She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me

by Herbert Gold

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “I don’t know if there’s any use in going, but I’m going.”

  “I’ll be there. Wait, I’m on my way.”

  His son had lived in Trenton, New Jersey. His son was being buried in Trenton.

  I was thinking of the nightmares fathers have, waking sick in the dark, far from their children. For Alfonso it came true with drugs and a drive-by shooting. He didn’t tell me if Alfie was one of the shooters, one of the dealers, or just a kid passing by on his way. “He was still in school,” he said. “He was gonna make it.”

  I asked him if he was trying to fly east with his service pistol and if he didn’t want to leave it with me. He asked if I thought he was nuts, but he didn’t answer the question. Then he felt me reach across to poke at his hip as I drove and he chuckled as if we were playing our bachelor games again. He couldn’t get it on the plane. He couldn’t shoot his former wife. He couldn’t kill himself.

  “Hey man, I might be crazy, but I’m not nuts.”

  “Thanks for that reassurance.”

  Then he was being silent about his son and I was being silent about mine. I drove through the morning traffic down 101 to the airport, the San Francisco commuters heading out to Silicon Valley and the peninsula commuters heading into the city, Alfonso heaving wide-mouthed yawns. He wasn’t bored or sleepy. His eyes were red-rimmed and heavy-lidded as he slumped against the door. Men sometimes yawn when they mean to do that thing they somehow forget how to do around the age of eleven, the skill of weeping, although rumor has it that they are learning again and floods are being released all over America.

  Alfonso’s breath was bad, sour meat inside. I wondered if, to make sure, I should pat him down, body-search him for his pistol.

  At the terminal I pulled up at the United entrance. If he carried a weapon, he might could talk his way on, a cop on duty. Okay, that was his business. Most likely he wouldn’t be carrying it on his person if he was thinking rationally. He might not be thinking rationally. I wasn’t my brother’s keeper.

  He swung his bag out of the back seat. The grace of some fat men. Alfonso’s caramel voice running thick. He wasn’t meant for sadness, but I couldn’t tell him that now; sadness wasn’t God’s intention for Alfonso Jones. He was meant to be funny and easy in himself, hard on me, but people don’t always play their assigned roles. Even as a cop, he was no longer at Park Station. Life doesn’t make permanent assignments.

  “Call me from Trenton,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, where will you be staying? I’ll call you.”

  “Never mind. I’ll be back in three days.”

  He hoisted his bag and straightened his back, stretching. The bottom button of his shirt was undone. “Just before this came up,” he said, “something else came up. Wanted to talk with you. I know Karim wants you to do some jobs for him.”

  “I got to get some money. I got to get some variety in my life.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I might.”

  “Don’t, you listen to me now.”

  But Alfonso wasn’t Dan Kasdan’s keeper, either. On the way back to the city I switched on the radio, KSAN, and before I could turn it off I heard part of a golden oldie that said something like, Hello hello, I’ll be your lover tonight. Wisps of morning damp on the highway, wisps of asbestos and oil particulate and a touch of San Francisco morning freshness being undone by heavy morning traffic. Alfonso, my buddy.

  Alfonso, my fellow father. Perhaps I shouldn’t put myself in the way of accident, just as Alfonso said. A philosophy to live by, if we were choosing to live. Having other people in mind sure does limit a person’s options.

  Alfonso had his son, I had Priscilla and Jeff, maybe Karim thought he had me. No telling what makes a person fall for someone, willing to give his life for someone, a ruinous meteor elevatoring out of control down from the sky here at the edge of the Pacific or any ocean. With fiery edges crashing and sputtering out.

  He used to have his son.

  Chapter 19

  It seemed that my friends were falling into trouble; maybe I was a carrier. The day Alfonso was due back from Trenton, Fred, Fred Weinberg, Doctor Fred, called out of the blue, saying, “Need to see you in my office.”

  “Sorry we haven’t been in touch. I’ve been kind of busy—”

  “Never mind, now you better come in right away.”

