Authors: John Levitt
Unleashed (7 page)
“A columbarium is a building or vault that is used as a storage place for the ashes of the dead. So it’s a cemetery of sorts, and the Columbarium in San Francisco is one famous example. It’s over in the Richmond, close to Golden Gate Park.”
“I went there once with Sherwood,” I said. “Her parents are both there. They were killed in an auto accident, remember? Their cremains are in one of the little niches.”
“Perfect,” said Eli.
“But what do I do once I’m there? Will Sherwood will be popping up out of a corner to embrace me warmly?”
Eli gazed at me with a fond tolerance. He knew me, and knew that when I get flip and dismissive it’s because I’m either upset or worried.
“Who knows?” he said. “But if there’s anywhere you might reestablish the connection, I think there’s a very good chance it would be there. It’s got all the requirements. Another thing that will help is if you could bring a keep-sake with you—something that will help connect her to both you and the here and now. You must have something she gave you, some object, something special.”
I didn’t have to think about very hard about that one. I had just the thing.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give it a try.”
ON THE WAY HOME I STOPPED BY MY FAVORITE taqueria to pick up a burrito. At Twentieth and Mission there’s never any parking, but for once there was an open meter right in front, so I sprang for a couple of quarters.
I ordered a carne asada burrito to go. The burritos there are enormous, more than enough for me even sharing with Lou. He would have preferred an entire one to himself, but a few lunches like that and he’d be waddling instead of prancing down the street.
A few customers ahead of me picked up their orders and left. El Farolito was always busy at night, but afternoons could be slow. The only people left in the place were a trio sitting at one of the small Formica-topped tables along the side wall.
I watched them idly as I waited for my burrito, as one sometimes does in restaurants. An older couple, in their late fifties I would guess, and a young woman, probably their daughter. The couple had that indefinable air of out-of-towners, something that included the clothes they wore, the way they sat, and the curious glances they cast at everything around them. Natives, by the time they’ve reached that age, are blasé even about things they shouldn’t be.
On the other hand, the daughter clearly was a city resident. Again, it’s something hard to quantify, but you can always tell if someone belongs. She had short black hair, and when she turned her back I could see the top of a colored tattoo peeking out just below the neck of her red top.
So they were parents visiting their daughter, and she was showing them around the city. I gave her points for taking them to a Mission taqueria instead of Fisherman’s Wharf, and bonus points for choosing El Farolito over classier and less tasty establishments.
Her parents were scarfing down their burritos with the gusto of intrepid explorers bravely indulging in some exotic cuisine. The daughter looked up and caught me staring at her, which was embarrassing because she was quite attractive, and the natural assumption would be that I was scoping out her obvious charms. Which was true, but not really.
I gave her my well-practiced open and nonthreatening smile, the one that says friendly interest but nothing more, and certainly nothing creepy. She stared back at me with a totally flat affect, giving me nothing. It was beginning to make me nervous when she made a decision and smiled back, jerking her head over at her parents and doing just the hint of an eye roll. It wasn’t mean; in fact, it was done with fond affection, like a mother with unruly kids at the ice cream parlor. A real smile replaced my practiced one; I couldn’t help it. And she saw that, too, and her own smile widened.
So far, I had established a deeper relationship with this woman than I’d had with any woman in the past year, with one notable and sad exception. Too bad I was unlikely to ever see her again.
Then her mother, who had been tearing into her burrito, stopped. She sat quietly for a moment before rising slowly to her feet and standing there, immobile and silent. He husband stopped talking to her and a look of concern appeared on his face. He jumped up and took her arm.
“Lily? Are you all right?” She didn’t answer, just stood there hunched over slightly.
Shit,
I thought.
That woman is choking.
I thought.
That woman is choking.
The husband realized it about the same time I did and started pounding her on the back, which never does any good. I took a quick peek at the door to see if perhaps a paramedic team might have decided to stop by for a bite, but no such luck.
I didn’t have a handy spell available to dislodge a fat burrito from a narrow throat, but I had once taken a class in the Heimlich maneuver at Victor’s insistence. That was ages ago, though, and I’d never had to use it. It looked like that long drought was about to come to an end.
I moved toward their table, not running, but close to it. The husband saw me coming, and God knows what he thought. He might have been leery of being in the Mission anyway, and now his wife was choking and a stranger was rushing toward them with unknown intentions.
I’m six feet tall, I hadn’t shaved, I was wearing old disreputable clothes, and my dark hair was shaggy and unkempt. I must have looked threatening to him, like what he imagined a Mission gang member to look like, although the typical gang member is more often a baby-faced sixteen-year-old with a semiautomatic. But he didn’t hesitate. He jumped in front of me, interposing his body between me and his wife, and stood ready to defend her. His daughter grabbed him and pulled him aside.
“It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay,” she said. I hoped she was right.
I slipped behind the mother and put my arms around her. She didn’t resist; she at least knew what I was up to. I took a moment to review what I’d learned. Find the xiphoid process. Check. Go two fingers below that. Check. Be careful not to be too rough; older bones are fragile and you can break ribs. Check. Make a fist, cover with your other hand, and give a sharp upward thrust. Nothing to it.
Except when I did, nothing happened. No rush of air, no wheezing gasp, no flying food. Nothing. I pushed down the beginnings of panic and thrust again, harder this time. Still nothing. I forgot about being careful and gave three more thrusts, each harder than the last, ribs be damned. On the third squeeze, a large chunk of burrito flew out her mouth and halfway across the restaurant aisle. She took a huge whooping gasp of air as I released her, and then it was over.
