South of Broad (28 page)

“I’m just your waitress, honey,” Leslie said. “I’ll get you what you want to eat and drink. You’ll have to hire your own tour guide.”

“There’s nothing I love more than a witty, unexpected answer from a sassy woman. Can your bartender make me a Bloody Mary I’ll never forget?”

“Mike, we got a rube in town. Wants to know if you can make a Bloody Mary.”

“A bloody what?” asked Mike McCourt (the world’s greatest bartender—Trevor’s words again). “Let me look it up in my bartender’s manual.”

That marked the beginning of Trevor’s long association with the Washbag, which became his headquarters, his refuge, and his hideaway from the home he never had.

Today, I am the first to arrive. Leslie puts me into a bear hug, then kisses me on the cheek like a sister. Mike McCourt blows me a kiss and makes me a Bloody Mary. The whole restaurant has marked Trevor’s sudden disappearance and all have been worried about both his disease and his whereabouts. It moves me when Leslie brings my Bloody Mary to Trevor’s table and motions for me to take a seat.

She tells me, “We’ll keep you posted on anything we hear about Trevor. If the little bastard was in trouble, he could’ve come to live with me.”

“You know how cats go off in the woods to die alone,” I say.

“Everybody who comes in here is looking for Trevor. We’ve got eyes all over this city.”

“Then we’ll find him,” I say.

Soon, the Charleston crowd begins to drift in, and the scene with Leslie and Mike repeats itself over and over. Our group has thrown parties for both of them when they visited Charleston with Trevor in the early eighties, before the AIDS epidemic detonated its quiet poisons through the bloodstreams of an unsuspecting gay population. By now, the newspapers across the Bay Area have become dense and swollen with the obituaries written by the partners and survivors—many of whom carry the virus themselves. It makes me weep to read them, and I always see the face of Trevor Poe in the rawness of the wording. It is a new and terrible literature delivering an ache of loss and a hopeless mourning over the death of boys.

We order light lunches and begin to compare notes from our morning’s work. Sheba enters the restaurant in her impenetrable disguise of everydayness and no one recognizes her. It surprises me that she did not greet either Mike or Leslie, and I let her know that.

“I’ve never met them,” she says. “I’ve never been here.”

“How’d the meeting with Herb Caen go after I left?” I ask. “It looked like the beginning of something sinful.”

“Full-page column. Tomorrow morning. Herb’s going to tell the story of the famous actress and her high school friends from Charleston who’ve come to hunt for her brother dying of AIDS. He loved the angle of Ike and Betty being black, Fraser and Molly being society broads, Niles being an orphan, and Leo being a brother columnist.”

We cheer, but Niles is clearly miffed. “Why did you have to tell him I’m an orphan? Why didn’t you tell him I’m the athletic director at Porter-Gaud or teach honors history?”

“Good copy,” I explain. “A pathetic orphan boy searching for a childhood friend dying of AIDS? We newspaper guys love hooks.”

Sheba has grown frustrated by this argument. “Leo’s a hermaphrodite, and Molly’s a lesbian whore, and I’m having an affair with President Bush. I just want to find my brother, okay? I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Niles. You know what we all think about you.”

“I have no idea how you think about me, Sheba,” Niles says.

“The same thing everyone else does: you’re the best of us. The very best, Niles. You’ve got character that comes from walking through fire when you were a kid. Your sister’s a nutcase for the same reason. Me and Trevor are both borderline cases because we didn’t do so well in the fire. But you and Betty—the fire made you stronger. It showed your mettle and proved your steel.”

For the next few moments we eat and drink in silence. Then Ike clears his throat and says, “Here’s what me and Betty found out: the chief of police handed us off to a cop whose beat has been the Castro for years.”

“But Trevor lived on Russian Hill,” Fraser says.

“Don’t worry,” Betty says. “Our boy’s well known in the Castro. This cop was fascinating. Told us right off he was gay. Had a dossier on Trevor. In fact, he said they once had a flirtation and he thought it might go somewhere. Trevor admitted he had a thing for guys in uniform.”

“I bet that’s why he always liked Ike,” I say.

“Shut up, Toad,” Ike says. “Trevor’s been picked up two or three times for public drunkenness. Got caught once for DUI. Paid a fine. Had to attend some classes. He was found in possession of pot four or five times, but that’s like being picked up for parsley in this town.”

“The most serious thing in Trevor’s file is he was picked up once for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute,” Betty reads from her notebook. “Again, he was fined for possession, but told the judge he was not guilty. And I quote here, ‘Your Honor, I plan to use every damn gram of it for myself.’ It got a laugh from the judge.”

