Berkeley Noir

by Jerry Thompson

  A shift in the moonlight and there she was, a female mouse the color of dryer lint. Her head sat centimeters from the curl of almond butter, her neck nearly flattened beneath the U-bar. I hadn't thought about the trap in months. The almond butter had fogged over with dust and I couldn't have imagined another creature finding it. This one did. She was small. Her eyes, solid black, bulged from their sockets. The bar was supposed to flip and kill instantly, Henry had said. That's what made the trap humane.

  The mouse struggled, managed to drag the trap a few inches along the hardwood floor. And then she stopped. With each panting breath, her small body swelled and receded. At last, she sighed. Her eyes rolled up to look into mine.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry."

  The mouse grew still, released a stream of urine. The yellow liquid trailed to the edge of a floorboard and ran in a rivulet along its seam.

  Shaila came to me later that evening, her body shaking even before she saw the mouse. When she did see her, she cried out, picked me up, and held me to her cheek, where I could taste saltwater trails. "Lothlorien," she whispered.

  Henry burst through the door and I scurried into her pocket. "Fuck," he said, crouching by the trap. "Well. Let's get rid of it." He turned to Shaila. "What's the matter with you?"

  From her pocket, I watched him fiddle with the U-bar, curse quietly, then pick up the trap, the mouse's body drooping off its edge. At the outside garbage can, he threw them both in, trap and body together.

  Shaila stayed in the in-law with me that evening. "I'm sorry you had to see that," she said.

  "Thank you for staying with me."

  She ran a finger between my ears. "I don't know where he's gone. He's gone all the time now. I think he's seeing someone else." I rested a paw on her finger. "He can see whoever he wants," she sighed. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not letting him go."

  I won't ever understand humans.

  A week later, Henry pushed Shaila out their door again. This time, he threw after her an assortment of her belongings—a few shirts she'd managed to buy over the months, a pair of jeans, a phone.

  Shaila found me in the in-law. She cried in great racking sobs, on her knees, holding her stomach. She cried until she could barely breathe, and all I could do was watch, my paw on her foot.

  Dusk turned to night. "Can we leave now?" I asked.

  She picked up her phone and dialed. "Papa," she said, "come get me? I want to come home."

  * * *

  It's been a year since we left Henry's house. A good year. Shaila's at Berkeley City College now. She wants to finish in three years and go for an MBA. She's been back home, living with her parents. There was no stepdad. Only Mummy and Papa, mild-mannered doctors, bewildered and terrified by her absence, ecstatic to have her home. Mummy would quite happily send me to the sewers, but Shaila keeps me safe in a cage in her bedroom, slips me into her pocket whenever she leaves the house. I've been auditing her classes on the sly, absorbing what I can of macroeconomics and Tolstoy.

  * * *

  It's a late Saturday afternoon. The mist has not burned off, but hangs low and heavy over the hills. Shaila and I are on a bus, winding up those old familiar streets. In the in-law, Henry waits.

  "Hi!" He's breathless and bright-eyed when he opens the door. I search behind him for the willowy form of the new woman, but she is nowhere. "We're alone," he says.

  I can feel the sad heave of Shaila's chest, the thump of her battered heart. Henry places a hand on her chin, lifts it, and they kiss.

  But it's only a kiss, as they say, and a few minutes later, Henry's in the kitchen, filling the water kettle. I jump from Shaila's pocket. "Lothlorien!" she hisses. I find my old hiding spot. In the distance, the kettle rumbles to a boil.

  Henry is still determined to talk about the murder, at least with his therapist, and Shaila pleads for his silence. He's already told his acupuncturist, he says, and Shaila shrieks and shoves him in the chest. With a single hand, he shoves her back and sends her tumbling off the sofa.

  Then he gets up, moves to the kitchen, and fills Shaila's mug with water and a tea bag. He pulls his own Extremely Expensive Travel Mug out of the cupboard, and fills that up as well.

  "I plan to head to the police station today," he says. "If I have to serve time, I'm okay with that. If they trace things back to you, well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that."

  Shaila's head sinks into her hands. She sits there, silent. I want to be with her.

