San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis

  The thing about Eyeball is, he’s a cantankerous troll, and whimsical in the worst sense of the word. For example, one time you’ll come to him with the simplest piece of information, and he’ll charge you a grand for it. Another time he’ll give you the Governator’s cell digits for a buck. So I was a tad apprehensive about what he was going to charge me, but at the same time, I had four free Gs pulsating in my secret pocket, and with four Large I was confident I could find the Snow Leopard.

  So sure enough, there he was, as advertised, Eyeball, buried somewhere under all that hair, stuffing his piehole with vile dim sum. Before him sat three plates pregnant with rancid rolls and skuzzy buns, grizzly gray meat and dumplings lying there like stillborn dog fetuses, and rice with little things that looked like dead insects sprinkled in it. Crumbs spread out in a half-moon on the floor around him, his hair/beard layered deep with bits of chow from meals present to years-gone-by. I loved to watch the man attack and subdue his dim sum. As I watched him ravage his food, it became clear: This is Eyeball’s thing. This is what he lives for. The man is a chow junky.

  I didn’t want to interrupt him when he was in the middle of a big feed, he can be cranky as a mother bear when you threaten her cubs, he’ll take your head clean off if you’re not careful. I waited till he came up for air, then moved in, gentle but firm: “Hello, Eyeball, how’s life treating ya?”

  “I got gout. Ain’t that sump’n’? Gout.” Eyeball shook his head, which made his hair ripple in waves of frayed gray.

  Eyeball’s a mumbler. I always forgot that. Actually, it’s not that he mumbles so much as the fact that the food he’s constantly stuffing into his mouth serves as a natural muffler, making it difficult to hear more than about forty percent of what he says.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, as I tried to figure out exactly what he had. Bout? Doubt? Gout?

  “Gout!” Eyeball shouted, dim sum flying as if from a volcano. “Ain’t that a kick in the ass?”

  Ah, gout! I didn’t even know what gout was. But it sounded like one of those things you definitely don’t want, like you never hear anyone say: Hey, everybody, congratulate me, I got gout!

  I leaned as close as I could without invading his personal space, as my ears adjusted to his volume.

  “Do you even know what gout is?” Eyeball snapped, cranky.

  I wanted to chill his wig as quickly as possible, so I jumped right in: “No, I don’t, but it sounds bad. Can I get you anything for it?”

  Yes, I did want to soften him, but I was sincere about getting him some meds if he needed them. That’s just how Mother raised me.

  “Thank you, very kind of you to offer,” came out from under Eyeball’s hair. “Either my liver is producing more uric acid than I can excrete urinarily, or I have more uric acid in my bloodstream than my kidneys can filter. Apparently, the uric acid has crystallized in my feet, and it feels like Satan is punishing me for my sins by shoving white-hot knitting needles into my big toes.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I empathized with my feminine side.

  “How’s Chinese Willy?” Eyeball grunted as he stuffed an entire dumpling into his mouth and swallowed it whole like a snake sucking down an egg.

  “He’s fat and happy. So, listen, I’m looking for someone, she’s—”

  “The Snow Leopard,” he said without missing a beat.

  “Eyeball, you never cease to amaze me, how did you know that?” I was actually flabbergasted, although in retrospect I should’ve seen it coming.

  “There was some nastiness at Felipe’s, no? Several brutes bought the farm at the hands of a coupla very talented individuals, one of whom is the Snow Leopard. The police are quite interested, by the way, so if you know anyone who might’ve been involved, I would advise them to lay low.” Insinuation oozed out from under that hair so hard you’d’ve had to be in a coma not to feel it.

  “Thanks, Eyeball, I appreciate your concern. If I run into any such individuals, I’ll pass on that valuable information. So, where do I find her?” I tried not to betray too much of the ill and all-consuming lust madness that burned in me. I’m afraid I was not quite successful.

  “You don’t,” he snorted matter-of-fact.

  “No, you don’t understand, I have some unfinished business with her, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and—”

  “This is not a person you want to find.” Eyeball said it like he was telling me without question that the earth is round and revolves around the sun.

