San Francisco Noir (28 page)
It went on like that for blocks. A litany of Bud Callum’s ring accomplishments, each opponent growing in stature, each bout becoming a greater life-or-death battle. Hanna didn’t know anything about boxing, but she knew she wasn’t hearing the truth. It sounded too much like the lies Uncle Bob told the other residents at the retirement home, before they’d had to move him to the assisted-living facility. Before they dared even speak the dreaded A-word.
Bud took his eyes off the street and peered at the woman. In profile, she looked like Nora. Same angular nose, same strong jaw. He was suddenly back in the apartment they had on Jerrold Street. He saw the kitchen curtains that she’d made and the ugly pink-and-brown speckled linoleum they both hated, and for a split second he smelled the burning remnants of the dinner he’d tried to make for her twenty-fifth birthday, when he had no money to take her out.
“You look like my wife,” Bud said.
Hanna blushed. “How long have you been married?”
“She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, cheeks reddening. “Was it recently? That she died?”
“Tell you the truth, I can’t remember. I think it was a long time ago. She was beautiful, I remember that.” They fell quiet as traffic on Ninth Street surrounded them.
“Where can I drop you?” she asked, delicately.
“I guess I should go home. Can you take me?”
“Sure. Where’s home?”
“You know, where I live.”
“Well, actually, I don’t know. What’s the address?”
“I can’t remember right now. It’s around here somewhere.”
She drove back and forth on the grid of one-way streets South of Market for the next half hour, while he searched for a landmark he recognized. The problem was, he recognized everything as it was sixty years ago, and delivered a running commentary about what
used
to be there: the bakery where the homeless shelter now was, a nightclub that had been the glass works, the office building that replaced Coliseum Bowl, the combination boxing arena and rollerskating rink.
He knows exactly where he lives,
Hanna suspected.
He just wants somebody to talk to.
Like Uncle Bob. She wondered if Bud Callum knew there was something wrong with him.
“Mr. Callum,” she said, tentatively. “Are you seeing a doctor?”
Doctor
. Medicine. Prescription. Drugstore. That’s where he was supposed to go: the drugstore. Joan had gotten him a prescription for some kind of medicine she wanted him to take. Oh Christ, he could hear her now, bitching about how long it took to arrange that appointment at the free clinic. They had a huge fight when he refused to go.
There’s nothing the matter with me!
he yelled. But he went. Joan was unstop-pable; she always won in the end.
Bud dug into his pants pocket. He still had the slip for the prescription. What about the money? She’d given him cash. A bill, one big bill—a hundred dollars. He couldn’t find it. Joan would kill him. Where had the money gone? It was right in his hand, he could see it.
“Did you lose something?” Hanna asked.
Suddenly, Bud was afraid. He wanted to go home.
“Sixth. I live on Sixth Street,” he said.
Bud didn’t want Nora to leave. He could tell she didn’t believe all the things he’d said, the stories he’d told her about what he’d made of himself, and how close he’d come to fighting for a title. She needed to know. Nora needed to know.
“Please,” he said, looking at her behind the wheel of the expensive automobile. “Come up just for a minute. I’ve got something I want to show you. Please. It’s been a long time, and I just—please.”
What’s the proper payback for someone who’s saved your life? Certainly more than she’d given so far.
“I’d love to, but—there’s no place to park.” It was automatic, the quintessential San Francisco excuse.
“There’s a space right there,” he said, pointing.
She’d never been inside squalor, only driven past. Everything about the building scared her: the creaking of the old warped floors, the stains and graffiti all over the walls, the neglect that hung in the dingy corridor, the misery she imagined behind every door. When she heard the muffled screaming of a baby, she thought she’d be sick. And the worst part was, she knew this wasn’t the bottom.
Bud lived at the far end of the second floor. One bedroom, a bathroom with a shitty shower. A hot plate, no stove. He kept it clean as a whistle.
Uncle Bob had four rooms, an ocean view from each, and a staff of nurses ’round-the-clock: eight thousand dollars a month.
“Wait here,” he told her. “You can sit right there if you like. I can make tea or coffee.”
“That’s okay. I can’t stay long.”
