San Francisco Noir (7 page)

When she got to her seat she half-closed her eyes, peeking out from under her heavy lids as the city rolled by. She discovered a fondness for the city buried somewhere deep in her chest, most noticeable when she was leaving. Gina sat upright at the bridge, staring at the early-morning skyline: Dawnlight glowed on fairy tale city.

“What crap.” Gina put her head back, went to sleep.

She had intended to call Karen from Santa Rosa: Get out the bong, the booze, the shrooms. I’m headin fer the high grass. The tall trees. Comin to break the monotony of yer sheltered rural ex-is-tence.

But the River Express bus was at the station when she arrived so she just kept moving, no breaks in the rhythm, not even to call work: Got stuck up the river, road’s washed out, won’t be in today. She kept moving toward the green, away from the city drizzle that hurt her eyes. Burned her heart.

Gina hopped off in Guerneville, fog swirling from the trees at the top of the ridge, Latinos waiting on the corners for day-wage dirt jobs, no traffic on the street, slow dogs pissing on the shrubbery. Nice one-street city. Tattoo shop, couple weird art shops. Coffee shop.

“Double espresso, please.” Gina took a deep breath, felt her ribs expand in the country air. First big rib-stretcher in a long time. “Ahhhh. Please, where’s the nearest phone?”

Karen answered, melodic with country cheer, “Alhambra here.”

“Al Hambra? What? Like some Saudi cousin of Al Qaeda?”

“Giiina! How are you?” She laughed. “It’s a palace in Spain.”

“You moved to Spain? Or named yourself after a building?” Gina scowled: You let em move outta the city, they completely lose their little freakin minds.

“Hah. I just liked the sound of it. So, what’s up, little grouch?”

“I’m in Guerneville. Filled with urban angst.” For the first time Gina wondered if this had been a good idea. She decided not to mention bongs or shrooms—when people changed a perfectly good two-syllable name like Karen to something mouth-filling or edificial, you never knew what other changes might have taken place.

“Gotcha. I’ll be there inna few. Don’t go to the bridge.”

“Okay.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“Don’t do anything weird there. The local citizen-watch has the place bugged and videotaped.”

“You shittin me? What’s up with that?” Gina turned around, slow, careful, looking left, looking right. The vigilantes were hunkered down somewhere out of sight.

“The lower river’s tagged with being inna condition of urban blight. Garbage. And crime, Gina. Terrible crime. People smoke dope. Shoot the lights out. Make noise. The world will come to an end if the good citizens don’t document everything.”

“What should I do?” Gina asked.

“Oh hell, go to the bridge anyway. It’s the easiest landmark. Besides, the river’s huge, makes everything hum. Make ya feel alive. Meet you there.”

“Eat my shorts.”

The rain started pissing down again, it would never stop, the world was going to wash away or disappear in a poof of mold. Dozens of vultures lurked in the dripping trees by the bridge, shitting down their legs, watching Gina with lazy hungry eyes.

She walked out to the middle of the span and stared down at the wide coffee river rumbling along only a foot or two below her, the bridge itself thrumming with the crazy power of so much muddy water bombing past. Gina goggled down into deep river space then pulled her sweater off over her head, spread her arms wide open to the
sprizz
of the water. “Yeeeeah!”

“Hey! Get outta the way!”

Gina turned to see a skinny guy walking a purple and green painted wheelchair.

“Din’t yo mommy teach you ta watch yer back?” He stopped next to her, crowding her against the metal screen railing. He peered at the delicate vines tattooed around her left arm, at the datura blossoms inked by the same Mission district master artist on her right. “Wow.” Up and down, moving closer. “Nice ink, babe!”

Gina glared at the gimp, she slid away from him. His T-shirt exposed beef-jerky muscles covered with blackwork tattoos. Thick lines where the ink had bled through the skin made the ugly skeletal forms worse. Both lower legs were similarly covered. Badly executed fake-tribal. The whites of his eyes were dead yellow, no pupil, his face didn’t move when he spoke. Not good. “Get the fuck away from me.”

He grabbed her arm, turning it to examine it closely. “Looks like my work, here.” He leaned forward. “This here jus like my design.” He ran his tongue up her inner arm.

Relax arm, bend knees, step to the side, and twist sharp. “You simple-minded fuckhead—”

There was more she was going to say, but his fist slammed into her face, she felt her right eye crack like an egg, sudden yolk ran red down her neck. She took a deep breath, a low crooning subsonic kind of sound began in her belly, spun out of her mouth. Her toes curled back, she popped his dick with the ball of her foot, and while he crouched in the traditional male
oof
position, she jumped straight up in the air, clasped her hands together, and whacked his head into a steel girder. He made a satisfying
clang
sound.

