One Foot Off the Gutter

by Peter Plate

  “I told you to come out of the bathroom, didn’t I? What’s taking you so long? I hope you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be doing, like going through your daddy’s shaving stuff.”

  “We’ll be out in a second,” Celeste shouted.

  The childrens’ voices were muffled behind the closed door. Patsy looked out the window again. Her mother was shouting at the cab driver. Her mother was so loud. That was one thing money could never hide. No matter how much cash you had; if you’d been loud and poor somewhere in the past, you remained loud until the day you died.

  Patsy remembered a breathing technique she’d learned from an exercise program on television. Bad thoughts out, exhale. Good thoughts in; breath deep and hold. Repeat and start all over again. She did that several times. The kids opened the bathroom door and scooted down the hallway to their bedroom with Celeste yelling at the top of her lungs.

  “Grandma’s here! Grandpa’s here!”

  Once she got the folks inside the house, Patsy welcomed her father to San Francisco by serving him a drink on the deck overlooking the backyard. It was ten o’clock in the morning and time for Daf’s first high ball of the day. She served him a tall, frosted children’s water glass filled to the rim with ice dunked in liquor.

  “Thanks, doll. I do need something to take the edge off my nerves,” Daf said. “It’s been a rough morning.”

  “Here you go, Daf,” Patsy said.

  He peered at the glass with flinty, suspicious eyes.

  “Did you put enough gin in there?”

  “What makes you think I’d short change you on a drink? Have I ever done that to you? Can you remember when? Not once, and you know it,” Patsy said.

  “You know me,” he crowed. “What you see is what you get. That’s my motto.”

  The stewardess on the shuttle flight had refused to serve Daf anything, saying it was too early. She said it was in his own best interest to abstain during the short flight. Daf was a World War Two veteran who’d served his country in the European Theater. He’d come home with a bunch of medals on his chest and a jag of shrapnel in his leg. He didn’t need anyone’s advice about his personal habits. Daf told the flight attendant to drop dead with a smile of his own.

  In between making money and putting it in the bank and sleeping with other women during the first twenty years of his marriage to her mother, he accused everyone of cheating him on a drink. He was a poor boy who had made big money on the West Coast selling insurance to the wealthy Anglo gerontocracy. He’d pulled more than a few scams in his time.

  Daf was tough and craggy, but Patsy was seeing a fragility in him that she’d never noticed before. He swallowed his drink with uncertainty. His hands shook with an almost feverish trembling, the blood pinging through the large, purple veins on his forearms. His skin was parchment paper; the color in his gray eyes turned to amber. He looked up at his daughter with a fey grin twisting his lips. She could see a change was overcoming him. Daf was getting old.

  “You all right, dad? You’re looking sort of peaked.”

  Daf took a hearty gulp from the water glass, smacked his lips and belched, “I never felt better.”

  “Honey? Can you come in here? I want to show you some pictures I took from our vacation in Hawaii. I think you’ll like them. I’m wearing a new bathing suit that I know you’ll be jealous of.”

  “Mom’s calling me, Daf,” Patsy tittered.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “She’s always wanting your attention.”

  He cackled with a false, reflexive laugh that showed the better part of his dentures. At moments like that, Daf displayed a heroic vulnerability.

  “You go inside and take care of your mother. I’ll sit here and sip on my drink and stay out of trouble.”

  If it was only that easy, Patsy said to herself. She walked back into the kitchen, letting her eyes adjust to the shift in light. Her mother was sitting at the table with a large pile of photographs. The sun was shining directly into the old woman’s eyes, illuminating her blue rinsed hair.

  “Looks like you’ve gained a little weight, Patsy,” she said. “You haven’t been getting enough exercise lately, have you?”

  “If you mean my tits are bigger, mom, it’s because I’m premenstrual. I feel bloated.”

  Her mother was the queen of the artful innuendo. She could make a sentence feel like a dagger or a bunch of flowers, depending on her mood. A Gordian knot of emotions was looping across her leathery face. Patsy sat down on the other side of the table and smiled at her.

