by Herbert Gold
“Hey?” Ferd asked. “Pay attention in class, okay?”
Kasdan was wondering if spiders could sense that the always imminent San Francisco earthquake has ripened. If the building falls, even if it isn’t supposed to, does the web sway and bend but not break, due to spider architectural skills?
“Hey, hey, we got business here, you look uncomfortable. Not comfy, pard?” There was much goodwill in his concern, with the implication that Kasdan should reciprocate with goodwill of his own. Instead, Kasdan was busy sniffing out the mold finding its place in the shaded alley along with weed saplings, the trees of purgatory; sniffing out what he couldn’t smell. “Dan, I need you to care, not just do a job like it’s only a job. Pay attention. I’m human, you read me? Just like anybody else, I want to hear the bitch, strike that, the lady say my name after I come. Maybe she’d come too if she said my name and then I’d say hers. But no – dumb cunts! So friendship in a not faggot way is what I really count on, now that I feel sad because the bitch always lets me down, it’s what they do. Might as well use a greasy pillow, toss it in the trash, know what I’m telling you, Dan?”
“I do.”
“Then pay attention.”
“I am.”
“Okay then...” Ferd relaxed. He gathered his strength. He adopted a dramatic old-time television voice, growling, “Our story continues…”
“I’ll do it,” stated Dan Kasdan.
Ferd responded with a wide wet lippy smile. It had to go like this. Dan was coming through for him. “You know what, Cowboy?”
“Don’t…”
Ferd’s hand flew up. “Okay, okay, I won’t. Peace, brother. You’re my partner and a cowboy partner has his own dignity, but okay, okay, you don’t like the tribute. I’m just asking your undivided... I was going to tell you all…” – another dramatic television voice – “Prominent Lawyer and Business Man Tells All! How I used to earn my daily burrito with extra salsa trying to help our Hispanic Latino Chicano brothers from the other side of the law make something better of themselves, upgrade from perpetrator to, I don’t know, dishwasher, sell some white powder around the back entrance maybe, buy an SUV maybe – no, scratch that – a Buick Skylark convertible from the lot in Daly City with the gizmos that make it hump and jump when they’re cruising on Mission the hottest day of Chinko de Mayo, they like that, pumping the tar up from the street because the stupid Skylark’s rusted all the way down, what-the-fuck…”
“Ferd?”
“Okay, okay. But just let me mention Pedro probably got the sound box turned up maximo maximus... You know those Latino girls with the skin like brown silk and the shiny ass till they’re twenty, twenty-one? That silk is mucho-mucho, hombre. But then the ass starts to wrinkle and droop from too many burritos in lard, plus their natural born genes. So Pedro dreams about the white girl he could really love and respeck. Personally, I ask him: what’s wrong with a firecracker from your own kind? He doesn’t answer cause I only ask him in my secret heart. Meantime, you can hear him spinning, doing wheelies, blasting his music all the way to the Indian Alkie Happy Hunting Ground, you know that sidewalk between 16th and 18th on Mission? And then he pulls up ’cause he sees this pair of tits bouncing down the street... Do I get your undivided attention?”
“No,” Kasdan said. “Cut to the chase.”
“You’ll be amply funded to jet off to Hong Kong China for R and R, come back with white linen suits from that tailor there. Shit, you’ll wanna fly to La Jolla California for a quick weekend, wear your new linen suit to the La Valencia, sit in that bar where all the stoned rich hotties drink down the sunset. You won’t even need one of the rich ones. You can embellish your suit, man, with a beautiful cocktail honey, no Botox in her face, doesn’t need it, not yet – wrinkles up her skin adoringly when you say, Dinner? Course, her mother probably bought her the grandissimo hooters across the border in Tijuana Mexico for her sweet sixteenth birthday, couple years ago. Mom and her both got the blond hair dark at the roots, up for anything, both of them together – Mom’s just a big kid herself, but built, muy built.”
Kasdan’s eyes were closed.
“You can, let me emphasize this, you can do anything your heart desires. I don’t feel your pain, man. I feel your pleasure.”
“You know what I want.”
“Right right right.” Ferd was impatient with Kasdan’s impatience. “Right, take care of your daughter, get little Sergei the best of custodial, the nursemaid, the docs, the helps, not need D’Wayne to do what you know he can’t... There you go, right. But sometimes a fellow needs to work off a little mischief, you’re picked up shitfaced…”
“Not me.”
