Old and Cold

by Jim Nisbet

  FIFTEEN

  BUT YOU BURIED THE PISTOL IN ITS PLASTIC SACK IN THE DIRT among the roots of the tree, on top of which you slept. So the means of production remain. But the lack of shoes is a threat to your innocuousness. Down Hayes Street, five blocks east of Stanyan, stands a café that’s open very late. The sun is barely up. In front of the café stands a pair of 96-gallon garbage trolleys, into one of which a man has thrust his upper torso to the Waist. So many puns, so much remuneration. The lid is up on the second trolley, and atop its load of refuse sits a styrofoam plate containing a bagel, cream cheese, a few leaves of roughage, and one and a half strips of bacon. You begin to eat this meal. It’s not bad. The bagel is perhaps no more than a day old. The bacon is cold, not drained of fat, and tough. But it’s also hickory smoked, a flavor you have not sampled for some years. The roughage you leave. Head down into the first trolley, the man continues to root about. In the window aside the door of the café behind the two trolleys a slate proclaims the price of a breakfast bagel at six dollar. As if it were a victory. Two pigeons watch the scene from a respectful distance of six or eight feet. The forager sounds like a rat making its way through a bed of ivy. One of the pigeons darts along the sidewalk to the foot of the trolley, beaks up a crumb of the bagel, and zigzags away, as if dodging gunfire. She is followed by her mate, and they take turns pecking at their discovery in the middle of the street. Two blocks away, a garbage truck takes delivery of the contents of somebody else’s trolleys. Willy-nilly, trolleys stand before every building on both sides of the street as far as the eye can see. The hand of the man emerges from the first trolley and sets another styrofoam carton atop the refuse in the second trolley, and returns to its work. You open the carton, revealing half an omelette, made with shallots with goat cheese perhaps, tomatillos on the side. A receipt lifts as if by magic and presents itself to you, scrawl up, and hesitates a moment before your eyes, while you read it, before it flutters sideways into the gutter, there to be momentarily inspected and dismissed by both pigeons. Not goat cheese but feta—what’s the difference? Perhaps the ewe, suggests the smart money, as if just waking up, but, in either case, there’s the brine preservative. It’s like pulling teeth, you remark, while remembering to chew on just the one side, to get you to make any comment remotely germane. No puling teeth about it, ripostes the smart money, they pule when called, and top of the morning to you, too. The very sheath of misery, no two ways about it. A square meal, nonetheless and, but for a fork, perhaps the tetanus. For tetanus, one needs a deeper wound than the mouth. Is there such? In most cases, yes. Lame, you remark, apropos of nothing, is an anagram of male. A short silence. From the depths of the first trolley, rustling persists. In the street, the sire attempts to mount his missus while she’s eating. Every situation will present its opportunity, remarks the smart money, no matter how opaque. Those shoes, for instance. I see they left you your socks. Everybody has their limit. They are perhaps the correct size. Nor are they out at the uppers. That would make it his turn. So far as that goes, he seems already fully engaged. Having fed you, he may well take pleasure in seeing you shod, too. You replace the styrofoam carton, now denuded excepting the tomatillos, atop the refuse within the second trolley, and drag the back of your hand over your mouth. He’s been a deal of help, this fellow. We have left him his salad. Bent at the waist as he is, over the frontmost lip of the trolley, which is fully forty-two inches off the ground, he’s tippy-toe, his shoes are easy targets. That bin makes for him a rather large phylactery, broods the smart money. Laceless, in fact, off they come. The figure stops rummaging. The socks are surprisingly clean. But he does not emerge from the cart. Perhaps he is contemplating the possibility of some fresh mortification. And behold, he has started to rummage again. What could possibly be in there, so deep? The man is merely thorough. And the odor? His milieu. His dedication to his task has saved him a thumping. To which you looked forward? Not at all, not at all. Not even a little? Not a whit. Nothing wasted, then. Empathy with the poor scavenger’s degraded estate. None whatsoever. The truck is but a block away. He must soon emerge. Then we must away. A coffee would be good. Your stomach can no longer handle coffee. I’d forgotten. No matter. In three days, at the most, an hotel. And martinis. How much is left? Perhaps eleven dollars. They took your coat, they