by Herbert Gold
She smiled. Buffed teeth, very white, just the few brownish edges of a smoker. “You’re not going to get it, Mr. Kasdan.”
I could have said, Yes, I am. I could have said, Isn’t there a heavy-duty dentifrice for those nicotine tooth stains; said it nicely, open-faced, friendly. But G. Press was too easy with talk and therefore probably less so with silence. Old training in collections had provided examples of folks like this. They weren’t usually Renaissance minds with equal skills in talk and silence. I was pretty sure a space of silence was the ticket. The eerie ceramic cats didn’t move or purr.
She cleared her throat.
Good sign. A little self-esteem slippage.
She offered me a chocolate from a box.
I shook my head, not uttering “Allergic,” or just “No,” or even “Yes.” Silence was now the ticket if it didn’t drive her to call upon the weapon I was sure she kept someplace within reach or the assistant she might have had waiting in one of the other rooms. She let me in, didn’t she? She hadn’t seemed surprised or distressed. She must have been confident. She was easy in her person like someone used to dressing her own way, decorating, having things proceed in her own preferred order.
“Cigarette?” White cork-tipped cartridges extended from a ceramic dish with a cat embossed and baked into it; lady liked kitties though not necessarily live ones. Like a fisherperson handling bait, she jerked the dish toward me again.
Shook my head. Stared. Didn’t give a fuck.
Lady couldn’t anticipate I’m a nonsmoker.
“I could,” she remarked mildly, “have you hurt, maybe right now. Might could do it myself.”
I stared.
She might could; she didn’t.
I pursed my lips in the old Black Panther, Muslim, Muhammad Speaks middle-distance stare, guaranteed ominous.
Surely she would prefer that I engaged in continuous conversation. Evidently she hated to carry both ends of the chat. It goes with the style, decor, tea or dinner jacket—preferred warm sociability even if inside she might be a cold person.
“Look, Mr. Kasdan—” she began again.
“No, you look, Miz Press. You talk. You stall. I wait. Finally you get.”
“Wow,” she said. “Scary, menacing.”
I could see her cosmetically challenged eyes trying to sort me out. I had no obvious backup. I didn’t seem to be carrying weaponry (in fact, wasn’t). Yet I seemed absolutely convinced I was in charge of these Nob Hill condo premises. Only Dan Kasdan knew he wasn’t, and didn’t care, but she couldn’t understand that, could she?
I might venture a merciful bit of conversation as a reminder of the cause to which I had hired out. “So if you’ve got a dinner date,” I said, “you won’t be late if you settle with Karim right now. I’m ready on his behalf. And then I’m scampering outta here like the Domino’s pizza guy.”
Strictly speaking, my commentary was unnecessary, especially since I was sure that with G. Press not talking spoke louder than talking. Also I wondered if she had a tape recorder going. A bleak old-timey Kasdan stare used to work with runaways. It might not work with Miz Press, but it wouldn’t record.
Silence. Revving of a sports car down Jones Street, twelve floors below. City silence with no grandfather’s clock ticking in the corner, just the unheard purr of a ceramic kitty.
“What kind of work”—I had all day, all night was the idea—“you do before you got involved with our friend?”
She loved it, loved it when I spoke. “Got people hurt who crossed me. Thinking of going back into that line of work.”
I performed an appreciative half-grin, a little habit born of vanity since I lost a back tooth after an especially active night of tooth grinding (Priscilla gone, Dan sleeping alone). I needed to make a little control statement. I wasn’t going to punch up G. Press, push her around, but I needed something equally attention-getting. So I sat down.
A little understated as aggression.
If she was a madam, she had her armor watching over her someplace; same if she was a dealer; same if she was into loans or gambling, although I doubted either of those was her chosen field of financial and creative endeavor. Whatever, I believed in her violence and the idea that Karim might not protect me. By this time I fully merited being hurt in her cat-eat-dog universe. What would stop her could only be herself, her anger untickled to the point of explosion. Maybe I could help her both fear me and like me to the extent that cutting my balls out just wouldn’t be worthwhile. Already she was puzzled that I didn’t seem to care much. Knowing the terrain, I was puzzled myself. To lose caring while retaining desire might be the ticket to success around here.
