I coaxed the English couple downstairs for breakfast around 7:30 and then sent them off in a direction that would get them as far away from England as one could get in San Francisco.
When I went upstairs to make their bed and tidy up their room, I noticed Celestine’s walking shoes outside of her closed door, indicating she was safely tucked into her room, and judging from the quiet, still asleep. I thought the shoes outside the door was a cute, old-fashioned touch. Had she years ago stayed in some pensione in Italy where the elderly proprietors shined shoes for their young Americana? They weren’t the sort of shoes that would take a shine but I was so full of my infatuation with this woman that I found myself wanting to please her at every turn. I took the boots downstairs, gave them a full scrubbing and filled them with sprigs of bougainvillea and ferns I had growing on the side of the house, before replacing them in front of her door. Then I went downstairs to make a fresh pot of coffee.
Breakfast runs from 7am to 9am, after that, if no one is at the table, I begin rapidly putting everything away. I will however leave the food and coffee out longer for some guests, if I like them and think they may be down shortly. I’d looked forward to chatting with Celestine over the breakfast table, so I decided to leave everything as is until she came down, no matter how late. I hadn’t seen her for a whole day, a significant amount of time in the life of a tourist, as one can see by the following Travel Industry formula: 1 Tourist Day = 2 Human Days = 14 Dog Days.
Unspeakable tragedies
I called Tip around 8 just to check in. He reported that the tourist landscape looked bleak but fingers crossed, he was hoping for a fresh kill before sundown. Business was bad – for everyone, not just us. Hotels were laying people off; small inns were closing. What a contrast with the years before the dot-com dreams went sour and the tragedies of September 11, namely the destruction of the Twin Towers, the attack on the Pentagon and the automobile accident that took out Uncle Arthur.
When I tell people that my Uncle Arthur died on 9/11, they get all misty, moved against further inquiry so as not to pry into the sacred. They make me understand with their facial distortions that they feel deeply for my unspeakably tragic loss. Arthur, of course, was nowhere near the East Coast catastrophes. He was meandering through ground zero of an intersection so perilous it makes the Basra-Baghdad Highway look like a cake-walk.
As one ascends Market Street from downtown up towards Twin Peaks, a large double hill shaped like Barbie’s tits, one passes through many intersections where confusion greets the coming together of roads, but by far the most dangerous is the asphalt free-for-all near the Castro, where Market Street, all six lanes of it with a street car running down the middle, Noe Street, 16th Street, and a couple bus lines, converge. Add onto this treacherous field the militant bicycle riders, the aggressive cruising tactics of throngs of gay men, (which leave them less attentive to traffic patterns, or, if driving, to unattractive pedestrians,) the drag queens and lipstick lesbians with their perilous heels, truckloads of diesel dykes, dog-walkers, stoned beggars weaving on and off of sidewalks and you have a recipe for disaster.
(When I think of that intersection I always see that famous image from the early days of rail before they quite knew what they were doing, the one where the train has burst through the Parisian architecture and landed on the street out front.)
Arthur wasn’t the only one to die that day; he struck a pedestrian before driving the car up and over a small cast iron fence and finally expiring. I tried to help the investigating officers piece together the circumstances that led to such a tragedy. It seemed that Arthur had had a heart attack, causing him to lose control of the car. What puzzled the police was that Arthur had known his victim – it was his psychiatrist! To further complicate matters, this psychiatrist had received several death threats in the weeks leading up to his death. This led, implausibly, to the theory that Arthur had been on an assassin’s mission gone awry. I assured them that he never took any of his doctors seriously enough to want to harm them and I pointed out that Arthur, though he was not averse to doing strange things for money (as evidenced by the conversion of his home into a bed and breakfast,) had never even gotten a traffic ticket, let alone been involved in any killings for hire. Privately however, I couldn’t help wonder if he’d had the heart attack first or if he’d gunned the car to take out his psychiatrist and then had the attack. We’ll never know.
The car that Arthur died in is in fact the one currently used by me. It only needed a little bodywork and it was fine. Sometimes, if I think a guest finds the macabre titillating, I take them for a drive in it, tell them the story and embellish it a bit by mentioning the blood stains that occasionally appear on the carpet and then mysteriously disappear again. They lap it up like kittens to cream.
