Impersonal Attractions (17 page)

But the bombing didn’t have the thrill of contact with women like Lucinda Washington. And that kind of opportunity didn’t present itself very often. Most of the nigger women stayed home and minded their kids while their menfolk took the chances, spoke out, and got themselves killed. So, occasionally, he had to do a little something on his own.

Sometimes he rode at night with his friend T.J., a sheriff’s deputy. Patrolling the back roads could be boring, T.J. had told him, unless you knew what you were looking for: dark nights, parked cars with steamed windshields, a makeshift lovers’ lane at the edge of a cotton field.

The trick was to spot them and drive up real slow with the lights doused. Then zap them with the big lights and what you had was a tangled mess of arms and legs and titties and underwear and sweat.

If they were white, you stood and lectured them while they put their clothes back on, listening to them stutter while they explained to you what they were doing there. Every once in a while it was a preacher’s son or a schoolteacher’s daughter, and then you might make them get out of the car first before they got dressed. Then you got a really good look and you knew they sure as hell weren’t going to go home and tell any tales.

If the couple was black, that was a different story. Catch a nigger couple diddling each other in the back seat of a rusty old Ford and you could have yourself some fun.

One night, riding with T.J., he lucked out.

After hitting them with the big light T.J. pulled his sawed-off shotgun out of the patrol car and ordered them out of the cab of the battered old pickup truck. They were teenagers, no older than the boy. She was a pretty little thing, if you liked dark meat. Both of them were scared as shit.

T.J. made them take off the rest of their clothes and then hit the dirt.

“Nah, boy, not like that. Get your ass over on top of that girl, like you was doing before.”

“No, sir, Mr. T.J., we wasn’t doing nothing like that,” the terrified young black man whined.

“Well, you was wanting to if you wasn’t, so you going to get your wish now. Do it, boy. Hump her. Now!”

T.J. hit him in the butt with the shotgun and the young man assumed the position.

Terror had weakened his ardor, however, and, as the young girl sobbed beneath him and T.J. yelled in his ear, he couldn’t perform.

“You good for nothing nigger!” T.J. roared. “I promised my friend we was going to have some fun watching you niggers fuck and you’re making me out a liar. What you got to say for yourself, boy?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. T. J., sir.” He wiped tears and snot from his face with the back of his hand.

T.J. slapped him with the butt of the shotgun and the young man hit the ground.

“Don’t you look up from there either, boy. You just lay there with your eyes closed. Do you understand me?” Then he gestured to the still naked girl sobbing on the ground as if he were the host at a party. “After you. Help yourself.” And so he did. He enjoyed himself a lot. He liked the acrid smell of fear that rolled in waves off her, which was even stronger than the odors of hair pomade, Cashmere Bouquet powder, and Pall Malls. The smell of fear was very exciting.

But then, as she twisted and moaned beneath him—was it pain, was it fear, or did she like it—he couldn’t finish. He couldn’t get there.

The dispatcher’s voice crackled over T.J.’s radio, and then T.J. was urging him to come on, he had a call to answer.

But he couldn’t hurry, he couldn’t make it happen, and he was starting to get mad.

“Fuck me, bitch,” he growled into her tear-streaked face, and then he slapped her as hard as he could.

There was a small snap as her nose broke and blood gushed red across the dirt.

Then it clicked. That’s what was missing.

It was the blood and the knife that got him home.

They did their magic once again.

Within two minutes, he and T.J. were back in the patrol car headed toward the interstate and a three-car accident at the Acornville Road overpass.

“Thanks, T.J.,” he said.

His friend stepped on the gas and turned on the siren. “My pleasure.” He grinned. He hesitated a minute. “But I guess I really didn’t count on killing one.”

There was a long silence as they rolled past dark fields and crossed a narrow steel bridge over the river.

“It was just a nigger.”

“Right.” T.J. reached over and ruffled his friend’s hair, which was damp with sweat.

But after he’d dropped the boy off on the road near his house T.J. looked back for a long moment in his rearview mirror and wondered.

TWENTY-SEVEN

B
y five o’clock that Tuesday afternoon Annie knew she had been stood up. Would a grown man make a date on an answering machine and then not call back to confirm? Why hadn’t she called him? Now it was too late. If Harry was coming, he was coming, and if he wasn’t, she wasn’t going to call him up and make a fool of herself.

She was on her way to the money machine at the Union Street branch of the Wells Fargo. Perry’s was right next door. Harry was probably in there yakking it up with his friends and ogling the pretty young girls.

Will you stop? she said. So what if he is? He’s going to take you to dinner later. In three hours. Or is he?

She was just about to cross Union to the automatic teller. The wind that always rose in the late afternoon was blowing her long blonde hair into her face. As she brushed a curl back out of her mouth, her mother’s solitaire caught in one of her gold hoop earrings. Zap! The earring pulled out and was gone.

Annie wore very little jewelry. These earrings, given to her in a fit of generosity by Morose Mario, were the only pair of real gold ones she owned.

She stood frozen in that same stance she assumed when a contact lens popped. Maybe it was still on her body somewhere and if she didn’t move, it wouldn’t fall.

An elderly man walking a small white poodle stopped and asked if he could help her.

She began to tell him about the earring. As she did, it dislodged from her shoulder, where it had been resting, and flew, glinting, through the darkening cool air and landed three feet in front of her, smack on a Pacific Gas and Electric grate in the sidewalk. The earring circled, circled, slowly, slowly, and then fell. Plop. Through the slotted grate and down into a black hole.

She, the elderly man, and his dog stood staring first at one another and then down into the hole.

“Call PG&E,” he suggested.