I was getting better at holding my tongue.
She cleared her throat, drummed on her jacket pocket, which gave off a scratchy, metallic rattle, kind of tinny, this fabric, maybe no weapon inside.
I continued my present course of action.
She moved. Her heels scraped through carpet, then rattled on hardwood floors; she trotted through the glass door, down a hall, into another room. Hair sculpted but in motion, earlobes red; a lady deserves better security in her own condominium high on Nob Hill. Her little hooves sounded like Janey’s pony. Maybe she would bring me her Medal of Honor.
If she came out with a weapon, well, it happens. I used to be a fighter, even if my best battles were fought to keep from fighting. I was different these days. I hoped it wasn’t hormonal.
I stared down the carpet, keeping in practice. Little carpet eyes, tiny pony-hoof depressions, gazed back at me. She must have been truly piqued to dig in so deeply. Gradually the fibers sprang forward again, the carpet eyes faded. The shadow of G. Press above them kept watch over me and I watched it; that was only fair.
I wasn’t worried. This worried me. In my line of work you’re not good unless you know you’re in danger and avoid it to the maximum. I didn’t.
Jeff. A floor hockey game coming up next Saturday. His dad wanted to sit on the bench with the young mothers and a few other dads.
Maybe I did care. I couldn’t do this. I was doing it.
I heard a snapping sound, like a flag in the wind. Adrenaline sharpens both the ears and the eyes. She could come out with a pistol, a knife, a friend, or an army. It was all the same to me. Then why the animal thumping in my chest?
The little pony trot sounds were returning down the hall. The glass door opened. She looked into my face with merriment, as if she had won a great victory. “Do you take Visa?” asked G. Press.
One side of my mouth went up in its shy smile to indicate adequate IQ; I got the joke.
“Sure you don’t want a smoke before you go?” Nodding toward the ceramic dish with the cat design baked into it.
I stared. I let the shy mouth-corner smile go.
“I could,” she repeated thoughtfully, “have you hurt, if not now maybe later?”
This was a question, but I only shrugged.
It was really bothering her that the cat—one of the cats—seemed to have gotten my tongue. She gave me her attention in case I wished to respond. I didn’t. She took a deep, reluctant breath. She held out a plastic portfolio. The words SANTA BARBARA were printed on the side; it was a souvenir. It was sealed with packing tape. That was the snapping sound I had heard, ripping this flypaper stuff off its roll.
“For Karim?”
“Unless you run away with it. Wouldn’t advise that.”
“Thank you, Miz Press.”
“And now get the fuck out of here.”
And so I did.
* * *
At the grand Victorian on Guerrero, the morning sun glowed through drawn curtains, a dusty filtered tropical pearliness in a room with heavy mahogany furniture and layers of rug on the floor. When G. Press redecorated, her consultant must have shipped the treasured old pieces over to Karim. By noon this banana-belt neighborhood of San Francisco would be as hot as Ensenada; now it was just warm and densely humid. Karim kept lots of plants. Fresh pale green shoots in a tray o
n the windowsill had the spiky look of herbs for salad flavoring. Karim was smiling, resmiling, broad faced, broadly happy. When he took my hand, I could feel the lotion slipping between us.
He wanted me to feel welcome. He took my hand to draw me close to him. He was assured already of our success. Since I was only a partial success, he wasn’t as good a judge of character as he thought.
“Please, sit down, and also I have for you—”
I didn’t sit. I handed him the sealed portfolio from G. Press and said, “That’s it. I’m going on to other employment.”
“Oh, my impatient friend, and you haven’t even yet received from me, with many thanks—”
“I quit, Karim.”
Still warm-souled but exasperated, he asked, “Does this sudden … childishness … mean you want to know things we agreed you didn’t need to know?”
