by Herbert Gold
“I’m not usually here much at night.”
“So meet Mr. Karim at the farmer’s market—he like that fresh stuff, no preserve in it—down at Civic Center? How about eight o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“I don’t like to get out that early. I get up, but I’m just having my coffee.”
“Tomorrow morning’s an exception. Maybe you be up most of the night anyway, am I right?”
The weapon was just for show. The skinny fellow stuck it in his pocket. It probably didn’t even have cartridges. The skinny fellow was just Karim’s way of saving on telephones, not putting things on tape, plus making an impression.
“If you never done your shopping there, you gonna love that farmer’s market, man. All those fresh fruits and vegetables and dried nuts in bulk.”
He started out the door.
“Hey!” I said. “Don’t you want your cleaning bucket?”
He turned, his goggles catching the light from my gooseneck lamp. “You say hey to me, smart-ass, I got to give you credit. But man, I think you stupid, too. How about your responsibilities? Don’t you get a divorce from your wife but you still got a boy you didn’t divorce yet?”
* * *
I called Priscilla and said to watch Jeff, not let him wander unobserved, and were there any strangers hanging around the neighborhood?
“Dan, is there anything I should be afraid of? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No, no, you know me. Just fuss and fidget.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Nothing to tell, just thinking night thoughts…”
As always, when I spoke with Priscilla by telephone, my hand was shaking when I hung up. But nothing in my voice betrayed anxiety, I was sure of that, because otherwise she would have mentioned it.
I thought it best, perhaps even interesting, to meet with Karim as requested. Although the message was delivered by a man with a cleaning bucket who had found his way into my office in the slope above Enrico’s in North Beach, and this wasn’t the way messages usually came to me, I saw good reason for doing a bit of shopping at the Civic Center’s farmer’s market the next morning. It would have been wrong not to enjoy the nuts in bulk and hear the man out.
* * *
The little brown guy was right about my sleeping that night. Karim had found a way to keep the blood moving in my head, the lymph system flooded and alert, if that’s what causes a person to mobilize himself. It was almost a pleasure to be forced into doing something again.
I parked illegally in a bus zone near the outdoor market end of the Civic Center. As long as I wasn’t towed, I wouldn’t worry; always intended to rotate into the set of Florida license plates a colleague in West Palm Beach sent me every year as a Christmas present, but never quite put the screwdriver to work. Onion smells off the morning produce stalls. Admired the Honda clunk shut of a well-fitting door. The clunk now had a bit of rattle, like a cigarette cough; someone once tried to pry it open at another bus zone, figuring he might as well make off with the radio since the car was illegally parked anyway. Must have been a fastidious junkie who didn’t like smashing windows, all those pulverized bits of safety glass.
Not just onion smells; nice onion smells. Down here in the Tenderloin, amid the homeless, the Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants, the old alkies, the geriatric giveups, the Wednesday and Saturday farmer’s market provided earthy, healthy, vitamin-filled fumes. Not even the hot air inflating the dome of San Francisco City Hall nearby could kill the smell of fresh onions. Folks picking up their bulk raisins, sun-ripened tomatoes, strands of plump white garlic, and artichokes from Castro Valley temporarily outnumbered the folks in the nearby outdoor offices of the transvestite and transsexual, twenty-four-hours-a-day, we-never-close retail exchange of drugs and favors.
I looked back to find a woman cop with her foot on the rear bumper of my Honda, taking out her citation book, and then waving, “Yo, Dan!”
“Yo, Wanda!”
She tucked the citation book back into her belt. Maybe this was another lucky day. I even remembered her name. If she’d still been a meter person, where she’d started out, it would not necessarily have been my lucky day. San Francisco was sometimes a friendly small town where people knew each other, such as Wanda and Dan, and didn’t give citations.