  “No, I do, I really do, see—”

  “I don’t feel comfortable dispensing this particular information,” he said, as he wiped his mouth with his stain-besotted sleeve, “as I’m quite sure it will be extremely hazardous to your health.”

  “Do you know where she is?” I asked.

  “What kinda question is that?” Eyeball came over all insulted: “Of course I know where she is. I know where everyone is. What I’m saying is that I do not want to be responsible for the shitstorm that will rain down upon you.”

  I got very serious now, and tried to find Eyeball’s eyes in all that hairy chaos. “Look, I appreciate what you’re saying, I really do, but I don’t care what a dangerous psychopath she is, I have got to get ahold of her. I’ll be responsible for the consequences. Trust me, I need this.”

  Nothing came out of him. More dim sum went in.

  “How much?” I persisted.

  “Not for sale,” he insisted.

  “Everything’s for sale.” I was the dog with a bone that wouldn’t let go.

  “You can’t afford it,” Eyeball mumbled.

  “How much, Eyeball, seriously.”

  “Five grand,” he said, knowing I’d never come across.

  I felt like the star of my own movie as I reached inside my secret pocket, extracted the five Large, and handed them to the stunned Eyeball, who had no choice but to say: “Over the tarot joint on O’Farrell, she owns the building, lives on the top floor.”

  With a five-grand spring in my step, I headed happily to the Snow Leopard’s pad. I was really looking forward to breaking into her place. I was born blessed. Ever since I was a kid, there was no place I couldn’t break into when I put my mind to it. As a child I was always sneaking into people’s houses when they weren’t home. I loved being inside their lives. Snooping through their drawers. Rifling around in the back of their closet where they hide everything they didn’t want anyone to find. I was always drawn to the unmentionables. And I loved seeing one of these pillar-of-society types walking around town like they’re the head of the Committee for Moral Decency, and knowing that they have dirty magazines full of schoolgirls and Great Danes at home just waiting in their closets.

  So when I walked up to the tarot joint on O’Farrell, I was thinking: Cake. It was almost 1:00 in the morning, so there was still quite a bit of street action. Stumpy Charlie and Tripod, his three-legged dog, teetered by. That chick I saw before with the tattoos stumbled by, she’d clearly found a fix and was happily self-medicated. Well, maybe not happily. A behemoth with a three-foot orange mohawk and chains connecting various parts of his anatomy like they were holding him together stopped in front of me, looked me right in the eye, and said with malicious intent: “What the fuck are you starin’ at?”

  I love these guys that get themselves decked out in some outrageous Halloween-looking costume so everybody has to stare at them, and then when you stare at them, they want to rearrange your face. The begging-for-a-fight boys.

  But me, I just could not have cared less, particularly not tonight. So I smiled easy-as-you-please and said: “I was just admiring your hair, my man.”

  Because I was so easy with it, all the piss and vinegar drained right out of him, and he said, “Oh, uh…thanks…”

  Then he clomped off to find someone weaker and more feeble to smack around.

  There was a door next to the tarot joint that led into her building. Too obvious. The building next door was clearly the way to go, so I skeleton-keyed in lickety sp
ilt, shot up two flights of stairs, out the back window at the landing, and grabbing a drainpipe, I swung around so I landed on the Snow Leopard’s roof, quiet as a love-monkey making a house call. I hopped down onto the fire escape and leaned way out so I could see inside the window of the Snow Leopard. Sadly, drawn drapes stopped me from staring into her lair.

  A nobody’s-home vibe radiated through the walls and I could barely stand it, so close to being inside her cave, sniffing around her unmentionables, uncovering her underbelly, unearthing the sweet secrets that make the Snow Leopard tick. One foot on the fire escape railing, the other on her sill, I jimmied my handmade fenestrator in, guided the lock to the disengaged position, slid the window up, and slithered in like an oiled snake.