Greed
In those days before the dot-com crash our guests lapped up everything we placed in front of them. We actually had people outbidding each other for rooms, desperate for anything and we took their desperation straight to the bank. Although it wasn’t my business then, I’d often help Tipton and Uncle Arthur out. I needed the cash and Arthur’s health was starting to decline; he’d had a stroke that he rapidly recovered from but it left him feeling and looking much older.
San Francisco was in the midst of a boom then, everyone getting rich off smoke and mirrors and silicon chips. The more prosperous citizens of the city were locked in a stranglehold of greed and self-importance. They felt particularly important in their enormous, option loaded automobiles as they heedlessly asserted their right of way. Walking was too pedestrian, and if you were one, you took your life in your hands. Once, as I was crossing Mission Street in the cross walk, a left-turning car careened point blank toward my lower body; I was literally inches away from road kill. So when I dared confront the driver over his reckless driving, do you know what he said to me in response, all miffed and snotty?
“I let you go!”
The arrogance was incredible. It was like being an extra in some 1930's Hollywood film about the French Revolution, 'A Tale of Two Cities' or something and you were one of the straw filled dummies being run over by an aristocrat's coach. You were always getting in the way of people trying to cash in and if you weren't cashing in (and how could you be if you were walking, not running and squealing like hogs to the trough), you were unworthy of consideration.
But Caveat Emptor! – be careful, all you careful consumers with your hedge funds and your hedges between your houses. Beware, all you sitting pretty people, you buttoned up, tucked in people with your thread counts of over 300, your 401k’s, your Fortune 500 portfolios, your XL2000 series automobiles – your number is out there and the numbers do get called.
As many of my peers were busy accumulating wealth, I solidified my position as a member of a distinct class of middle-aged individuals whose creativity and odd illnesses have impoverished them while leaving them with no great bodies of work but their own lumpen flesh. They are distinguished by their intelligence and by the vehemence of their arguments and their accusations; by the traces of bitterness licked by their tongues like the line of sticky residue on an envelope. They are possessed by nostalgia for the moneyed life they may only briefly have lived and all their achievements are unfinished prototypes for events that never happen. They become isolated and haunted, intimates of all things dead, attendants of past lives rather than their own present ones. The more ambitious and energetic among them become re-enactors of Civil War battles or eccentric docents in house museums.
The times did not encourage one to feel charitably disposed toward strangers (no money in it) and who are the unfortunate people but strangers, people we go out of our way to keep at a distance? We take extra care that the hems of our trousers just barely skirt the street corner lay-abouts, their swollen feet and ankles like new potatoes in the oven, shiny and red and burnt – about to burst, it would seem, from steam below the skin. But for bad timing, they might have hit their marks. With good luck t
hey might have avoided catastrophe, but catastrophe met them half way. Is home something misfortunate people can ever hope to have?
Be kind to strangers, the Greeks used to say; they may be gods in disguise. Sometimes I tell myself, as I’m stepping over them on the sidewalk, don’t forsake life’s losers; they may hold the keys to your happiness.
The lioness in winter
When Celestine finally made it down for breakfast around ten-thirty, she looked worn and smiled oddly. If she was a lioness, this morning she was a wounded one.
“There you are!” I declared grandly, as she stepped down from the stairs to the hallway still clutching the banister. Then, sensing that she required something else from me that day but unable to stop my performance I demanded with mock gravitas, “What have you done?”
“What?” she barked. It sounded like an accusation.
“I mean what have you been doing, I missed you yesterday.”
“Oh, yes. What have I done?” She laughed sardonically. “What have I done? That’s the real question.” She wasn’t quite ready to come back yet from the distant place she’d traveled to since last time I saw her. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired,” she said, batting the air in front of her face as though shooing a fly away, but there wasn’t one. “Thank you for the flowers in my shoes this morning, that was so sweet. I felt like the girl in that little nursery rhyme, ‘rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes.’
“You left out ‘and bougainvillea in her booties,’” I added, trying to draw out the woman I had been so impressed with.
“And did you clean them too?” she asked in a high-pitched voice.
“I gave them a good, quick scrub.”
“I thought so. Oh, you’ve left breakfast out,” she said as if she didn’t quite understand. “But it’s after ten-thirty.”
“I thought you might like a little something, so I left it. No big deal.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her movement to the table was slow and cautious, like she expected the floor to give out from under her. Obviously something had happened, something that had scooped out the very core of her. I moved indirectly toward an explanation or at least some clue.
“You are a mysterious woman,” I said.
“No, just private,” she answered, meeting my eyes with her own, bringing my inquiry to a halt.