I didn’t know the farmers at their stands. Some of them wore mittens, plaid shirts, work boots; and then, beneath a sign that said ORGANIC SQUASH, there was the young woman wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt, denim cutoffs so short I could see part of the triangle of hair between her legs. She had a cute face with bright kitten eyes under dark bangs. “What’s organic squash?” I asked her, and from behind her cart—now, settled on its wheels, it was more like a country stand—she said, “Bugs, weevils, worms, all good protein when you cook it—no cancer-giving insecticides, sir?”
“That’s terrific.”
“We sell a lot of them at Halloween time. We call those over there ‘pumpkins.’”
“Good name for them,” I said. “I’ll take a weevil zucchini if you got one.”
“Eat it here or to go?” the kitten-faced, button-eyed farmerette asked. “That individual standing behind you wants a word with you, Mr. Kasdan.”
I turned slowly. It was Karim, no surprise there, wearing a long knitted coat, a kind of overgrown sweater with folds and drapes that made him look like a thickened, foppish manager of dancers. Several colors in dark shades, purple, orange, were woven together. He was nodding and nodding, smiling, dense trimmed clumps of eyebrows working, darkly stained lids blinking, the voice oiling out: “You sure do mess up.”
“Explain that to me.”
Karim worked his lips in the fresh vegetable chill. “Prefer not, my friend, worry you unnecessarily.” He shrugged under the heavy knit. “If it turns out to be necessary.”
The important thing in a complex negotiation is just to be there, not rushing to have a say, just waiting for the opening. I have learned this, but I don’t always know it. This time I partway managed. Karim put his fingers around a tomato at the farmerette’s stand. He didn’t squeeze hard; he was only enjoying the fresh yielding flesh. He was smiling, nodding, urging me to understand him, care for him. I needed to make things explicit. This need of mine had been part of what caused the trouble with Priscilla, my asking if she loved me at a time when the answer was not going to be favorable. Sometimes it’s better just to let things slide along. I wasn’t like that. I was an old-time nag and worrier.
“You ever go about things the normal way?” I asked.
Karim sighed. He put his hand on the knitted wool over his chest and then back on a tomato. “Like everybody, I have human feelings, my friend. I think it was eight years ago, summer. I was younger. My best girl was pregnant—was I pissed—but then she had a miss, you know, a late period, and she couldn’t stop crying and suddenly, right here”—his chest again—“I felt something for her. Sad? Didn’t want to fuck her or anything, just sad. For her. Isn’t that the normal way?” He cast his eyes downward, long lashes fluttering, dejected. “And then I went to the mirror, my friend, see what it look like.”
“I accept what you’re saying, Karim.”
“No you don’t.”
“I believe you.”
“But you don’t understand. Nobody does. You’re so smart you think you do, but you’re so dumb you don’t.”
“Stipulated. What does this have to do with me?”
Karim was still exploring the tomato, pressing into it, taking risks with his nails. It could squirt all over me. It could even squirt on him. “My friend,” he said, “but I really was sad. Would have changed my life. Have that son, nearly eight years old by now.”
I wasn’t going to ask how he knew it would have been a boy. Karim didn’t need the procedures of questioning. I didn’t need the involvement.
The farmerette with the bright button eyes and the fringe of bangs was watching us both with a happy Future Farmers of America smile on her pointy
little face. During the moment which gave her a chance, she remarked politely, “Normally when people squeeze the tomatoes, we prefer they buy. These are carried ripe, farm to town, and we’re proud of their mint condition. We even drive in low gear so’s not to bounce them around too much.”
I reached into my pocket.
“Oh no, not you, Mr. Kasdan. I was just explaining our tomatoes in general. You’re not responsible for what Karim does around here.”
Now the nice fresh vegetable smells weren’t much better than the green chemical cleaning smell in my office. Sniffing around should be more fun for a man with a healthy nose in middle life. For that matter, as a coffee lover, I had been stuck with rotten coffee since Priscilla and I split up—either bitter restaurant coffee after cheap Greek salads and souvlaki or, worse, instant brown paste when I was waking myself at home, climbing out of a bad dream with relief when the alarm went off. Sniffing around with a healthy nose in middle life was leading me to Filipino office cleaners and Junior Miss farmer persons without a lot of sincerity in their hearts.