  Sometimes, an old rat gets a new idea. It seems, initially, like a very good idea, and eventually, like the only possible idea. As the tea steeps and the argument continues, this old rat climbs atop the fridge—the height is staggering, but I close my eyes and smell for what I need. And there it is. Still there, that old bag of poison.

  Thank goodness for the precious materialism of the bourgeoisie. I rustle a strychnine pellet from the bag and drop it in his Extremely Expensive Travel Mug. He will die today, this man so adept at throwing away the bodies of women, this man so ready to ruin Shaila's life.

  I watch from my high perch, my nerves writhing. Henry takes the two mugs back to the sofa, and it occurs to me that he just might give Shaila his travel mug. The thought sends me squealing. He looks up, suddenly alert. Shaila pulls at his hand.

  "Hey," she says.

  "I thought I heard something." He takes her hand. "The thing is, Shaila, I've learned a lot about accountability. Cynthia—she's taught me a lot. We're in therapy together—"

  "You're in therapy? Together? You've been together how long?"

  "Our relationship has been fast, yes. It's been very intense. But it feels right." His eyes shine with certainty as he picks up—I shudder with gratitude—his very own travel mug.

  He drinks the tea down in a long, glorious slurp.

  "Does she know about me?" Shaila asks.

  "She does not."

  She should be relieved but instead she looks hurt.

  "But she'll stay with me if they put me away. She's promised." That's when he peers into the mug. "Holy shit," he says. He gasps and gags.

  Shaila watches him. She doesn't know.

  "You put something in here," he says. "What did you do?" He bends over and tries to vomit but can't.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You did this!" He lunges at her now, grabs her by the throat. I leap from the fridge, shrieking. Shaila lifts a boot and kicks him in the chest. He falls to the ground.

  I run at him. I will tear him apart. He looks down, sees me, and squeals. He leaps onto the couch and scurries behind Shaila, who is holding her throat, gagging for air. "Run," she croaks. And I do.

  I am nowhere now. And everywhere. Isn't that the rodent's way?

  "Look," she says, her voice hoarse. I can no longer see her. "Give me your mug. I'll drink it myself. There's nothing in there." I know the sound of Shaila sipping. That's how well I know her. I hear that sound.

  "Shaila," Henry says. Rats know the rasp of death. We know it in our bones.

  I step out of my hiding place and watch Henry, who looks so very sorry now.

  "Shaila," he says again, and collapses to the floor. Shaila gapes at him, picks up the travel mug, and drops it like it's scalded her.

  When she sees me, she knows. "You. What did you do?" Her eyes grow wide.

  I must hurry now. I run to the fridge, leap to the top, not even noticing the height, and I push the bag of strychnine to its edge.

  She looks at it, looks at me, then holds her throat. "Oh god," she says. She runs from the house.

  "Wait!" I run out after her.

  The ambulance finds Shaila rolled into a ball on the sidewalk. She's managed to stumble half a block before falling to her knees. They load her onto a stretcher. They do not see me. "Lothlorien," she gasps as they lift her aboard. But I'm too slow. The ambulance doors slam shut, and I have to let her go. It's for the best, I think. A hospital is no place for a rat.

  * * *

  Eventually, they find Henry, dead
on the floor of the in-law. A quiet graduate student, clothes in his closet, a typically bare fridge, an unfinished thesis, a clear suicide. Both houses are empty now. Even the mice are gone. Shaila will know to find me here, and so I wait among my hardwood floors, my Spanish tiles, my granite countertops.

  But a rat needs a home. My homing instinct is strong, though I won't go back to my family. Mine didn't even bother naming me. I was standard issue Rattus norvegicus until the day I met Shaila. I left home because my family lived high up in the rafters of the church and I, with my vertigo, couldn't move or think or breathe up there. It's a wonder I managed to leave at all. It was my sister who led me, eyes closed, mouth clamped around her tail, from our rafter down a drainage pipe and onto safe ground. On the ground, I felt like myself, for maybe the first time. On the ground, I could move, I could run, I could leave.

  Why do people leave the homes they know? Sometimes, simply to live.

  Shaila is my home now. Without her, I am a refugee. Four hundred beats a minute, and I count every one. In the main house, I find a hole so dark and tight a human wouldn't know it existed. It is my own penitential cave, in which I wait for her, in which I repeat to myself the only thought possible: She is alive. It was only a sip. Shaila will be back for me soon.

