She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me (28 page)

“That's so important these days”—but when I finally spoke, Priscilla and Karim glanced at each other, not sure what I was referring to after my period of silent thought.

Usually first impressions decide whether I'm going to like a person or not. In Karim's case, it had been not; but then there were second and third impressions, and now this, and I could see why he had won Priscilla over. The man took pleasure in his life as a man should. He saw something in me that I might want to find in myself. Since other procedures were lonely, turned out lonely, I was considering the example Priscilla was pressing on me.
Hey Karim, it's kind of lively in your vicinity.

From where he sat, defenseless in an armchair, natty and at ease and contentedly defenseless, he fixed me with the eyelinered eyes and waggled his heavy head. “I have been explaining, my friend, and to persuade. That has been my intention. Perhaps now you concur. Pris-ceela understands and so must you. This is America, which gives rewards for good work.”

The man doesn't give up. “Sometimes,” I said.

“But oh, my friend, you have been difficult in your time of troubles.”

“That's always my way.”

“Change your way, my friend. Such is my mission.”

I didn't thank him for his example, his devotion to mission. Perhaps I should have thanked Priscilla.

She joined the party. “Everyone can see, dear, and especially I can see, how stubborn you are in your own really bullheaded way … Well, you were even motivated to the point of middle-aged fisticuffs. I hate to use the word ‘jealous,' Dan.”

“You can use it.”

“Dear man. Xavier was a
visa,
that's all. You know what that means?”

Karim stood up, saying, “Thank you, thank you, I really must—thank you so much.”

Time to go, time to go; he was still smiling and shaking his head, seeming to have accomplished something; waved at the door, Priscilla not accompanying him; and then he was gone. Discreet Karim, friend of the family.

Priscilla listened to his receding footsteps and then said again, “Visa. I don't need it anymore. I let the visa expire. Hey, you ought to believe me. I still like you a lot and he's just an expired … Dan?”

“What?”

“Pay attention.” When Priscilla turned sarcastic, or turned to justifying or explaining herself, she knew she was in trouble. Her clear blue stare would have been beseeching in another woman. Sometimes the only way she could make herself clear, since words only confused matters, was by making love. “I said I still like you a lot. Believe me when I say something.”

Chapter 24

If she comes back to me, I agree. If she doesn't, I also agree. I try to be a civilized individual. The smell of tennis shoes reminds me of flowers; the smell of composted weeds in the bin behind my cottage reminds me of tennis shoes. A truly civilized individual would understand that she's not coming back to me, and I do not so understand. I make do with composted flowers and old tennis shoes, exercising the part of the brain that picks out the good smells, not good sense.

Being herself kept Priscilla busy, fully occupied with the day when awake and actively realigning flesh, soul, and dream anticipation when asleep, making her way through the rhythms of the world, metabolizing herself like a healthy animal. I wanted to branch into that electricity, that directional beam; it seemed like a miracle to a person whose brain was mostly an olfactory registration device.

Life was more peaceful now. I hung on. I liked my nest, my lair, Poorman's Cottage. Like a good householder, I swept it out regularly. How noticeably convenient it was to awaken after a bad night's sleep, dreams of loss, sometimes spiteful dreams, and then to get busy distancing myself from them with a relaxing hour immersed in the newspaper and wars, fires, famines, crimes, the world's general pain. I climbed into the newspaper like a warm bath. I learned to use a better grade of coffee at breakfast—Yuban instant—because it almost tasted like good coffee. I swept the twigs, leaves, dust, and animal droppings from my front steps, catching slivers in the broom. Someday I might buy tools and wood and replace those steps myself; someday maybe. I had plans for the future. I was enjoying the San Francisco autumn, which burst upon Potrero Hill with sudden dry heat before the winter fog and shortened days came to town.

It would be wrong to complain. Clutching the coffee mug in my hands, I stare like a raccoon at the prospect of the day, and yawn like a fish, and in general lose myself in the recesses of beast mind, at one with immensity and chaos. Since the universe is crowded with the past, I am not at one with reality or myself, I'm only trying, getting along.

A kid from the Projects is playing war, crawling through the grass up the hill toward me. I go to the window, careful to show myself, taking aim with an imaginary weapon, peppering him with shots.