This was a complaining man. Sometimes I drank good coffee at the Puccini on Columbus, and Alfonso made good coffee, and I recall a few times, visiting Jeff, picking up the kid, when Priscilla told me to sit down while she offered me a cup of the brew I remembered.
Karim called me back to business. He preferred that I pay attention. “Hey Dan, two things people like to have said about them, and since people say those things about me, I’m a happy individual.”
“What’s that?”
“You mean what’s those. Okay, now we’re conversing. First, I have a great sense of humor. Everybody wants to hear that, but in my case, I’m confident it’s true.”
“Stipulated. And?”
“And he moves with a certain grace.”
“Pardon?”
“People say, Dan”—Karim bent closer to explain, patient—“people tend to say I’m stocky, not fat, built slow and easy, not a kid anymore, but, Dan … I move with a certain grace.”
I would agree to that, too, a certain grace, plus lovely eyes, if it was required. I had no strong convictions in the matter.
“And Dan? Furthermore?”
I kept my eyes on him.
“You kind of tickle me. That’s as good as have a way with jokes—better. And you definitely move with an average degree of style. I’d almost say, in your case, grace, if you will kindly permit.”
“As you say, everybody does.”
Karim shook his head. “Didn’t say that, my dear. Said people like to think that. About themselves they like to think it, and sometimes like to say it to others, whether it’s true or not. It doesn’t have to be true.”
“Okay.”
“So Dan, you have this clumsy kind of charm. Your kid got that sort of quality, too, only more so. Fresh.”
I didn’t find this conversation enlightening or delightful. The conversation was circling something unsaid, and—in an open-air market with scales and bargain tables and organic certifications over the beans, rice, fresh vegetables, and bananas that certainly weren’t from plantations in California—it didn’t seem appropriate to be having a conversation where the disagreeable part was undefined. So I just stared. I didn’t even like the farmerette anymore. She had no business knowing my name.
Karim was patient. He liked waiting. He smiled at the farmerette. His attitude toward her was different from mine.
“What’re you telling me, Karim? What are you asking?”
“Jeff,” he said. “Your boy there’s not exactly girly, but he’s sweet, you know?”
I felt the heat rush to my face. “That’s not how I think about my son.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Karim was satisfied and glowing in his knitted sweater coat. “Some people would, Dan. I’ll tell you what.”
“What?”
Karim shook his head. “I’m thinking. I’m formulating. Then we’ll converse.”
While I waited, I smelled the onions and thought of poison gas despite the fresh salty whiffs of other vegetables, the sugary undertow of rot. It was only a memory. I should have been thinking of good things, but I smelled tear gas. Nothing but a memory.
“You know that kid they took away in Italy one time?” Karim asked. “Father, grandfather, whole goddamn family was zillionaires?”
“Getty,” I said.
“Yeah, Eye-talian name like that. Gotti. Well, reminds me you got a boy, too.”
“No money,” I said. “No point in that.”
Karim shook his head. “Local people around here wouldn’t be sending you pieces of his ear, like those Eye-talians did. For the fun of it, around here, they’d be sending you pieces of his asshole.”
The market seemed there. Karim seemed there. I was in a spot where people were buying and selling nice fresh produce outside and I could see the dome of the Civic Center. And my arm was reaching out to grab Karim by the soft wool of his collar, choking him while Karim twisted and said, “Dan, Dan, have a sense of humor, I ask you…”
Off to the side I could see the cute farmerette with a forked hammer, the tool a person uses to open crates of lettuce. She was bringing it toward me with a smile in her bright, unspoiled, girlish eyes. I let go of Karim and turned to her. Karim raised his hand to halt the descent of the hammer, the fork darting and silvery.
His voice was croaking and his throat must have hurt, but all he did was repeat gently, reproachfully, “Dan, that’s not careful. People can do harm, Dan. Try to pay attention.”
I stood there, paying attention amid the fresh onion smells.
