Winners (14 page)

“Fuck it’s nice up here,” Fulton says. “Do you think I could build a deck?”

“I don’t know.”

“With a hot tub? It would look like shit I guess but who cares. Sit up here in the tub. Naked, with a bottle of good wine and cheap dates and a sniper’s rifle. There’s got to be a way.” He glares at the roof, calculating its demise. “I think I’ll call my architect. The very idea of it is going to cause him physical pain.”

“You can find someone to do it, I’m sure.”

“Oh, always. No matter what it is.” He half rises and crabs his way along the top of the roof to meet Shane. “So where you been hiding? You didn’t join my gym.”

“No.”

“I swear it’s not all pussies. They got tough guys, too, there some ghetto boys, plus a buncha good dudes from Cal. You should join. I’m always there. I guess your work keeps you in pretty good shape. Me, three days I’d turn into the blob.”

“Do you know a kid named Sam?”

“Probably. The gym has no names. One of the best things about it.”

Shane describes him, quickly. “My brother and I been looking for him.”

“Intrigue. Come back down with me sometime, I know everyone, we’ll figure it out. Goddamn.” He points out to the west at two small streaks of clouds turning orange and red. “You must be a better person. Anyone who spends most of their time up here has to be a better person.”

“It’s all right.”

“Gotta be better than all right. You could be doing a lot of other things, you wanted to.”

“I don’t know about that. I like being outside, I like houses. I like being my own boss.”

“Sure. But it can’t be the best money in the world.”

“It’s okay.”

“How much do you make?”

“About sixty.” He doesn’t remember anyone ever just asking him like that. “Before taxes. But I deduct everything.”

“And your wife?”

“She does all right, I guess.”

“She can’t be paying herself much. They’re stalled out on the IPO, what I heard.”

“Everybody knows everybody,” Shane says.

“You’re betting on her.”

“It means a lot to Lou.”

“And you?”

“I want her to be happy.”

“But not rich?”

“I don’t really think about it.”

“Maybe you should. Would she be happy if the company’s successful but she doesn’t make a lot of money?”

“I don’t know. Is that possible?”

“Of course it’s possible. Everything could change tomorrow.” Fulton laughs. “But tomorrow isn’t coming, not for a while, I’ll tell you that right now. There’s a lot more to this than people realize. People don’t even know. By the time tomorrow rolls around? She’ll probably be starting her fifth company by then. You guys’ll be living across the street, up in those beauties somewhere.” He nods off into the heart of Pacific Heights. “I don’t see you as a South Bay kinda guy.”

“This might sound stupid,” Shane says, “but I don’t really know anyone to ask.”

“Shoot.”

“Does that mean you really think they’re going to make it?”

“Of course,” Fulton says. “Why wouldn’t they? Come on, look at all this. And look at her.” Fulton rubs his shoulders in the slight breeze. “You can tell the difference between the parasites and the ones who have the magic. You can smell it. Not everyone can create things. Some people just want the path of least resistance. Some people just want to get rich. But she’s a creator. She’ll build this one and do another and do another. She’s got the bug.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what she wants.”

“You never know. You never know until they’ve got their fingers wrapped around the golden ring.”

The light is fading hard, as the window sparks of downtown blink brighter in the growing dark. The rooftops’ waves are shadowy now, a quiet winter sea.

“It’s a great time to be breathing,” Fulton says. “A lot of kids hated history, but I was one of those geeks who liked it. I always wondered what it felt like when everything changed. Those moments that got their own chapter.” He holds his head above the chimney, listening to the strange distorted sounds below. “Now we know. It feels…gooood.” He shakes his head with pleasure, surveying his domain.

The lights of downtown stare back at them, well-lit offices telling tales of late hard-working nights. “Can you help her?” Shane says. Were the downtown people getting rich too? He feels Fulton watching him, but he doesn’t look over. “I don’t know if she needs it. She seems to think she does. But if you can, I’d be really grateful.”

Fulton lifts his head, following Shane’s gaze, looking for something he’s never seen before. He nods, slowly. “One wrong move up here and that’s it, huh.”

“That’s it.”

“What about my chimneys.”

“What about them.”

“Can you fix them?”

“Sure. Is there something wrong with them?”

“I don’t know. But they can’t be perfect, can they?”

“I guess not.”

“So make them perfect.”

Shane laughs. “I’ll come back sometime and check them out.”