He rises, laughing, and spectacularly falls dead, his body jerking from the automatic fire. I applaud. He rises again and bows graciously, then trudges back to the Projects. His nightmare universe is also crowded with dreams. I put down my weapon.

I carry my cup outside; drink the last sips of Yuban Almost-Good Instant in the sunlight, blinking, violating the ophthalmologist's rule to wear sunglasses always. Nearby there is latex sex litter dripping from bushes. Unless the raccoons are taking up birth control, some of the Project kids must be inviting their girlfriends out for a stroll. But the girls don't seem to prowl; it's boys I see staring at me, sometimes their noses to my windows while I'm reading, peeing, or at the refrigerator drinking orange juice from the carton. Evidently they think I'm too dim-eyed to see out.

Little do they know, peeking at the slouched grizzled old white guy, that I take reasonable care of the machinery. It wouldn't be right to be forever young, packaged by weight training, vitamins, and plastic surgery, grinning tightly, littering up the earth. I've come to like crisped leaves, dark-edged petals, strong smells of fallen rinds, even dead raccoons on my hillside. They gradually fade into the hill, eaten inside and out by ants, rats, and squirming maggots, while the Project kids and I, too, make a wise circle around them in our roamings; we stop and stare first. I could—not a bad option—leave my body on a hillside to filter back into soil, sifting through the digestive system of other creatures. A body is only rank for a little while, until the weather and those other bodies finish working at it.

*   *   *

As my friends begin to die, or grow old, die a little, I am angry with them, as if the same thing isn't happening to me. I look at Alfonso, that terrific pal, the very best, and want to hit his swelling sagging belly, kick him in that drag-ass behind with heavy thighs flopping in thick pants. Retired from the police now, he thinks he has the right to a pensioner's indulgence; cops quit too young. Part-time work as a security consultant to the Pinkertons—black men didn't used to do this kind of experting—means he doesn't have to conform to weight requirements. It's not the rules that are uptight; it's Dan Kasdan, who is not fat but skinny—that's another way age takes a man. Muscle not turning to rubber; going to gristle. I have no right to resent others.

“Man, you wasn't my friend, I wouldn't want to hang with you,” Alfonso said. “What happened to not giving a fuck? You used to know how. Learn some survival skill, man.”

“If I'm not fun anymore—” I said.

“Okay, I'm your watchdog now, so I get to bark whenever I think of it.”

He still liked to nag me about Xavier. He knew Xavier made no difference about anything important, and knew I knew it. Whatever pleasure there used to be in remembering one stupid swing of my fist had been used up.

“Hey, look at you, inspiration to a boy like me,” Alfonso said. “Someday I'm gonna retire all the way, smell the bees, whatever it is you do.”

“I'm not retired.”

My pal the police detective and Pinkerton consultant just stared with big wet eyes. Patted his tummy. Eased himself into the too-small chair in my kitchen. “No, not retired,” he said. “Just not working anymore. You nursing some kind of breakdown?”

“Eligible for Social Security, officer.”

He took that in. He gave it a long think. His chest rose and fell in the too-tight shirts he wore, not because he liked tight shirts but because they just tightened up on him. My buddy the police detective emeritus was taking on the weight of an old athlete with good appetite for beer, fried potatoes, and after-shift sociability. He wasn't in a terrible hurry to compare himself favorably with his friend the divorced father in Poorman's Cottage.

“Pension time roll around, I might could finish my degree at Lincoln University, be eligible to drive a cab like the other night-school lawyers.”

“Hire out as a private investigator, solo practitioner, like me.”

“Maybe. But one thing I'll tell you, buddy. Not like you.”

*   *   *

I wake and listen to the rain ticking against the window. I must be asleep, I think. No, there's a slow soaking in gusts that send scattered drops like pellets against the side of Poorman's Cottage. Just now it's coming from the east; then the wind turns, the ticking ceases, the walls yield and relax under it. Rain, wind, a steady winter downpour—the drought has stopped.