  “Look at this photograph, honey.”

  Patsy scanned the picture her mother handed to her.

  “Well, ma, that’s some bathing suit. Where did you get it?”

  Her mother was sitting next to a swimming pool with her feet dangling in the water. She was smiling for the camera man, which had to be Daf. Her eyes were conveniently hidden by a pair of oversized tinted glasses. Patsy had never seen a more cynical mouth on a human being. Her mother was wearing a red bikini that did little to hide her cellulite. She was exhibiting her defects with a vengeance, challenging the camera.

  “Do you like my suit, baby?”

  “I don’t know, ma. To be honest, I don’t think scarlet is your best color.”

  Patsy’s tone was as tart as a lemon. Her mother steered her attention away from the photograph to another topic, cutting from one subject to the next with surgical directness.

  “How’s life with the doctor, cupcake?”

  “Me and the doctor are getting along just fine, ma. What makes you ask a question like that?”

  “You know me,” her mother said. “I want my baby girl to be as happy as I was when I was your age. Your father and I, we’ve had some good times together. I always hope that you and your husband are having fun while you’re still young. Life doesn’t get any better when you get older. You know that, don’t you, darling?”

  At last, an oracle had come to Twenty-first Street.

  twenty-one

  doreen was holding Bellamy’s hand while the wind flew off the top of Mount Davidson. The wind played with his hair transplant. Doreen didn’t know anything about the transplant. For the time being until he got to know her better, he wasn’t going to tell her. Bellamy gathered her in his arms. She nestled against his chest. They hadn’t said a word to each other in the last five minutes. It was some kind of record for him.

  Some women would let you do that. They could tell a man exactly what they wanted from him without having to explain anything. That suited him fine. Bellamy wasn’t particularly skilled at talking. The way he saw it, a command of the language had never been one of his strong points. He was a non-verbal type of guy. He preferred to live with the spaces that were in between words. He hopscotched from space to space, making sure he didn’t get tangled up in promises that he couldn’t take back later if he had to.

  Looking back, he’d been recalcitrant to call her up after their first date. That wouldn’t have been an effective course of action. The pursuit of a woman by a man was not a desirable prospect for anyone these days. In deference to the other gender, Bellamy didn’t want to promote himself too strongly. But the world played with your head: their liaison had taken on new contours.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Her voice was no louder than a child’s. He felt the swell of her breasts against his bulletproof vest. He’d taken a shower the day before and he knew he was smelling finer than usual. Since he’d started hanging out with Doreen, he was bathing more often. It wasn’t a bad idea. But he still didn’t have any clean socks and he was hungry, almost ravenous. Vultures were pecking at his entrails. It made him realize that he’d been eating meals off a hot plate his entire adult life.

  “Ah, nothing much,” he replied. “Just how cool it is to stand here with you. You know, shit like that.”

  “It feels good to hold you, too, Bells,” she said.

  She fit perfectly against him. Her head came right under the bottom of his c
hin. Bells. How did she know to call him that? It was another space in his life that Doreen had discovered. The way she was treating him, kissing and hugging him all of the time, it was hard to say what space she hadn’t made her own. He even got along with her girls. They were the best kids. Doreen had doted on him with extra appreciation when she saw that her kids took a shine to him. She let him spend the night with her more often after that.

  “Do you ever want to get married?” she asked.

  “Wait a minute,” Bellamy cautioned. “What are you talking that nonsense for?”

  “It’s not nonsense. It’s what people do when they care about each other.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’ve seen some good relationships fall apart because of marriage.”

  “You might be the exception.”

  “Hey, Doreen, you don’t know me that well.”

  He didn’t want her to know that he liked to play around. He didn’t want her to know that he was a player. She’d peg him as a minor league operator, a sucker who just wanted to get into her pants. It would hurt her feelings. He had to show her respect. That was an entirely different region, respect was. It didn’t always come with the territory. Respect had to be earned. Doreen deserved respect. She deserved to be treated like a monarch. Bellamy was an old whore and he thought he should be treated like one, too.