took your shoes, they didn’t take your perineum. At Fulton and Ashbury, one descries a pair of sneakers, dangling by their laces from the south-facing stoplight. They are extremely large, though nearly new, but their laces take no time at all to remove from their former grommets and grommet them anew. Old grommet! delights the smart money. Frayed lace! No delight but in things, though you might have killed your fellow desolate. He is nothing to me, no more than I to anyone else. In failing to be hungover, you remain witless. I couldn’t agree more. The view from atop Fulton Street is priceless—City Hall, the new, “green” Federal Building, the newly arrived edifice apparently at Fulton’s eastern extremity, though much further away, on the very edge of the bay, its obscenity blocks the rising sun. And the moon, too, most nights; it blocks the rising moon. Will this vanity never be pulled down? Yours was pulled down years ago, and it’s all you will ever understand of vanity, which, remaining buried and unremembered, amounts to a minusculity, untrafficked. Hammer flush every human salient. Defeat flocks like hoarfrost the slim blade of your being. Good morning, sirrah. Your customary sheath of misery? Perhaps there is time, this morning. Having fed, without benefit of coffee, lo these many years, and forward. Forward it is, deliberately ignoring the portent of this morning’s lameness. Something isn’t right. You’ve started off on the wrong foot, unshod, in a manner not usual. The sheath of misery fits uncomfortably, like it’s shrunk in the dryer, another canker you can chalk up to immoderate cleanliness, plus or minus an evening passed out-of-doors, in the embrace of nature, as it were, nature red in toothlessness and traffic signal. Crimson, even. Got game? No particularly. Yet persist one must. Please take into consideration the primal endurance of the mud that was and will be this flesh, and look out for that bus. Thank you. Why am I so tired? Good question. Maybe your enzymes is flagging. As go your martinis, however, you must persevere. Right you are, and perhaps there’s still time. East on Fulton to Divisadero, right to Fillmore, left and all the way up Fillmore to Jackson. Not long after the turn onto Fillmore you pass a Goodwill outlet, but it’s early, they’re not open yet, and though they no doubt would provide a nice overcoat against the chill, perhaps later today, on the way back. That cypress off Stanyan isn’t a bad place to wait out payday, a little more work in the bastionade department would make it reasonably secure, tin cans on strings, empty plastic bags on the ground, a scattergun, infrared perimeter intrusion detection—what else? A gallon of vodka, came the reply. Ah, back on task. Right on Jackson, run the ridge over Russian Hill and down through Chinatown to, lets’ say, Columbus Avenue, left on Stockton to Union, right and up the hill to Montgomery—et voilà… The sleepiest neighborhood you could want. The sun is fairly up, it is true. A flock of cherry-headed conures circle aloft, broadcasting their morning racket until the drove gets organized, then vectors off to one of their select hangouts, the Monterey pines in Washington Square Park, for example, or the palm trees down the early blocks of Dolores Street, or any of several especial groves in the Presidio or Golden Gate Park. You know them all because you visit them too. A jogger with a Labrador retriever on a leash chuffs up the hill. You assume your position on the bench. To the south stands the pyramid, the BofA building, the twin towers of the Hong Kong Hotel. Voices from up the street. A gate closes, and a young man wearing braces under his pinstripe jacket and carrying a briefcase makes his way down the hill, already on the phone, the heels of his shoes clacking. Three blasts on the horn of a cruise ship indicate that it’s backing up, disembarking for Juneau or Honolulu or both. An electric car glides silently down the hill, takes a right on Green Street. Two children, almost certainly brother and sister, both wearing book satchels, walk hand in hand up the hill toward,
