“What about me?”
“You?”
“Yeah, me.”
Lamplight dappled Harriet's pale skin. She touched her daughter's head, rubbing the girl's hairless dome. “You're just like your dad. It's frightening.”
That was all Diana needed to hear. “You want me to stay with him?”
“Please, bunny.”
Her mother was asking for permission to leave. Diana knew what she had to do. She was the priestess of family secrets. Clasping Harriet's icy fingers in her small, warm hand, she repeated the mantra to all successful journeys. “Go. Everything will be cool.”
TWENTY-THREE
A nighttime candlelight vigil was held every Christmas at city hall. The annual event honored the homeless that had died in the last year. Buddhist priests from the Zen Center on Page Street conducted the rituals. The names of the deceased were read aloud from a scroll. Bells tolled for each and every one. Two hundred and seven men and women had lost their lives during the preceding twelve months. The lighted candles carried their spirits to a nicer vista than the streets of San Francisco.
In the Trinity Plaza Apartments a possum rummaged in the garage dumpster and unearthed a plate of day-old Chinese take-out. Winos covered in newspapers slept in the bushes that bordered the parking lot. Rats scampered in the patio. Eviction notices were scattered like autumn leaves in the hallways. The owner wanted everyone out of the building. The Trinity Plaza was getting razed on New Year's Day.
Harriet paraded from the bedroom into the living room. She was tricked out in a high-necked red and black woolen shift, buckled shoes with low heels. Rouge, mascara
and lipstick varnished her face. Her hair was taut in a rigid ponytail. Her jewelry was sparse: a silver bracelet, feathered earrings. She plowed through the overturned furniture, past the damaged Christmas tree.
Robert sat cross-legged on the rug. The dog was at the pound. Slatts was god knows where. Diana didn't have her science fiction books; the German shepherd had eaten them. Now his wife was walking out. Like good wine, unhappiness made him loquacious. “You're booking?” he said to Harriet. “Where to?”
She refused to look at him. “My mother's.”
“You planning on coming back here or anything?”
“No.”
“What about the kid? You taking her and shit?”
“Nope.”
He wasn't sure what he'd just heard. It had to be a gross misunderstanding. Maybe he was going loco. Hearing words that weren't being said. But what if it were true? God help him. He was in no shape to take care of the girl. It would wipe him out. He was more of a brat than she was. “Pardon me?”
“I'm not taking her.”
“You're leaving her with me?”
“That's right. She belongs with you.”
This was a revelation. He chewed it over, figured out nothing, and thought about parole. It was necessary to maintain an address. “So what about the apartment?”
“I called the landlord. Told him I was moving out.”
“And what did he say?”
“He wants you gone by morning.”
Robert was floored. “Uh, like, how are you getting to your mom's house?”
“Zap is taking me. I just called him.”
The Mexican's name on his wife's lips was a knife in the head. The news would've killed a lesser man. Robert was intellectual about it. It wouldn't be the first time a woman ran off with a speed dealer. The fact was he'd been waiting to hear it. Had started waiting for it in prison. Anyway, he had worse things to think about.
The downstairs neighbors were having a holiday fiesta. The guests danced up a storm. The soothing vocals of Frank Sinatra on “Silver Bells” percolated through the walls. Harriet walked out of the living room, unlocked the front door, and, without saying good-bye, plodded into the patio on her way down to the street.
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In the nights ahead Robert Grogan would experience a recurring nightmare. He was handcuffed to a chair and watched his wife go through the side door of a decrepit theater. The stage had collapsed. The curtains were in rags. There were gaps in the floor. She looked back at him. Her eyes were glazed with disappointment. The dream happened often, and he began to think of it as a memory.
It was too hot in the apartment, even with the door open. Mosquitoes did sambas against the window screens. The air conditioner made a sick noise as Robert drifted into the bedroom. His daughter was awake in bed, hugging a pillow. A frown was etched on her wee face. He asked, “You okay?”
She was crestfallen. “Mommy and the dog are gone.”
“It's some fucked-up shit, ain't it?”