  Doreen saw he was thinking hard. The lines on Bellamy’s forehead were cutting deep into his blotched, sun-starved skin.

  “I guess I never found the right woman. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of chicks to choose from. But whatever. Maybe I haven’t been the best choice a woman could make in wanting to settle down with a guy, either. You hear where I’m coming from?”

  “Don’t get so anxious. I won’t harm you,” she said.

  Bellamy was saying more than he intended to, Jesus help him. What he really needed was a drink and a bite to eat. Maybe a hamburger with fries. He licked his chapped lips and looked down at Doreen’s upturned face. She was radiating the beginnings of a love. He could see the feeling in her eyes. She was grinning at him, showing him her yellow, corn kernel-sized teeth.

  “After all of these years being a cop on the beat, and knowing that I’m too much of a fuck up to get promoted, what woman would marry me? I live out of the back seat of the squad car. My spare uniform is in the trunk. I don’t need to live anywhere else, even if I could afford to, which I can’t.”

  There: he was out with it. Let her judge his testimony. He was a homeless cop. He wasn’t sure if marriage would allow him enough room.

  “You should see my partner, Coddy. The man is making himself sick in the head about getting a new house. When we drive around the city, I listen to Coddy talk to himself. He never completes a sentence when he’s like that. It’s this game he’s playing with himself. Something has come over him lately, and let me tell you, it ain’t pleasant,” Bellamy guffawed.

  Doreen stirred in his arms. It was the longest speech Bellamy had ever made in her presence.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

  “Where are the kids?”

  “They’re at my sister’s.”

  “How come?”

  “I thought...I thought I could get you to come over.”

  She didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t any need to. The unsaid words nearly shouted themselves into the air. Bellamy could hear them ringing in his ears. He was going to have a rupture from fear, and from another emotion he’d never encountered before. He didn’t know what to call it. Love was too strong of a word. It felt more like pneumonia than anything else.

  “I should have seen it coming,” he said.

  “Don’t get smart with me,” she chided.

  Bellamy was both tickled pink and paranoid. Doreen plucked a ring of keys from her purse. He stood behind her, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders as she worked a key into the door. It was going to be a peaceful afternoon. He didn’t have to be at work until the evening. He didn’t have to worry about anything. Doreen unlocked the door and turned to him, apologizing.

  “Don’t mind the mess, but the kids, you know?”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Bellamy replied with gallantry. He reached around her and pushed open the door.

  Doreen flipped on the living room light switch and turned around to look at him. Bellamy took off his bulletproof vest, removed his riot helmet and sat down in an overstuffed chair. There were so many spaces in his life that he wanted to keep open. He didn’t want to end up like Coddy. That would be unwise. But there was something Doreen was doing that led him to believe he could stay with her for awhile. He unbuckled his gun belt and put it down on the coffee table. When he took off his gun, he could still feel its comforting weight against his leg.

  “Do you want a beer?”

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

  Doreen walked into the kitchen. Bellamy heard the refrigerator door open and close. While Doreen poured the beer into a glass for him, Bellamy took a quick tour around the living room. He examined the kids’ toys, the books on the shelves and the couch by the hallway. He ran his fingers over a reproduction of an oil painting on the wall near the front door. The painting was by Van Gogh. The enamel finish on the print was peeling off in transparent brown strips. It looked so shoddy, Bellamy had to cringe. His transplant felt hot and his scalp was irritated.

  “Like what you see?” she asked quietly.

  Bellamy whirled around to find Doreen standing behind him holding a glass of beer in her hand. She offered him the glass, then took his other hand, bringing his fingers to her lips. She brushed them with a brief kiss, and said:

  “Some people call it home. Besides the girls and my family, it’s all I have. You’re welcome here any time, Bellamy.”