“I’m finished, Karim.”
“You did exactly what we agreed upon, and thus in return, for my part—”
“Resign, no more, finished, it’s not my line of work, Karim.”
He was shaking his large head. He put a thick envelope in my hand and I took it. Because otherwise it would fall insultingly to the floor. Because I wanted it. Because I needed it. “Please, a coffee?” he asked.
“This is it.”
“You accept without even discussing the terms?”
“I earned it. Okay. Now it’s done.”
“You did very well. No fuss, prompt, I like that. I asked myself why you waited until morning, but you didn’t want to awaken me. You had to think, consider. I knew I could count on you.”
“Stop counting. I’m out.”
This would not be easy. Probably I shouldn’t have taken the envelope, but I needed it. It was dense, stuffed, the most appetizing way for cash to be presented. It didn’t help the process I intended.
Karim sighed and touched my hand again. Already the lotion was mostly absorbed. His hand felt hot and dry. “I could be like a father to you,” he said.
“I’m too old to have a father. My dad would be drooling if he were alive.”
Karim licked his lips. “And of course you have a son, so you know how a father feels.”
“That’s a joke I don’t want to hear from you.”
The good judge of character looked at Dan Kasdan and saw a man who didn’t want involvements yet was capable of murder. His sigh was deep, like a yawn. “I apologize. We made a deal.”
“So I apologize too, Karim. But I’m not your boy.”
He spread his arms, opened his palms, grew happy again. “And I never never on this earth said you were. To be my colleague, colleagues, so much better, is it not? It would be—” He glanced at the envelope heavy in my hands, not yet a part of my economy. “As you can surely understand.”
Karim and I didn’t see or understand the same things. My clients and I usually did not. That’s why one side offered and the other side took. The work wasn’t about mutual understanding.
“There are other tasks for an intelligent and diligent person that come up from time to time. You have the temperament, my dear colleague. Reliable, honest, why do you imagine I have my heart set on someone exactly like you?” He glanced at my paw. “Also you have the appetite to sup at my table.”
“Sometimes I’m hungry. I’m a little short these days.”
“You see? I enjoy your honesty. You are a little short, so let me help you grow. Of course, we have already nicely begun.”
He wouldn’t give up. We were going around and around. I was out of there, dropping the laden envelope on the table by the door. A thick supple presence was relinquished, almost like a woman’s body, but my sense of business was not entirely departed. I felt regret. In the blast of light through the open door, Karim stood beaming and joyous, rapid grief rapidly gone, disappointed in me but entertained by human folly, the best kind, as I also used to be, before the folly around here became mine.
He let me pass. He seemed certain this was only another step on life’s way.
I wanted to rush, to proceed with noise and wind, showing heels and billowing shirt. But there amid the smells of riddled wood and drying palm fronds, I stopped and turned back. Karim was still fully equipped with both gloom and happiness to spare, nodding, encouraging.
I walked past him to retrieve the envelope off the table. It was mine by right. I had worked for it. We could think of it as the severance package. We didn’t have to think. I needed it.
His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Go ahead, go on. He didn’t stop me as I took the money. He didn’t stop me as I finally departed. We had already agreed I was a little short these days and had to do certain things. Whatever that might be.
* * *
Alfonso Jones and Dan Kasdan sat at nearly clean Formica in Panchito Three (We Serve Luncho), a cop’s burrito-and-coffee joint south of downtown near the Hall of Justice, 450 Bryant, eating rice and beans off paper plates on plastic trays. The plainclothes guys were packing into mounds of fried fuel, guacamole serving as the vegetable, and grabbing their monster containers of coffee-to-go. Disgruntled citizens on jury duty were complaining to each other about the waiting, waiting, except for those who had brought plenty of reading matter. A few in the jury pool were staring at portable word-processor screens, trying to keep up with business while performing their civic duty and regretting they hadn’t gotten a testament from the family physician that they were challenged by deafness or the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (they had forgotten to do so). A bailed-out defendant sulked at a corner table. His girlfriend was weeping and stroking his motorcyclist tattoos while the guy stared heroically into the middle distance. Probably an amphetamine bust. The only happy defendants were the Food Not Bombs crew, publicly celebrating their coming conviction for illegally setting up a feed for the homeless in Golden Gate Park. The men wore revolutionary, ecology-saving beards, except for their leader, who had a revolutionary, ecology-saving shaved head, using no hair or skin products to pollute the atmosphere; usually the women did the cooking in twenty-gallon cans and looked more businesslike.
