They stand in stark contrast to what happens occasionally during the day. Across the street—directly across from where the men wait nervously in the shadows—a man is yelling at a woman. I can only hear his voice, but I know it’s a woman because half the words seem to be “bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.” He is angry but I can’t tell why. Perhaps he is yelling into his phone, perhaps he is yelling through the locked gate at someone inside the apartment building or its garage. I never hear hitting, so I don’t call the police. I also don’t make any sign that I can hear what’s happening.
***
There’s a preschool next door to my home behind one of the hippie houses. One night in 2014, the school director stops me as I’m walking home from the bus.
She is a middle-aged white woman perhaps five to ten years older than me; a year or so ago she began to organize a block neighborhood watch group. I don’t know if it’s still active or not. We are friendly neighbors, if not close.
“I wanted to let you know about something that happened last week,” she says.
Apparently a group of teenagers have been hanging around the school. They smoke pot by the dumpsters at the end of our block and hang around the church parking lot that borders our back yard. She spoke to them, she says, asking them to move away from the school if they were going to smoke.
A few days later, someone broke into the school basement and stole a safe.
It had been recovered, intact, in West Oakland, yesterday.
“Your upstairs neighbors saw them, too,” she tells me. “They’ve spoken to them as well. So you should just be cautious.”
***
“One thing I’ve learned, this is a lawless town,” the middle-aged black woman on the bus says.
She is speaking with the man on the seat in front of me, a lean black man in braids and shades and a polyester suit. He is doing his homework, studying to be an HIV education counselor. He is an ex-addict clean for twelve years.
Another woman, sitting behind the first, is also speaking. She is studying to be a youth advocate in the criminal justice system. “I’ve been through it from the inside, you know? Now I’m learning about it from the outside,” she says.
The middle-aged woman has a large woven satchel on her lap. “You call the police, and they don’t show up. Or they show up hours later, after everything is over. And the people around you, they see that you called the police, and now they’re ready to pop you for stankin’. What are we supposed to do?”
The younger woman, the advocate-in-training, echoes her. “We go to school, we try to straighten out. We’re working on it. Are they working on it?”
The man in the suit and sunglasses tells a story of a man who was shot on the street in his neighborhood. A young woman with trauma nurse training tried to keep him alive until the ambulance came, but it was an hour before more help arrived, and the man who was shot bled to death. “There was only so much she could do,” he said. “And after the ambulance arrived and the paramedics saw that he had died, they just drove away. Didn’t say nothing. Just drove away.”
He puts the sunglasses on top of his head. His eyes are small and a little bit yellow. “What are we supposed to do?” he says.
“Fend,” I say, and the whole bus laughs.
“I was just going to say that,” he says, and gives me a high five. “Fend, and I’d like to add one more thing. Pray, because I am a Christian brother. We got to fend, and pray.”
***
The landlord has a burglar alarm set up for his flat on the second floor. He offered to let us buy into the contract as well, but we declined. We display the alarm company’s sticker in our window but that’s our only protection.
In 2009, the teenage daughter of my landlord’s wife moves into the illegal unit on the third floor of my building. She has a tendency to forget her keys. When she forgets her keys, she often ends up breaking into her own apartment. Sometimes she forgets to turn the alarm off after she gets inside.
The alarm company automatically dials the police when the alarm is tripped.
The Oakland police are notorious for their lackadaisical response times, violent and non-violent alike.
One night, four hours after the alarm is tripped upstairs, the Oakland police knock on my back door. Why they went to my back door rather than my front door, I don’t know. I am working at my desk. I am the only one awake. My two children, twins under a year old, are sleeping in their crib in the room next to the back porch.
The back door is unlocked; I planned to lock it when I went to bed. Because I am not expecting anyone to knock at my back door, and because the responding officers knock quietly, I’m not sure at first that I heard things right, and so I am late getting from my desk through the kitchen to the door.