“What should we do?”
He pulled her into his arms and offered hope. “Let's go hunting.”
That perked her up. “For deer?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“This is the best time. We'll take the critters by surprise.”
“Where will we find them?”
“The Sunset district. There's thousands of deer out there.”
Before the 1930s, the Sunset district had been miles of dunes that went all the way to the Pacific Ocean. After World War II, a construction boom developed housing tracts on top of the sands. The Mission district's Irish working-class population moved in. Over the years, Asian families had filtered into the neighborhood.
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It wasn't any cooler outside. The moon galloped across the sky. A broiling December wind misted the air. The heat was close to the ground. Robert drove the Hillman through a chiaroscuro of red and green stoplights to the beach. The trash in the street, papers trapped in a current, conducted a tango over the asphalt. Through the diaphanous fog Billy Strayhorn's “Passion Flower” tinkled from the car's radio.
At Forty-sixth and Noriega, three blocks from the water, Robert halted the sedan next to a southern style, two-storied, colonial mansion. Gold and silver Christmas ornaments highlighted a tidy lawn. A cardboard Santa Claus with a sleigh was propped up at the gate. There was a white neon sign: “Frank's Mortuary and Funeral Home.”
“We're here,” he said. “This is where the deer are.”
Spilling out of the Hillman, the ex-convict and his daughter gallivanted across the grass to the porch, getting
their shoes wet. Robert rang a bell. The mortician, a chunky fellow in a wool nightcap, burgundy velveteen bathrobe, and a pince-nez, answered the door. He was confused by the visit. It was two in the morning. “Robert? Is that you? I heard you got sprung from prison.”
“Hey, dude.” Robert pulled him to one side. “I need a favor.”
The men whispered for a minute, and then everybody piled inside. They slogged through a vestibule furnished with a row of wingback chairs. Plastic flowers in vases were at the base of a ten-foot red plastic crucifix. The walls had recessed niches with the statues of saints in them.
The adjacent room was a parlor stocked with coffins. Candles flickered on an altar; aluminum and copper and gold-plated caskets burnished in the light. Pushing open a door, the undertaker asked his guests to follow him. “This way,” he beckoned.
Oak floorboards squeaked under their feet. A storage closet had more plywood and cardboard coffins. The girl expected a ghost to pop out of it. “Where are the deer?” she asked.
“The next room,” her father replied.
Their host keyed the door to the last chamber in the hall. It opened with a squeal. He said, “This is it.”
The cubicle was tiny, ten feet square. Coffee brown linen curtains cloaked the lone window. Two cheap caskets sat in a corner. A cot and a wood chair took up the rest of the floor space. The funeral parlor owner stabbed a nicotine-stained finger at the bed and said to Robert, “The kid can sleep here.” He waddled into the corridor, leaving them alone.
Diana flopped on the cot. “Are we still going hunting?”
Robert grimaced at the water spots on the ceiling, as if all his troubles were rooted in the discolored plaster. “Maybe later.”
“When is later?”
It was a wonderful question. Robert didn't like it and changed the subject. “I don't know. I have to talk to your mom tomorrow.”
“About what?”
“She wants a divorce.”
“How come?”
“The scene with me and Slatts.”
“But what about us?”
He made like an owl. “Who?”
“You and me.”
“Yeah, well, you're staying here tonight.”
“And the deer?”
Robert was flustered. All the questions drove him loony. “The deer can wait. Your grandma will get you in the morning. I'll be back for Christmas.”
“Then we'll go hunting?”
“I swear we will.”
She lay down on the cot's thin mattress. Spreading an olive green army blanket over his daughter's legs, Robert patted her on the head. “See you at Christmas, little mama.” He turned off the light and slinked out.
The wind scratched at the window. Mice romped under the floor. Diana tossed and turned. The cot's springs twanged. The room contained the souls of the dead that had passed through the mortuary on their way to heaven. Their sibilant voices were a choir in her ears. If there were any deer, she didn't see them. No doubt they were hiding in the dark. Biding their time until Robert and his guns went away.