  He stared at her with a lump in his throat so big, he couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t think of a word to say. What she was doing to him was making up for all the wide open spaces of being a homeless cop in San Francisco.

  twenty-two

  wild parrots were chattering, their tiny lungs bursting with music, perched in the grim palm trees that lined Mission Street. Bellamy poked his head out the window of the squad car to gawk at them. Though it was only September, he saw autumn had weakened the sun. Winter was approaching with a non-refund-able, non-exchangeable, perishing light. September meant the year was soon coming to an end. Bellamy was not only apprehensive of the months and the drop in temperature and the boredom of being cold, he was also faced with a renewed awareness of all the past Septembers in his life. Memories filled him with nervous energy.

  I nudged the accelerator, tapped the brake pedal, then aimed our patrol vehicle onto Twenty-fourth Street. Moving at five miles per hour down the potholed asphalt, the squad car rolled by Joyeria La Joya, El Nuevo Fruitilandia, a pair of alleys named Lucky and Balmy, La Reyna Panaderia, China Books, and the murals covering St. Peter’s church with images of Spanish conquistadors and Aztecan warriors.

  The York Theater, St. Francis’s Soda Fountain, Iglesia de Dios, and Teddy Wong’s Cleaners passed by our windows like the stage set in a ghost town. All the store fronts on the block were spray painted with the names of gang members who’d died in the last year.

  I made up my mind to go back to Twenty-first Street.

  It took me five minutes to get there.

  I switched off the ignition and pocketed the key with a mechanical flick of my wrist. I was focusing in on a single channel; there weren’t going to be any detours. My scope was narrow and like most intelligent men who weren’t blessed by an education, I was beginning to relish the compulsive nature of my behavior.

  It was the real estate. I was its prisoner. The demons of money, inflation, and anxiety for the future tormented me, haunting my sleep, constipating my bowels. The devil, thank his soul, caused my hair to fall out in clumps.

  Bellamy couldn’t handle it. I could hear his brain ticking away, unbelieving. He looked at the Victorian, then he glowered at me through the foul mur
k of the squad car’s interior. He didn’t notice my mouth was swollen with held back rage.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Coddy? Why are we here?”

  I exploded, with spit balls popping from my lips.

  “You want to know why, goddamn it? When I first joined the force, if you wanted to walk the streets, you had to play fair. Stay sensitive to other people, and people would care.

  “I was gonna be a star. Isn’t that what we all thought? All I had to do was set the example. I was the guy up on the highway billboard, holding your injured child in my arms, because I was a cop who’d just saved his life without even working up a sweat. All I got was a kick in my teeth every inch of the way. No mommy. No daddy. No family. No more friends. Fuck ’em. I’ve had it, Bells. I’m on my own now. Ain’t that righteous?”

  The effort to talk was costing me too much. I opened the car door, adjusted my garrison belt, and heaved myself out of the bucket seat with the agility of a man who knew he was getting fat. I glanced up the street.

  “I used to think the world belonged to me, Bellamy. Ain’t that sad? I used to believe that without even thinking about it.”

  “Coddy, you’ve got to stop complaining like you’re on the rag,” Bellamy advised.

  The Whirl-o-mat’s neon sign was stuttering on and off in the dark. Everything had fallen into a velvet-smooth quietude. It was one of those strange, peaceful nights in the Mission where you could actually smell the salt in the breeze blowing east from the ocean. Two girls were walking arm in arm across Twenty-first Street. Their high heels were clacking along in unison while they talked to each other in hyperfast Spanish.

  Their slim backs receded and disappeared around the corner of Treat Street. I could almost feel how young those girls were. I couldn’t recall ever being that young. The fun I was supposed to have in life, it had never happened. Fun was an advertisement for an expensive and mysterious product. The only time I saw people having fun was on television, or when they were drunk in a bar, too smashed to know the point of anything. Usually, I was one of them, one of the crowd. Nobody you’d notice.