I go to the door and look out. Potrero Hill is gleaming in the dark. Reassured, I lie back down, sleep suddenly, and when I wake, wonder if I dreamed all this, which I didn't. Maybe my night prowling was not about Priscilla, about loneliness, about growing older; it was only about needing to confirm the rain ticking at my window, turning in the wind, bending the walls.

In the morning, a troop of gulls fetches in the air like infantry, ungull-like, bewildered by bayside city smells. They are sea creatures, marines, not land soldiers; normally quite good at what they do. They know most of the world is water, but adventure and hunger urge them to explore the land. Sometimes they're willing to dine on garbage deep in the city, just like human beings.

Dammit if I was going to feel sorry for gulls awking about, cawing, dropping feathers that needed a little dip in salt to feel just right. I was ready to make a treaty with nature. I wouldn't ask the gulls (or the raccoons, the Scotch broom, or the evil-eyed kids from the Projects) to feel sorry for me and I wouldn't feel sorry for them.

My present ambition: not to feel sorry for myself, either. That would complete the cycle.

In a year or two I might try myself on Xavier with the longing gaze and pretty hair; first my apology, then he might say he too was sorry; then the heart-to-heart talk. Just now the notion made my stomach churn. The urge to throw up means that fellow feeling for Xavier, even if he was jilted in his turn, isn't ripe yet. Just now I wasn't pushing for more sympathy, insight, brotherly feeling, or compassion than what came naturally to my heart. It wasn't much. Just now I still thought Xavier was a rotten asshole with hopes and dreams like every other needy creature. Zen peace of mind only took me so far. I appreciated the gulls in their swooping and scavenging.

Sometimes in winter, standing in the doorway to catch the weak sunlight, I can see the light soapy film of snow on the hills around the bay. That's about it for winter around here, although a couple of years there was actual snow on Twin Peaks, crackles of frosted water in the road that lasted an hour or two in the morning. If the town ever really froze, cars, people, and the unprepared raccoons whooping on their paws would just slide into the ocean—back into the ocean. For winter colors, about the closest I see is the dusty green of weeds, sparkles of dew pretending to be ice. That's not much winter.

Even in January, the sun barrels down on Potrero Hill. Nighttimes, there's the fog, Project kids lurking, a few whispery animals on undeveloped raw slopes. Abandoned tires do their best at the abandoned-tire task of growing mosquitoes by gathering water for the incubation season.

I like to sit outside in the sun. I prop a Goodwill kitchen chair against the warmed siding. If I can't smell the fennel from here, I trot around a little, trampling Sotch broom. When I sit long enough, I discover butterflies in the air, hummingbirds, invisible mites made visible as I wait there blinking, hands around the mug of instant. My blood pressure descends, ringing a little chime when it hits a number that ends in zero. Down the hill a way, in the shade of the next cottage, an ailanthus grows, tree of heaven. I feel my blood pressure definitely sliding, teeth recalcifying, cataracts clearing, and because it's peaceful and nice, my heart bleeds with longing and at the same time heals, seals the insult to proper thumping because that's how an optimistic metabolism works. Winter things are buzzing and blooming out here, sun nice on my neck as I turn; it's steadily rotting and garish, this untended junk garden of the good herbs and bad tires. Gradually Goodyear melts back into the sandy alluvial soil of Potrero Hill.

I pick a blackberry. It's not sweet, it's sour. That's okay, it's a blackberry and still growing. If I wait for it to sweeten, the gulls will get it. They're greedy and foolish, but they know enough to wait. I don't.

I shouldn't be looking at the sky for a carrier pigeon to bring me a message; the breed is extinct. A gull heading across the hill with wings spread and lofting might drop an invitation from Karim on my head, and why not accept it? Changing my luck would be a reasonable procedure. Karim was a faithful lover. I had tried other procedures; maybe it was time to try being an employee. Alfonso also practiced being easy and comfortable, and then he lost what mattered. Nothing can be counted on. I could start over in trouble like a kid with jolly Karim's enterprises and turn out to be a winner after all.

Let me think about it. Give me a few more years.

I bite the fennel and get the smell of licorice. I think of Jeff across town. Saturday I'll take him to the Exploratorium. Jeff, let me put my hand on your shoulder, don't be embarrassed.