  Surveying the place with my penlight, I couldn’t quite wrap my eyes around it. It was as elusive as she was. One huge room, the whole floor of the building. I could see what was probably the front door, around 150 feet away. Only the moon through two skylights provided light, and that came and went as nightclouds drifted by. Another door on the west wall. Closed. One more door on the east wall. Closed. In the back corner, one giant bed with four posts was covered in carved cats chasing each other up and down. Fur blankets piled high. No chairs. No table. No kitchen. No garbage can. No TV. No computer. No, wait. Next to the bed, growing up the wall, was a ten-foot bookcase with a ladder next to it. And what, pray tell, does the Snow Leopard read? my mind wondered to itself. You can tell everything about a person by their library. Or lack thereof. The Jungle Book. The Cat in the Hat. How the Leopard Got His Spots. Why Cats Paint. Taming the Tiger Within. How Large Cats Kill. The Leopard Hunts in Darkness. I smiled.

  Inside one door: bathroom. Or rather a shell of a bathroom. A toilet. A standing sink. A claw-foot tub. A bar of soap. No beauty products. No medicine cabinet. No medicine. It’s like she was not quite human.

  Behind door number 2: walk-in closet. Outfits hang on rods. All black. Hump-me pumps, kick-yer-ass boots, gouge-yer-eye-out stiletto heels, thin Chinese slippers, and one pair of spiffy spats. One dresser. Three drawers. Bras. Panties. Stockings. One pair of black panties. I picked them up. Wrapped them around my face like a gas mask and breathed in the secret scent of the Snow Leopard. Pavlov was laughing in his grave as that smell invaded my central nervous system and zapped my boys while blood pumped automatically toward them. I considered stealing them, but I didn’t want to piss the Goddess off. I’ll ask the Snow Leopard for them after I re-sex her, I thought.

  Snap your fingers. Do it now.

  The time it takes you to think about snapping your fingers is how long it took for her to have the muzzle of her petite little pistol in my earhole as I left her walk-in closet.

  My first thought was: How did she do that? That’s my thing. Nobody gets the drop on me.

  And yet there it was, her cold metal stub at the tip of my earhole.

  The next thing was smell. That in-heat scent, that aural-sense memory that made my thing sing as the breath drained out of me in a long warm sigh.

  And suddenly her face was in mine. Those burning-coal eyes sucked me into the sunspots in the middle and I remember thinking: How did I get to be the deer in the headlights? The monkey in the middle?

  She just stared. Looked like a smile was hiding under her quicksilver face, but there wasn’t enough light in the room to tell, just little flashes of moon through the skylights. I kept waiting for her to ask: What are you doing here? Or: How did you get in so easy? Or: What is wrong with you? But nothing. While freakydeaky cracklyscary estrogen-testosterone-saturated atoms careened around her huge empty cat cave.

  She leaned in sooooo slow. Just kept leaning. Closer and closer. A picture popped into my head: She’d bitten my lower lip off and it was hanging out of her bloody mouth and she slurped it in between her teeth with a hungry happy growl.

  Her lips were right at the tip of my lips and the heat of her breath made it feel like there was a furnace inside her pumping vaporized sex into my mouth and down my throat, filling my lungs and pulsating into my chest, then spreading all the way down to my hips, which began humpdancing unconsciously into her, and the chemicals were changing in my brain, synapses firing, my heart rate erupting through the roof of my mouth, the flow of blood altered, redirected by the Snow Leopard.

  I wanted to say: How the hell did you sneak up on me like that? Or: Are you mad that I’m here? Or: Who are you, anyway? But the cat got my tongue. The tense intense anticipation was killing me, and all the while I was madly aware of her metal rod flirting with my earhole. I simply cannot emphasize enough how this added to the life-n-death of the whole thing, knowing I was one itchy trigger finger away from having my brains turned into wallpaper.

  The tip of my lip got the softest lick from her rough cat tongue as her other hand grabbed my package hard, knocking the air right out of me, while she shoved me back into the wall with a thud, her claws digging into my boys.