I backed off as the other two sat her down, making sure she was all right. She waved them off.
“I’m fine,” she said, when she caught her breath. “Really.” She looked up at me. “Thank you, young man. I thought for a moment I’d never see Cincinnati again.”
“Glad I could help,” I said.
The daughter came up to me and held out her hand. Up close, she was even more attractive, though she looked shaken at the moment.
“I’m Morgan,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
“Mason,” I said, taking her hand. “Well, at least we’ll have quite a story to tell our children.”
Now that the crisis was past, I immediately reverted back to my default flip demeanor. Not an admirable quality, but I’m working on it. She looked at me with that same flat affect and I thought I’d gone too far, but then she smiled again.
“How do you know I’m not married?” she said. “Or gay? Or both?”
“We could still have kids.” She moved back a step and looked me over.
“Possibly,” she said, after a significant pause. “But I’d have to see how you clean up. Do you have a job?”
“I’m a musician,” I said.
“Oh.”
“No,” I protested, “a real one. I get paid. Most of the time.” She continued to look at me skeptically. “In fact, I’m playing tonight at the Glow Worm.”
I wasn’t sure if she would have heard of the club, since it’s mostly for jazz aficionados, but she raised her eyebrows in appreciation.
“Oh, you play jazz,” she said.
The way she said it didn’t give a clue if she thought that was a plus or a minus, but at least she’d heard of the place and knew it featured jazz, which was something.
“I’m a guitar player—it’s a trio gig. You should come by. Seven thirty for the first set.”
“Maybe I will,” she said.
Meanwhile, her father was looking at her with exasperation and disbelief. After all, her mother had almost choked to death, and here she was, flirting with a stranger, one bare minute later. He started to say something, but his wife put her hand on his arm and shook her head.
I retrieved my burrito and gave them all a wave as I left. I don’t usually hit on nonpractitioners, no matter how attractive; it always turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth unless you’re talking a one-night stand, and that’s something I haven’t done in a couple of years.
But there had been an instant connection, even before the choking incident. If not for that, I would have just quietly departed, but this was a special circumstance. Surely I deserved some reward for saving a life.
Lou had his nose pressed impatiently against the window of the van. I’d been in there longer than I expected and the meter had run out. I was lucky there wasn’t a ticket waiting for me. He looked at me expectantly when I climbed behind the wheel, but I made him wait until we got home. My van may be old and battered, but I still didn’t want scraps of burrito strewn all over the seats.
“I just saved someone’s life,” I told him. “What have you done today?”
He stared fixedly at the paper sack with the burrito and ignored me.
At home, I ate my burrito slowly, pondering what Eli had said. Lou finished his portion in ten seconds and then expected more, but he gave up when it became clear I wasn’t holding anything back.
By the time I finished my lunch it was close on three. Still plenty of time to get out to the Columbarium. I dawdled around for a while, reluctant to go. I wanted to know what that apparition of Sherwood signified, and yes, I had to know if there was a chance she was still alive; but still, the whole idea was creepy and unsettling. But I had to try. That wasn’t even a question.
That thing she’d given to me, that special token with meaning, rested in the drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. Next to it was another token, a talisman Campbell had given me—a figure of ancient ivory and wood, a two-legged figure with the head of a wolf. The wolf was my totem, and twice now, that totem had called up help from God knows where and saved my hide.
But it had gone dead. Before, it had been alive, powerful, and a bit disturbing. Now it was inert, no more magically alive than any other antique curio in a dusty shop. I didn’t know if it would ever operate again—it had been my security blanket, always there in the most dire of straits. Maybe I’d used it once too often.
I shoved the wolf figure back into a corner of the drawer and picked up Sherwood’s gift, tossing it from hand to hand, contemplating. It was the only thing I had to remember her by—a figure of a guitar player made from one continuous strand of thick wire that she’d bought at a street fair one day, simple but clever. It reminded me of how it had been back then, when we were newly in love and took delight in the silliest of things.
I put it in my pocket, checked the Columbarium address on the Web to make sure I remembered it right, and five minutes later was on my way to the Richmond District.
The Columbarium sits at the end of a dead-end street, a large, neoclassical domed building, surprisingly light and airy. I parked a few blocks away and walked over, Lou by my side. It might have been more appropriate for my purposes if it had been dank and foggy, but the afternoon was bright and sunny, with a light breeze ruffling my hair.
Off to one side of the main building was a small court-yard with a fountain. Next to it, an immaculately groomed lawn, but behind the lawn was an untended field, overgrown with weeds. In back of the field were bushes of forsythia, bursting with color, but they, too, hadn’t been tended to in quite some time. Maybe the contrast between the manicured lawn and the neglected field was some sort of philosophical statement about life and death, or maybe they were just short on money.
I circled the outside until I reached the entrance. There wasn’t a person in sight, so I gestured to Lou and we walked in. I’m almost positive dogs are not welcome in a shrine to the dead, but with no one around who was to complain? Certainly not the departed. And he’d come in handy if another apparition appeared.
Inside, it was deserted as well. Daylight streamed through the mandala of the glass dome at the top, throwing flickers of sunlight over the tessellated floor where tiled spokes radiated out from the middle, with marble columns surrounding the center. Boxes of Kleenex had been discreetly placed in small recesses next to each column. Large stained-glass windows glowed brightly, mostly depicting fierce winged angels.
Along every wall, recesses filled with urns or chests faced inward, like nothing so much as a room of safe-deposit boxes in a bank. I strolled by, reading the names: Saunders, Markey, Von Ronn, Hisieh, Silver, Yu. Several levels were visible, circular tiers like a wedding cake.
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