At which point there are two Oakland police officers standing in my breakfast nook.
I can’t remember what I first said to them. Probably “Can I help you?” They explain why they are here, near midnight. They apologize for entering my house “but when nobody answered our knock…” I tell them, “This is not the right house.” I walk with them back to the porch and point out the staircase that they had to pass to each the staircase leading to my back door. They nod their heads and head in the right direction. They never explain why they didn’t knock on my front door instead and I am too shaken to ask.
A few months later this happens a second time—the teenaged daughter, the cops on my back porch. This time I get to the kitchen in time to answer the door before they try the lock. This time I know what to say. I explain that they have the wrong house and they need to go upstairs. They thank me and depart. I still don’t ask why or how they ended up at the rear of the house.
Ten years in Oakland and I’ve never been face-to-face with a person meaning to do me (or my property) criminal harm. Yet I’ve had the police on my back porch twice. Once they went so far as to walk uninvited into my kitchen.
I start locking my back door.
© 2014 Lori Selke.
About Lori Selke
Lori Selke’s fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and anthologies including Homewrecker and Spicy Slipstream Stories. Her UFO road-trip novella “The XY Conspiracy” is available from Aqueduct Press and her collection of queer erotic fiction, Lost Girls and Others, is available from Sizzler Editions. She is also the co-editor of the science fiction anthology Outlaw Bodies from Future Fire Press. Before she settled in Oakland, California with her family, she lived in San Francisco, Chicago, and East Lansing, Michigan.
Capsule Reviews
by The Editors
Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler of The Magnetic Fields) has style to burn. His first YA opus, the thirteen-volume (and then some) A Series Of Unfortunate Events, put three clever and reasonably attractive orphans in ahistorical but distinctly Victwardian-as-drawn-by-Gorey situations and landscapes as they struggle to unmask a nefarious Count, learn about “V.F.D.” (the secret organization their parents belonged to), and survive despite the best efforts of their various guardians. Every bit as substantive as they were stylish, it’s not surprising that they were popular with children and adults alike.
Handler’s follow-up, the prequel series All The Wrong Questions, is not another baby’s-first-gothic, but rather noir-for-tots. In it, Lemony Snicket, who as an adult chronicles the escapades of the aforementioned Baudelaire children, instead narrates his own adventures as an apprentice member of the V.F.D.. While still oozing with Handler’s trademark ho-hum pathos and frisky wordplay, the new books will appeal to readers of the first series while being delightfully their own thing.
All The Wrong Questions reads almost as a distillate of Noir tropes; familiar elements such as the anti-hero, the city of shadows, the femme fatale, even cigarette smoking and drug-induced dream sequences are re-imagined for kids—but not at all dumbed down. This unapologetic foregrounding of such stock essentials serves as an introduction to the genre for young readers, and (given the author’s evident enthusiasm fo
r his subject), helps the series deftly avoid cliché. The books would be unbearable if they were mocking Noir. Instead, the winks and nudges recall the genre without seeming like cheap parody.
The first book in the series, Who Could That Be At This Hour?, is a MacGuffin plot; the second, When Did you See Her Last?, a missing persons case chock full of doubles and twists. The third, and most recent, Shouldn’t You Be In School?, is a great switcheroo. All center on Snicket’s attempt to evade the watchful eye of his incompetent chaperone S. Theodora Markson and investigate mysteries far more sinister than what the “S.” stands for in her name.
Like the protagonists of A Series Of Unfortunate Events, the thirteen-year-old Snicket is a bright and plucky child, as eager as he is helpless to affect the world of insane grown-ups against which he is pitted. The most sinister of these is the villain, Hangfire, who is responsible for the downfall of Stain’d By the Sea, a once-prosperous town that has fallen on hard times after overfishing octopuses, in which Snicket is trapped by both duty and circumstance.
