by Peter Plate
When we’d hooked up, dating and drinking in bars like the 500 Club or in Blondie’s on Valencia Street, it was the anniversary of my tenth year at the DSS. Maybe Frank had been attracted to my professional reputation; some members of the social services community said that I was a go-getter and deserved a medal for valor. Others said that I was a fraud.
But I wished he’d known me years ago, back when Petard was preparing me to assume the mantle of his heir. I was foxier then. I wore mascara, took black beauties, teased my hair, went out nightly, and was very popular at the DSS. At the time, my co-workers thought my rise was infectious, that Petard’s power had rubbed off on me. Even if I didn’t know it, that might have been so.
Frank was heaving. I had admonished him: slow it down, dumbo. But he couldn’t brake his manic rhythm. Sometimes, men seemed so lonely in their quest for affection, even when they were inside you. I’d give him another minute and that would be it. The wet, velvet walls of my slit robbed him of every desire in life except to jet up and down fast as he could. He pinned me to the mattress, nipple to nipple, blubbering, “Give me your hand. I’m coming.”
Theoretically, an orgasm was salubrious. But I had seen men get angry and weep when they climaxed. For some reason, I don’t know why, I thought of the waiting room. It was one of those associative connections where a sensation on the body instantly evokes a complementing recollection.
We’d been introduced, my future husband and me, at one of the public forums the DSS used to throw to talk about assistance-related child care, home nursing, adult education and geriatric facilities. Petard said these events would generate a healthy public image for us.
Frank had been part of an entourage of students from San Francisco Community College. I was charmed by their roguish innocence. Stunning to me, it really was. They were disarmingly gauche, decked out in Ben Davis jeans, Converse running shoes and Carhartt anoraks, resembling the thugs and purse snatchers that came out after dark to lurk around the McDonald’s on Twenty-fourth Street.
It was the month Gerald began to change his policies, arguing for a more conservative plank. He’d even attempted to institute a workfare proposal, sending out squadrons of pregnant teen mothers in Department of Public Works trucks to sweep the sidewalks. For a time, you saw them on Mission Street. Girls with distended stomachs pushing industrial brooms, uniformed in orange nylon welfare vests, rubber gardening gloves and white hard hats.
fifteen
Clients were surging out of the DSS, some running, others cursing, while several policemen formed a knot at the front doors. I yawned, not unduly surprised to see the cops, not even first thing in the morning. But one officer had his service revolver out and was aiming the barrel toward the ground. Rocky was running straight for me, more livid than any black man I’d ever seen before.
“Mrs. Hassler!”
It was critical, or he wouldn’t be coming at me, detonating right in my face and blurting with childish intensity, mewling, “Where have you been? Did you hear what happened?”
“I just got here. What is it?”
“Come with me.”
Before I had a chance to decline the offer, he uncharacteristically grabbed me by the sleeve and tugged me after him. Using his size as a wedge, Rocky dragged me past a rush of clients, more cops, a couple of addled medics and a group of uncommunicative social workers who were cross-eyed with terror attempting to get out of the building.
I saw Rubio. He yelled something at me, but I couldn’t reach him. The corridor was wall to wall with people; everyone was trying to stay quiet. Simmons tried to make eye contact with me, but I lost him when the crowd pushed us ahead. Someone stepped on my foot, then gave me an elbow in the gut. I was straddling Rocky from behind, kept there by the mass of people coming after me. I shouted at him, exasperated, “What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer me and didn’t look back over his shoulder to see how flummoxed I was. Rocky just kept hauling me deeper into the murky unlit corridor. At a turn in the hall, he stopped to jaw with a white-haired, apple-cheeked cop. The policeman looked at the Pinkerton, then at me while Rocky raged, “Let us through, man!”
“You don’t have the proper authorization to enter the premises. I can’t do it. Got to follow regulations.”
