Leave It to Me

by Bharati Mukherjee

  I stepped out of the Corolla. Stoop Man, Duvet Man, Tortilla Tim, Beamer Bob, Snorting Sam, Pammy Whammy, everyone in the neighborhood, were already gathered behind one of the barricades on the far sidewalk. They weren’t looking my way; they were interested in the food table. The laggards, people I recognized from soup lines and doorways, were being encouraged by a woman in purple tights and yellow tank top to drag themselves and their supermarket carts and their milk crates and garbage sacks out of the crew’s way.

  The woman fixed a friendly eye on me. “Hi, need help moving your car?”

  “Who do you think you are?” I said.

  “Locations PA,” she said. “We do have the city’s permission, you know.”

  I held my hand out. “Devi,” I announced. “Also known as Goddess.”

  The woman gave my fingers an air-shake. “We need you to cooperate.”

  “Why?”

  “Hey, nothing personal.” She flashed a tense smile. Her lips had been given a collagen workout. “The city permit—”

  “You don’t have a permit from me,” I interrupted.

  “That’s true”—the woman backed away from me—“very true.” She signaled the tow truck I hadn’t noticed before, because it was parked around the corner. “Look, I don’t make the rules. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  My fists clenched up on their own. “Well, I do! I make the rules! So beat it, Ms. Loc!”

  The woman looked down at her shoes. They were Mary Janes in purple suede. I began to enjoy myself. PA ponders power play versus penitence. I could still miss Frankie at the strangest times.

  “Look, could you like move your car out of here for now, and maybe, like take it up with the mayor or something?” She sent an anxious glance to where Stoop Man was lecturing a longhaired man. “Ham?” she spoke into her walkie-talkie.

  The longhaired man raised a walkie-talkie to his lips. “I just learned about inner-city problems in other solar systems. This dude’s a perfect extra. See if you can get me Sarah. Or any of the casting munchkins.”

  “Ham,” the locations PA pleaded, “can you spare a minute? We have a situation.”

  The man with the gray hair to his shoulders had to be in production. Some sort of desk job in the entertainment business, anyway. He wasn’t crew, and he wasn’t talent. I Sherlocked that from his clothes: a dress shirt and tuxedo jacket, white slacks, white loafers, pale panama hat on an oversized head. The white slacks had double pleats, the loafers gilt buckles that didn’t glint in the sun. Pretty cool himself. Not too many guys can wear white shoes and white slacks with wit or style. The shirt was authentic Jazz Age twenties, not shopping-mall knockoff. I’d worked at the expensive Love at Second Site too many summers in Saratoga not to know vintage from junk. Smooth, I decided.

  Ham maneuvered Stoop Man behind the police lines, then ambled to where I was giving his assistant a hard time, all the while nodding to gawkers and shaking hands. Money changing hands as Ham advanced. He didn’t doff his panama, but he did scoop up my left hand in both his and kiss the inside of my wrist.

  “Hi, honey, I’m Ham.” He hung on to my hand, and gave me a deep, I-really-care-about-you look. “What’s the problem? How can I help?”

  “For starters, get this dodo out of my face.”

  Ham did, with an “I’ll take care of this, Mimi, but have Sam call my office and check for messages; I hope Arturo made his flight okay.”

  “Good luck,” the PA said over her shoulder.

  Ham glanced at Pammy Whammy. She was at the crafts-service table, flirting with a man wearing some sort of utility belt. The man was more interested in her than in the Danish in his hand.

  “You looking to break into movies like everyone else?” Ham asked. “You want it, you got it. The usual rate. Fifty bucks cash for the day.”

  “So that’s how you guys take care of problems?”

  “That’s the rate,” Ham repeated. “Nonunion nonfeatured extra.” He leaned towards me. I felt my back press against the Corolla’s door. Dawn had started out foggy, and the car was more soaked than dewy. “Are we working it out?”

  I sized up my advantage. “What is this shit?” I snapped. “Ethnic cleansing?”

  “That’s pretty heavy, honey.”

  “Well, here’s a counteroffer.” I slipped my hand out of his, reached in through the driver’s side window and pressed the horn and kept pressing it and let up only when he pleaded, “Okay, LA tactics always win. So how much are we talking? Are you the community rep or just acting freelance?”