She grabbed the wheelchair and heaved it over the railing into the river. A classic finishing move.
Hoo hoo hoo
.

Gina took fragile steps along the bridge, back the way she had come, muttering to herself. She snapped her fingers at the spot where she figured the camera would be:
Kiss my ass
.

As she stepped off the bridge she saw Karen’s lanky figure running toward her. Gina took her hand off her eye and waved, spattering drops of blood which disappeared in the drizzle before they hit the ground. Gina’s one-eye vision wobbled. Karen? Long sweater, long skirt, cowboy hat? Two long black braids swung out behind the woman as she ran.

“What happened?”

“Uhhh,” Gina said, waving at the staggering figure on the bridge. “Uhh. Tattoo pride. What can I say?”

“Put your hand over your eye, press down. Wait. No. Don’t press on it, you might make it worse. Tilt your head back. Wait, no, don’t tilt it back, you won’t see where you’re going—here, lean on me.”

Gina grinned up at her friend. “Calm down, Allllhambrah. Just point me to your car. This ain’t my first head wound, surely won’t be the last. C’mon. Let’s blow Guerneville.”

Gina wrapped her sweater around her head before she got in the car so she wouldn’t bloody-up the upholstery. Tires squealed, there was no traffic so Karen took it from zero to sixty in, well, it was an old wreck of a car so it made it to sixty in a couple, three, maybe four blocks. Held steady around the curves.

“Ahhh. That felt good. I mean, now it feels really bad—you do have dope at home, don’t you? But outside of this ex-cruciatin pain here, I been needin to do that for months.” Gina tipped her head into her hand. “I can see why they hava camera on that bridge. The Mission’s a snooze in comparison. Izzit this excitin generally?”

Alhambra spoke through her teeth, “I have some Percocet, and no, it’s not usually like that. Generally people just hang out. Yunno. But that guy—well.” A dozen turns, over a couple more bridges, onto a gravel and dirt road, some more curves, the old car still hanging tough around the corners, then
bounce bounce bounce
, Alhambra avoided the trees growing smack in the middle of the throughway, sharp right. “Home.”

“Hardly a spot on your brocade.” Gina’s sweater was soaked through with great splotches of blood—head wounds always bled like some animal had been gutted—she dropped it on the porch.

Alhambra picked it up. “No need to advertise to the neighbors that you’re a thug. I’ll wash this.” She looked at Gina’s bloody clothes. “Gah. Take them all off. They’ll get stiff and sticky if you don’t.”

Gina stripped on the porch, head tilted back, palm cupped over her eye. “This could be so romantic. But instead, how about you gimme some dope, like right now? Like even before I enter your Spanish palace?”

Alhambra wrapped Gina in a huge blanket, pushed her inside and onto the couch. “Here.”

“Yum.” Bright light, hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, scissors, tape, gauze—“Thread and needle? Get away!”

“Shhh. That’s just part of the kit, darlin, you aren’t gettin the full treatment this time. Just gonna clean here and here.”

“Ow. I would be stoic, but then you won’t give me any more drugs. Ooooh owwww.”

“Shit. Stop howlin. I need ta see if your eyeball is squished.”

Gina tried to sit up, “My eyeball ain’t just squished, I heard it crack like it was a egg!” She wondered how it would be to live one-eyed.

“It looks like his ring cut your eyelid. But your eyeball isn’t scratched or cracked or anythin.” Alhambra stepped back, smiling. “Gonna hava shinerrr.”

“Crap. Come to the country. Be bucolic. Frolic. Man, this sucks.”

Alhambra fixed a gauze patch over Gina’s eye, handed her a package of frozen peas to put on her cheekbone, and set the kettle on the stove.

Gina lay back with her eyes closed. Half-dreaming, she heard the sound of chopping, then wood hitting the slate floor with a
clonk
, crunkle of paper,
skritch
of match,
whomp
of a fire starting—the smell of pitch pine and oak, the flicker on her eyelids of orange dancers, the whistle of the kettle. Peppermint ginger tea. Something gritty slid through her mind about rural livin bullshit and how it just ain’t true, but she let it drift away. “I miss you sometimes in the city, yunno? I got a friend, he been on the streets now for I dunno how many years, but even with him, I don’t see that reflection of who I am—like I see in your eyes.” She muttered, “Lonely.”

“You needa learn to be gentle with yourself.”

“Gentle? No.” Gina shifted, grunting. “Oh. Right. You can say that now cause you’re the medicine woman of the woods. Livin clean. Chop wood, carry water.” She took a gulp of tea. Gina thought she heard monsters roaring in the distance. “What the hell is that big noise?”