“… you can just pay the fine, apologize to your buddy Harvey, say Judge I needed to work off a little, well, you’ll call it something, how about ‘stress’? Not criminal mischief…”
“Is this where we’re going? Blah, blah, blah?”
And suddenly the spigot turned itself off. Ferd blushed. He had revealed too much exhilaration. His cheeks revealed a pale stubble. He seemed to remember he had to take matters step by step for the man who worked for him, not just fire off words, not just spending adrenalin and nerves, self-inflamed, to demonstrate that the universe did the bidding of Ferd Conway. He stopped emitting. He looked about himself confusedly, waiting for the words to die against walls, decay, fall to the floor. He accepted being called to order. Silence happened. He said: “Profit is where we’re going. Gain.”
A telephone was ringing two steps away. Kasdan had already noticed this phone, a novelty item with a pig snout and hair painted on its muzzle, a Chinatown special. He hadn’t considered it a working object. This was not the first mistake in his association with Ferd. It was a working pig snout. The pig rang and rang and Ferd committed the grim little, shy little, shrugging little smile that stated: You are so important to me, and our deal is so important to us both, that I’m not even going to answer this phone. It rang once more, half a ring. Ferd shook his head. He gazed silently upon Kasdan while the drama of the unanswered pig snout filled their lives.
When it stopped, he continued. “Hey, things go as good as they’re bound to, you can have a par-tay, dress up, meet some rich person with her own real estate, even marry her, why not? You can fuckin pool your resources, Dan, hear me?”
He had Kasdan’s divided attention. Kasdan was thinking of Sergei and the diapers he would need for too long. He was seeing the lost and found Amanda smiling at her dad, which she did sometimes, although the conditions of her rearing were defined by his absence. He could make up for it. “Yes, I’m listening,” Kasdan said.
“Not planning to step out on me, Dan? Not planning, I don’t know, what’s that I smell? Duplicity?”
It was a big word, but after all, Ferd had passed the California Bar and only been suspended from practice, due to no fault of his, twice.
“In that you need some ready cash money, free of the federal claim, also the state’s cut, and in that I need a partner I can trust and to whom I can give all my fiduciary confidence…”
“Be it resolved,” Kasdan murmured.
“… and in that I personally prefer furthermore a partner I value as a human being albeit at times a sarcastic asshole…”
“Let’s get to it,” Kasdan said.
“You’re awesome!” Ferd held his hands up, palms open and out, nothing to hide. “Lookit,” he said. He pulled a stained vinyl suitcase from a bottom shelf which otherwise held San Francisco Chronicles to be perused at some future date. “This is what you won’t carry!” he said. “You will pass through Miami International with dignity, man, along with all the other fun-lovers, only a little sweaty. Those security hassles after that fucking nine-eleven, it’s natural. I’m paying you for not showing it. Apply an aluminum compound, dries the flopsweat pores, maybe irritate your skin a little, but don’t set off no detectors, plus you get to meditate about the extra percentage I lay on the top for pain and suffering, whatever blood pressure might ensue.�
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“Ferd…”
“Wait.” He held up only one hand this time. “I’m getting there in my own time. We need to cover every step of the way. This is for your own benefit, feel secure plus be secure, okay?” As if it belonged to someone else, he blinked at his right hand, which was still suspended in air, did his wincing grin, pulled it down with his left hand. See how concerned he was, so that even his body’s coordinated limbs were uncoordinated?
So afterwards, he continued... and there really wasn’t that much heavy lifting involved, just carry the cash to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, buy a little property there, a nice house on the seashore in Jacmel, this pretty little village – okay, it was a rough trip by a bad road from Porto – and okay, plus you have to deal with a notaire, they call him, make sure the papers were all in order, the deed... okay, there was a little light lifting going on, it’s the Third World after all, but the beauty part – Third World records and computers... like Pong machines!... and then afterwards Dan could settle back home in a better-living condo and not have to talk jive with illegal funkybutts in County Jail, but instead... help poor little Sergei with some special ed? Make Amanda proud by acting like a real dad?... Ferd paused for breath; he was only human. And added: “Take a trip to Vegas or Paris any day, any time, think nothing of it!”
