by Ian Bull
“Here’s what I think,” Kath says. She guzzles her beer and then burps like a trucker in a Peterbilt talent show, long and hard, in a rumbling rising note like a honking eighteen-wheeler speeding past. Paul and Sam stare at her, shocked. “I have brothers,” she says and shrugs.
“They taught you to be disgusting?” Sam asks.
“Yes, they did. Just like your San Quentin boyfriends taught you to be an obedient little pillow biter,” Kath says. She grabs a cloth napkin off the table and holds it against her mouth, as if she were stifling a scream.
“I don’t think we’re interested in your offer,” Sam says to Paul.
Paul slaps the table as if they were. “Good! This is the deal then. We’ll each pick one job. First Kath, then Sam, then me. You two do the work, and I’ll pay for all the expenses – cars, tools, bribes, cover – and we split each payday three ways.”
“What happens after the three jobs?” Sam asks.
“If you like the arrangement, we keep working. Or you walk away. All debts to me erased. You owe me nothing,” Paul says, his palms up like he’s Jesus offering them the loaves and the fishes. Kath and Sam look at him and each other, suspicious.
“Too easy. There’s got to be a hitch,” Kath says.
“Why do you say that? I want my people to be happy, and I know neither of you loves working for me. I want to change our situation, so we can all benefit. And if my idea doesn't work and you decide to move on, I'll know it wasn't meant to be," Paul says. His voice is low and earnest like he's quoting a church poem on a fabric wall-hanging.
The pilot steers the speeding bouncing yacht on three long loops past downtown, under the Bay Bridge, around Alcatraz and then past downtown again. By the third loop Sam is sick and Kath is laughing. The Jack Daniels didn’t help. Paul takes pity on him and parks the yacht alongside the docks at Pier 39, so Sam doesn’t have to endure the bouncy ride through the choppy waves all the way back to the St. Francis Yacht Club. Paul and Kath stand at the railing and watch Sam walk a slow crooked arc up the dock with his hands stretched out as if he were a drunk in the dark just hoping to touch a wall to keep the world from tilting away from him.
“He might need this, but I don’t,” Kath says.
“I know. Neither do I. But I can make it worth it for you.”
“I knew something else was coming,” Kath says. Sam reaches dry land and waves at them in triumph, then disappears into the tourists crowding Fisherman’s Wharf.
Paul leans close. “Sam likes you. Play along with my offer. Talk to him.”
“What are we supposed to ‘talk’ about?”
“Where he put five hundred thousand dollars of my money. He’s got it hidden someplace and I want to be there when he gets it,” Paul says, and then explains the whole safe cracking story. “I’ve got too much tied up in the health club, and in real estate. I have no liquidity. I need cash, right now, and he has it.”
Kath hears it all, then shakes her head. “This game’s not for me. I’m no Mata Hari.”
Paul glances over his shoulder to check if Inge is watching, then reaches out and rubs the back of Kath’s neck. She recoils at first, then closes her eyes, bites her lip and endures his touch.
“I remember a time when you’d do pretty much anything I asked you.”
Kath shakes his hand away. “That’s before I knew you better.”
Paul walks back to his chair. He pulls out a cigar from a cedar box on the table and lights it, blowing the smoke towards her. “Don’t get ugly with me. I found you dumpster diving at age seventeen. You used to huff paint thinner until you passed out in the gutter. I changed all that,” he says, then sucks on the cigar until the tip lights up red.
“And you won’t ever let me forget it,” Kath says.
“You miss me sometimes. You miss all this,” he says, gesturing at the yacht. “Admit it.”
“I don’t. And quit bringing it up,” Kath says, crossing her arms. “Or I’ll tell Inge.”
Paul holds up his hands in surrender, and laughs. “Then I admit it. I remember the fun we used to have, and I miss it. Just do me a favor and have fun with Sam for a little while.”
“You want me to fuck him?”
"If that's what it takes. Or plan burglaries with him. With this business arrangement, you have a reason to spend time together. Just work your magic and find out what I need to know."
Kath paces the deck like a caged tiger. “Why me? Why not some other girl?’
“Because you still owe me money. Remember all that cash I’ve given you over the years? You’re still paying interest, you’re not even into principal.” Paul plops back down in his black and white easy chair. He puts his feet up on the table.
“I’ve been paying my debt off. Your math is funny. It always has been,” Kath says. “And you could get any girl to do this. Girls with more professional talent than me. It doesn’t add up.”
Kath faces him, her legs apart and her arms crossed. The fog horns blow under the Golden Gate, announcing the incoming marine layer that rolls in during the late afternoon. The wind whips her hair and raises gooses bumps on her bare arms, but she doesn’t break her gaze. Paul puffs on his cigar and crosses his own arms, his stare matching hers.
“Because you look like his wife.”
Kath’s eyes widen as Paul grins. “What? He’s got a wife?” Kath asks.
Paul signals to the pilot up top, and the yacht pulls away from the Pier 39 docks. Paul walks over to Kath, circling her. "He had a wife, until he trashed it. A real looker too, just like you. Different hair color, you're taller, but your eyes, mouth, and chin are the same," Paul says, pointing at Kath's face and hair like she was his model. "It's probably why he followed you out of Macy's, whether he realizes it or not."
