She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me

by Herbert Gold

  It would be wrong to complain. Clutching the coffee mug in my hands, I stare like a raccoon at the prospect of the day, and yawn like a fish, and in general lose myself in the recesses of beast mind, at one with immensity and chaos. Since the universe is crowded with the past, I am not at one with reality or myself, I’m only trying, getting along.

  A kid from the Projects is playing war, crawling through the grass up the hill toward me. I go to the window, careful to show myself, taking aim with an imaginary weapon, peppering him with shots.

  He rises, laughing, and spectacularly falls dead, his body jerking from the automatic fire. I applaud. He rises again and bows graciously, then trudges back to the Projects. His nightmare universe is also crowded with dreams. I put down my weapon.

  I carry my cup outside; drink the last sips of Yuban Almost-Good Instant in the sunlight, blinking, violating the ophthalmologist’s rule to wear sunglasses always. Nearby there is latex sex litter dripping from bushes. Unless the raccoons are taking up birth control, some of the Project kids must be inviting their girlfriends out for a stroll. But the girls don’t seem to prowl; it’s boys I see staring at me, sometimes their noses to my windows while I’m reading, peeing, or at the refrigerator drinking orange juice from the carton. Evidently they think I’m too dim-eyed to see out.

  Little do they know, peeking at the slouched grizzled old white guy, that I take reasonable care of the machinery. It wouldn’t be right to be forever young, packaged by weight training, vitamins, and plastic surgery, grinning tightly, littering up the earth. I’ve come to like crisped leaves, dark-edged petals, strong smells of fallen rinds, even dead raccoons on my hillside. They gradually fade into the hill, eaten inside and out by ants, rats, and squirming maggots, while the Project kids and I, too, make a wise circle around them in our roamings; we stop and stare first. I could—not a bad option—leave my body on a hillside to filter back into soil, sifting through the digestive system of other creatures. A body is only rank for a little while, until the weather and those other bodies finish working at it.

  * * *

  As my friends begin to die, or grow old, die a little, I am angry with them, as if the same thing isn’t happening to me. I look at Alfonso, that terrific pal, the very best, and want to hit his swelling sagging belly, kick him in that drag-ass behind with heavy thighs flopping in thick pants. Retired from the police now, he thinks he has the right to a pensioner’s indulgence; cops quit too young. Part-time work as a security consultant to the Pinkertons—black men didn’t used to do this kind of experting—means he doesn’t have to conform to weight requirements. It’s not the rules that are uptight; it’s Dan Kasdan, who is not fat but skinny—that’s another way age takes a man. Muscle not turning to rubber; going to gristle. I have no right to resent others.

  “Man, you wasn’t my friend, I wouldn’t want to hang with you,” Alfonso said. “What happened to not giving a fuck? You used to know how. Learn some survival skill, man.”

  “If I’m not fun anymore—” I said.

  “Okay, I’m your watchdog now, so I get to bark whenever I think of it.”

  He still liked to nag me about Xavier. He knew Xavier made no difference about anything important, and knew I knew it. Whatever pleasure there used to be in remembering one stupid swing of my fist had been used up.

  “Hey, look at you, inspiration to a boy like me,” Alfonso said. “Someday I’m gonna retire all the way, smell the bees, whatever it is you do.”

  “I’m not retired.”

  My pal the police detective and Pinkerton consultant just stared with big wet eyes. Patted his tummy. Eased himself into the too-small chair in my kitchen. “No, not retired,” he said. “Just not working anymore. You nursing some kind of breakdown?”

  “Eligible for Social Security, officer.”

  He took that in. He gave it a long think. His chest rose and fell in the too-tight shirts he wore, not because he liked tight shirts but because they just tightened up on him. My buddy the police detective emeritus was taking on the weight of an old athlete with good appetite for beer, fried potatoes, and after-shift sociability. He wasn’t in a terrible hurry to compare himself favorably with his friend the divorced father in Poorman’s Cottage.

  “Pension time roll around, I might could finish my degree at Lincoln University, be eligible to drive a cab like the other night-school lawyers.”

  “Hire out as a private investigator, solo practitioner, like me.”

  “Maybe. But one thing I’ll tell you, buddy. Not like you.”

  * * *

  I wake and listen to the rain ticking against the window. I must be asleep, I think. No, there’s a slow soaking in gusts that send scattered drops like pellets against the side of Poorman’s Cottage. Just now it’s coming from the east; then the wind turns, the ticking ceases, the walls yield and relax under it. Rain, wind, a steady winter downpour—the drought has stopped.

  I go to the door and look out. Potrero Hill is gleaming in the dark. Reassured, I lie back down, sleep suddenly, and when I wake, wonder if I dreamed all this, which I didn’t. Maybe my night prowling was not about Priscilla, about loneliness, about growing older; it was only about needing to confirm the rain ticking at my window, turning in the wind, bending the walls.

  In the morning, a troop of gulls fetches in the air like infantry, ungull-like, bewildered by bayside city smells. They are sea creatures, marines, not land soldiers; normally quite good at what they do. They know most of the world is water, but adventure and hunger urge them to explore the land. Sometimes they’re willing to dine on garbage deep in the city, just like human beings.