“Deal. As long as you bring me up here with you.”

The roof is steep, and Shane offers Fulton a hand as he creeps down toward the ladder. Fulton grabs it, hangs on tight. He moves well up there, a strange absence of fear in his eyes.

“Makes me feel like an idiot I’ve never been on my own roof,” Fulton says when they’re on the ground again. “Makes me think of all the other things I’ve never done.”

They sit at a long maple table in the dining room, fourteen of them eating lobster, corn, and small roasted potatoes. Somewhere, an invisible cook has been cooking. Bottles of pinot noir move freely at all ends of the table. Shane is drinking beer. Everyone wears cheap plastic bibs with cartoon lobsters strutting large across their chests, waving their happy claws like cruise boat tourists.

“Forget New Hampshire,” someone is saying. “The whole primary thing is ridiculous. New Hampshire is over. The East Coast is over. Might as well make California first and call a spade a spade. Who gives a shit about New Hampshire? Iowa?”

“Yeah. Except that most of this country has more in common with Iowa than California.”

“Who needs ’em. The fifth largest GNP in the world, right?”

“End State.”

“Technology. Hollywood. And farming. Who’s gonna mess with that?”

“Farming?”

“There’s New York.”

“New York. They have no idea what’s going on in New York.”

“No idea.”

“We’ve even got our own chimney sweeps,” Fulton says. “What do we need with New York?”

“A chimney sweep,” one of the other women says, looking at Shane. “There’s something romantic about that.”

“I found him first,” Lou says.

“The key to San Francisco,” Fulton says, looking sly, “is mixing the power of tradition with the absolutely new. You know, like, human society is changed forever but people still think it’s good luck to shake the hand of a chimney sweep.”

“Is that true?”

“Supposed to be,” Shane says.

“How on earth do you know that, David?”

“The man has heard of everything.”

“A master of idle conversation.”

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Fulton says, winking at Shane.

“Yeah,” Shane says. He feels like he’s been set up. “Which one, the king and the horse?”

“What I heard was they used to invite the chimney sweeps to weddings and have them lie in the bridal bed. For marital good fortune.”

“Oh, that’s tasty.”

“Lie in the bed?”

“Unclear if that’s with or without the bride,” Lou says. “The chimney folks had great PR guys.” She winks at Shane. “Naughty.”

“What else?”

“Well,” Shane says. “They’re all luck-related. Like kissing a chimney sweep is supposedly good too.”

“Kissing?” Lou says. “You told me humping.”

“Can’t hurt.” The table is smiling. Lou leans over and kisses him theatrically on the cheek.

“What about,” Fulton says. “What about this. In architecture, they say the chimney was the technological leap that allowed for class division.”

“We have got to get you a day job, David.”

“Something. Selling Slurpees at the 7-Eleven.”

“I never heard that,” Shane says, searching Fulton’s face for motive. Definitely a setup. But why?

“Think about it. In the castles, apparently everyone used to eat together in one big heated room, with a fire in the middle, and an open hole in the roof for the smoke. The duke, the duchess, the piss boy, everyone in one big room. Then chimneys come along, and suddenly you can heat rooms separately. With chimneys,” he says, removing the slender piece of meat from the bottom jaw of a lobster claw, “people could finally get the hell away from one another.”

“Says who?” someone says.

“I read it online.”

“Well it must be true.”

“Where do the top hats come in?”

“So the Internet’s even worse,” Shane says, “right? Because now people never have to see each other if they don’t want. Like everyone’s got their own personal chimney.”

“Not at all,” Fulton says. “What was the important stuff that used to live in the privileged rooms? Was it the people or was it what they knew? It was really language, books, maps, knowledge, ideas, memes, the conversations of power. And now that lives everywhere, right? Now anyone can find it. And use it.”

“For free.”

“Free can’t last. Someone will invent new chimneys,” Fulton says. “We probably will.” He’s trying to catch Shane’s eye but Shane won’t have it. He drinks his drink. Did Fulton make this fable up?

“Data encryption.”

“Embedded copyright protection.”

“Paid content.”

“Place your bets.”

“Funny to think about someone looking back on this as medieval.”

“Ah those heady times of possibility.”

“Days of kings and feasts and parties.”