TWENTY-FOUR
The holidays wouldn't be complete without a sniper. On a winter's day in 1979 a rifleman climbed to the top of the old Security Pacific office building on the southeast corner of Ninth and Market. He opened fire on the Christmas shoppers in the street below. The gunman refused to cooperate with the police and a battle ensued. The cops gained access to the roof and shot him dead.
The sniper was long gone, his name unknown, the event itself forgotten. The molecules of destruction he sowed many years ago were now an invisible part of the street's spirit. Shadows hung too briefly over buildings; the sun was always in a hurry. Tourists, dope dealers, winos and junkies, street cleaners and meter maids sleepwalked across the pavement.
The morning's air was sumptuous, a feast of diesel exhaust and fog. The intersection of Powell and Market was clogged with bicycle messengers and incense vendors, the homeless and their shopping carts, businessmen in blazers. Chess players had erected folding tables on the sidewalk.
A hot, spicy wind buffeted the historic Flood Building at 870 Market. Reeling in the door, Robert Grogan bopped down a hall on the first floor to a legal firm's suite. He pussyfooted inside and found Harriet in the waiting room. A lawyer, a swarthy forty-year-old man in a Gucci suit with a razor-cut hairdo, was at her side.
The shyster ushered the estranged couple into his office. He got them a couple of seats and made them welcome. “I have smoked herring in the minifridge, bagels, too,” he said. “Before we start, you guys want any? It might be a good way to ease the tension between you two.”
Robert didn't want a bagel. Neither did Harriet.
“Okay,” the counselor said. “Let's get down to the nittygritty. Harriet wants a divorce.” He leaned toward Robert. “She's suing on grounds of adultery. Do you plan on contesting the charge?”
“Hold on there.” Robert was flummoxed. “What's this shit about adultery?”
The attorney simplified it. “She's says you slept with someone else. That constitutes adultery.”
Harriet interjected. “With Slatts.”
“For crying out loud,” Robert carped. “It was nothing. I mean, really. I met the guy in prison. You've got to cut me some slack on that. You'd do the same thing if you were in my shoes. You can't nail me by what went on in the pen.”
“You admit you had congress with him?”
“Yeah, well, possibly.”
“Here's the deal. We can get a court date for this afternoon. The third party, this Slatts Calhoun, is also the only other witness in the case. If we get him in the judge's chambers, he can testify. It'll make things go faster. The
sooner we finish this business, the better it is for everyone involved. Less expensive and less painful.”
It was a rush job. The legal wheels were spinning. The missing link was Slatts. The mouthpiece asked Robert, “Can you find this, uh, friend of yours and bring him to court so we can get his testimony and an affidavit?”
Robert didn't know what an affidavit was. It had to be a chapter in the bible that would condemn him to everlasting oblivion. He did some reckoning. His underwear chafed. He was tired enough to die. “Yeah, ah, there's a problem, dig? Slatts is on the run. He got busted for shoplifting, resisting arrest. But I'll see what I can do.”
The solicitor clapped his hands. “Bravo. I'll get the judge's clerk to give us an appointment. We'll be in and out of court in no time. Be done by nightfall, at the latest.” Rocking in his chair, he said to Harriet, “You also have a child, right?”
She demurred. “Yeah, but she's Robert's kid, too, you know. Not just mine.”
“How old is she?”
“Seven.”
“How is she doing in school?”
“I don't know, like, we haven't heard any real complaints or nothing.”
“And what do you intend to do about her custody?”
Harriet shot from the hip. “She's going to stay with my mom in the Fillmore. Most definitely.”
“Are you all right with that?” the lawyer asked Robert.
Robert stared at his bad hand. In the dictionary of his soul, he knew nobody cared about his opinion. He was an ex-con with no money. Cannon fodder. There were a million jailbirds like him in California. Harriet's lawyer was no
different than a cop or a parole officer, just with better clothes. The shyster even had herring and bagels in his refrigerator. The bigger problem was Slatts. Where the hell was he? Robert swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah, I'm mellow.”