Dan’s choice. One little deal, maybe a follow-up if he wants to increase the extra affluence. All he had to do.
In addition, Dan and Ferd would be forever bound together by chains of deep mutual self-interest. Together, they could grow old gracefully (Dan ahead of Ferd in the grow-old department, of course, but it makes little difference after the first hundred years).
All Dan had to do, right?
“... like the grown-up prosperous ma-choor individuals we both aim to be, are we on the same page, partner?”
The stare of Kasdan’s partner was like that of a contented but wary cat across the ruins of a meal of newborn mice, the mom having been saved for dessert, sticky pieces of her not yet cleaned from his claws. Then Ferd did a little curtsey, not anything too extreme, not sinking to his knees, just enough to make it clear he was being cute.
But hadn’t Dan already agreed and agreed and agreed?
“The first of the month,” Ferd was saying. “A nice two weeks is ample to settle in, relax, buy the notaire a couple drinks and dinner, see for sure it’s straight down the line. In the Third World, you got to make extensive nice. Your passport’s up to date, right?”
“I’ll make sure.”
“Summer clothes. Pick up some Neet at Walgreens, they say it’s good for mosquitoes.”
“I can slap them.”
“What a hero. So we are all set, Cowboy? After I make a few more collections? Just one or three little details?”
– 16 –
He was receiving the news in segments. Either Ferd wasn’t ready, or he didn’t trust Kasdan, or the deal about the deal was like Coming Attractions at the movies, encouraging interest with a loud soundtrack. But Kasdan needed no further wooing. He was ready to buy into it.
Foglight, that lucid sun-suffused San Francisco glimmer taken from the ocean, the bay, thermal rising and falling, swept brightness along the street. Even as the winds slowed, the town was not like other towns. On a day like this, through no fault of Kasdan’s, his thoughts slid toward the lips of Petal-she-called-herself until the father and grandfather reminded himself: No! There’s a daughter. There is Sergei Mose.
Waves of sound emerged from Teletubby Midway, Shoppe Supreme for Happy Kids. The noise pushed Kasdan backwards onto the sidewalk. He re-gathered his strength. He forged onward. He wasn’t accustomed to shopping for happy kids, sad kids, any kids at all, but he knew this was something grandfathers do – head up from home in the Tenderloin to Union Square to find a smoochy, fabricky, squeezy, trademark-registered product for Sergei. He had money in his pocket and soon, thanks to his caro amigo Ferd Conway, there would be more.
He braced himself. He rode the surf of clanging, arfing, chiming audiotape straight into the maw of kiddie purchasing opportunities. He penetrated the interior of Teletubby Midway. Now he recognized calliope music, the sounds of lost love, lost childhood, sweetness embedded in the genetic code, as if he had sped backwards through time on a merry-go-round, and perhaps he really had, finally arriving at this place. Time to get off. The music merely occurred; it wasn’t really played, it occurred on some computerized loop. He guessed carousels were being evoked simultaneously in every Teletubby Midway, Shoppe Supreme for Happy Kids (Trademark Registered), in shopping centers and malls across the nation. Sound environment engineers adjusted for time zones at World Headquarters in an industrial park in Burbank.
Buy a toy and get the hell out.
He tried not to trample the young mothers, a sprinkling of fathers, and less young grandparents seeking items for their beloveds. Well, now he was one of them. He slowed down at Aisle Gretal, between Goldielocks Strasse and Rue de Hansel. He was tempted by a pig-like wolf, a wolf-like pig, a fuzzy-wuzzy towel cloth creation not yet stained by spit and piss, soon to be treasured by Sergei. Grampa read the instructions. It could be hand-washed in hot soapy water. It should be air-dried.
He bought.
He hurried to the door.
An alarm buzzed like an electric chair. A security guard stopped him, shoved him, demanded, “Hey, Mister.” He ran a wand over his body; no toys secreted in his clothes. Kasdan presented the receipt. The cashier had forgotten to remove the chip. The manager apologized and presented him with a ten-dollar chit toward a future purchase, not valid for sale items, in return for his not seeing his attorney, not suing on the basis of public embarrassment, just because a crew of clerks and a crowd of young mothers and fathers, less young grandparents and ethical toddlers, were pointing accusatory fingers at him. “Plus, I’ll put a notation in the cashier’s file,” the manager promised.