“Go ask your wife if you want to, the kid is fine. Why would I do a thing like that?” Karim’s hand was gently massaging his neck. “Hurts, Dan. Shouldn’t get so excited with a man you might be considering doing business with. I was just horsing around, kidding, already told you about my sense of humor, but what I mean is I sincerely hope you will consider how you can significantly improve your situation.”
“I don’t want any business from you, Karim.”
“You’re a man in need and so am I. At least we have to make that clear. Where we go in the future is up to us. You owe me the opportunity to present my offer, Mr. Kasdan.”
“I don’t like the offers you’re presenting.”
“Hey, hey, a little calm consideration. All I wanted was to get your attention.”
“You got it. I didn’t appreciate it.”
“As I said, Dan, hey, hey. Calm. I deeply apologize, but this is one more thing I like about you—a passionate nature, it so much reminds me of my own.”
“Thanks.”
“Now let us put that behind us.” He made a sweeping ass-ward gesture with both hands. “Truly I have so much to give, someone who appreciates your qualities.”
“No.”
Karim enjoyed the vegetables and spice air of the market, the view of my temper, the prospect of accomplishing a task he had set for himself. He was fully engaged in his project and in some way that commitment was reassuring. In my present frame of mind (stumbling desolation and the ebbing of an adrenaline rush), I could even find space to admire him. Yet I repeated: “No. No deal.”
He was standing too close. He observed me with compassion. His warm breath reached my nostrils.
“I am sure,” he said, “as you think, think fully, my friend, you will find time to consider the opportunities. In my heart I feel most positive.”
* * *
I needed to take a shot at getting things clear with him. If he wanted me for laundering money or carrying goods, I wasn’t going to do it. I suppose, yes, I could consider going along with finding someone for him. Maybe. Someone he really longed to locate. Or maybe even a collection. Priscilla had a point or two, she had a way of showing me things; but I didn’t like Karim’s procedures for approaching a deal. He wanted to start on top with an off-balance employee. I didn’t need to be any more off-balance than I already was. I may have needed work, I could even see why Priscilla liked him—a man who
had fun with his life, no matter what obstacles came his way, unlike others she could name—but I wasn’t sure I could afford to be hired by Karim.
I headed toward the Mission with my feet jerking at the brake, the clutch, the gas pedal, forcing red lights, always the sign of a man who is absolutely determined, has his mind unequivocably made up, but isn’t sure about what.
Karim lived in a tall wooden Victorian house on the wide boulevard of Guerrero, not too far from the Spanish colonial Mission Dolores with its graveyard filled with vigilantes and their victims, including the hero or victim named King William of William. I remembered telling Priscilla the story of my favorite con man, Dr. Lovejoy, buried here, who was asked by the vigilantes about to hang him if he wanted to speak any last words. “Not at this time,” he said. An inspiration to a man getting along in years.
Karim’s stately Victorian made a statement about cash flow—Caribbean sloppy grace, vines, a palm tree, wooden steps through a jungle garden climbing a steep slope, rocks breaking through the planting on the hillside. The siding was rotten and splintered in honorable Victorian tradition; the palm tree had shed its leaves, leaving untended drifts to crunch underfoot, like some San Francisco version of snow, a peppery smell rising as my boots crackled through it. The high white structure and the leaf-strewn stairs looked like a house in Port-au-Prince. Quite a nice little ecosystem he had here.
My footsteps on dried fronds seemed to serve as a wake-up call. Karim filled the doorway, all in white, dazzling, a real beauty, white pants, shirt, some kind of almost-linen jacket, white shoes, and a beaded belt flashing tropical colors over a hard jutting belly. “Welcome, welcome,” he said. “So glad! Be welcome.”
His eyebrows were still carefully sculpted into wide dense thickets with clean outlines, the ever-present antlike dots of plucked hairs between the clumps. The eyeliner on the lids, with an added gleam of mascara on the lashes, highlighted his fortunate natural pigmentation. The effect was lively and bright, and certified that I was correct in my view—don’t get involved with this enterprise.