Alhambra laughed. “It’s the river! Cool, huh?”

“Not cool. Wheelchair perverts anda howlin river. And you. I mean, you gotta cowboy hat now. A full medical kit. A rifle?”

“No rifle. Just an old Ruger with the numbers filed off. It was a gift, because it’s a classic, like me.”

“What?”

“That’s what the guy said. I wasn’t all that pleased with the man, but the gun is sweet.”

Gina growled, “Convicts like us can’t have guns, Karen. Can’t have dope. Can’t do medical stuff. We aren’t allowed to protect ourselves. Not even if there’s wolves at the door. Monsters in the woods. Once a convict, always a criminal.”

Alhambra laughed, “There’s no monsters in these woods.”

“Ha. What you gotta gun for? What the hell you doin up here?”

“Safe haven, Gina. That’s all. Sanctuary.”

“Dayam. Sanctuary?”

Alhambra put her hand on Gina’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, that guy you clobbered isn’t a gimp. He uses the wheelchair as a prop so people give him money. Dude’s not even poor. His daddy’s in grapes and development. Gonna shut the river down—says there isn’t enough water to go around for the fish and all the people.”

Gina listened to the growling of the river. “Seem to me there’s plenty of water.”

“Not for these greedy bastards. They’re gonna make the river dry all up in the summer. Pretend it’s good for the fish, then sell the water for development.” Alhambra chewed on one of her braids. “Can’t stand to let people just live, gotta always make money.”

Gina looked up, her one eye huge and sad. “Used to be rivers in the city. In the Mission. All kindsa fish, too. My granma told me. She told me how she’d watch her uncles go off for a day of fishin insteada goin to school. They come home drunk. But sometimes they’d catch little trouts, then everybody would come over and…Well, it’d be great. All gone now.”

Alhambra shivered. “Rivers are an endangered species. That guy’s father maybe figures if the river dies, then his toad son come back home, become a wealthy lawyer.”

“Same no matter where I go.”

Gina took the package of not-really-frozen-anymore peas from her cheek, started to get up to put it back in the fridge.

“Siddown, you. I’m in charge here. Gimme that, it’ll be pea soup innabout an hour.” A frying pan sizzled as pancetta hit it, rattle of peas into a pot.

“Smells like hot dogs.”

“Hah. Remember when we try to learn how to give a guy head?”

“Oh yeahhhhh. Stuck hot dogs down our throats till we gagged, so we gave up and cooked em. I never yet have had occasion to use whatever it was we learned. You?”

“Sure! I’m up for whatever comes along.”

“Comes? Along? Oh yuck. Did you swallow?”

“Condoms are your friend, dimwit.”

“Not my friend. I don’t go that way.” Gina leaned forward, staring into the flames. “How long has it been since I hadda fire inna fireplace? Forever? Never? You do this a lot?”

“Every night this time of year. Drops to freezin. Sometimes, if I don’t bank it right, I need to start it up again in the mornin. But that’s not hard cause the embers are still hot.”

“You learn this up here or you knew it all already? Me…Well, I sort of figure if I don’t know it, I’ll fake it.” Gina shifted her hips, trying to get comfortable. “Like, I suppose I could make a fire…” Her voice faded. “Just never expected to need to know.”

Gina watched Alhambra cook. “We always at the mercy of rich fuckers. They want everythin to be their way—mean and narrow. Oh crap! I gotta call work! I just sort of up and left the city.”

There was a huge boom. And another. Another. Gina bolted upright. The light on the table blinked, blinked, blinkblinked, then fizzed. The house was dark except for the firelight.

“But it’s already dark, as you can see. They know you’re not comin in, Gina. Besides, power’s out. No regular phone.” Alhambra placed the pot of soup on the wood stove. “Don’t worry, if the phone lines didn’t come down, you can still call out.” Alhambra left the room, hollering over her shoulder, “Let me see if the land line is workin.”

“Land line?” Gina felt around for her pack. “Jeez. What’s a land line? A shortwave radio? I’m gonna call work on like a CB? Well, I gotta tellum I won’t be in tomorrow neither.” Her voice faded to tiny mutters, she peered out at the menacing tree shapes looming over the house. “Fuckin primitive out here. Hey, Karen? You realize I only have one workin eye and this is like purgatory? I can’t see shit now.” She didn’t mention that the trees were reaching mean spiky fingers out at her. Smaller voice, “Shit. Can’t find my cigarettes.” Gina sat back on the couch clutching her backpack on her lap. “And my eye is startin to hurt. And…” She began to snicker. “And I can’t get to work.” The snickers turned into laughter. “And I can’t call because they don’t hava shortwave radio. Hah. Haaaaaah.”