  I tried to think big. “A grand,” I blurted. “In cash. No deductions.”

  Ham’s face relaxed. “You got it.” He laughed.

  I cursed myself for thinking small-time Hudson Valley.

  Ham consolidated his win. “That’s you plural. You as spokesperson of, and disburser for …”

  I was a counterfeit wheeler-dealer. Ham was the genuine thing.

  “What’s your community organization? My assistant’ll need a name.”

  I thought he was going to call me on the scam. But he smiled instead, as though he and I were playing a game. “Have your assistant phone me.” I pointed to the pay phone.

  “You have to come up with just the right name,” he advised. “Names count. How about Lower Haight Development Authority, or—”

  I cut him off. “I hate authority. Development Association.” Ham looked impressed. He lifted his panama and dipped from the waist in a Japanese bow. I had a good thing going. “And what’s this Upper and Lower Haight bit, elitist scum! We’re the HDA. Your office is dealing with the HDA.”

  Ham made a note on his palm with a Mont Blanc ballpoint. “My office, tomorrow. Be there?” He pulled a business card out of the pocket of his dress shirt.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  “I’d guess so have you, honey.”

  I flicked the card in through the car window. “Why should I trust you, Mr. Ham?”

  The man acted stunned. Finally he said, “You have a sense of humor.”

  “What’s the joke?”

  “I’m Ham,” the man said. “Because I’m Ham, Hamilton Cohan. The Father of His Country, Parts I, II, III and IV?”

  “A rip-off of Flash’s Boss Tong of Hong Kong, Parts I through VII,” I sneered.

  “My god! You know the Flash films of Francis Fong!”

  I knew from the sudden beatific sheen on the man’s baggy-eyed face that my life had turned an unexpected corner. Welcome to the Magic Kingdom. I kept my excitement low profile.

  “A Fong homage,” Ham Cohan explained, “not a rip-off.” He stroked the same wrist he’d kissed, then gripped my hand and gave it a reverent shake. “I can’t believe you know Fong’s films! That makes you an automatic member of the Flash Fan Club. Want to know who else belongs? Tarantino and me.”

  Mimi crackled a message on Ham’s walkie-talkie. “Arturo checked in. But dead drunk. He’s a no-show for this afternoon.”

  “Gotta go,” Ham apologized. But he was still beaming at me. “So you’re a Fong fan. This has to be karma! Have lunch tomorrow? I’ll send a car. Just stand at the corner there and Sam’ll find you. Ciao until then!”

  The first time I heard of karma was from the Indian burger-muncher at McDonald’s, the one who’d asked me out to an Indian movie. A moonfaced man with heavy lids and a neat goatee, he’d made his move, then handled my rejection philosophically.

  “Your no is not a personal disappointment,” he’d lectured, “because it is evidently not in my karma to see you outside this eatery. So, what to do? Overdose on Sominex like my roommate, Mukesh, who was having brilliant career in biochemistry? No! The concept of karma is that fate is very dynamic. Not too many peoples are understanding that part of it. True concept of karma is: when on a dead-end street, jump into alternate paths.”

  I don’t think Ham had that Indian man’s concept of karma in mind when he sent his assistant for me. A woman was at the wheel of a blue Ford Escort. “I’m Sam
,” she called out to where I was squatting on the sidewalk next to Pammy and her pup, Whammy. “Samantha. Ham’s assistant. He said you’d be expecting me.”

  The woman’s face with its nose stud, tongue hoop and eyebrow rings didn’t seem out of place at the corner of Cole and Haight. I tested her as a matter of principle. “How do you know you want me and not her? Or her? Or him?” It was a warm morning. Folks I didn’t recognize from soup lines were staking out spots and propping up cardboard signs. GIVING FEELS GOOD, TRY IT! LOST MY TICKET HOME TO THE MOON, NEED HELP. Amateurs, transients. Trust fund derelicts. Dim prospects of futurity.

  Samantha said, “The boss doesn’t forget faces. He described you to a tee. Shall we?”

  On the way to ShoeString Studios’ offices in North Beach, in the middle of one of my harangues on the highhandedness of rich movie people who thought they could come into a neighborhood and treat us like dirt, she asked, “Wow! Did you feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Three-point-two, at least. You know what I was doing when the last one hit? Weighing a Bulgarian in a Berkeley weight-loss clinic for nudists, and the man jumped naked off the scales and raced right out into Shattuck, that’s a busy street!”