“Nothing is more mysterious or harder to come by these days than privacy. I have to go finish the laundry, just knock if you need anything.” I said. Some in my position would have apologized for being too nosy after hearing the discouraging tone in Celestine’s voice, but there’s nothing more repellant to me than service industry obsequiousness. In order to maintain my authority, it’s important for me to just be who I am, the nosy inn-keeper without apology, which when offered only suggests to guests that I’ve said or done something that is cause for offense. I serve on my own terms.
De-privatization
I’ll never cede my right to know those things a guest can’t hide but I do respect privacy, something that exists more in theory for the host of a bed and breakfast, and though I don’t read my guests their Miranda rights, my investigations are limited to evidence in plain view. Whatever you are concealing, I will never unzip, unsnap or unroll your secret.
I was frustrated Celestine wouldn’t open up to me. I’ve become what I previously despised, namely one of those California ‘feeling’ solicitors; my conversations are often cross-examinations, sifting for emotional content, that New Age California gold. Typically I’ll meet a total stranger, (in the past, this would have been accomplished in a bar, now most likely in the supermarket or out on dog patrol,) she’ll launch right into her messy divorce before we even know each others’ names. I respond with my war stories about former girlfriends and here’s where I best her because I bring up my alcohol addiction and the horrible effect alcohol has had on my relationships (the truth is more complex; it was often the glue that held them together.) She then tells a sad (but disturbingly exciting) tale of how, from the age of 13 to 15, she was the sex toy of her mother’s elder brother and on and on it goes. If it ends well, we sleep together, if not, then we go our separate ways feeling like we’ve been seen shitting in public.
People in San Francisco, the real San Franciscans, (by which I mean the moths attracted to it’s flame, not the ones born within its limits) want you to fold out for them your emotional map. Where is your affliction? Where is your pain? Show me on the map, where does it hurt? They know that once you have unfolded your sorrows, you’ll never be able to fold them up again in quite the same way; the creases will show.
Neighborly chat
Before I had a chance to finish emptying the clothes dryer, the doorbell rang. As I walked my long strides down the hallway I could hear Celestine pouring herself more coffee. I opened the front door to find Porky with a hybrid goatish/sheepish grin on his face.
“Hi, Roy, is this a good time to work on the plumbing?” Now it was my turn to look confused, which I do by compressing everything on my face towards my nose, then I put my right hand onto my forehead and slide it over my head down to my neck, which I scratch. All of this and more I did before I finally said,
“Hi, Porky, come on in.” He started pushing his way in before I even had time to get out of the way and his tool bucket banged me in the shins as he went past.
“Ouch!” I said. And he answers,
“Hi, Celestine!” Filipino-Americans don’t say ‘sorry’ nearly as often as the English do.
“Well, hello Porky,” Celestine says, in such a way that I’m not sure if she’s really glad to see him or just being polite. By now she’s really gotten herself together and Porky doesn’t witness the spectacle of decline I’d seen earlier.
“Listen, I have something for you,” he says to her as he pulls out a painter’s cap.
“Oh, you brought me one of those hats, thank you so much. This will be just the thing for gardening. I love this extra wide brim. What do you think Roy?” she asks me as she tries it on. I think Porky and I need to talk.
“It’s lovely. Porky, let’s get you started on that plumbing, because I need to go out and do some errands.” He doesn’t budge. This is several minutes of his life that he refuses to share with me.
“Listen, Celestine, I was thinking, I know this great seafood place down in Bay Shore, best in the city and today’s Thursday, which is all you can eat fried clams. Heaven. And they have this great beer selection. You can watch me drink and see my face turn ten shades of red.”
Celestine laughs and asks, “Are you allergic?”
“No, it’s just an Asian thing.”
“You know my kitchen faucet is just an Asian thing too; it’s made in Japan,” I say, but I no longer exist for Porky, and Celestine is basking in male attention.
“That sounds lovely Porky, is that an invitation?” she asks.
“I forgot to tell you, they have a deck right on the water. How about I pick you up around four?” he asks
“Well, let’s see,” Celestine pauses to think. “I’d planned on being in the Mission neighborhood this afternoon, how would we work our meeting?”
“I have a job in the Castro!” Porky shouts; I half expect him to jump in the air and land in one of those cheerleader crotch splits. “I’ll pick you up in front of Mission Dolores at four. Perfect!”
Oh, how I’ve come to hate that word – ‘perfect’.
