by Tuttle, Dan;
housemate included. In the comments his
emojis ranged from cross to righteous fist,
the first for dropping references to nuns
and second as a sign he’d too resist
the insularity it argued shuns
transparent dialogue over opaque
so that we’d all together this world make.
196.
That ‘friend’ of whom she’d written fit the beat
but complicated later tales to come.
It felt much easier and, well, discreet
to craft a narrative of only one.
She climbed out on the roof and sat a bit,
her favorite spot to let her mind off-leash.
Great sagas looked up to did not omit
supporting characters. A good pastiche
would do as such. Perhaps she’d kill two birds
with one verse, if she stole first eyeballs then
minds from Tee’s hangers-on with crafty words;
and also come to peace with self again?
Important would be pacing of the clues
such that no one suspected long-con ruse.
CHAPTER 23
197.
That week, the weather forecast warm and still,
they chose to move the meeting spot outdoors.
Stel didn’t mind they’d picked the drugging thrill
of hookah bar near Geary. New routes, tours
among the city’s many hangouts came
because they found that getting table at
Deluxe was harder every week. The fame
of Darla’s selfie post weaved fable that
hot spot to be on weeknight was that bar.
Though bittersweet to leave a place they’d liked,
they recognized more business meant its star
musicians might get tips deserved, were psyched.
It also sanctioned group to range, explore
what manifold metropolis had stored.
198.
The night was late for weekday, early for
the other things that fueled the Tenderloin.
Across the street were chicken wings (‘galore!’);
at corner stood a group transgender. “Coin
to spare?” asked limping, nappy blanket-wrapped
man walking by. “No, sorry,” Tee replied.
“GODDAMMIT! Fucking arrogance,” he snapped.
Tee wasn’t rattled, knew that he’d subside
and watched him stumble back to cloaking night.
“Well, that was awkward,” Benny said. “Eh, it’s
a part of SF. Can’t be too uptight.
To him we’re ATMs. It kinda fits:
he’ll ask, sometimes he’ll get, sometimes he won’t.”
“I’ll give him something,” Benny said. “Please don’t.”
199.
Joe: “Why? Aren’t you some socialist?” “In part.
But it’s a thing of practicality.
Made this mistake before. He’s gonna start
harassing more. The act – er, gallantry –
will sink our evening. But if you’re inclined
to give once we’re all done and heading home
then go for it.” Benita in a bind,
she nodded, backed down. Homelessness syndrome
presented symptoms similarly all
across the city: cussing, restlessness,
and stench and drugs, sometimes graffiti’s scrawl.
Some voters wanted to invest less, kiss
them all goodbye by pulling services.
Tee: “I think what makes rich folks nervous is
200.
their inexperience, not knowing what
a homeless guy is going to do because
where they grew up was segregated, shut.”
“Uh, Tee, you know long back those Jim Crow laws
were struck down, right?” But Benny in defense
piped up, “Wrong point, Joe. Technically they were.
Repeal’s not full repair. Use common sense.
You know life’s more complex than that.” “But her
whole point’s that we were separated.” “Yes.
We were.” “We weren’t.” “You’ve heard of redlining?
Some basic hist’ry shows that we’ve compressed
together racial groups, whites headlining
the flight to like communities with gates.
Then taxes otherwise that modulate
201.
school quality and opportunity
fly too. Think back to how you grew up, Joe.
Your peaceful neighborhood community,
SoCal McMansion tract grid tan château
was populated by professionals.
I bet it didn’t have the working class.
You’re not on hook for some confessional
of racism. Point’s that no poor trespassed,
and so you lived in bubble, couldn’t know
in any way about the other half,
caught in a personalized Truman Show
staged all by where your parents lived.” He laughed,
dismissing Benny’s point without reply,
a maddening reaction from the guy.
202.
“Across the street there, Nazareth Hotel,”
said Tee, of building run-down at first look.
“You think if you grew up there you’d excel?
You’d have a place to study, read your books?”
She paused to let it sink in. Man-bun heard.
The windows barred in iron, broken screens,
and doorstep feces spoke louder than word.
“The name aside, I don’t see Nazarenes
too plentiful ’round here.” Joe nodded, said,
“But kids don’t grow up in hotels.” “Oh no?
It must be hard to dream from featherbed,
but that right there’s what’s called an ‘SRO’.
Think dorm room,” she said, waving off his phone
procured to look it up. “With methadone.”
203.
It then was Stella’s turn to check the web
and figure out the reference. Heroin
addiction, Google said, was often ebbed
by methadone, drug fairly narrow in
its application. Café waiter came
to get their order, said the minimum
was pipe per sidewalk table. Joe asked, “Name
best-selling flavors sir, please.” “Mint with some
small bit of bitter apple’s pretty good.”