The security guard unbuttoned his blazer and showed the police officer the bib of his dress shirt. I could’ve fainted and felt justified. His buttoned-down oxford shirt was covered with blood. But the cop didn’t care for the Pinkerton’s sense of drama. He and Rocky kept bitching at each other until the guy suddenly gave up, sighing, “It’s your trip.”
The security man growled, “Let’s go, Charlene. I want you to see this.”
With Rocky ahead of me, we managed to get by the line of policemen guarding the door to the waiting room.
There were a few abandoned theaters on Mission Street; grand movie houses built earlier in the century. Their marquees were weather-beaten ornate deco confections, like obelisks. Inside, the theaters were caverns, grottos fusty with damp and rot. It was their darkness that reminded me of the waiting room.
Nobody was around except the police in their riot gear, a dozen of them. The electricity had been turned off; flashlights provided meager illumination. The cops in the vicinity weren’t saying anything. Their silence and the dusky coloration in the place distorted my spatial perception, flattening it out. Moving forward, I banged into a chair and before I could recover my balance, I barged into two more.
“What the hell is this?”
“Just wait, Charlene.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth.”
The Pinkerton was still holding onto my sleeve. The police officers looked perturbed and I thought, if it could be helped, it would be wise not to vex them.
“Over here, Hassler.”
We were nearing a string of cubicles; my own office was a mere few feet away. Another group of policemen were pointing their flashlights at the floor, causing a halo that spelled trouble. A medic was on her knees doing something. We pushed our way into the circle of men standing around her. Everyone was busy staring at the figure down on the linoleum.
I counted to ten, exhaled, and lowered my eyes.
“See?” Rocky sniffled. “Look at who it is.”
Hendrix was supine, legs scissored. The police were waving their flashlights over his body like magic wands. Ribbons of light danced across his corpse, which was getting putrid in the hot room. I gagged, eyes watering. Rocky asked, “You know what happened, don’t you?”
I couldn’t answer him, nor was I able to take a breath.
“A client shot him in the chest. Took his time about it, too. Wanted to see the man suffer. By the time I got down the hall, Hendrix here, he was fucked.”
He took a step closer to the dead man and nudged one of Harry’s legs with his boot. A cop gave him a dour look for that, but the Pinkerton was blind with indignation.
“The man took three hits in him. I heard them. Made me want to puke, and damn, look at his face.”
Harry didn’t look well. The deceased’s visage had a distinctly horrified expression, having seen his whole life unreel before him. The mouth was frozen shut, leering with terror. Thinning, moussed hair lay against his dandruff-infested scalp. His eyes were white, sightless. He’d voided in his pants, and no one had seen fit to close his lids. Rocky rasped, “They got the culprit.”
“Who was it?”
“One of his caseload. The papers were all over the floor. But you know, Charlene? I can’t believe you give a fuck.”
The visible tremor running down one side of the Pinkerton’s face told me he was upset, but what the security guard said next was inexcusable.
“This is your fault, and Hendrix’s, too.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You brought this on. One of your clients, those cocksuckers.”
He took a step toward me with the intent of getting in my face. But the sight of Ha
rry’s remains, a bag of skin and bones, took the fire out of Rocky, deflating his rage like the air coming out of a truck tire.
Unconcerned for him, I was miffed. “You know what? You owe me an apology for saying that.”
“I don’t owe you horse pucky.”
Rocky and I had moved outside of the circle, away from the policemen. We were off to one side, standing in the gloom. His back was turned to me, which was just as well, because I had nothing to say to him. Harry was dead and I wanted to unravel, but not in public. The medics got the body onto a stretcher and with some of the Pinkertons in the corridor, they cleared a path to take Hendrix out of the building. I’d have thought Petard would be on hand to supervise the debacle. I didn’t see him or Lavoris, nor anyone else I knew, just the burly cops in their crowd-control overalls.
sixteen
I was standing at the rear of the cubicle, fingering my wedding ring, and contemplating what I had seen that morning. I had remained dry-eyed when the police left us to clean up after them. Hendrix’s body had swelled up in the heat, tucked under the medic’s blanket on the emergency stretcher, and it was good to get it out of the waiting room. The sorrow that I felt? It would come out in stages, probably through drinking and fighting on the weekend.