  I hadn’t felt any tremor. Probably because I wasn’t tuned in to earthquake preparedness. I went back to haranguing.

  Samantha didn’t enjoy the drive as much as I did. When she showed me into Ham’s office, I heard her whisper, “For your lunch, I recommend the Turns, boss.”

  Ham Cohan wasn’t Asian according to Frankie’s formula, but he was a man with more needs than wants. I sized him up before I’d clocked fifteen minutes in his office. He needed to wheel and deal in human vanities, needed to do favors so he would be owed, needed to break down doors for friends so he’d be admired and to rescue waifs like me so he’d be adored. I figure a guy who makes himself that indispensable must collect in imaginative ways. He didn’t look it, but he could turn out to be more dangerous than Frankie.

  At least Ham didn’t come on direct, forthright, as Frankie had, which was just as well. I was off men for the while, smelling smoke, seeing flames, when I thought of sex. I was attracted to Ham. I don’t deny it. It had to do with the game he played. Ham’s game was devotion. Devotion tending to the melodramatic.

  He sat me on a chair under a framed The Father of His Country, Parts I, II, III poster triptych while he networked for me on the phone. “Hi, Simone, what’s up? Still desperate for a house sitter?… Does that mean what I think it means?… I think it means Padraic’s out of the picture, et cetera. Well, mazel tov, darling … I’ll ask around. Shouldn’t be impossible to find someone … I know, I know, you have psycho goldfish and nervous plants.”

  “I need a job, Ham. I have a place.”

  “Hi, Verna, how’s the commute going? If you decide to spend the whole month with Larry in Tucson, I might be able to find you just the right tenant … Keep in touch, ciao!”

  Pappy used to be a chain-smoker. Ham had to be a chain-telephoner.

  “Hi, Jess, I have a very special friend sitting in my office … No, just arrived in town … Yeah, exactly, I’m trying to talk her into helping you out at the agency. Here, I’ll put Devi on so you can work your charm on her … Just for a second, though, we’re running late as it is … Day-Vee, yes … I don’t think it’s an Indian name, Jess. She hasn’t mentioned anything about being named for any Indian village or mountain. You’re thinking Uma, as in Thurman.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Is it a Hindu name?”

  I shrugged. “Got it off a license plate.”

  “Cool.” He laughed.

  I went with the laugh.

  “Okay, see you at Glide Sunday? You bring whichever tight-ass author you’re looking after this weekend, I’ll bring my new friend. Ciao!”

  “Who’s Jess?” I asked.

  “Just the woman who owns the hottest media escorting business in the country.” He punched up another number.

  “Why did your friend Jess think my name’s Indian?”

  Ham was still networking. “Hi, Francesca, cara mia, just checking in … Yeah, it’s moving, the director hasn’t shot himself in the head yet, and the cash cow from Osaka hasn’t cut us off yet, so we aren’t complaining … But how’re you doing?… That’s it, that’s why I’m calling. I just met someone who’d be perfect for your restaurant. Jaqui may’ve beat you to it …”

  Ham worked the phone, part agent, part producer and wanna-be lover; I paced his overfurnished office. After the sixth call I stopped eavesdropping and read aloud the names in fine print off Ham’s posters of art films. Lola Lavendar. Baby Tahbeez. F. A. Fong. Frankie Fong high-kicking in The Monster of Mandalay? My Frankie in a pre-Flash horror flick? Guilt closed in. I let myself down into a chair directly below that poster.

  “Weird,” I remarked. I meant the Flash connection between us.

  “He’s moved to the States, you know.” Ham put the phone down, and sighed. “It’s sad, really sad. He’s making videos for some exercise firm. The man was a genius.”

  Is, but I let the error pass.

  “His house burned down in New York. Someplace upstate. I heard he’s being investigated for murder and arson.”

  “Somebody died?”

  “Some squeeze. Smoke inhalation.”

  I didn’t have to believe the rumor about death from smoke inhalation. I didn’t have to believe there was any fatality. I didn’t have to believe there’d been a fire, except that I’d witnessed it.