Drinks continue to disappear at a rapid clip. Fulton throws a corn cob at someone. A lobster claw puppet show ensues. The table is abandoned for the deck out back. Lou is telling a dirty joke about a parrot screwing chickens. Shane has heard it before and starts laughing before she gets anywhere near the punch line. They’re all laughing, Lou too, holding onto someone’s arm for support. A cell phone rings, then rings twice more before Shane realizes it’s his.

“Excuse me,” he says, embarrassed, although no one pays him any mind. He steps back into the house. “Hello?”

“This Shane?”

He sees the phone tucked into the curve of her neck. “Yes.”

“I need you to come over here.”

“Now?” he says. He means to ask why? or what? but somehow now? gets there first.

“Yes,” she says. “I need your help. This Debra. Debra Marks?”

“I know.” She waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.

“Shane?”

“Yes.” Lou is still holding court outside, telling another story. Her audience leans as one, as if her hands are tugging gently at the end of their marionette strings.

“Can you do that for me?”

“Okay,” he says.

“Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she says, “I’m here waiting.” She hangs up.

L
OU’S CAR CLIMBS
up the slope into the projects, purring healthy and quiet against the steep incline. As he slows to turn into the parking lot, his mind flips through a quick slide show of monstrosities: stabbings, shootings, dissections, strangulations, bludgeonings, forced drownings, anal rape. He wishes Jimmy were here, although maybe it’s for the best.

He parks the car, sits in it running for a moment before he kills the engine. Slipping off his jacket, he tosses it in the back seat, then opens the glove department and removes the miniature can of mace that Lou keeps inside. He holds the can briefly and then puts it back. The seaweed smell of lobster lingers in his shirt. He checks around for signs of life and death and then gets out of the car as slowly as he can make himself, closes the door behind him, speed walks to Debra’s doorway. The familiar graffiti sits waiting for him: God help us all, Niggas be acting like bitches. There’s one glowing in the dark that he hasn’t seen before: a date, Ray-Z, R.I.P. His fists are balled up tight. Glass sand crunches beneath his feet, the sound of fight or flee.

Behind him, out in the parking lot, a voice calls out, impossible to know what it says or who it’s for, but it sends an electric jolt up his spine. There’s someone there. He doesn’t look back, just pounds on Debra’s door. Quick. Music’s coming from her apartment or maybe the one next door, pretty loud, the bass rattling the brass doorknob slightly, the hard low voice rapping promised threat. It’s a good soundtrack for a killing.

On knock number five her door opens and her face appears, level with his, hair slicked back carefully, lips wet with lipstick just applied. Her perfume staggers him back a half step, and she slips through the door, closing it behind her.

“You look nice,” she says, as if this is the most normal occasion in the world, his dropping by on a Thursday night.

“I was at dinner.” He fights not to look behind him. If she notices the wobble in his voice or hands, she doesn’t let on.

“Huh.” She sighs softly and nods her head in the vague direction of the world beyond. “I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry, “I just need to get out of here.”

“Are you okay?”

She shakes her head. “I need to talk to you,” she says.

***

They end up in an upscale diner down near the Embarcadero, almost on the edge of North Beach. He doesn’t know why there, where he has never actually been, he simply gets out on the road and starts driving. They barely speak. He’s expecting some kind of explanation but it seems like she’s decided to wait until they arrive. They drive by the new ballpark in full construction, rebar bursting up like a field of magic beanstalks, they drive under the massive girder legs of the Bay Bridge, they drive by the ferry building made small by downtown around it and the empty piers in renovation and then he sees the diner and the perfect parking space out front. He stops.

They sit in a big red booth. In the mirrored wall, he catches a glimpse of them: his pink-white skin looks red and blotchy next to hers, his light cotton pants and black sports coat wrinkled compared to her fitted white blouse over tight blue jeans. She takes her time, in no kind of hurry, reading the large menu carefully before choosing crab cakes, a small Caesar salad, Diet Coke. He orders a beer.

“Last time I was out for dinner,” she says, “like out, at night? I don’t even know. I do not even know,” she says again, slowly, as if the words themselves might drag back the memory by force. She examines Shane, then checks out the rest of the diner. “I like this place. Reminds me of a soda shop. You ever go up there to Trays?”

“No.” Is this why she’s summoned him? Is this how she works her way up to the truth about Sam?

“It’s known,” she says. “Kinda like this, if it’s even still around. Used to be. I haven’t been there for years.”

“I’ll have to look for it.”

“It ain’t much, nothing to look for. It’s like more down home, know what I’m saying? This here’s better,” she says, nodding her approval, making clear that she has no problem with change, advancement, progress.