no doubt, Garfield Elementary School, at the corner of Kearny and Filbert, just below Coit Tower. You wonder what time school starts. You wonder what time it is altogether. And then the gate over the entrance to fourteen-ten Montgomery Street creaks open, only to allow street access to another young fellow, dressed almost identically to the earlier one, a young man on the way to his office, gymnasium, café. The anecdotal evidence of these endeavors curl your lip. And as you turn around to refold your arms and scowl at the southerly view, still chilly in your long-sleeve pineapple shirt, the gate opens again, and she steps through it. She, too is dressed as if for a day at the office, though in slacks and practical flats. She could dress way up from this costume, you notice, she’s an attractive young woman, and, once again, the fleeting query as to what she might have done to get you into her picture crosses your mind. But it’s way too late for that now, for in reality she is the only thing between you and your next binge, and that’s all she is. She comes down the hill, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other. She’s taking the steps carefully, as it’s steep. She passes you on the bench, and, favoring you with a polite smile as she grasps the handrail, begins the descent. You watch her. At the bottom of the staircase she turns right, onto Kearny. So if she’s for downtown she’s not for downtown yet, you conclude, she’s going for her morning coffee. Seized by this intuition, you descend the steps yourself. At the bottom of the stairs you catch a glimpse of her at the far end of the block, taking a left on Kearny. So far, so good. You go straight on to Vallejo, where you descend a longer staircase, and on its next-to-last tread you take a seat. And soon enough, she appears on the corner and she takes a right, across Kearny, and heads west on Vallejo. You stand, thinking that, almost certainly, she’s heading for the Trieste Café, which has held down that’s street’s intersection with Grant Avenue for two or three generations. Therefore you retake the stairs on faith, back up, and at the top you take a right and descend to Broadway. There, amid the sudden bluster of morning traffic, you take a right. A short block later you cross Kearny, and, soon enough, you take a right at the corner of Columbus. A very short stroll, north and up a slight grade, you turn the corner at Grant Avenue and, thirty yards later, presto, across the street is the Trieste Café, wherein, viewed from the street window, she waits in line. Outside the café on the Vallejo sidewalk there’s a chair and a vacant table, page A-1 flapping atop a disheveled Chronicle beneath two empty cups, both still showing the remains of cappuccino foam. You co-opt table, chair, newspaper. “So You Just Want To Forget? Science Working on Eraser.” “Korean Missile Was a Failure.” “Pakistan’s Ticking Clock.” “Ranks of Homeless Swell as Middle Class Teeters.” “No Easy Answer for Recharging Cell Batteries.” You’re just settling in for reading the newspaper, something you haven’t done for a long time, so long you can’t remember, and you’re just beginning to wonder how long, it must have been the last time you were in Union Square, when a woman passes by. You wait, then look up. It’s her. She’s heading west on Vallejo. You go back to the paper. You shake your head. You deal the paper in to the table top in a heap, as if disgusted. She turns the corner, left, south on Columbus. You stand up, round the corner of the café entrance, and take your time walking back down Grant. Soon enough, she crosses the mouth of upper Grant, at Columbus. She’s carrying a covered paper cup in one hand, the briefcase in the other. No sign of the cellphone. You take a left at the corner. She’s waiting for the light at Broadway. You read the menu in a window to your left. Pumpkin Papardelli, $9.95. Across Columbus, the red hand on the pedestrian signal begins to blink, and the numeric readout counts down from ten. When it reaches three, you begin walking. The hand stops blinking and remains on. The light turns red. The light in front of your quarry turns green. As she gains the curb on the south side of Broadway, you step off the curb on the north side. As you mount the southern curb, she’s passing the mouth of Jack Kerouac Alley, formerly Adler Place. Across the street from her and down a little bit, at the corner of Columbus and California, a big green neon cocktail glass lofts above Mr. Bings. MARTINI, the sign says, speaking to you, to you, personally, and, with a growl of resolve, you quicken your pace. A helicopter passes overhead, low, seeking knowledge, perhaps, of traffic on the Central Freeway. She rounds the corner at the northern vertex of Kearny, where it cross Columbus, where she’s caught the light, and she skips across Pacific there, just as the light turns green, and four lanes of traffic accelerate up Kearny, to split evenly at the X, two lanes north on Columbus, back up to Broadway, and two lanes north on Kearny, also up to Broadway. You have to wait for this traffic. But you can see her, as she waits as a car that has made a left across two lanes of northbound traffic, on Columbus, to enter a parking garage to her left. She removes the cover from the hotcup and has a sip of coffee. The car enters the garage. The light changes, enabling you to cross Kearny. You wait to cross Pacific. From here, you can no longer see your