One Foot Off the Gutter (23 page)

“You want to play games, don't you?”

I didn't know what else to say to him. I was going to
have to arrest the man, and I didn't know where to begin. Steady, I advised myself.

“No, no games,” the asshole replied. “I don't think it would be fun with someone like you.”

I didn't like the sound of that. It was as good of a time as any to bust the shithead. I reached for the handcuffs on my belt.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm going to have to take you in.”

He giggled, an eerie, thin laugh.

His laughter was followed by a loud bang that hurt my eardrums. The robber's face was a mere glimmer of light. Bellamy's voice was in back of the light in the other room.

And what was this?

A bullet was traveling in a beeline toward me. It was moving slowly for a bullet, rotating in mid-air. I looked past its flight and saw the liquor store robber was holding the gun in his fist. The bullet began to pick up momentum. I examined its trajectory, then stared at the asshole. I heard Bellamy call my name again, and I cried, “No, don't!”

A huge fist socked me in the solar plexus, backing me up into the wall. Okay, now what? I asked myself. It was a question I couldn't negotiate. In what took a million years, I fell to the floor, giving me the opportunity to go over everything I'd ever done wrong.

I had been falling for a long time. Yesterday, Bellamy and myself had been called to the scene of a domestic conflict on Shotwell. Ordinarily, I didn't enjoy those encounters, and this situation did not deviate from the norm.

A young, outraged pregnant lady in a maternity dress, some eight months gone and wielding a large kitchen knife was out in the street backed up by various members of her family. She was squared off against this guy attempting to protect himself with a screwdriver. He didn't have a chance. She'd already stabbed him three times. A pregnant woman. Nobody in the crowd spoke English, and we didn't know any Spanish. Of course, this made everything worse.

Bellamy got mad because he wasn't able to express himself. He started to shout, as if volume would solve the problem of comprehension. I knew we had to get out of there. We didn't belong there, really didn't.

In all worlds, there were mistakes that needed correcting. And if Bellamy didn't want to leave, didn't want to make a plan, I'd travel alone. I knew what I was doing. All I wanted were a few more minutes to set things straight. I called out once, Alice? My partner was screaming, but I couldn't answer him. I was dropping away. I was slipping out of reach. It was time to go. My journey toward home was just beginning.

PETER PLATE taught himself to write during eight years spent living in abandoned buildings in San Francisco's Mission district. A spoken-word performer, Plate possesses an eidetic memory that allows him to recite whole chapters of his books from memory.
One Foot off the Gutter
joins
Snitch Factory, Police and Thieves,
and
Angels of Catastrophe
to complete Plate's Mission Quartet. His previous novels are
The Romance of the American Living Room
(1993),
Darkness Throws Down the Sun
(1991), and
Black Wheel of Anger
(1990). Peter Plate lives and writes in San Francisco.

Copyright ©1995, 2001 by Peter Plate

 

First published by Incommunicado Press in 1995
First Seven Stories Press Edition November 2001

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Plate, Peter.

One foot off the gutter : a novel / Peter Plate.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-609-80054-3

1. Mission District (San Francisco, Calif.)—Fiction. 2. Police—California—San Francisco—Fiction. 3. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. 4. Squatters—Fiction. 5. Criminals—Fiction. I. Title

PS3566.L
813'.54—dc21 2001041090

 

 

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