  Dammit if I was going to feel sorry for gulls awking about, cawing, dropping feathers that needed a little dip in salt to feel just right. I was ready to make a treaty with nature. I wouldn’t ask the gulls (or the raccoons, the Scotch broom, or the evil-eyed kids from the Projects) to feel sorry for me and I wouldn’t feel sorry for them.

  My present ambition: not to feel sorry for myself, either. That would complete the cycle.

  In a year or two I might try myself on Xavier with the longing gaze and pretty hair; first my apology, then he might say he too was sorry; then the heart-to-heart talk. Just now the notion made my stomach churn. The urge to throw up means that fellow feeling for Xavier, even if he was jilted in his turn, isn’t ripe yet. Just now I wasn’t pushing for more sympathy, insight, brotherly feeling, or compassion than what came naturally to my heart. It wasn’t much. Just now I still thought Xavier was a rotten asshole with hopes and dreams like every other needy creature. Zen peace of mind only took me so far. I appreciated the gulls in their swooping and scavenging.

  Sometimes in winter, standing in the doorway to catch the weak sunlight, I can see the light soapy film of snow on the hills around the bay. That’s about it for winter around here, although a couple of years there was actual snow on Twin Peaks, crackles of frosted water in the road that lasted an hour or two in the morning. If the town ever really froze, cars, people, and the unprepared raccoons whooping on their paws would just slide into the ocean—back into the ocean. For winter colors, about the closest I see is the dusty green of weeds, sparkles of dew pretending to be ice. That’s not much winter.

  Even in January, the sun barrels down on Potrero Hill. Nighttimes, there’s the fog, Project kids lurking, a few whispery animals on undeveloped raw slopes. Abandoned tires do their best at the abandoned-tire task of growing mosquitoes by gathering water for the incubation season.

  I like to sit outside in the sun. I prop a Goodwill kitchen chair against the warmed siding. If I can’t smell the fennel from here, I trot around a little, trampling Sotch broom. When I sit long enough, I discover butterflies in the air, hummingbirds, invisible mites made visible as I wait there blinking, hands around the mug of instant. My blood pressure descends, ringing a little chime when it hits a number that ends in zero. Down the hill a way, in the shade of the next cottage, an ailanthus grows, tree of heaven. I feel my blood pressure
definitely sliding, teeth recalcifying, cataracts clearing, and because it’s peaceful and nice, my heart bleeds with longing and at the same time heals, seals the insult to proper thumping because that’s how an optimistic metabolism works. Winter things are buzzing and blooming out here, sun nice on my neck as I turn; it’s steadily rotting and garish, this untended junk garden of the good herbs and bad tires. Gradually Goodyear melts back into the sandy alluvial soil of Potrero Hill.

  I pick a blackberry. It’s not sweet, it’s sour. That’s okay, it’s a blackberry and still growing. If I wait for it to sweeten, the gulls will get it. They’re greedy and foolish, but they know enough to wait. I don’t.

  I shouldn’t be looking at the sky for a carrier pigeon to bring me a message; the breed is extinct. A gull heading across the hill with wings spread and lofting might drop an invitation from Karim on my head, and why not accept it? Changing my luck would be a reasonable procedure. Karim was a faithful lover. I had tried other procedures; maybe it was time to try being an employee. Alfonso also practiced being easy and comfortable, and then he lost what mattered. Nothing can be counted on. I could start over in trouble like a kid with jolly Karim’s enterprises and turn out to be a winner after all.

  Let me think about it. Give me a few more years.

  I bite the fennel and get the smell of licorice. I think of Jeff across town. Saturday I’ll take him to the Exploratorium. Jeff, let me put my hand on your shoulder, don’t be embarrassed.

  I don’t have to think about Priscilla, I never stop. Gulls are swooping overhead and I know they aren’t vultures because vultures would circle, waiting; gulls have no real patience. As far as I’m concerned, the universe is still okay. She took my arm as if she loved me.

  Also by Herbert Gold

  Novels

  Birth of a Hero

  The Prospect Before Us

  The Man Who Was Not with It

  The Optimist

  Therefore Be Bold

  Salt

  Fathers

  The Great American Jackpot

  Swiftie the Magician

  Waiting for Cordelia

  Slave Trade

  He/She

  Family

  True Love

  Mister White Eyes

  A Girl of Forty

  Dreaming

  Short Story and Essay Collections

  Love and Like

  The Age of Happy Problems

  The Magic Will: Stories of a Decade

  Lovers and Cohorts

  Nonfiction

  Biafra Goodbye

  My Last Two Thousand Years

  A Walk on the West Side: California on the Brink

  Travels in San Francisco

  Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti

  Bohemia: Where Art, Angst, Love, and Strong Coffee Meet

  A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  SHE TOOK MY ARM AS IF SHE LOVED ME. Copyright © 1997 by Herbert Gold. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  First Edition: June 1997

  eISBN 9781466883307

  First eBook edition: September 2014