“That’s our boy.” Niles grins.

“We called the cop who arrested Trevor for the DUI,” Ike says. “Cops are funny. He could’ve been pissy about it, being called out of the blue and everything. But I explained who we are and what we’re doing. He said that Trevor was the most gentlemanly, courtly, and comical drunk he’d ever picked up. Trevor told him, ‘Officer, it’s men like you who’re taking all the fun out of drunk driving. I’d be ashamed of myself if I were you.’”

“Jesus Christ.” Fraser puts her face in her hands. “If you had told me when I was fifteen that one day I’d be hunting for a sick homosexual who did drugs and had sex with a hundred other men, I’d have signed an affidavit that you were crazy as hell.”

“You were born with a silver service stuffed up your ass, Fraser,” Sheba says, her sudden fury silencing us into an abnormal discomfort.

“But you were born beautiful, Sheba,” Fraser says, shaken. “I’d trade for that any day of the week.”

“Do you think it’s made me happy? Do any of you think it’s made me happy, a single day of my life? Do any of you think of me and say, ‘God, I wish I were Sheba Poe?’”

“Leave Fraser alone, Sheba,” Molly says with an authoritative voice. “And let’s hear what Leo learned at Trevor’s flat.”

I pass around the four albums of photographs and mementos, which have turned out to be treasure troves. I see dozens of men I met over the years, smiling through time in the sheer enjoyment of their ineffable handsomeness.

“Jesus Christ,” Betty says as she and Ike turn pages. “Is there any such thing as an ugly gay man? These are the best-looking men I’ve ever seen.”

“Tell us about Anna Cole,” Molly reminds me. “Did you learn anything from her?”

I give an edited version of my encounter with Anna Cole and the lecher she had picked up. Already, I am feeling sheepish and uncertain about my outburst of machismo. I come up inadequate, if not quite wordless, when I describe my encounter with the beetle-browed stalker. I do not mention the pistol, but I do read out the license plate number, the Social Security number, and the number on the driver’s license of John Summey. I think my exploits will win me a round of well-deserved applause from my friends, but their full-frontal assault catches me off guard.

“You impersonated a police officer, you dumb son of a bitch!” Ike yells.

“You kicked in his window.” Molly is unable to hide her disgust.

“Have you lost your mind, Toad?” Niles asks.

“We’ll be lucky if John Summey doesn’t go straight to the cops,” Sheba says.

Fraser jumps in. “How do you know the guy was stalking her, Leo?”

“Because she told me,” I explain. “He was lying down on his goddamn floorboards. Why would anyone do that?”

Betty rushes in. “Lying down on his floorboards? I don’t know of a statute in a single state where that’s against the law. You kicked in his window. Intentional destruction of personal property.”

“You’re a journalist, Leo,” Molly says. “And the
News and Courier
would fire you if this story makes the local news.”

I say, “The hell with all of you. None of you were there. I did the best I could.”

“Were you trying to get laid, Leo?” Betty asks. “Was this gal pretty?”

“What difference does that make? I ran the goddamn guy off. The woman’s glad, so glad she let me into her flat and gave me these albums. She tells me that she’s got thirty boxes of Trevor’s stuff stored in her garage and she promised to help in any way she could. I think I did pretty well, to tell you the goddamn truth.”

“You’re right, Betty,” Molly says in disgust. “Leo was flirting, trying to get laid.”

“What is it with you women? Does every damn thing on earth revolve around sex?”

“Yep,” says Betty. The other women nod in agreement.

Niles says, “We’re operating in strange waters out here, Toad. All of us are in over our heads. We’ve got to make good, smart decisions. You screwed up, pal. But learn from it. All of us can learn about how not to do it just by listening to how you made a horse’s ass of yourself.”

Fraser says, directing the attention away from me, “On Monday, we start delivering lunches to indigent AIDS patients for a group called Operation Open Hand. The woman in charge told me and Molly that Trevor probably found himself living on a welfare check and got a room in some squalid hotel. Most likely, in the Tenderloin. We’ll be delivering lunch to the worst dives in the city. She told us we needed to be in the company of some of you guys because it’s so dangerous. A lot of times these gay men use aliases to avoid people like us who’re trying to find them. So we’ll deliver meals to those guys, then interrogate them. We’ll get addresses, phone numbers, everything. And sooner or later, we’ll find Trevor.”