  And then I understood. This is her thing: Getting guys by the balls. Literally. Her grind finding mine, she dug in, yes it did hurt, but at the same time, pleasure shot to all my centers, all at the same time. Pleasure. Pain. Pain. Pleasure. I couldn’t tell anymore where one ended and the other began. She dragged me back and forth fiercely, and I had never felt more alive in my entire life. She squeezeboxed me like a rhythm queen working overtime, working me over but good.

  I was now waiting to wake up overheated and covered in cold sweat from this dream.

  But no.

  She pushed me hard, my back literally up against the wall. She shoved me down onto the floor, and plopped down on me, she had me pinned, straddling one boot on either side of my thighs, black skirt up over her hips, sucking on my tongue so it shivered me with freezing heat, and that little prick of a gun was always there, hard and cold in my earhole, my death at her whim a whisper away.

  The Snow Leopard started making crazy growly hissing sounds, I could feel the pull of the moon from inside her, and I knew I never wanted to leave there.

  She maneuvered herself open, pulled back her head and looked into my eyes, inviting me inside to ride her Ferris wheel to the stars. She took a deep breath, and a sweetness came over her face, it filled me up, everything softened and she melted me in places I didn’t even know I had places.

  Then she grabbed me behind the neck with her free hand and gathered herself like a hurricane off the coast.

  And then BOOM! she shoved down with all her might, with all those muscles, with all that leverage, all that wet and that swell, sliding down deepdeepdeep into the depth of her holiness, all the way to the bottom of the well, splitting her open like an atom, an explosion of heat blowing my mushroom-cloud heart all the way up.

  More crazy roar big cat scratch fever screams as she rocked slowly, flexing in rhythm with the tide, tugging and grinding, pressing flesh on flesh, sweat beading out now, the sound of squishing liquid wet, ecstasy crawling from pleasure center to pleasure center up and down my tingling spine as she pulled me up higher and higher, while ripping into my skin. Is that sweat or blood trickling down my neck? my brain asked. Yes, it is, my body answered.

  She was back in my face again, the Snow Leopard. I could finally see her, as a strip of moon filtered through her skylights, and she poured herself through my windows, and this is what took me to the edge of Lover’s Leap.

  She nodded at me ever so tiny, she wanted to know if I was ready to jump off with her, to take the great plunge, and into her eyes I nodded, Yes, I’m ready, jump off and I’ll jump with you.

  Funny what a person can get used to. When the muzzle of her petite little pistol first nuzzled my earhole, everything else in the entire world faded away, and there was nothing but the cold steel feel of that gun, death at the tip of her finger.

  But by the time I heard the click of the trigger, I had quite forgotten, in all the excitement, that her petite little pistol was there at all. It took me a moment to realize what that sound was, to remember that her gun was indeed in my earhole.
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  How long was it between the time I heard that click and the time that bullet ripped down the tiny barrel of her pistol, barreled through the hole of my ear and into the fishy tissue of my brain? Couldn’t be more than a flicker of a blink, right? A heartbeat? At what point during its passage through my skull did the bullet take me from orgasm to death? I cannot accurately answer that question.

  But as a sex maniac, I couldn’t have asked for a better death: coming and going in the same moment, at the hands of the Snow Leopard.

  Acknowledgments

  The editor wishes to thank the following for their encouragement and support: Andy Bellows, Sona Avakian, Jennifer Joseph, Paul Yamazaki, Miriam Hodgman, The Matlock Brothers, Ashish & Janaki Ranpura, Daphne Gottlieb, Alan Goldstein, Tasha Keppler, Daniel Mandel, Jane Ganahl, Cheryll Eddy, Jeffrey Chan, Justin Chin, Mattilda, Johnny Strike, Nichelle Tramble, Michael Disend, Alan Black, Jill Tracy, Charles Gatewood, Marta Koehne, Stacey Lewis, Melissa Wagner, Jon Bradford, John Hurtado, Richard Poccia, Sherry Olsen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nancy J. Peters, Elaine Katzenberger, the gang at City Lights, and to Chris &Alex for logistical support; past, present, and future.