  “What is it?”

  “A little health problem’s come up.”

  It didn’t sound like any health problem I knew about. I said cautiously, thinking that blood tests ripen a little faster than this, “Hey, it’s been months since my physical. How come you just thought of it?”

  “I’m in my office. You can get down here right now.”

  And before I could point out that it was Wednesday afternoon, religiously his midweek afternoon off for catching up on the medical journals (golf), he had hung up on me. Didn’t like this, but headed out to Fred’s office on Sacramento.

  * * *

  There was no receptionist, this being Wednesday, but Fred buzzed me in. The waiting room where ailing patients and dead magazines kept each other company was dark. He came to the window and without a word beckoned me into his office. He switched on his desk lamp and said, “Karim.”

  Karim was sagged comfortably in a chair, half out of the yellow circle of light, nodding and nodding, enjoying my surprise. There was a smell of cleaning powder in the room, that green chemical smell.

  “Your friend, Dr. Weinberg, and there are so many doctors in our city, happens also to be my doctor.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “Since when?”

  “I thought I could ask him to help me,” Karim said.

  Fred looked sick. He wasn’t wearing his on-duty white smock. “Do it! Do it, Dan! Do what Karim says.”

  Karim was shaking his head. “No, no, such a negative way from my good friend Dr. Weinberg. Do you think he sees too many people who are ill, sometimes seriously so, and that makes him feel negative sometimes? What he means is—”

  Fred was standing by the tools of his trade, books, instruments, devices, a wall of diplomas and framed certificates, as if they should give him strength and authority, but they seemed to be choosing not to. His mouth was working but no explanation came out.

  “What he means,” Karim said, “I need someone to help in my business and you, sir, have no good reason not to be the one.”

  “I told you. I explained already. I don’t do the sort of things you like to have done.”

  Karim spread out his massive arms in his linen jacket. “Exactly! Exactly! We have already seen! And that is why you are the most marvelous person.”

  I looked at Fred. I couldn’t understand why a doctor didn’t find his own drugs. What was he using? It shouldn’t have been necessary to go to Karim.

  But then it was also difficult to understand why I was considering Karim’s request again. I couldn’t need money that badly. I needed it, but not that badly. I needed distraction from my life, but this wasn’t as good as some distractions. Karim was threatening me. He was promising reward and threatening punishment. Like a vulnerable soft disc between the notches of the spine, worn down by use and abuse, caution was wearing thin. I had relished the visit to G. Press in her gold lamé jacket at the Clay-Jones Tower and he knew it. Karim had figured me out. He didn’t plan to be the loser in this courtship.

  “I am so happy,” he said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But I see you are thinking logically at last. I am so happy for that, dear friend.”

  He was right that I was thinking, even if I wasn’t thinking with top-grain logic. I was considering. I was entering a full condition of off-legal estimation of gain, a state of mind not unknown to my profession. Launderers, hiders of fact, revealers of nonfact, there were operators like these who filled out the ranks of my colleagues. Why should I be different? I had already taken a share from the visit with Ms.
G. Press. Like Fred, I needed a remedy for this time in my life; I needed. And today, whether I could use it or not, I was getting a down payment in amazement. Fred took my two paws in his, holding my hands together, and said, and begged … Fred was the man who had consoled me, made notations in my chart, eased a rubber-gloved finger up where no man’s finger should go and told me my prostate wasn’t too bad. I felt as dizzy and seasick as I had been in those post-forty rectal encounters. He was whispering, choked, “Dan. Do it for me.”

  I barked at him. “What! What!”

  “Oh dear,” Karim said. “Please instead do something for yourself. I’m not in the business of threatening your friends or your son—”

  “What the fuck you say?”

  Karim backed off. “No, no, for your own benefit and gain, my dear, this time all I want is for you to transfer a package, just once to see if despite so many difficulties we can work so well together … Be my friend just once more, and then we will see.”