  “It must have been an accident. They said it was an old firetrap, and he’d added all sorts of electrical shit. Someone must have fallen asleep smoking. The cops picked him up ’cos he was screaming and running down the street like a maniac. The Oswald syndrome. He doesn’t belong in a state pen! Jeez, the Flash was a genius.”

  I held my gaze on the Mandalay Monster. On the contrary, Flash was so vulnerable, a one-hundred-fourteen-pound woman destroyed him. We knew that all along, bud, didn’t we?

  Ham grinned, rolling his eyes up at the Mandalay Monster. “Acts like my ex-wife. Looks like all my ex-wives.” He beat his chest in mock horror. “You see where romantics end up?”

  “Where?”

  “Living alone on houseboats. On the lam from exes, lawyers, creditors.” He pointed to a Polaroid picture taped to the side of his computer. It was of an ordinary-looking houseboat, its name, Last Chance, painted in red across its prow. “It can be cozy.” He gave me an it’s-your-call kind of look. I must have scared him. “I’m starving, how about you? Wanna check out my favorite Chinese hole-in-the-wall?” He grabbed his jacket off a peg behind the door of his office and walked to the elevator while wriggling his arms into the sleeves. The jacket wasn’t cut like the blazers and sports jackets men wore in Schenectady. It was loosely fitted and collarless. You had to be confident to wear that. What’s next, sky-blue tuxedo with black piping?

  Over lunch at Tung and Phuk on Stockton near Columbus, Ham went through a Coming-to-a-Theater-Near-You version of his life epic. Suburban childhood. Parochial schools. Dad into Knights of Columbus and the Irish Rovers, Mum into Jack Daniel’s. Four surviving siblings, making adequate livings as photographer, graphics designer, prison warden and short-order cook. “I dropped out of Berkeley to look after Mum.” He sang a bar from “Beauty School Dropout.”

  “Don’t be so defensive,” I soothed. I made the necessary entry in my mental Rolodex: Catholic; four divorces; no kids; impulsive but avoids commitment.

  Ham turned his bad marriages into sitcoms, then prodded me. “Your turn, Day-Vee. I don’t know a thing about you.”

  I chopsticked a perfect crisp-fried squid from its bed of spinach to Ham’s lips. Take your time, I told myself, craft a bio to charm, don’t scare him with the little you know.

  “Give me your first impressions, Ham.”

  “Oh, streetwise in a way,” he teased. “Actually, I see two people.”

  “Only two?” I teased back.

  “I noticed the New York p
lates. You’re about as Haight as a Japanese tourist.” He squirted pepper sauce on his noodles. “You ever model, do a little acting? On the lam? Drugs, maybe?”

  “Okay, you’re good.”

  “New York’s cool,” he said. “New York’s sexy.”

  I played to Ham’s image of me. Mother was the innocent native-born Californian from one of those valley towns ending in o, a fun, normal late-sixties-early-seventies type who’d tried out all the good stuff like communes, bead curtains, Buddhism, drugs, headbands, drugs, lots of drugs, Jimi, Janis, Morrison, am I missing something from those times, Ham?

  Ham bought it, and played along. “Candlemakers on Telegraph, gurus on Sproul Plaza, ashrams in Napa. Jimi used to hide out in my place when he wanted to be with a chi—I mean, a woman—for longer than an hour. That’s before all the booze and drugs, of course. Who knows, I might even have met your mother.”

  “Fucked her, you mean?”

  Ham ignored that, and the distant implication. “That’s the way it was. Where’s she living now?”

  “No clue.”

  “Tell me something new.”

  “She’s dead, for all I know. Like Jimi and Janis.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  She’ll wish she were. But I didn’t say that. I said instead, “I wouldn’t know where to look. My legal parents—I was adopted when I was two—don’t know and don’t care to know.”

  Bio-Mom I painted as a flake who’d backpacked across three continents, chasing herbs and new gurus.

  “Half the girls in Berkeley were on those trips.” He got mawkish nostalgic, and looked like an old man all of a sudden. “The girls of our youth.”

  I stabbed at wilted greens that I didn’t have names for. “Women,” I corrected.

  “Two of my wives knew their way around Katmandu a lot better than Oakland.” He sighed. “And add to them, oh god! Laura Ann, Melanie, Loni, Jess, Cindi, the Holbrook twins …”