Alfonso took in the familiar scene at Panchito Three, then began to shovel up what he had piled onto his tray in the line at the counter. He needed a little nourishment while I sipped my pink strawberry punch. Then he said, through shreds of pork, “You not tellin’ what you up to.”
“Not everything.”
“Up to you.” He refilled his face.
“Right.” Of course he knew; it was his business if not his pleasure to keep track of me. Poor fellow accepted the heavy charge of an old friend.
Even in my present state of selfishness I had an obligation to him. I explained that I didn’t feel very enterprising these days, and he asked if beggars have taken to being choosers, and I argued that maybe some other job would turn up. Nodding agreeably, Alfonso let me persuade him that transporting drugs or moving illegal money to a safe place were among the sorts of work that didn’t suit me just now. Bad loans or payoffs, professional girls or shylocking, Karim’s ham-and-eggs conglomerate was not a good place to put my energies. I thought G. Press most likely ran a house for Karim and wanted to buy out of the franchise, take her gold lamé jacket, and trot away on her little pony hooves into an enterprise that would be all hers. G. Press, ready to go for it. Maybe she was making a feminist statement; maybe arranged for new protection. A superb idea for me was not to do any more work for a man who made dumb jokes about my son. Alfonso’s deep bass surged up at me: “You put it like that, don’t sound so good.”
Karim had made a smarter joke about the PI licensing commission.
“Something else?” Alfonso asked.
“No.”
“Isn’t there something else?”
“No, not now. Nothing I can’t deal with.”
It was up to me. “Okay, due time,” Alfonso said.
I may have been hungry. I may have been scared. I may have forgotten how to say yes to opportunity. But I could still figure o
ut how to say no to this opportunity. I could do without the new transportation and Priscilla wouldn’t be happy with her surprise present anyway. Gifts from estranged spouses make some wives feel tender and regretful—not Priscilla. Sometimes I thought I knew her better than I knew myself, even if I also didn’t know her at all.
I didn’t want to depend on my new strength, being careless of whether I lived or died. It was the only power most of the Project kids ever learned. It may have been the power Alfonso’s son had. Okay, thank you, Priscilla and Karim, thank you all. But the G. Press envelope was just tentative money, cash I came across, happened on in a game, not a real job. It was a speculation, just to see. It was a temptation, an easy win I wasn’t going to repeat.
All this roiling inside, plus Karim’s moldy Victorian on Guerrero, feeding at Panchito Three on Bryant, and the speculative bulk of Alfonso observing, parked opposite, helped me imagine I was still here on earth, still alive. That was something. Being still alive was progress in the sense that it was not retrogression.
I didn’t mind lying to myself.
“So did you take the envelope and how much was it?” Alfonso asked.
I said nothing. Didn’t like lying to Alfonso.
“We agree, don’t we,” Alfonso asked, “that Karim he full of shit? Not like some other folks?”
His laughter came rumbling toward me again, deep and worried. The defendant in the corner behind us at Panchito Three was goddamn tired of having his arm tattoo stroked by his blubber-faced girlfriend and gave her his stone-cold, steely-eyed stare, enacting the role of Man in Control.
Chapter 18
Alfonso was on the phone in a voice that stopped my breathing.
“I gotta…” he was saying. He was flying east and would I drive him to the airport? “There’s this long-term parking if I’m parking there long-term, man, but I don’t want to drive. I don’t think I can drive, man.”