  Fred fell to his knees in his own office, amid the textbooks, charts, files, diplomas from Swarthmore and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, certificate of successful completion of residence in internal medicine, souvenirs and trophies of friendships and hobbies. His face was wet and swollen as he pulled at my hands: “Please.”

  I wouldn’t fall to my knees even to bring Priscilla back—not noisily, anyway—no, definitely would not. Pride must be the last thing to go in certain cases. My addiction was different from Fred’s. I might walk on my knees, but not fall to them. Not in public. Not with that craven plopping sound. Or if I did, I would explain it to passersby as an athletic event, tryouts for the Olympic knee-walking competition.

  Fred and Karim were waiting. I needed to answer Karim and he offered soothing music to help me on my path: “I am the first son of a first son, dear friend, and I strongly prefer to get what I think is right. You have the qualities. I have studied your nature and I am sure of that. I am stubborn. Just like you, I have feelings, I am strong in that field. So, your favorable response?”

  “Okay.”

  “Isn’t that what we all need?”

  “Okay, just once,” I said. “One delivery, okay, and it’s understood I’m to be well paid.”

  Fred pulled himself lumberingly to his feet, whispering, “Thank you.” I didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Very happy, very pleased,” said Karim.

  I looked straight into Karim’s face with my own lying one. “Understand I’m only in this for the money. I may do this only once. Please specify exactly how much.”

  “I understand exactly, that’s best, my friend. Now are we once more good colleagues and friends?”

  “How much, Karim?”

  His breathing was audible, that of a heavy smoker burdened by both lung blockage and financial consideration. He was engaged in thought. In and out the breath, up and down the chest with its layers of linen. Finally inspiration arrived with a slow beaming grin. “I have a wonderful idea. Let’s say this, Dan. I’ll be appreciative.”

  “What fun,” I said.

  “Dan, don’t spoil our association with bad sarcasticness. I’ll be very, very … I don’t want to say ‘generous’ because that isn’t the way I want it to be between us, I want more of a democratic feeling, two partners, equal in spirit and other ways…” He seemed to run out of breath but not out of smile. The grin was fat and tireless.

  “Let me think.”

  “Of course. As a friend I value your fine mind.”

  “How can I turn down a friend?” I said.

  Fred sat in his chair, staring at the framed photograph on his desk of his former wife and children, the wife in her haircut from better times, the children still babies when the photo had been taken and encased in its gold and velvet frame. “How can you?” Fred muttered.

  Chapter 20

  Alfonso was staring at me across the table at Ensenada on 16th Street off Valencia. That’s more chic than saying 16th off Mission. He was thinking and thinking and not talking to me about Trenton or Alfie. In the two weeks since he’d been back, his son had been our main subject of nonconversation. If he wanted to talk, and when he wanted to talk, he would inform me.

  What he wanted to say was something different. “Okay, so the man don’t want to leave you be. He nagging and nagging at you, got a bug up his butt. I think he handing out what we in the law enforcement field call an opportunity. Will you listen? Ain’t hard to ’splain at all. Why should he be the only one with a plan?”

  I listened and after a while felt my head moving up and down. It meant I chose to follow the line Karim had in mind. You could say it was fate and my state of mind. I’d prefer your saying it was my choice.

  “We get a free shot,” Alfonso said.

  “I don’t know if I like this.”

  “He need you not just ’cause he treasure your funky soul, man. No encumberments, nolo encumbered, amigo. You clean so long, you like a fucking virgin to him.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Not to me. So we don’t know if it’s skag the man into or maybe he delivering some of that frisky dog kibble to the yup-pie pups on Chestnut Street, our good buddy Xavier help him out with that, or the gay clubs down on Folsom. They sure ’preciate that friskiness, don’t they?”

  I needed to take this in—“our good buddy Xavier”—without giving up too much in the way of surprise and off-balance behavior. “Don’t like this.” But I could allow Alfonso a little peek. “Don’t need Xavier playing stupid games with my wife.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” My buddy in his pigeon salesman mode stopped his rap to consider what I had just brought up, good bargaining, nice recovery. “I promise, word of faith, your wife—ex—don’t know nothing about it. Listen up, pal. Even if she know—”

  He had all my attention.