  EVERY MAN AND EVERY WOMAN IS A STAR

  by Nick Mamatas

  Ho Chi Minh Park

  My stalkers come in two flavors—communists and occultists. The former, despite the millions dead at their feet, are gormless fetishists. The latter, though theurgy is nothing but applied dishonesty, they are the dangerous ones. I know; in my time I was both a revolutionary socialist and a ritual magician. Then, after my mentor was murdered, I had to kill a few people, my own father included, in self-defense. I went to prison. I had some time to think. Some crackpot wrote a true crime book about me, entitled, Love Is the Law: Patricide, Power, and Perversion on Long Island. It was a best seller for a season, and well-creased mass market paperbacks can still be found in Moe's, Pegasus, and the shadier sort of used bookstores beloved by the creeps who like to follow me around. There used to be some fan websites about me, on Geocities and Angelfire, with black backgrounds and fonts that dripped red. But I got old, moved to California, had a kid, and started a new life. Now only the hard-core remain.

  I've found that the best defense is a good offense. I teach yoga, in the park. The aging Reds of Berkeley still call it Ho Chi Minh Park, but the occultists, who are middle-class squares and generally out-of-towners as well, know it as Willard. I lead a group through four basic asanas as described in "Liber E vel Exercitiorum." If you threw a stick in this town and managed to miss a frozen yogurt shop, you'd hit a yoga studio, and one staffed by young lithe blondes with serious ponytails and welcoming smiles. There are only three reasons to come to my class instead—that it's free, and it's me, are the exoteric reasons.

  One of my students attends faithfully, for the esoteric reason. She sweats, she grinds her teeth, every morning. Tense every muscle and be still. She gets off on that. When I finally asked her for her name—Lindsey—she nearly orgasmed on the spot, her white-girl dreadlocks shivering, thanks to the sheer attention I paid her.

  It was just me and her the morning of the Hayward quake. Even the big redwoods in the northeast corner of the park started to sway, and the chain-link fences of the nearby tennis courts sang. Lindsey opened her eyes, let an undisciplined gasp escape. I glared at her. Stay still. A car roared up Hillegass Avenue, swaying more wildly than it needed to; the driver honked the horn as a telephone wire snapped and whipped the asphalt. The lawn chairs we used for our first asana, The God, tipped over as well.

  "How long . . . ?" Lindsey asked through gritted teeth. I found myself focusing on my Muladhara chakra, and imagined my coccyx sinking into the earth, a bone drill in black dirt. Lindsey couldn't hold her posture anymore and fell over. A moment later, the quake subsided. Nothing but the sound of flapping wings, and then the creak and roar of falling branches, of people opening doors and shouting into the streets, and of sirens. The air smelled like ozone and sweat.

  "Next position is—" I started to say, but a male-seeming groan stopped me. I didn't turn my head, but Lindsey could see him.

  "That guy was behind a tree . . ." she said. In Berkeley, in general, it is not at all unusual for some mentally marginal individual to spend all day hanging out in a copse of trees, but I already knew who he was. "We have to help him."

  "Is that our will?" I asked Lindsey. "Or just your will? Or is it his will that you end our session prematurely?"

  "I also need to walk it off," she replied, gingerly picking herself up.

  "I do need help!" Heinrich said, a pile on the ground, pinned under a heavy-seeming branch. "I think my leg is broken!"

  "A lot of people are going to need help," I said as I assumed the thunderbolt position, left heel under my ass, arms over the knees. "Why chose the one who's closest?"

  Heinrich was one of Berkeley's freelance revolutionaries. He was in his late forties, born too late for campus riots and the Free Speech Movement, but right on time for ninety-second punk rock songs about Reagan nuking the world and polyamorous tangles with patchouli-drenched sex-positive sex bunnies and occasionally their mothers. He was microfamous for a series of pamphlets attempting to rehabilitate Bukharin as an anarchist, but every four years he blinked and voted for the Democratic candidate for president. Heinrich was, of course, in love with me.

  "Can you walk?" Lindsey asked him. Yoga had made her strong. She lifted the branch off Heinrich's leg; he grunted hard, slid out from under it, and picked himself up. "I can," he said. "I can stand anyway."