CHAPTER 15
The Tenderloin

S
unday falls upon us not as a day of rest but one of drowsy, melancholy, or, at best, enforced leisure. Since I was a child, God’s day has felt anxiety-fraught; the Sunday afternoon willies always leave a handprint on the middle of my stomach. I go to an early Mass and get back to a household gathered around the breakfast table. Opening the Sunday
Examiner and Chronicle
, we turn to Herb Caen’s column and read his piece, “The Queen of Sheba.” He is as good as his word, and his whole column praises the heroic efforts of the sex goddess Sheba Poe to locate her twin brother, Trevor, who has disappeared into that stricken underground world of AIDS.

Sheba opens a huge package of circulars that had arrived from L.A., featuring a photograph of Trevor in his dazzling prime that touches me to the core. “I hired a Boy Scout troop to put these up all over town,” Sheba says. “It’s a beautiful photograph. He looks just like me, don’t you think?”

Outside the limo driver honks three times. “Murray is going to ride us over to Powell Street,” I say.

“Why don’t we just stay around here and get drunk by the pool?” Sheba asks. “I hate when the Toad makes us go on field trips.”

“It’ll be interesting,” I promise.

“What’s on Powell Street?” Fraser asks.

“A surprise,” I say, “but one I promise you’ll like.”

On Powell Street, Murray rolls his eyes when he hears I am forcing my friends to take a cable car ride through the city to Fisherman’s Wharf. I think there might be a mutiny among my friends, who groan as they depart the luxurious limo and join a crowd of camera-laden tourists awaiting the arrival of the next cable car. In the storming of the cable car, I barely make it onboard, grabbing on to a back railing and hanging on for sweet life. The crowd is high-spirited as our car labors up the hillside. When we reach the summit of Powell Street, I look out toward the white-capped bay alive with the pretty slippage of sailboats and yachts. But I feel an uncomfortable danger when I realize that I do not have enough room to change hands or find purchase with my dangling right foot on the step I balance on. It is only after we pass through Chinatown, which smells like wonton soup and soy sauce and egg rolls, and begin a headlong dive toward the bay, that I have fears of my bright idea of a cable car ride turning life-threatening.

In the middle of the steepest lunge back down the hill, with the cable still humming beneath the streets like some living thing, I hear a woman’s voice screaming out in fury. Even worse, I recognize the voice: “Get your goddamn hand out of my purse, you smelly son of a bitch!”

The crowd, the gripman, the conductor, and I all freeze. She screams again: “Are you deaf, you worthless bastard? I told you to get your goddamn hand out of my purse and drop my goddamn wallet. Quit pretending you don’t know who I’m talking to, bozo. Let me be more specific: get your goddamn
black
hand out of my purse. That narrow it down enough, asshole?”

Sheba Poe’s voice is as unmistakable as any in movie history—breathy, sultry, iconic, and, at this disturbing moment, unstrung. When the cable car reaches the next intersection, almost every rider leaps off, sprinting in all directions in helter-skelter flight from the drama Sheba has unleashed. The passengers who remain onboard have known one another since high school, except for the largest black man I’ve ever seen: wild-haired, frantic, six feet five inches tall, three hundred pounds.

“Little woman,” he says to Sheba, his voice gently controlled, considering the circumstances, “you gonna get yourself hurt if you don’t hush your mouth and lower your voice. I can’t get my hand out of your purse because you got it so tight around my wrist.”

“Let go of my goddamned wallet and I’ll loosen the purse, you smelly black son of a bitch.”

“I’d lose the references to smell and color,” Molly suggests in a soft Charleston accent.

“Uh-oh,” the big man says, emboldened. “I believe I found me some cracker-girls a long way from home. You cracker-girls could get hurt when I pull a knife out of my pocket, which is what I’m about to do to improve Miss Goldilocks’s manners.”

“You got worse than cracker-girls to worry about, tiger,” Betty answers smoothly, pulling out a thirty-eight and laying it against his head. “You got the law.”

With no assistance from anyone, she goes into professional posture, flipping out handcuffs and passing them to Ike in a move as showy as a behind-the-back pass. Ike snaps them, then steps him off the cable car and into an alleyway as our group follows. The gripman and the conductor appear from where they’d ducked down in front, as do six or seven curious passengers who materialized out of nowhere. Soon the cable car continues its interrupted journey down toward Fisherman’s Wharf as the seven of us face the wrath of a man whose eyes are murderous. “I didn’t know you were cops,” he says, taking us all in with his wild-eyed gaze, but addressing only Ike and Betty.