Because of the slaying, Petard had ordered every caseworker and security guard to stay at his or her post, or risk losing their job. The union rep in the building was informed of this, and to nobody’s surprise, he meekly submitted to the management’s demand. Gerald was going to have his way again.
Crowding around the portable General Electric radio in Simmons’s office like excited teenagers, we’d heard the cops tell the reporters outside the gates on Otis Street that they were investigating the motive for the murder.
I caught a glimpse of the pawky Eldon carrying a mop and a pail of sudsy water. He must have seen me because even though he was walking toward the custodial supply closet, he quickly turned around and bustled over to my door. He acted as if our strife had never existed, and hailed me with enthusiasm.
“What’s up?”
I scrunched my shoulders and said, “What a day, huh?”
“Man, who would’ve ever thought of Harry?”
“Mrs. Hassler…Hassler…line two…Mrs. Dominguez is on hold.”
Eldon took that as his cue to keep moving, and he moseyed down the hall. I waded through the papers on the carpeting over to my desk and picked up the phone, flashing that if Hendrix was alive, he’d be doing the same thing in another office.
“Hello? Frances? How are you today?”
“I’ve been waiting twenty minutes to speak with you.”
“Yeah, well, I was busy.”
“What took you so long?”
The petulant tone in her voice made me want to vent my spleen, but I counted to five and felt calmer.
“Sorry, but we’ve had a difficult morning over here. We had some trouble.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re having our problems here, too. The stamps haven’t come in the mail yet.”
“Wasn’t I at your duplex yesterday, Frances?”
“Yeah, so you were. But shouldn’t the stamps be here today?”
“Wait a minute, will you?” I said.
I picked up a pencil, jotted down a few notes on a pad and told her, “We have to solve this. The problem is how. What can I do about the mail?”
“I need those benefits right now. Goddamn it, hija, can’t you get on the stick and make something happen for me, please? What are we paying you for? To sit on your nalgas?”
“What do you want me to do? Come over to your house? Is that it? Just get up, forget all the other people I have to deal with here, and make a special trip for you, because the mail is holding up your shit? Is that what you want me to do?”
“Could you do that for a vieja?”
“Frances, c’mon, don’t manipulate me.”
“Please.”
“What do you need?”
“When will you be over?”
She wheedled and provoked, jerking on my chain. Frances Dominguez knew my weaknesses and had her finger on them. I don’t know how many times we’d been through this, me and her. Only a few, I guessed. Our relationship had prematurely aged, ripening like cheese, getting to where she knew me better than I did myself. I inspected my calendar and breathed into the greasy telephone receiver.
“Give me two hours. Is that okay?”
She didn’t even bother to say goodbye, just left me with the dial tone in my ear.
In the waiting room, the children were singing:
“Food stamps, food stamps, taste great! Gonna get mine, can’t wait!”
A client was harassing Simmons in the adjacent office, castigating him for not providing her with temporary housing. It seems her house had gotten arsoned during a drug war in Hunter’s Point. The local Red Cross didn’t have any shelter for her, and he didn’t know what to do either. She was going on about her kids and what they were lacking. When Simmons started to defend himself in his trademark falsetto, I turned a deaf ear to the argument.
seventeen
In the cubicle across from mine, a radio was tuned to KSOL, an Oakland soul station. They were playing a Barry White song about being in the head-space for love. I swept up some food stamp coupons, a stick of chap-stick and the sunscreen from my desktop, let them fall into a leatherette purse that Frank had gotten for me on my last birthday, then vacated the office.
The Pinkertons were massed in the corridor, arm in arm. They presented the look of a ragtag army, like they were extras in a Ronald Reagan western—one of the later ones during the twilight of his career when he was nothing less than a rouged and vituperative queen on horseback promoting Borax. You cannot imagine what it was to grow up in California on welfare, and to watch him on television.
