City of Dragons (9 page)

R
ick found her across the street on Sacramento, leaning against the wall of a small rooming house wedged in between the commercial storefronts.

She was smoking, staring at the herbalist shop through the massed bodies of partygoers crawling up the street.

“Are you OK, Miranda?”

She looked at him, blew smoke out the side of her mouth. A percussive banging was crawling up from the cement and into their spines, chased by chanting, cheering, and crashing cymbals. The parade was finally arriving on Grant Street, four hours late, timing their entrance with the final rays of sunlight sinking behind Ocean Beach.

“Weren’t they supposed to march in the afternoon?”

“They did. Got stuck on Market—too many people throwing money. You know the city.”

“Yeah. We give ’til it hurts.”

Darkness crept out from basements and swept up from Market Street and the piers, the Chinatown neon glittering with brittle pink and blue hues. Miranda shivered in spite of her coat, in spite of the Chesterfield. She dropped the cigarette and ground it with her pump.

“Where are we going?”

He took her arm, leading her down the hill to Grant. Worry framed his face. “I owe you dinner, but I don’t have much left for anything more than a quick bite at the Universal. At least it’ll be away from the parade.”

“How in the hell are they going to fit any more people in here?”

He shrugged, pulling her aside. Four couples from the smart dinner set tinkled by, glissading up the Sacramento grade.

“Miranda … are you sure you’re all right?”

She jerked her elbow out from his hand, and walked faster. “Quit goddamn asking me. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Firecrackers popped behind them, the noise carried aloft on the drums of the parade and the horns from the band up the street.

“Don’t pull that crap with me. You were damn rattled back there. I was, too.”

“She’s a carny. Like the rest of them. Hustling people out of dimes and nickels, preying on desperation, smelling fear. I’ve seen it a thousand times on Treasure Island, and in every two-bit flea circus between here and the end of the road. Except this is the end of the road.”

“But the kid—”

“Listen, Sanders …”

She stopped in the middle of Grant, while a family of five wove around them, the parents calling the oldest son back to watch his little sister.

“… I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t like getting rooked. The kid wasn’t starving. Maybe the whole thing was a setup, who knows? The kid’ll be fine. She’ll be—”

“—all right?” He looked into her eyes. “You know, once in a while it’s OK to show some vulnerability, Miranda.”

She held his gaze and then broke it, staring ahead at the corner of Washington and Grant, the
pound-pound-pound
of the parade a couple of blocks behind them echoing her heart beat.

“The streets are littered with vulnerable women.”

She strode ahead, not looking back to see if he was following.

The band warbled and wailed, trying its best to ride a Cole Porter number before getting bucked off. Rick was clutching her bare back, pretending he knew how to dance. Every step proved he didn’t.

Miranda repressed a belch, brought up by the ham and cheese she’d eaten too fast, standing up, at the Universal Café. So much for dinner. They’d drifted toward the YWCA building, still searching for a place to talk. She agreed to dance. She didn’t want to think about why.

“So record on this Mike or Ming Chen, record on Filipino Charlie. Your friend will get the blood type on Eddie Takahashi. And the green Olds … are you sure it was an Olds?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Maybe you don’t know your models as well as you think you do. If it was a newer Dodge, it could be the hit-runner on Seventeenth Street everyone’s looking for. That was a green coupe. I can look up the poor bastard that got killed—see if there’s any connection. All I know is he was an old man. And I’ll keep my ear to the ground for rumbles about Gonzales and the other cop—what was his name?”

She winced, as his left foot crushed the top of her pumps. “Duggan.”

He drew her closer, looking down into her face.

“What about Phil, Miranda? I thought you and Phil—”

The song was over, and she pulled away, the crowd clapping without enthusiasm.

“I see a place we can stand.”

Rick followed her to a spot on the wall behind a palm frond. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“You look cold, why don’t I—”

“No, Sanders. Quit worrying about me, for God’s sake.”

He shrugged, taking out a cigarette, his voice flinty.

“You’re no good to me in the hospital with pneumonia. Don’t you own a whole dress?”

“Look around, Adrian. It’s the style. My evening clothes are working clothes.”