“We’re part of an exchange program,” Betty says. I recognize that she and Ike have no idea what to do with their prisoner now that he is cuffed and in their illicit custody. By the looks on their faces, I can tell that what they did was every bit as illegal as the theft of Sheba’s wallet.

“You heard that woman call me a nigger,” the man shouts. “It was a racial incident, plain and simple. I’m the victim of a hate crime.”

“Shut up, mister,” Betty orders. “Give us time to think.”

Sheba possesses a gift for making a bad situation worse. “You’re absolutely right, loser: it is a hate crime. I’ve always hated bastards like you. Look at the size of your ass. Why don’t you get a job sawing down redwoods in the national forest or something?” For reasons unclear to us Sheba delivers these words in a drop-dead perfect Charleston accent that only exacerbates the racial tension. I also notice that Sheba has ventured out in her disguise of everywoman, with sunglasses, scarf, and loose-fitting clothes, rendering both her fame and her beauty invisible to the naked eye.

“Officers, listen to these white folks,” the man says. “These is cracker rednecks. Hell, they’re Klansmen for all we know. I know what I’m talking about; I grew up in Carolina. I know a racist bastard when I see one, and I sure as hell know it when I hear one.”

“Which Carolina?” Ike asks. “South? Where ’bout?” By now, all of us have calmed down enough to hear the familiar rhythms of this stranger’s voice.

“You ain’t never heard of it,” the man says.

“Try me,” Ike replies.

“Gaffney.”

“Gaffney?” several of us scream.

It suddenly hits me when he turns to me that I have seen those eyes before. “We know this guy,” I say in wonder. To Niles and Ike, I say: “Get rid of the greasy hair, erase the beard. Make him twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter. Pure muscle. The state semifinal in Columbia.”

“Son of a bitch—you’re right,” Ike says in disbelief.

Niles obviously doesn’t see it yet, and murmurs, “What?”

“Think, Niles, think,” Ike says. “We should’ve beaten Gaffney. Why didn’t we? We had the better team and were favored to win. Look at those eyes.”

“You know South Carolina?” the man asks with hope.

“Macklin Tijuana Jones!” Niles exclaims at last, astonished by the recognition.

“We were on their five,” I remind the women, who are staring at us as if we’ve lost our minds, “down by six. Fifty-eight seconds left to play. Those eyes. We drove our fullback into the line three straight times, and this was the guy who stopped us each time. The last play, Ike, Niles, and I had the same assignment. To knock this guy out of the play. Our job was to give Wormy a shoulder to get into the end zone. After our last time out, Macklin Tijuana Jones shoved all three of us back and tackled Wormy for a three-yard loss. The last play of the game.”

“My daddy still thinks you’re one of the best five football players ever to come out of the state,” Ike says. “Take off the cuffs, Betty. We got us a homeboy on our hands.”

“Not till he promises to behave himself,” she grumbles.

“You guys played for Peninsula?” Macklin asks. “I kicked the shit out of you.”

“You sure did,” I agree. “Then you played for Georgia.”

“You played pro,” Niles says. “But you got hurt—your knees, right?”

“Both knees by the time I was finished. The Saints traded me to Oakland. That’s how I ended up out here. I was already finished.”

Ike says, “Man, did you go from sugar to shit in a hurry.”

“I had back luck,” Macklin says. “Anyone can have bad luck.”

“What are we developing here? Skills in the art of conversation? Shoot him in the kneecap and let’s go to lunch,” Sheba says.

“Tell me I didn’t rob the wrong broad,” Macklin says, which gets a laugh from a few of us.

“You’ve got no clue, my friend,” Niles says.

“Where do you live now, Macklin?” Betty asks, though she doesn’t let down her guard.

“In the Tenderloin,” he says. “In a deserted car owned by a friend. It’s parked in the backyard of a building he owns. He was a Raiders fan. Helped me out.”

“You a crack addict?” Ike asks.

“That’s what they tell me,” Macklin admits.

“You were a magnificent athlete.” Ike shakes his head, then studies Macklin for a long moment. “You know the Tenderloin well?”

“I
am
the Tenderloin,” Macklin brags. “It’s my base of operations.”

“You want a job?” Ike asks.

“Have you lost your ever-loving mind, Ike?” Sheba cries.

“No, but I just had me a bright idea,” Ike says. “Macklin Tijuana Jones is going to help us find Trevor Poe.”

“That’s the dumbest idea I ever heard,” Sheba says.

“C’mon, Ike,” Niles says in protest.

“This is going to be hard enough,” Molly says. “Let’s try not to make it harder.”

“What’s a soul brother and sister from South Carolina doing hanging around pig, honky motherfuckers like these?” Macklin snarls.