A candle was burning in a saucer plate next to the receptionist’s counter, surrounded by an assortment of pungent bouquets. The caseworkers in Harry’s unit had dug into their pockets and bought flowers to honor him. Most of the orchids, calla lilies and roses were wilting in the overheated air. A couple of the guys, Vukovich and Rubio, had gathered around the devotional candle, and looked seriously wasted. Both of them were sporting bold bags of sleeplessness under their eyes. Vukovich asked me when I went out the door, “Where are you going?”
Client, I pantomimed, sucking in my cheeks, making my face look gaunt.
Seeing Bart Rubio and Matt Vukovich mourning for Hendrix in their tacky maquiladora-wear, flaunting their Gap sweatshirts, Nike hightops and baggy Levi’s confirmed my opinion: social workers didn’t have a clue about fashion. Most welfare recipients had lofty taste in clothing, at least compared to the caseworkers. The clients just didn’t have the money to accessorize their wardrobes.
Bad judgment, empty pocketbooks and no self-respect: that’s what the waiting room was about. Girl, I had to get out of there.
Walking down the street, there was this guy in front of me, a scruffy bushy-haired penitente in a wheelchair pushing south on Mission. Baby-faced with a wispy beard, his black eyes were congealed with the singularity of purpose that belongs to idiots and madmen. A stainless steel crucifix was hanging from a mesh chain between his eyes. Other crucifixes hung on leather thongs from his chest, back and shoulders. Everyone who saw him, the gangbangers in their blue bandannas, the Catholic school girls, the cops driving by in their black and white vans, stopped to get a look at him. To absorb from him what they could not get out of themselves, a talismanic effect.
After waiting for a funeral procession on South Van Ness Avenue to let me pass, I got to Shotwell without any hindrance. The pieces of a Harley-Davidson panhead were soaking in buckets of gasoline on the pavement by Mrs. Dominguez’s building. Even though none of my client’s biker neighbors were around, I saw the imprints of their boot heels in the oil stains on the sidewalk.
There was a pile of circulars from Thrifty’s, the state lottery program, and a Reader’s Digest on her doormat. This led m
e to surmise that Frances might not be in the house. If that was the case, I was going to be ticked off. I rang the bell, and nothing. I checked the door knob, but it didn’t budge. What a fuck in the ass. She wasn’t answering: this was getting me mad.
“Hello? It’s me, Hassler.”
The windows were shut and the curtains were drawn. I pounded on the door; nobody answered my knocking. I decided to sit down, to get stubborn, and to wait.
For that hour of day, getting close to three o’clock, the street was dead. I had never been a patient person; it’s a trait for those people who can afford it. The stoop was uneven, and I pulled my dress over my knees, thinking I ought to wear pants on the job. Damn her. I didn’t know why Frances wasn’t making herself available. Like anybody, the woman was capable of irresponsible, untimely behavior, but I’d thought she understood the rules and knew how the contest was played.
“Mrs. Dominguez. I’m getting tired. Open the door.”
It took me a few minutes, then I deduced she wasn’t at home. It was exasperating doing this penny-ante stuff. I got to my feet, slipped a notice through her mail slot, a triplicate form that said she could get her food stamps down at the DSS.
It was rush hour on Mission Street when I ambled past Lutz Plumbing, Rubalcava Flower Shop, La Cuban Panderia, Fay’s Club, Kun Woo Food Products and a billion Chinese ladies streaming out of the Capp Street haberdashery sweatshops. At the Sixteenth Street bus stop, a wall-eyed pink-faced man with Down’s Syndrome was hammering away on a battered acoustic guitar.
The guitar was propped on his hip. He leaned forward, working his stubby fingers over the frets, whacking the strings with a downward stroke, and singing out of key.
“Hey-da-hey-da-ho-da-hey-da-do-da-do.”