“One mint, one bitter apple, then. We’ll mix.”
Man left. Tee said, “Geez… think what parenthood
would be like with your neighbors turning tricks.”
Tee spoke with some authority, immersed
in humanizing stories as a nurse.
204.
Or rather, she was studying to be
one, and she clocked her hours of practicum
as aide at nearby clinic. “One, two, three…”
the waiter counted to exacting sum
as he set down each apple tea and wrapped
bright colored plastic mouthpiece, sanitized.
Next door in nook a lumpy figure napped
on cardboard fresh from Amazon, man-sized.
In absence of another subject, Tee
continued musing, “I don’t get how both
the cities here, inhabiting same wee
landmass, but forty-nine square miles, are loath
to interact. It’s like same footprint holds
creased heaven, hell, and purgatory folds.”
205.
Stel thought about how life at study desk
contrasted with what Tee described went on
across the street, kids left in Kafkaesque
depressing halls to grow up, shared-floor johns.
Adults could try controlling where they went
and who they interacted with, but when
in such tight quarters couldn’t circumvent
their thin shared wall with halfway-housing men.
Kept far from danger, close to textbooks moored,
Stel didn’t have a basis to compare.
Both she and they had much they had endured.
Won’t everyone have items to forswear
from any, every past? To have regret
is simply to be human, Stella bet.
206.
Hydraulic Cadillac from sixty-two
refurbished in a candy apple red
rolled by with JBLs on Changes, Tu-
pac’s single wondering when he’d get dead.
The part about if cops cared cued car chant:
“Philando! Sterling! Garner! Clark! Brown! Rice!”
all murdered black men. Tee said, “Sucks I can’t
do much to help in clinic. Doc’s advice
was try to put up barriers, protect
ourselves from patients, so to better care
for them. I can’t. That feels more like neglect.
There’s lots of moms our age in doctor’s chair.”
The waiter brought both water pipes with hell’s
own inner fire beneath coals gray ash shells.
207.
With hookah passed around and topic hard,
excuses went unspoken as to why
most Opposition quieted. Safeguard
for difficulty’s often to be shy.
As silence played with minty apple fumes
their normal buzzing hive was dully fogged.
Their thoughts were skyjacked by the swirling plumes
that densely danced from bowl pipes waterlogged.
“Cade, you grew up ’round here, no?” “Not nearby,
Joe. More The Richmond, downhill from the park.
You know that slope Arguello has? Steered my
phat yellow black Big Wheel down in the dark,
completely wrecked it, broke a collarbone
and spent six weeks of kindergarten home.”
208.
“Ha!” “Yeah. With no one home I had to go
down to the ER by myself. Dad worked.”
“Good god.” “Ain’t that bad, everyone’s got woes.
It’s mostly funny,” Cade said as he smirked,
“And if there’s one thing rap has taught me, it’s
that all of us should thank like whoa the fact
that we ain’t living where we’re blown to bits
by bump stocks, rockets, IEDs, or smacked
by cops, or dealers, bullies, all that stuff.
You wake up breathing? Treat it like a dance.”
Except, Stel thought, when waking calls the bluff
of dreams lost childhood might get second chance.
She chose not to go down that rabbit hole,
and poked to turn the ash-entombed charcoal.
209.
That night they had the privilege yet again
of being graced by YouTube’s homemade queen,
young Darla (less Hong Kong and more Shenzhen
in person, contrast to her life onscreen).
No one in Opposition would admit
to telling her where this week’s meeting was
since Cade had made it clear she didn’t fit
and didn’t like how she did what she does.
“We’re live from Nile Cafe,” she said to cell,
“where apple-mint is on the menu, and
though you may want to show up as a belle
avoid high heels ’cause this is crack pipe land!”
The group aghast, her bright composure’s wrath
smacked of the empathy of sociopath.
210.
Dar’s camera angled so the group was cut
out, showing only her and neon sign.
“Dar, what you’re doing’s illegitimate.”
“Cool off, I’m joking, Tee.” “It’s beyond line
that anyone of decency would draw.
You’re making advertising money from
a joke about folks so fucked up they gnaw
their own teeth out to cope.” “Well, they’ve succumbed
to drugs, their choice, they know what happens.” “Dar,
you’ve never met an addict, never talked
to one, and never understood streets scar
with more abuse. You think if you were stalked
and lived out here the cops would give a shit?
Crack use begins ’cause folks have gotta quit
211.
all sleep at night, for safety. Nap? Get knifed.
Or rather, the alternative’s a drug.