The drinks come, and he gives his beer a good gulp while she stabs her ice with the straw. Her nails are long and perfect, red to match her lipstick, although her hands themselves seem huge and ancient, too big and too old for her body. Deeply wrinkled at the joints. Those hands must have done some work in their time. Why does the rest of her look so young? She has young skin, that’s it, what is Lou always telling him: it’s all about the skin. Up on a hill somewhere, his wife is being clever or listening with furious concentration or sparring with whoever’s game: an Ed, Celeste, a Fulton. What was the look she gave as he left, lying his way to the door? A question—do you need me?

“You a quiet one, huh?”

“Not always.”

“You are though, you happy just to sit there and chew your tongue up.”

“Sorry. I’ll try to do better.”

Through the window they can both see the bridge, which is something else from here, large and lit, its clean steel lines slicing up the dark sky behind it. Beneath it, the revamped Embarcadero with its rows of healthy uplit palm trees in the median, edged by new curb and stone. She shakes her head.

“Straight out Disneyland down here.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Yeah, huh, you feel me? It’s going on, they got the made-for-TV city. You ever see them doing that show they do?”

“Which one’s that?”

“Right here, you know, it’s like in San Francisco. Come on, now, you seen it. With that puffy head Miami dude wearing little pink yellow jackets. Every time I see that show, I’m like, for real, unh-uh, it’s too cold be wearing that golfing get-up. Not in my city.” She looks back out the window again, as if the film crew might be there, right now. “They must got a headquarters down here somewhere. Always got that shot, you know, in the show, of the bridge through those big-ass windows.”

“I think I saw that.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Me, I don’t care for it, but I seen them making the show one time on the hill? They had the big ol’ trucks out there and lights, daytime right? but they had it all out there. Seal off the block and the whole nine. I didn’t see that dude though or nobody famous, but that’s what they all said it was. I’m like, put me in the show I give you something more to look at than ol’ puffy head and that little Mexican. Nah, I don’t care for that at all.”

“I don’t really watch it very much, to tell the truth.”

“What shows you look at?”

“Nothing consistent. I guess I do watch some TV, but it’s like I don’t even notice.”

“You just zone out, huh.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s what Samson do,” she says. “You could dynamite the door he don’t hear it.”

“Where your kids?” he says, not meaning to but the thought of Samson brings the other faces out of the ether around him.

“They with my momma for the night. Over in Oakland.”

“But everything’s okay?”

“Nah, everything’s not okay.” She shifts in her seat and leans in to tell him a little secret. “Shit. Look at me.” He does. She’s frowning hard, summoning wrinkles into her forehead and shaking her head softly. She looks angry and scared and maybe even a little like she wants to slap him or something. He doesn’t know what to think. “Look at me,” she says again. “What am I doing here.”

“I don’t know. Tell me. What’s going on?”

“My shit’s fucked up,” she says, “why I got to talk to you. I can’t sleep. I can’t think straight. I can’t do nothing. And now that punk come hassling me? I got to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“I gotta know something.”

“I’ll try.”

“You and your boys play with Samson, y’all homosexuals?”

He shakes his head, squints, not so much denying, but trying to make sure he’s heard her right.

“Yeah you,” she says, “the other guy, y’all you play with, y’all homosexuals?”

“No. Not that I know of. I’m married.”

“Married don’t mean nothing.”

“Maybe not. But no. I’m not a homosexual.”

“The other guys.”

“I doubt it. Not that you’d notice. It doesn’t really come up.”

“Samson’s a homosexual,” she says, staring at him hard. “You know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” He can feel the vinyl of the booth irritating the skin of his thighs, seeming to tighten against his flesh like shrink-wrap plastic. “Like I said, it doesn’t really come up.”

“Oh, it comes up,” she says. “It comes up and up and up. Are you religious?”

“Sometimes,” he says.

“Well I’m not religious. My momma was, though, she pray more than she eat. She the one named him Samson. You know why?” He shakes his head. “Cause I was 14 years old, and I was drinking and drugging already and gonna have a baby, and she told me God was giving me a gift, like He gave Samson to the Israelites. And she took me to that Bible and that Bible said I must drink no wine or do nothing else unclean—and everything but everything I was doing be unclean, know what I’m saying?—so I had to stop cold if I wanted to have me a little king, a little somebody. And you know what? I just stopped. I believed her. ’Cause it did feel like a gift, and I wanted to have the baby, and I did. Didn’t I?”