She sat at a small Formica-topped table while he went into the next room and rummaged around. A narrow band of sunlight cut through the window, slicing between buildings across the alley. Bud Callum came back with a scrapbook, which he set in front of her.
“Just look at it for a minute,” he said. “So you’ll know. You’ll know I wasn’t making that stuff up. You think there’s something wrong with me, that I’m ready for the nut house. But I did all that. Here, look. It’s real.”
She slowly turned the black pages, scanning a procession of brittle clippings that told the tale of Bud Callum’s rise. It was a hell of a life, a lot more dramatic than anything Uncle Bob had ever done. Looking at a big halftone of Bud throwing a punch, Hanna had to laugh. “My lucky day,” she said, tapping the picture. “At precisely the right moment,
this
guy came into my life.”
Bud smiled and went back to the other room. From the top shelf of the closet he pulled down his old foot locker and flung it on the bed. He started digging through it. Nora’s pictures were in there. Weren’t they? This is where he kept them, where they’d always been. She’d see the resemblance, once he showed her.
Nora
. He hadn’t looked at those pictures in ages.
Or had he?
They’d better be here. Joan better not have moved them, or thrown them out.
Hanna opened an envelope that had been set inside the scrapbook and slid out the contents: photographs of a dark-haired woman with shining eyes and sharp, pretty features. In some of the pictures she was dressed in a bridal gown. Bud was right—they did look alike. He was in a lot of the photos, too. After flipping through them for a moment, Hanna put them aside. She felt she was violating an intimacy. Also in the envelope was a section of newspaper, quartered. The
San Francisco Examiner,
dated June 11, 1951. An article gave details of a fire on Jerrold Street that claimed the life of Nora Callum.
Hanna quickly put everything back in the envelope, then placed it carefully in the scrapbook.
“Why are you crying?” Bud asked as he stepped into the room.
“Just looking at all this. You’ve had quite a life.”
“Stop crying,” he said. He hated it when people cried. He could understand crying at beautiful music or the finish of a great ballgame or a terrific fight, but he couldn’t stand it when people cried out of sadness or regret. It made no sense. Crying solved nothing. If something hurt, you stowed the pain and kept on punching. You just banged your way through it, that’s all. You banged your way through to the end.
“I have to go,” Hanna said, standing up. “My daughter’s having a birthday party and I’m supposed to be getting everything ready.” She couldn’t stop the tears. “My God, I must look a mess. I’m sorry.”
“Here, hold on.” From the rear pocket of his trousers Bud pulled a folded white handkerchief, perfectly fresh.
Hanna laughed, which made her cry more.
Nobody carries a clean handkerchief,
she thought.
She drew in a sharp breath, almost a gasp, as he cupped the back of her head in his huge hand. “Don’t cry,” he said. He dabbed the black streaks from her cheeks and she forced herself to look into his eyes.
“I’ll walk you down,” he said. “This isn’t the best building.”
Out front, as they approached her car, he said, “Thanks for listening before. I go on sometimes. And the ride, thanks for the ride.”
Before she knew what she was doing, she kissed him, half on the cheek, half on the mouth. Maybe she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t sure. “Thanks again,” Hanna said. “I’m glad I met you.”
She buckled herself into the Lexus and drove away. Bud went back upstairs to the room at the end of the hall.
He was re-stowing the footlocker when he heard the front door open.
“Who was that woman?” Joan called out.
He hated how she’d walk in and start talking, not even knowing if he was there. Loud, so loud.
“What woman?”
“Don’t start with me,” she said, entering the bedroom. “I saw her kissing you on the street. What’s been going on?” She eyed the mussed-up bed, which he always kept obsessively neat.
“Did you go in my foot locker?” Bud asked. “Did you take things out of my foot locker? I’m missing some important papers.”
“Bud, you hid those pictures yourself. Don’t change the subject. Who was that woman? Why was she in here?”
He hated her accusing tone, making him feel like a child being chastised. But she was all he had; without her he could barely negotiate a single day.
“I saved her,” Bud explained. “This guy was gonna rob her and I was across the street and ran over and I nailed him—three good shots, all right on the button, and she was so grateful that she gave me a ride home and then she came up and we talked for a long time, maybe an hour, about all kinds of things.” Bud brushed past Joan, reaching for the scrapbook. Had to put it away, before something happened to it. “She wanted to see my book, ’cause of the way I knocked that guy out.”