“I’ll see you later Celestine, four o’clock, don’t forget,” Porky says as he sails past me. He’s almost out the door when I yell,
“Tools, Porky!”
He jogs back in to retrieve his bucket and says to me,
“I’ll talk to you later, Roy.”
“Can you believe him?” I say to Celestine in exasperation as the door slams shut.
“Oh, I think he’s sweet. A sweet man and very amusing.”
I was now feeling embarrassed somehow, like I’d
lost a skirmish in front of my lady fair and I retreated with the usual banalities about enjoying one’s day and not doing anything I wouldn’t do, which I gave extra emphasis. I doubt Porky had mentioned his wife; he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring, but that’s usually the case when he’s working. I didn’t think it was my place to tell Celestine about it because she was above all my guest and rule number one is never make a good guest feel bad.
I heard Celestine retreat upstairs and then the rush of water coming down from the toilet as it coursed through the pipes in the wall. I went back out to the dining area, quickly gathered the remains of breakfast onto my little dinner cart and rolled them back to the kitchen. Shortly the phone rang and an excited Tipton informed me of guests imminently arriving.
“Ok, are you ready to pump some new life into your bank account?” he asked.
“Always,” I replied.
“You are going to have a full house tonight.”
“Oh my God, that hasn’t happened in weeks.”
“Well, pinch yourself, because it’s real. Family of four taking Septimus and Jefferson. I talked to the wife who has an accent, sort of Indian or Saudi Arabian or something. The kids are young, they’ll sleep in the twin beds, parents will take the double in Septimus. That’s two nights at $150 per, so $300 total to be paid in cash. They’re coming by car and they’ll be there in about an hour or so. I told them they could have the parking space.”
“Ok, I’ll go move my car,” I promised.
Pinky
I brought out some folded towels to bring upstairs just as Celestine was coming down. I wedged the towels underneath my left arm, opened the front door with my right hand and stepped out onto the porch with her to admire the fine day. As I had every reason to expect, there was Pinky, Porky’s wife, standing on her porch right next door.
Pinky is petite and round, her face still lit with the mischievousness of a ten year old. Every morning after her daily household cleaning, a three-hour effort she usually finishes by 11 o’clock, she struts out onto her porch like an inspecting admiral on the deck of her vessel, one with state of the art, fully functioning plumbing. There she stands for twenty minutes or so, watching all that passes, in such a way that makes you realize this is one of her chores also, one that requires only a beaming smile to accomplish, another skill of hers acquired from endless repetition.
Pinky was such a master of fastidiousness that she made my now considerable house cleaning skills look amateurish. The inside of her house was immaculate, every surface sterilized, just sitting tight, ready for a photo shoot or major surgery. Her achievement was all the more admirable considering what a slob Porky was.
After the kids had grown up, she and Porky had decided to take on boarders and had converted the first floor into two separate apartments, which was easily achieved, as that had been the arrangement when they’d bought the house thirty years before. Porky had earlier converted the apartments into bedrooms for their two sons, which had assisted them in developing an early self-sufficiency that would see them both leaving home soon after high school. He had, however, removed the stoves and refrigerators at Pinky’s insistence. Although she encouraged her boys to fend for themselves at an early age, in the realm of food she would always be their master and they her hungry vassals.
Their sister, the youngest child, was discouraged from venturing too far out into the world and was looked upon by the other four members of the family as a little slip of a celebrity that needed the constant protection of her entourage. This was the perfect breeding ground for rebellion and as she matured she became something of a handful. All this I would only find out later, of course.
I don’t know what Porky and Pinky stipulated in their adverts for boarders, but the inhabitants of those apartments, beings whom we could only observe, never communicate with, wouldn’t let themselves be known. They seemed to exist in an entirely different dimension, completely unaware of the lives being lead next doors, all around them. Pinky cleaned up after, and even made meals for, these ethereal beings yet not only were they never a topic of conversation but neither she nor Porky had ever even once acknowledged their existence to me.
“Hi, Pinky,” I called over to her. And then to Celestine, I said, (I’m such an asshole sometimes,) “That’s Pinky, Porky’s wife.” Well, she didn’t skip a beat; she says hello to Pinky and then looks back at me with a knowing smile and the devil in her eye and says coyly,
“Goodbye, Roy, I’ll expect more than bougainvillea in my booties when I get back this evening.” Subsequent discoveries would render this a moot point.
Chapter IV: Too Much Information
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