He struck a match on his thumb and lit the Lucky Strike. “Doesn’t look much like a uniform to me. You never answered about Phil.”

She drew in her breath, trying to control the impulse to run away.

“Phil’s got nothing to do with this.”

“He put the kibosh on the case. He’s sending goons like Duggan to harass you. What do you mean, he’s got nothing to do—”

“He’s retiring, goddamn it. He’s old, he’s giving it a rest, he doesn’t want me around to fuck it up for him with his new boss. OK? Lay off, Rick.”

He shrugged again, took a drag, and tried to sound nonchalant.

“Just wondered why he was treating you like a golden girl last year and now he’s hung you out to dry. I know he’s the fatherly type. Though frankly, that’s not how the boys in the newsroom described it.”

A boy singer stepped up to the stage in an ill-fitting white dinner jacket and handled the microphone like it was his first date. His voice cracked before he hit the high note in “If I Didn’t Care.”

Miranda turned to Rick. “You know what, Sanders? Fuck the boys in the newsroom.”

“Miranda …”

“As a matter of fact … fuck you, too.”

He jerked the cigarette out of his mouth, let it fall to the ground, and crushed it with his shoe.

“You’re lucky I know you. Although maybe I should say knew you.”

She was watching the sweat trickle down the singer’s forehead. Rick stared at her.

The song warbled on, the boy singing about something he didn’t know, didn’t understand, never had, never felt.

“You’ve gotten really good at locking people out, Miranda. A college degree in three years. But you weren’t the only one who lost Johnny. And one of these times you’re gonna find yourself in an empty room with no furniture. And nothing to keep you warm.”

She turned to watch him leave, his shoulders square and tight at the hat check counter. She watched him pick up his battered coat, covered in ash and food stains, and the old brown fedora that matched, the brim slightly too wide for his face.

She watched him dig around for his last quarter to leave a tip, and watched him, without a backward glance to the dance floor or her, stride through the door, the Chinese doorman smiling broadly and tipping his hat.

… if I didn’t care … for … you?

The song set was over, the singer retiring with relief and the audience clapping with it. Miranda collected her wrap, her coat, and her hat—she never danced in a hat—put a quarter in the tip tray and headed out.

Noise hit her on Clay, the kind you couldn’t dance to. Rice Bowl Party in full swing, the drunks in charge. High-class drinkers flitting out of the nightclubs, bees from a hive, honey for China, spiked by a dry martini and the promise of a hand job after the fireworks. Lower-class drinkers wandering, looking for a trash can or a gutter to empty their guts in, a quick blow in the alley if the B-girl could get it up.

She stood in a doorway, planning the shortest route back to the apartment. Saw a young woman, shoulders hunched in the damp cold, hurrying down Clay Street, a dress in her hands.

Chinese, beautiful, not as young as she looked. Hell, thought Miranda, none of us are anymore. She ran across the street, narrowly missing some screaming Stanford fraternity boys getting carted up the hill in a rickshaw.

“Betty—Betty Chow!”

Recognition. Then something else, something Miranda didn’t expect. Fear.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who—”

“Yeah, you do. It’s Miranda. We worked at Dianne’s together a couple of years ago.”

Betty laughed nervously, clutching the silk and brocade gown she was holding. She wasn’t wearing a coat.

“Oh—of course. Miranda Corbie, wasn’t it?”

Miranda stared at her. “Still is. What’s wrong, Betty? Dianne treating you badly, or aren’t you with her anymore?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just late for the fashion show. I ran out without my coat on.” Voice evasive, stockings too shabby.

“Something’s wrong. Is it Dianne?”

Betty looked at her wristwatch, glanced up at Miranda’s face, then looked around at the street full of people. None of them seemed to be paying any attention to the two women standing on the north corner of Clay. She bit her lip, rubbing some of the Tangee off. Miranda noticed her nails were chewed, too.

The Chinese girl seemed to reach a decision, and lowered her voice.

“I can’t talk here, and I’m late. I’m not—not with Dianne’s anymore.”

Miranda raised her eyebrows. Dianne and her illusions protected the women, the cloaked respectability of the tearoom and gathering place for escorts. It was usually their choice on how much of an escort they were willing to be. Away from Dianne there were no choices at all.