Snicket is not alone in his efforts. Side characters like Jake Hix, the short-order cook at Hungry’s Diner, Pip and Squeak, kid taxi-drivers (one steers while the other works the pedals), Moxie Mallahan, intrepid Girl Friday-style reporter, Ellington Feint, the dame to kill for, and Dashiell Querty, punk-rock librarian, all help Snicket out… as much as they can. These characters, as trite as they might initially seem, have their own inner lives and personal tragedies; Snicket, too, is almost painfully well-realized, subject to ruthless self-judgment and 20/20 hindsight that makes his plight heart-aching even when it’s drawing forth giggles. It is this sort of nuance in the overall quality of the writing that will almost certainly enchant adult fans of Noir, even if they are not otherwise readers of YA. Readers of the first series will find resonance between Snicket’s situation and that of the Baudelaire orphans—both come from shattered families, but Lemony might be the lonelier, for he is separated from his siblings.
Whether as a morose (but entertaining) gateway for young readers into the rich world of noir and crime fiction, or an interlude for adults who are fans of the same, All The Wrong Questions is wonderful. The reviewer eagerly awaits further series entries. —MT
Lamentation by Joe Clifford is an excellent crime novel that falls just short of noir. Jay Porter would be the champion loser of his small New Hampshire town if not for his brother Chris, who takes the crown thanks to a long career of drug use, truck stop hooking, and petty scheming. When one of Chris’s drug buddies turns up dead and a hard drive connected to the powerful local Lombardi family goes missing, Jay takes a crack at solving the case and saving his brother.
So far Lamentation sounds like any other amateur sleuth tale, and it has the usual twists and turns of one, the typical small town secrets, and even a bog standard family tragedy. What makes Lamentation different is the pitch-perfect vision of post-industrial New England, an understanding of and sympathy for the plight of junkies and the abused that never becomes either moralistic or prurient, and a cracking pace. Most books like this are written by outsiders; Lamentation is a sad song by an insider. Read it for a taste of the real shit. —NM
© 2014 The Editors.
About The Editors
Jeremiah Tolbert is a web designer, writer, and photographer living in Tonganoxie, Kansas.
Nick Mamatas is a writer and editor living in Berkeley, California.
Seth Cadin is an East Bay artist and editor who also sometimes trades stories for money.
Molly Tanzer writes and edits in Boulder, Colorado.
Retirement Plans at Shining Girls
by Na’amen Gobert Tilahun
The room’s dark, cracked walls comfort Sparrow. The backroom of the club has fifteen vanities crammed around the border, towering, wooden monstrosities that rise almost to the ceiling, none of which match, except for the flaking paint. The free space in the center of the room is tiny but it’s enough for over a dozen people to dress together if they don’t mind being crowded like fish caught in a bucket.
She’d started performing as a cover for her real job, gathering information, dealing out death and pain, and found in her travels that all dressing rooms feel the same when you fill them with men in drag, no matter the language of the performers. And any intruder is hustled out quick as half-dressed drag queens can haul them, which has saved her life at least once. Sparrow feels safe at the Shining Girls, and most especially here.
Which is why she’s stuck around so long, seven years now, a new house record. The venue is usually a crossroads for entertainers on their way up to bigger and better things or not-so-very-far down to the gutter, and most don’t stick around long, either way.
But Sparrow, she was in motion her whole life, and she’s tired of moving. She sees Shining Girls as a place she can retire and die quietly in, unlike the loud chaos her whole life has been elsewhere. And that’s why the current circumstances at the club are pissing her the hell off.
She picks up her makeup brush and gets to work re-touching her face. In seconds the girls will join her, filling the room. She needs to be ready. Sparrow long ago learned that when you are trying to crack someone else’s face yours should be flawless. Holding the stick of kohl to her eyelid, she sweeps down and out, drawing a fat line. The real stuff is illegal in the United States but she has a connection in Addis Ababa who sends her care packages. She doesn’t believe it actually wards off evil spirits but she doesn’t deny it has power, either.