“It’s after five. They probably won’t come.”

“Miss, is the earring real gold?”

Annie nodded.

“It’s worth a try.”

The PG&E lady had heard it all before. She put Annie on hold and three minutes later she was back. A service truck would be out shortly.

“How soon is shortly?”

“We try to answer all our service calls within four hours,” she answered, sounding not unlike Lily Tomlin.

Four hours! It was pushing five-thirty. Annie still had to get some money out of the machine, bathe, dress, and put a fresh coat of polish on her nails before she settled down to chew them, wondering if Harry was going to show at eight.

But, on the other hand, the PG&E lady said, it might take fifteen minutes. She had to give them a chance. If she left the grate unguarded, they would come and leave and she’d never know. The man with the dog promised to watch her grate for a few minutes while she raced across the street to the bank. He’d be there, he said, unless his wife finished shopping first.

She got her money, but the man was gone. Had she missed the truck? She’d just have to wait and see. What time was it? Almost six. Had Harry called and left a confirming message on her machine? She could call Angie, who had a key to her apartment. Angie could listen to her machine and tell her.

But she had no change. The bank machine only spit out fresh twenties.

The woman in the bakery across the street from the grate was very nice about giving her $19.40 change for a croissant.

“You did what?” Angie yelled, but she dutifully went across the hall to Annie’s apartment and listened to her tape.

“No, no message from Harry.”

It was 6:50 as Annie placed a second call to the utility company. She couldn’t wait any longer. She’d just have to start over tomorrow. She could see the writing on the wall. This was going to be just like the time one of her contact lenses lay in the dirty water in her lavatory trap for three days while she waited for the maintenance man to come back from vacation.

The dispatcher was trying to radio the closest service unit when a familiar beige-and-brown truck stopped in front of the arcade where she was using the phone. Her heroes had arrived.

One hero was short, old, and fat, chomping on a cigar. Annie thought he was beautiful. The other hero looked like a young George Peppard, with a healthy shock of prematurely silver hair. This was a PG&E man?

They were both very jolly about her predicament.

“Never had a call like this before,” said the Peppard look-alike. “But we’re always glad to help.”

She couldn’t believe it. This was a big grate and there were thousands of them all over the city. Surely other people dropped thousands of dollars’ worth of personal items down them daily. Maybe they just didn’t have a nice elderly gentleman nearby to urge them to call when they did. There was probably a whole treasure trove down there.

They lifted the grate and, while the younger man stood guard, the older man climbed down a ladder inside. Annie peered over the edge and almost fainted. The bottom was twenty feet below. This wasn’t just a hole, it was a subterranean passage painted battleship-gray, linking God knows what throughout the city. It reminded her of a tunnel in a James Bond movie. What did PG&E have going on down there?

Up lumbered her short, fat hero.

He was peering into his right hand.

“Two quarters, four pennies, and…”

He dangled her in suspense.

“One gold earring.”

There it was! She kissed him on the cheek and, before she could properly thank them, their radio crackled and they were off to a real emergency.

It was 7:10.

*

Annie looked great when Harry arrived, ten minutes late.

His Mercedes was parked on the sidewalk in front of her building. At the restaurant he left the car in front of a fire hydrant. He said he never got a ticket. She wondered if a Mercedes had diplomatic immunity.

His choice of restaurants was Fanny’s, a pretty little place in the Castro.

Harry wasn’t exactly rude, but he was peremptory. He didn’t ask her if she wanted a drink before dinner. He simply ordered a bottle of wine. He was impatient with the slow service on a slow night. He corrected the waiter, who attempted to remove his salad plate while she was still nibbling on her endive.

He was saying, “Then Xerox wanted to transfer me to Houston. That’s when I decided to strike out on my own. Couldn’t live without the bright lights of San Francisco.”

Harry was a mortgage banker who brought together brokers, buyers, sellers, and cash for real-estate deals. Annie’s idea of a real-estate deal was paying her rent on time.

Over some excellent salmon and sole they talked about movies, France, restaurants, what they’d been doing for the past thirty-odd years. They laughed a lot. Between the excellent Stag’s Leap chardonnay and the laughter, Annie began to relax.

As Harry pushed his dinner plate aside, Annie noticed a pile of rice on the tablecloth. He noticed her notice and reached over and shoveled rice off her plate too. When the waiter came to clear the table Harry apologized to him for his messy date.

They shared a piece of chocolate fudge cake, brandishing forks for the larger portion. Annie couldn’t remember the last time she’d even approached a food fight.

As they stood to leave, he walked toward her. He backed her into the wall behind her chair, put his hands on her shoulders.

“You have beautiful ankles. Size twelve shoes? Wonderful eyes. Size six blouse?”

Before she could figure out whether to thank him for the compliments or slap him for the presumption, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly, softly, slowly.

“I’ve wanted to do that for the last hour,” he said.

The man was funny. And charming. Could he hear her heart thumping? Close your mouth, Annie, she warned herself. Do not tell him you think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Before she had time to tell him anything, he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and carried her past the amused staff out of the restaurant. Depositing her neatly on the sidewalk, he kissed her forehead, took her hand, and led her to the car without a word.

It takes a tall woman, a woman one doesn’t throw over one’s shoulder casually, to really appreciate that kind of move. How did he know that? Was he funny, a great kisser, charming, and clairvoyant too? Or did he just have a whole bag of tricks he pulled out at random?

Where did she want to have a drink? He didn’t blink when she suggested the upstairs bar of Café San Marcos just a few blocks down the street. It was a beautiful mirrored room, very sleek, very New York, but it was also very gay. He parked the car in a bus zone.