And so in fear she’ll choose to save her life.
Then you show up stilettoed, looking smug
to smoke and joke and midnight toke. Get out.”
With selfsame plaster smile protecting face
Dar stood to leave, no sign there’d been fallout,
dropped five bucks on the table, turned with grace
and strode away toward cocktail bars. “Hear, hear!”
said Cadence, toasting apple tea to Tee,
“for driving incubus who’s insincere
away!” Mugs raised to hostess. “Tee, truth be
forever spoken so to power.” “Her? Dar
was hardly power.” “Her fans in numbers are.”
212.
“Let’s not go back to power talk, friends. We’re here,
we’re liberated from our parasite.”
“Still here!” said man-bun Joe, grin ear to ear.
“She’s worse, Joe. We see you in fairest light,
and even some day might give tiny think,”
Tee grinned to match, “to cutting you some slack.
But not tonight.” She finished with a wink
on face-dark side not seen by most of pack.
“Well, I, for one, am suffocating,” he
said to the group, “and I don’t mean by smoke.
San Fran’s too much sometimes. Airbnb
of interest soon? Drive north toward Cali oak
and cypress territory, Mendo coast?”
They’d text through deets if Joe would play the host.
CHAPTER 24
213.
A fact Mo mostly glossed over before
was long-held fondness for all Disney flicks.
Stel couldn’t know if Mona heretofore
had loved them or if she’d played politics
on sly with Cade while dating. Anyway,
in evenings all too frequently they now
dropped princess films instead of Dr. Dre.
With stereo recovering, Cade vowed
to keep up Stella’s education in
most useful life insights in canon rap.
In meantime, they’d watch Ariel and Gwyn
and Alice. Stella liked the more madcap
and, since she hadn’t seen them as a kid
sat in to watch when not by Cade forbid.
214.
“You’re kidding, Stel. You really never watched
a single one of these on VHS?”
“Not kidding, Mo.” “That’s nuts. By four I’d notched
through all of them. Loved every sorceress!”
Stel settled on the well-worn couch, the stuffed
green armchair held up Yeye too. They’d stopped
pretending he was present. When he huffed
it gave a little signal life still bopped
somewhere inside. It would be comforting
except for that it happened loudly, twice
a minute. Cade sat too. “My bum hurting
you here? No? Good.” “Your hips, to be precise,”
said Mo. “Ain’t no one here got hips except
you, babe.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s still inept.”
215.
Arrayed on Roku�
��s screen on long timeline
was every cinematic masterpiece
(and every dud) since 1939,
when Snow White first appeared. Soon rasters fleeced
the household through invented CRT,
aired color prime-time broadcast MGM
produced of Wizard’s Oz. To see art be
alive in technicolor, gleaming gems
of emerald to poppy fields bewitched.
Home’s glowing box made place to gather ’round,
a transfixed cell that advertisers pitched,
a group that coexisted sans own sound.
From 1950s hence, boob tube equipped
producers to keep mass opinions gripped.
216.
The trio’s watch list that night sidestepped time,
not chronologically laid then to now.
Tonight they picked between Steven Sondheim’s
Dick Tracy songs and Menken’s score that wowed
from start to finish, snagged Academy
Award, and fueled Aladdin fandom far
into the future. “Don’t look bad to me,”
said Cade, regarding green eyes of Jafar.
“I’ll pass on a detective story, Mo,”
chimed Stella, hoping votes of two cult fans
would let her let them watch grouch Iago
connive with Grand Vizier against Sultan,
watch one-time urchin rising from the streets,
from magic carpet wishes to elites.
217.
Cold open introduced a story told
by merchant who himself had not been part,
of ordinary bronze lamp, dullish gold
whose magic changed the fate of one upstart.
A young man who, like lamp, was more than seemed,
a diamond in the rough. A scarab’s flight
to start Saharan moonlit second scene
unmasked hid cavern treasure, entrance site
imposingly betoothed. To enter there
required a soul of rightest kind to spelunk,
zigzag down pitfall stairs to belly lair.
Within, to find among the priceless junk,
amid bejeweling gems that stole the eyes,
the object of true power required the wise.
218.
A chase right after that showed viewers who
protagonist would be, Aladdin. He,
denied a basic education, food,
or housing, had to pilfer what he’d eat.
When chased by guards, he took a hint and faced
the facts, that you’re my only friend, Abu!
He tiptoed ’round the law, each step erased
that sign that he’d existed. Nom de plume
where needed was so used. The Golden Rule
in Agrabah was: who has gold, makes rules.
The royalty immunely ridicule
the urchins who had neither bread nor jewels.
Fantastic Genie helped illuminate