  "Walk yourself to Alta Bates before the ER fills up," I said. "Maybe you have internal bleeding, or a concussion."

  "Don't say that!" he hissed at me. I smiled. He was superstitious, or at least worried about the possibility that what I articulate in words might soon manifest in reality. I don't believe in making things too easy for my stalkers.

  "You're a little old to be climbing trees, or playing the Peeping Tom," Lindsey said. She moved away from Heinrich to reclaim her spot on the grass near me. Heinrich limped after her and announced that he was going to join the class, then tried to twist himself into the asana. It's a difficult posture when one is in the best of health, and he'd clearly banged himself up.

  "What do you want?" I asked him.

  "Why . . . there was an earthquake just a minute ago? Don't you want to go to your home and check for damage?" Heinrich asked.

  "Don't you?" Lindsey asked.

  "He's homeless," I said. "Sheltered, probably with a storage unit, but homeless, probably for economic reasons that he recasts as political to his friends when he takes advantage of their showers and electrical outlets." I pushed myself back into my position, mouth sealed shut, nostrils pulling air into me, then expelling it.

  "Maybe it doesn't matter anymore . . ." said Heinrich. "But I heard something the other night that I thought you'd want to know." I didn't move. One shouldn't even speak while holding an asana. Heinrich had already shattered Lindsey's concentration. "It's about Riley."

  Riley was his sole name, because he considered it more efficient to become world famous and win the Google Awareness Lottery than it was to keep his surname. Riley doesn't need an introduction. What does need an introduction is why Heinrich would bring him up to me—Riley and my father had gone to college together, and there both of them got involved with magick. Riley became a millionaire, and my father became a drug addict who tried to kill—no, sacrifice—me to the spirit of capitalism. That was in 1989, just as the Berlin Wall crumbled. Now Riley's a billionaire, and my father's in the grave I put him in. Do you have one of those vocal-activated Internet of Things Assistants in your home? That's thanks to Riley. He clearly conceptualized of the service as a type of familiar, but Alexa or some other disembodied voice that does your bidding isn't your familiar, it is his. You just invited it into your home.

  I still didn't move. Let
there be a void, I thought, and let Heinrich fill it with his voice.

  "He's building something in the hills," he said. He gestured broadly to the west, toward the end of Derby Street and the beginning of the Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve. Another silence, another void.

  Lindsey, the good girl, said, "He's not building anything. He owns a company. Someone else is doing the actual work." She looked to me for a nod of approval, but I didn't grant her one.

  "People have seen him out there," Heinrich said.

  Finally, I was driven to speak. "Have none of your friends anything better to do than follow around people more notorious than you are." I stood up out of my stance. "Class is over. Do what thou wilt, comrades." Then to Heinrich I added, "If you try to follow me, I'll stab you."

  Heinrich smiled. Stalkers know their prey—he got me.

  * * *

  Home was a 1981 Dodge Sportsman RV I usually kept somewhere close to the park. The plates were fake. I had no license, registration, or insurance. Our toilet had long since given up the ghost, but the old Willard Pool building opens the showers twice a week, and the park itself has public restrooms. The public library—where my kid Pan did his schoolwork online under a false name—and the downtown YMCA supply the rest, so long as we stay healthy and climate change doesn't bring snow to the Bay Area. We owned so little that there was nothing in the few cabinets to spill out onto the floor.

  Like a lot of people around here, I'm off the grid. I'm also offline—no e-mail address, burner phones, no social media, no bank account. No health insurance or food stamps either. I'm just extremely lucky when it comes to, for example, scratch-off lottery tickets, and in attracting yoga students who insist on pressing money and prepaid gift cards into my hands. None of this is political; I'm no lifestyle anarchist or chemtrail-and-powerline kook.

  I kept a low profile to stay off Riley's radar. He was the one stalker I didn't dare make it easy for.

  * * *

  "Hi, Dawn," Pan said when I walked in. He was stretched out on the bench behind the table, his nose stuck in a volume of Lovecraft stories. A pimply little tween, with knobby knees and wrists, and everything he touched he smeared with a fine layer of grease. Sure, I love him. For a while there, I even loved his father, a Greek guy who flew me to Europe and hid me on his yiayia's goat farm after I got out of prison. Pan was born on a kitchen table. We're both used to cramped quarters.