  “—even if Xavier let her in just for the fun of it, she don’t know, y’unnastan what I’m sayin’? She not gonna be implicated any way or form.”

  “That’s a commitment.”

  “Even if she is, she isn’t. Your friend the junkie doc, neither.” Since I wasn’t responding, he looked at me tight and unfriendly and sincere. “Word, man.”

  Shit, shit, shit was what I was thinking. In this spot a person gets down to basics: Shit. “Still doesn’t feel good, Alfons.”

  “Uh-huh.” He was relieved. He tossed me a bone. “Partake of entrapment, that kind of bother you?”

  I tried to figure if Karim and Xavier were entrapping me. I was supposed to be snaring them. This wasn’t my usual way of life, not the way my career was supposed to shape up, but then my life wasn’t a usual way of life either, especially in recent times.

  “I’ve got that bad-taste feeling.”

  He brooded upon this. Matters of taste are hard to argue with. A man gets a bad taste, his pal really can’t tell him it tastes good. It seemed that Xavier might want to do me harm, but on the other hand I had already done him a little harm. It seemed that Karim just wanted to enlist me as a soldier—well, low-ranking officer—in his enterprises. It seemed I needed a new and stupid path at this turn in my late middle age.

  “Sometime,” Alfonso mentioned consolingly in that caramel rumble that served him well even when he was doing harm, “you deal with certain people, sometime you got to get down to certain people’s level.”

  “My own level isn’t too good these days, Alfons.”

  “That’s an opinion you want to change eventually. You goin’ do it?”

  Karim didn’t mention figures, how much I might walk away with. The police didn’t mention reward, what was in it for me. It was as if I was just a good citizen for one, a good soldier for the other, a loose hire for everybody in sight. I was pretty sure the satisfaction I might feel about taking Xavier down wasn’t going to cost him any lasting trouble; he and his lawyers would find deniability in ample amounts. I tried not to dwell on Priscilla’s opinion, especially if she knew how Xavier was filling the idle hours in San Francisco. “Right. Righ
t,” I said.

  Having sold his encyclopedias, Alfonso now took a rest and measured his client for what conditions he could offer. “Uh-huh,” he said, just passing the time. Then: “You don’t have to be wired. Clumsy like you are, probably you electrocute yourself on the battery. You just go along with him, I’ll be there, the narc detail be there—”

  I wondered how he knew the cops weren’t under Karim’s control.

  “Man, you are suspicious. Trust me on this.”

  That was always a recipe for disaster, wasn’t it? Trust me on this.

  “If it’s a delivery, we’ll have people watching. If he got people watching, we’ll have people watching the peoples. Just go along.”

  “Why am I doing this, Alfonso?”

  “You a loyal American. You want the reward money. You looking for something.”

  “I don’t like him threatening me.”

  Alfonso heaved one of his juicy sighs. “Now you got it. I knew I give you a chance, you figure it out.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said.

  Alfonso just grinned. “Be interesting.”

  “I said okay. Don’t oversell.”

  But for Alfonso and me, “interesting” was a factor not to be passed over at this wedge moment between our troubles. I wondered if my brother, who usually thought so intelligently about everything but his eating habits, was thinking up to par these days. The same question could be asked about me.

  * * *

  I also wondered if I was rectifying any personal rationality deficits as I drove past the Mission Dolores, where I remembered showing Priscilla grave markings one Saturday when the sun slanted over the walls where the tombstones stood in a garden that celebrated both the vigilantes who killed the men of violence and the men of violence who were hung by the men of peace, strung up with their bare feet tickled and teased by torches as they jerked and tried to climb up the ropes. It did the men of violence no good. The men of peace cheered, rubbed their hairy chins, and watched the men of violence bubble and cook.