“That’s it, Macklin: screw up just when things are going your way,” I say.

“I don’t get the Tijuana,” Fraser interrupts to ask, speaking for the first time. “Is that a family name?”

“Jesus,” I groan. “If Charleston were a snake you couldn’t kill it with a stick.”

“My mother’s old man was Mexican,” Macklin answers her calmly, as if it were the most natural question in the world. “My daddy’s people were the Joneses.”

Ike lets out a bark of laughter at the exchange and says, “Take off the cuffs, Betty. This is a South Carolina Jones.”

“He still hasn’t promised to be a good little soldier,” Betty says. “He’s got to give me a sign.”

“I’d still like to coldcock that bitch.” He looks directly at Sheba.

“He must like the handcuffs, Ike,” Betty says.

“Threaten my friend again, Macklin,” Ike says, “and I’ll take my pistol and break one of your kneecaps. Because I’m a fair man, I’ll let you decide which one.”

“I ain’t gonna do nothing,” Macklin says. “Just talking. Always just talking.”

“Shut up and listen for once. In Charleston, Betty and I know the streets. All of them. We know people who can tell us everything: the rumors, the dealers, drug shipments arriving on freighters. But we don’t have dog shit in San Francisco. Until now. Now we’ve got Mr. Macklin Tijuana Jones. Everybody see what I’m talking about?” Ike speaks directly to each of us.

“One thing I know,” Macklin says in the quiet that follows Ike’s explanation. “None of you ain’t never seeing my black ass again. Nice meeting this interracial pep club, but I’ll be on my way if it’s okay with you nice folks.”

“If that’s your final decision, we’ll be on our way,” Ike tells him.

“What about these handcuffs?” Macklin asks.

“They’re yours now,” Betty says. “They belong to you. Enjoy them.”

As a group we begin walking away from Macklin. He screams, “You can’t leave me here handcuffed. We’re from the Palmetto State.”

Our laughter infuriates him, and he begins cursing us with creativity and panache, which tickles rather than frightens us. The sheer outrageousness of the encounter is taking a giddy toll on all of us.

Then Ike spins around and grabs Macklin by the throat. “We need your help, Macklin. Do we get it or not? Be quick, make a fast decision. And try to make a smart one.”

Macklin takes it all in, then calms himself. “What can I do for you fine ladies and gentlemen?”

Betty turns him around and removes his handcuffs, and Ike says, “Sheba—give me your wallet.”

With reluctance, Sheba passes her wallet over to Ike’s outstretched palm. He does not take his eyes off Macklin Jones as he removes three hundred dollars and presents it to Macklin with a small flourish. “There’s more where that came from. We’re out here looking for a man named Trevor Poe. He played piano in the city for a lot of important people. Here’s a flyer, Macklin. He’s got AIDS. You find him for us and we’ll give you five thousand bucks, no questions asked. On the flyer, I wrote down everything you need to find us while we’re here. If you want to start your shitty life over again, we can help. Thanks for robbing us today, Macklin. I think God brought us together.”

“I think it was Satan,” he mumbles.

“I’ll second that,” Sheba says, taking off her sunglasses and glowering.

Macklin stares at Sheba. They are evenly matched in their capacity to attach hatred to their glaring. “I’ve seen this twat before,” he says at last, looking away from Sheba to the rest of us. “She was in a Nike commercial or something.”

“Or something,” Sheba says, and we rush to catch the cable car returning down Powell.

E
very city has its Tenderloin. It’s the part of town where you can feel the air change as you break through some invisible epidermis of squalor, a down-at-the-heels, joyless place where a city has gone wrong and can’t figure out a way to right itself. Though the Tenderloin is in the heart of the city, it seems like a bad piece of fruit, left too long in the sun and attracting the attention of flies and hornets. Although the Tenderloin was once lovely, and much of its architecture is still a pleasure to behold, it has spent itself with all the intrigues required by dissipation. In San Francisco you know that you are entering a rough neighborhood because no room has a view. In the Tenderloin, all vistas are worthless and disheartening; all alleyways smell of urine, strewn garbage, and cheap wine. On Monday, we are to deliver meals to seven hotels, more than a hundred meals. Our plan is to stick together and work with the utmost speed as we enter the Hotel Cortes. Sheba pacifies the deskman as the rest of us spread out through a hotel that does justice to the word
fleabag
. It smells of the kind of mold that grows on expensive cheeses, but also of a darker variety that has metastasized in dampness and air shafts and crawl spaces, untouched by disinfectants.