“No, don’t, why bother with the paperwork,” said Kasdan. “But you could cut off her hand, would you do that?”
An appreciative audience of gawkers, formerly witnesses at the crime scene, snickered in styles appropriate to their ages. This absolved shopper was joking! This was like Reality! And as in Reality on television, sometimes all was forgiven and profitable. It was a form of Reality which included both Absolution and Justice, a winning combo. For the jostle of fond adults and children infused with pre-caffeine sodas, flooding their arteries with sugar derivatives, what had started out to be just another purchasing expedition had been transformed into a thrill ride followed by poignant redemption. It was an incident to share later while the kids explored their battery-powered robots, space ships, submarines, lasers, child-safe massage units, a choice assortment of implements for contemporary junior living, except for no dildos. Mom would need to double-park at Good Vibrations on the way home if she wanted the latter. It would snow in Union Square before Dan Kasdan returned to use his ten-dollar chit.
Union Square had already experienced tickertape, Presidential rallies, earthquake, fire, bankruptcy, franchise food, and credit jewelries, but snow? Not likely, although according to myth, supported by archival photographs, it had happened. He passed through the front door again without incident.
On this fine autumn day in San Francisco, the tourists in their shorts and sandals, their flowered shirts and their maps, cameras banging against their navels, were, momentarily, in good luck. They found themselves in a California with real California weather, although the major orange blossoms and movie stars were only to be discovered hundreds of miles to the south. This California was the one with the fog, the cable car, the Crab Louie, the hippies and the homosexuals.
The few blocks from Union Square to the Tenderloin always gave Kasdan a brief sense of youth and vigor, thanks to a descending slope. He was young, he was agile, he only saw Doc Feldstein to complain insincerely about their shared bachelordom, he slept through the night without interruption. Now, on Ellis, a narrow strip of wind swirled between store signs boasting
about products whose prices ended in 99 cents. Harvey Johnson, the judgmental cop, said that only hookers and crack dealers were straightforward enough to offer their goods with prices that ended, as in an honest world they should, in zeros.
Kasdan stopped briefly at Katie’s Meddle of Honor, nodding apologetically at Frank, the bartender, whose biceps were freshly inflated by his curling exercises. No beer just now, only dropping by for a quick visit to the head. He wondered if his prostate was paying an extra toll, due to stress from the non-shoplifting experience, the security guard waving a magic wand of detection over his crotch. He proceeded toward presentation of the Smurfy object to Sergei Mose, who deserved some pleasure in life after being brought damaged into the world through no fault of his own. Receding adrenalin; rebounding weariness; if Amanda offered, he would gratefully accept a mug of coffee, no sugar, no cream. If she didn’t offer, he would exercise a grandfather’s prerogative to make his own (instant, if she stocked it; the high-fashion kind that popped its little crystals, he hoped; if not, any generic brown sand would do).
A familiar vehicle was parked at an expired meter half a block from her apartment. Kasdan recognized the customized yellow and black Buick Skylark; most Skylarks had disappeared into junkyards or the Mission district, which put special wheels on them, fixed them to bow, dip, and preen for weekend paseos, and kept them running the way ancient cars were preserved in Havana. Ferd’s was just temporary transportation, pending a good score. He had received it tax-free from a client with no need for a customized Skylark, yellow sides, black top, red Aztec arrows aimed at white targets on the fenders, while he served his time in Folsom.
What the hell was Ferd doing on this block?
Kasdan found himself making a new withdrawal on his adrenalin reserves. Some thoughts did that to him. Although he lacked direct personal experience in the matter, he believed in the sanctity of marriage. He also believed that the contract could properly be voided through divorce, because marriage was holy and blessed promises to love should not be blasphemed by strife. The marriage between his daughter, fatherless during her Mendocino commune years, and D’Wayne, who had passed his childhood with a single mother in the Valencia Gardens Project, was a sacred union between two semi-orphans. D’Wayne took reliable employment as doorman and security guard at the Yerba Buena Foundation, “Sex Therapy Like the Doctor Ordered, Big Boy.” He was a responsible young man. Together, Amanda and D’Wayne treasured Kasdan’s grandson, who arrived along with difficulties – called “challenges” in California – such as being a mulatto child with irregular brain sparkings, nerve and muscular malfunctions.