He doesn’t move, focused, listening.

“Yes I did. And I cleaned up. And my momma, they got me in the hospital and pushed out Samson and she said now you got to go with God and take care of this child. Like that for years, my child and God all she cared about.” She takes a deep breath, lets it go through her nose. “My momma here right now, she’d tell you all about it. She tell you all about God and Samson. Oh yeah, how my little boy’s gonna burn in Hell.” Her voice is hard and shocking, not just words. Hell a place as real as Burlingame or Daly City. “Well, if he do end up in Hell, least his daddy and friends be there soon enough, keep him company. But uhn-uh,” she says, shaking her head, wicking those thoughts away hard, “that’s not for me. Maybe he’s all right, out there somewhere.” She looks off out the window, watching a car drive by, then stares at the food at the table next to theirs where two huge plates of fries are being consumed by a couple of frat boys. “Those fries look good. I could eat a world of fries right now, you feel me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I understand really, no.”

“Least you honest,” she says, half laughing to herself. “Samson gone, y’all show up at my door like I dunno what, then that punk roll up on me and what am I supposed to do?”

He is fidgeting with his water glass, tilting it back and forth, watching the level change, and she reaches across the table, puts her hand flat on top on his hand and stops him. “I don’t know now if he hiding out or what, I don’t know if it’s true he owes money, I don’t know if it’s true y’all know where he’s at.”

“I wish I knew where Sam was at. Who told you that?”

“This little gangster, Ty. He say Samson staying with your friend.”

“He’s just making things up. He’s just trying to scare you.”

“Well it’s working. Bottom line is I got three other little ones take care of and I got to get out. And you got to help me, that’s what.”

“I will,” he says instantly. “I want to.” He does. He wants to more than he’s wanted anything for a long time. Get her out of there. Get her a job. Find Samson. These are tangibles, pins to aim at and knock down. She’s breathing heavy through her nose, holding her head in her hands. She’s going to cry. Is she going to cry? If she cries he doesn’t know what his own body will do.

“I’m going to help you,” he says. “I’m going to do whatever I can.” She nods. She looks angry is what she looks.

“That boy,” she says. “What’s more fearful than being a momma? You think of anything, let me know.” Her hand is still on top of his and they stay just like that, her holding him in place as they watch each other, until the waitress returns with the food and she lets him go.

“This looks good,” she says, not missing a beat. She digs in, eating slowly and steadily, absolutely confident in her appetite. She knows how to eat. He orders another beer. She eats and doesn’t say another word until she’s finished. He can still feel the warmth of her hand on top of his, like she’s burned a mark there that will blister up tomorrow.

“Why you not eating?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That beer, boy. Beer will fill you up. You a drinker, huh?”

“Sure.” He’s tilting his empty glass again but this time he stops himself. “Want to go?”

She looks around to see what’s wrong with being here. “All right. Where we going?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, you don’t know. Man, what are you, scared or something? I scare you, all this shit scare you?”

He tries to smile. “You’re scary.”

“Yeah, you should be, you should be huh. No,” she says, “you gonna come through for me, you gonna be scared but you’ll do it.” She smiles, her mouth and face expanding in anticipation and when she’s done it turns out to be quite a smile, a dime-sized dimple on either side. She looks like a teenager when she smiles. “I could go for a walk. A little stroll around Disneyland, see what’s going on.”

Outside they stand side by side while he looks around and figures out which way to go. She reaches out and takes his hand. Her skin is cool and rough, her long fingers wrapped around his. A light and comfortable grip but he can feel the strength in there ready to squeeze water from stone. He feels their skin touching as if from a great distance, a sensation beamed up to satellite and then back down to earth again. He tries to let go, at least he thinks so, but their hands stay peacefully joined.

“All right, Mr. Man,” she says, pulling him gently. “Let’s walk.”

North Beach is buzzing. The crowded sidewalks slow to a syrup crawl as they hit the neon center. They make their way mutely past the gaudy strip clubs, past the packed bars and restaurants. She keeps his hand like a flashlight as they walk the narrow sidewalk. The oncoming pedestrian traffic thins single file to the outside to let them pass. His favorite North Beach café is crowded with its usual mix of regulars and tourists, but there’s a table opening up right in the window, prime for people-watching. He suggests a coffee. Her hand is still cool in his.