“Betty—call me. I’m in the Monadnock. Maybe I can help.”

Betty clutched the embroidered red and gold dress tighter, her body halfway gone already. Something was holding her back. She licked her lips again, her voice even lower than Miranda’s.

“You’re gonna need some help yourself. Don’t—don’t track the Takahashi case.”

She was already half turned toward Stockton when Miranda put a hand on her arm. “Betty—what’s—”

The girl shook herself, pulling away from Miranda’s arm, and scuttled down the hill. Her head was down, but from the angle of her neck, Miranda could tell she was scanning both sides of Clay Street.

The Memory Box was shut and dusty. The only way to open it was with some scotch. Or rye. This time it was rye, neat, a little ice, the moisture beading on the glass, the cubes making that oh so pleasant clink of conviviality. Good times. Memories.

She was sitting by the window, her usual seat when she couldn’t sleep. She’d gone to the fashion show, noticed the dresses were getting shorter, didn’t notice Betty. Betty was gone. Rick was gone. Miranda was alone, but again, she was used to it. She even liked it that way, most of the time.

Just her and the Memory Box. And the scotch. Or was it rye?

The fireworks were all the
Chronicle
said they’d be. She’d stood up in Portsmouth Square, next to a young couple who didn’t know any better than to be happy. She’d watched them, watched them watching the sky, her red lips gasping, making an O of delight while he held her, held her close and whispered. When the firework that showed refugees from the U.S.S. Panay lit them up, lit the sky, and the crowd gasped, not sure whether to applaud or stay silent, the girl with the red lips got teary and he held her tighter and then they went away. Miranda was alone.

She came back to the apartment, tried some music, but it was all Someone to Watch Over Me and Just the Way You Look Tonight and I’ve Got You Under My Fucking Skin. So she figured what the hell. If the radio was going to do that to her, she’d play along. She took out the Memory Box.

She kept them in there so they wouldn’t spill over and make an hour or a minute suddenly messy and sodden. The pain she hid well and buried deep, mixed and swirling, rye on ice, indissoluble from memory, and locked in the same box.

She tried to throw away the key, but it always came back.

1937.

They made love in a small clay house, in a bed that was a straw mattress and too small for one of them and so just big enough for both. He insisted on going to “where the action is.” They argued. She lost. They made love some more, eating some dry cheese and bread they’d stored in the wardrobe and drinking from a jug that fit under the bed.

The taste of his skin filled her mouth. His lips on her body. Inside her. Johnny.

“Go back to New York.”

“Not when you’re here.”

“Randy—I’ve got to go. You know that.”

“I know the paper is paying you to cover the war, not fight it.”

“Same thing.”

“No it isn’t. You don’t need to go to the front.”

“I won’t argue with you.”

The sun would rise soon. They could feel the light coming, and their bodies responded with urgency, blending together as if the force would stop the earth, stop the sun, stop the time. More wine. Not enough.

“I mean it, Rand—go back to New York.”

“I trained to be a nurse.”

“How can I do my job if you’re there? At least go back to the capital. Wounded men are everywhere in this poor goddamned country.”

“I want to be close to you.”

He couldn’t answer her, just held her close. She felt his lungs expand, his heart beating. She felt him warm and strong next to her. She was happy.

Another building. Gray Spanish hospital, the sleepy decay of a few hundred years crawling on the walls like ivy.

There were men in there. Old men, young men, but always poor men. The Americans and Europeans sometimes had money, but never the Spanish. She looked at them, the harrowed, lined faces, the dust-dried skin, the corroded bodies, twisted like barbed wire. The pain. It was everywhere. If you were blind you could smell it. If you were deaf you could taste it.

There were women, too. Separate ward, until they ran out of space. Mothers, daughters, wives. Defined by the dying men next to them. They all belonged to somebody. They usually went without complaint, without notice, staring through the ceiling, looking for the God that had forsaken them, taking his hand. Father. Son. Husband.

No matadors in Spain that year. No robust country boys daring the bull from his fence. No Cava for the old men. No pity for the young. Not Hemingway’s Spain. She never saw Hemingway.