrist length. Perry Hilderly, the deceased client, had been
a big man.

Hank was already on his way to
the kitchen. By the time I got there he'd poured coffee and was holding
out a mug. I took it, then peered through a door to the left. It led to
a dining room with a fireplace and built-in leaded-glass
cabinets—standard for this type and vintage of flat. The room contained
no furniture, nothing but cardboard boxes with the name BEKINS
stenciled on them.

I looked at Hank, eyebrows raised
inquiringly.

"It's the stuff Perry moved here
years ago, after his divorce," he said. "He wasn't much of a homebody.
Accountants never are, I guess."

It was one of those blanket
statements Hank sometimes makes—bald assumptions with little or no
basis in fact. They always startle me, considering the variety of
individuals with full complements of quirks that he's seen wander
through the door of All Souls
year after year. Such typecasting of his fellow man is a product of his
early environment— his mother is quite adamant in her pronouncements
about others—and since he never allows it to cloud his judgment, I can
put up with it without comment.

I went over to the refrigerator
to look at a color snapshot that was held up there by a magnet. It
showed a tall, lanky man with curly blond hair and granny glasses; he
wore a Giants sweatshirt and was flanked by two similarly attired blond
boys who were only tall enough to reach to his waist. "This is
Hilderly, right?"

"Uh-huh. It's an old photo; his
boys are in their teens now."

I examined it more closely. "He
doesn't look all that different from the way he did in the nineteen
sixty-five picture that they ran in the
Chron
the morning
after he was shot. Of course, his hair was long and wild back then."