The other performers enter with a loud bang, in a cloud of chatter and cheap perfume. Hair of every color is on display, purple afros and pink bowl cuts, blue/red bobs and even a bald head painted with geometric shapes in gold. Their clothes shine just as much as their makeup, a glittering yellow pantsuit here, a silver mini-dress with electric lights blinking at the waist there. They jostle each other, moving like a school of tropical fish, though with a lot more noise.
Sparrow is immediately covered in a fine layer of multi-colored glitter with their entrance. She wipes at her eyes and coughs, loud and hacking, to make a point. Next to them, she looks drab with her razor-cut black hair, black tank, gray patchwork leather pants and five-inch black stilettos. Still, all the girls offer her space.
“Pretty as a picture and mean as an old junkyard dog,” her daddy once said, right after they started speaking again, right before she buried him. It’s the only compliment that has ever made her blush.
No one’s crossed her twice, not deliberately… except Heather. She’s new on the block, has been pushing Sparrow, driving her to hold a knife to Heather’s throat while all the other girls screamed and clutched each other on the other side of the room. Sparrow had held herself back, but only because Bruce hates it when she damages other performers.
Just yesterday, though, Heather had fallen, the eleventh victim in a series of poisonings. Rumors are flying about Sparrow’s involvement, of course, but the girls who’ve been around a few months are too smart to believe it. They know she’s more likely to cut someone than poison them.
The girls at the vanities near the door are still whispering about it. None of the mirrors are assigned but it’s understood that seniority buys space, and Sparrow’s is at the back of the room where it’s the least crowded. After applying one last coat of bright purple to her lips she turns, deliberate in her motions.
“What are you fags gossiping about now?”
Lucitania turns, slow, taking the bait, her molded hair—a crown of black and white ropes of tangled horsehair braided together to resemble snakes—barely moving. She blinks, eyes blackened from lid to lid with something safer than what Sparrow uses, and continues to shed her costume from the last performance.
“What do you think, bitch? Wondering who’s gonna get taken out next.”
Sparrow says, “Well, if I was going around poisoning folks, and my last victim survived, I wouldn’t stick around. They might be able to identify me.”
“Jewel stayed home tonight. So did Dy and
Charly,” Favu adds, never pausing while painting their face in maroon and turquoise camouflage.
“Cowards,” Angelica snorts.
“Smart,” Vandalle counters, adjusting the mirrors on her costume.
“So they’re better than us? Fuck them!” Aja Marie’s anger makes it hard for her to control herself, and the lines she’s applying around her eyes becoming harsher and sloppier.
“Who said anything about better than? Why shouldn’t they stay home?” says Lucitiania, now perhaps halfway done undressing.
“They can afford it.” Sparrow’s voice cuts through the rising chatter and stops it cold, the way mentioning money will do to those living hand-to-mouth, as so many of them were. “Same rule as always, don’t drink anything a customer gives you.”
“Well that didn’t save Heather did it?” Aja says, lifting her right eyebrow, painted a neon blue to match her pageboy cut.
“She’s not dead yet!” This was the first time Sparrow has heard from Ravage all night. If Heather could be said to have a friend, it was Ravage, who arrived within a week of her. Sparrow’s seen them chatting here and there.
“True,” Sparrow says slowly turning back to her mirror, keeping her eyes on the reflection of Ravage’s face. “But do you really expect her to survive?” She makes her voice rough with laughter and picks up a brush to dust some more blush on as she watches Ravage’s face goes red, then pale. “You weren’t even that close, were you?” She meets Ravage’s wide eyes in the reflection. Ravage tries to pull herself together and pretend she’s not bothered.
Sparrow does it better, of course. Ravage is an amateur.
“No, it’s just scary.” It’s the perfect thing to say, but the delivery is as fake as her complexion.
The Big Click: November 2014 (Issue 17) Page 2