“Uh-huh. And did you remember to go to the drugstore? Bud? Did you remember to get the medicine? Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Bud just stood there, holding the scrapbook, keeping his back to her. His face burned. When he didn’t answer, Joan came up behind him and reached into his trouser pockets. His knuckles bled white as he clutched the pebbled leather book.
“Goddamn it! You still got the prescription, Bud! What have you been doing! Where’s the goddamn money? You gave it to that whore, didn’t you? Saved her, my ass! You bought yourself a fucking blowjob, you son of a bitch! With money I gave you. Goddamn it! Is that how little you think of me? Is it? Look at me, you fucking idiot!”
Bud turned around. Joan was crying. Crying solved
nothing
. If something hurt, you stowed the pain and kept on punching. You just banged your way through it, that’s all. You banged your way through to the end.
“Budweiser, all ’round!” Danh shouted.
Even if he drank ten more he’d never tell anybody what happened that morning. Shit. Sucker-punched by an old fuck. He nursed his jaw, tossed the hundred he’d rescued off the sidewalk onto the bar, and chuckled to himself.
It was like his mother used to say, back home:
Sometimes, Fortune doesn’t need a reason to smile.
E
leven o’clock Monday night I was standing in the nasty skank stink of a body-fluid-scented room trying not to pant as I basked in the glow of the Snow Leopard. She was decked out in black jacket and sleek black boots, the long of her straight black hair leading directly to the short of her barely-there black skirt that hid little of the loveliest legs I’d had the pleasure to gander in God knows how long. Coal eyes with glowing embers in the center made my breath synchopate, and I could almost feel her long red claws at the end of her paws digging into the small of my back.
I couldn’t quite pin down exactly what she was. Asian? African? Mexican? Italian? Spanish? She seemed to shape-shift as she sized me up from the lone chair in room 211 of Felipe’s Massage Parlor. There was no Felipe. No one was there for a massage. Behind her the wall was stained with what looked like splattered brain, and if you listened hard enough, you could hear the ghosts of ho’s past screaming.
My eyes enjoyed their tour of the Snow Leopard. The race-car curve of her neck. The flesh bulging out of her bra under the tight black shirt under the black leather jacket.
The cocoa-butter brown of all that smooth silk skin. The smile that was so tiny I couldn’t even tell if it was really a smile.
I was falling under the Snow Leopard’s spell, I could feel her Black Magic working on me, and I couldn’t stop seeing her straddling me, those thick red lips contorted with mad passion as she ravaged me like a crazy jungle cat.
Being a sex maniac has a way of clouding a man’s judgment. The doctor said I was a
problematic hypersexualist
. I said, “Doc, that takes all the romance out of it. Can’t I just be a sex maniac?” He told me I needed to see him three times a week. I never went back.
People have many misconceptions about what it’s really like to be a sex maniac. They think just because you’ll rut with any old skunkhumper when the hunger’s upon you, that you don’t crave the crème de la crème. I was the junky who was after the finest China-white high. Only, of course, I was a junky of love. And at 11 o’clock on Monday night, the Snow Leopard looked like the greatest score in a lifetime of scores.
Keep your mind on the job, my mind reminded me. I was a distribution specialist in the illegal goods and services industry. A master courier. A bagman. Not to be confused with a bag lady, who keeps all her possessions in a shopping cart and screams about how the aliens won’t stop probing her. There are, in fact, female bagmen. Being a postmodern sexualist myself, I don’t have a problem with the gender blurring. I was basically a high-end black-market messenger boy. I picked shit up. I dropped shit off.
People often assume that just because you’re a sex maniac, you can’t have a life. Wrong again. As with anything, there are all levels of function among sex addicts. I was never one of those grab-a-kid-from-the-schoolyard-and-keep-her-in-my-basement sex maniacs. I was a very high-functioning sex maniac. An ethical sex maniac. I was all about consent. I had rules. I didn’t mix business with pleasure. I took pride in my work. Being the best distribution specialist I could be. That’s just how Mother raised me. So when I was on the job, I showed up on time, I got my package, and I was on my merry way.