quarry. The pistol is tucked under your waistband at the small of your back, under the loose tail of your pineapple shirt, and you touch it. The Czechoslovakian café, you notice, has been boarded up. The light changes. Gaining the opposite curb, you walk through a glass door, into the elevator lobby of the yellow brick building on the south eastern corner of Pacific and Kearny, and back out the glass door at the far side of it. Down a wide flight of four steps and you are on the sidewalk of the Kearny, across the street from Columbus Tower, aka the San Francisco Flatiron Building. At the bottom of the block the light turns green, so she crosses Jackson. By the time you get there the light has turned red. You take a left on Jackson. There’s no traffic so halfway down the block you jaywalk diagonally across the street. At the corner, you take a right onto Montgomery and see, at the bottom of the block, a woman waiting for the light at the three-way intersection of Kearny, Montgomery, and Washington. Across the street from her looms the open framework geodesic atop which stands the Transamerican Pyramid, whose footprint is half the block. The light goes green. Gaining the curb across Washington, she takes a left. The light goes red as you arrive. You turn east on the south side of the street. Halfway down the block stands a gate into a little pocket park that stretches along the east side of the pyramid, between Washington and Clay. North across Washington from this gate is the mouth of Hotaling Place, and connecting them is a pedestrian crosswalk, against whose right of way traffic must yield. You cross as she enters the park. At lunchtime today, any number of people will be scattered among the odd spot of sunshine reading, talking on the phone, eating. At the moment, however, there is no one. The park is deserted. You quicken your pace, pulling the gun. You rack the slide as you extend your arm. The pistol is a foot from the back of her neck when a blow strikes your shoulder and spins you around. Your pistol discharges harmlessly. Quite surprised, you see a man down on one knee in the middle of Washington Street, holding a pistol of his own with both hands, arms full extended. His pistol is pointing at you. A man to his left faces the oncoming traffic with arms outspread. He’s shouting. A tire squeals. The man with the gun looks at you, over his weapon, questioningly. You lower your pistol and, just as you fire at him, you receive another violent blow from behind. Your gun discharges, quite harmlessly. Again you spin, this time slowly. You notice a white cup rolling across the flagstones, streaming a brown liquid, from which steam arises. Her briefcase on the ground, mouth open, she is holding a pistol of her own. If it’s a millimeter, it’s nine of them, you are surprised to note. She looks surprised, too, and she might also have a question to ask. There is shouting. A wave of imbalance courses through your legs, it’s like the ’89 earthquake again, it’s as if you’re just off the deck of a ship after years before the mast. A shadow flicks over the park. You lower your pistol. She blinks, then begins to lower the barrel of her gun. A blow knocks you forward, your gun discharges, and its snap explodes a divot out of a flagstone in front of you. The smoking chips are barely disseminated before you bite the cavity with your one incisor, which is dislodged. Vertebrae crack. Your legs toss insensate af
t of you, like scythed vines. You feel very little of this, but, for lack of a better term, it’s as if your hear all of it. The younger cop is upon you, and you are disarmed. He wants to cuff you. To this end he locates one arm, but gore obfuscates the other. She is close. I didn’t recognize him, the older cop is saying, though you can’t see him. He cleaned himself up. That was fucking close, the younger cop says, angrily. She is staring at you, visibly upset. It’s her first time, perhaps. It’s okay, you telepath, it’s the first time for both of us. Her distress is palpable. It’s going to be contagious. Her pistol is in one hand. In the other, you can see, is her badge. She had wanted to show it to you. Now she’s crying. Your heart, such as it is, goes out to her. Maybe this could be my daughter. Oh, says the smart money, now you’re human. Where the hell have you been? Packing my bags. I’m out of here, I knew you’d go soft in the end, and the smart money goes up in smoke. Not on your life, you stipulate to the evanescing ghost, I’m maintaining my standards! Listen. Listen! Don’t worry about this, this thing, you try to tell her, don’t worry, you try to tell the smart money, don’t worry, you try to tell everybody especialy her, they’re holding you down but you get it out with a roar, it’s one less human being to despise.