Kath blinks, unsure what she thinks about this new revelation. She picks up a thick green blanket off another easy chair and wraps it around her shoulders. It’s emblazoned with the name of the yacht, Irish Mist. She shivers and stands by the railing and looks out over the water. They are coming up on Alcatraz Island, and the old decaying federal penitentiary.
“What’s in it for me?” Kath asks.
“One hundred thousand, and all debts forgiven. And you’ll be done with me forever.”
“These burglary jobs are a sham then,” Kath says.
“They don’t have to be,” Paul says. “We can all still make money.”
“I want them to be shams. No risk, no one gets hurt, no one gets caught,” she says, still staring straight ahead. They are now parallel with rocky Alcatraz and the lighthouse atop the old Federal prison. Paul sighs and shakes his head.
“Your job and mine can be shams. I can set that up easy. But the job he picks must be real,” Paul says. “But I bet you’ll find out what he did with the money long before he ever takes that chance,” Paul says.
They stare at the old prison passing by, a yellowing matron whose broken windows look like accusing eyes. “I’ll think about it,” Kath says. “But if I do it, you and I are done. Forever means forever.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
B ay Meadows is the oldest racetrack in the United States, a beautiful one mile oval next to a green grandstand, thirty miles south of San Francisco. It was torn down in 2008, so they could build a high-tech community for Silicon Valley, but in 1980 you can watch the jockeys in their multi-colored polka dotted satin shirts ride the giant thoroughbreds four times a week.
Kath rides Caltrain down to Bay Meadows every Sunday, to visit the Meadow Song Retirement Community, a two-story U-shaped building just two hundred yards away from the race track parking lot. One arm of the “U” provides assisted living and has an Alzheimer’s ward with a locked door so the patients can’t wander. The other arm holds small one-bedroom apartments with rooms so small you can’t fall without hitting a wall with a hand railing to grab first. This is the side Kath visits every week, and she says a little prayer as she passes the green locked double doors of the Alzheimer’s ward, thankful that she
doesn’t have to visit there yet.
She rides the elevator up and knocks on the brown metal door to apartment 201. She knocks, then rings, then knocks again, and just as she's about to get the manager with a passkey, a tiny woman in a pink bathrobe pulls the door open. She is Kath's great Aunt Bella, she's less than five feet tall, she is in her eighties, and she wears a brunette wig that looks more like a helmet than hair.
“Didn’t you hear the bell, Aunt Bella?”
“Yes, I heard it! The door is unlocked, just come in! I don't want to stop what I'm doing for every damn person who knocks on the door!"
Kath kisses her on the top of her wig and follows her into her tiny apartment. Aunt Bella is a pack rat who collects old National Geographic magazines, cans of food, playing cards, cribbage boards, and poker chips. Kath joins her aunt at a tiny kitchen table. Bella likes to eat her breakfast while playing Solitaire. Aunt Bella bites into a piece of homemade cinnamon toast.
“Want some?”
“No thanks," Kath answers. She slides a small pink gift-wrapped box across the table.
Bella puts down her half-eaten piece of toast and rips the package open. Inside are the gloves that Kath stole from Macy’s.
“You said the department store billed you for gloves they never sent, right?” Kath asks.
Bella’s eyes light up as she remembers. “Yes! I called them on the phone and told the saleswoman exactly what I wanted from the catalog, and then they sent me the bill, but the gloves never came! Can you believe that? How long will it be before I can order something while sitting in my home and trust that it will arrive?”
“Maybe someday, Auntie,” Kath says, and takes off her green scarf, blue beret, and cashmere coat. “It’s warmer down here than in The City.”
“That's why I live here, because there's sunshine. You've got ‘hat head,' run your fingers through your hair," Bella says, pointing at Kath's brown locks. Kath fluffs up thick brown hair as Aunt Bella stares at her and sighs.
“What?” Kath asks.
“You are so beautiful. I wish I still had hair like you.”
“I know,” Kath says, and reaches out and holds her aunt’s sugary hand.
“You shouldn’t have wasted your money on me.”
“The gloves were a bargain. I even got a pair for myself.”
“They are beautiful calfskin. Thank you,” Bella says. “Put them next to the stack of canned beans next to the window.”
“Why do you keep a stack of canned beans leaning against the window?" Kath asks as she places the gloves next to a four-foot-tall stack of cans.
“If the bad guys climb up the rain gutter and try to break in at night, I’ll hear the cans fall over,” Bella answers.
“Want to go to the track when it opens?” Kath asks.
“I’d love to. I have a system. Boys who wear pink always win big for me.”
She watches her aunt play Solitaire for several minutes. Kath sits but then stands again. She paces, then stops, then runs her hands through her hair, and then goes back to watching.
“You just cheated. You put red on black,” Kath says.
“Arrest me. Sit down, you’re bugging me with your hovering. What’s wrong with you?”
Kath sits down, clears her throat, and spits out her thoughts. “Speaking of cheating, the director said you were taking people’s social security money again,” Kath says.
“I won their money fair and square. No one forces them to play poker with me,” Bella says. “Is that why you came down today? To bust my chops about my gambling?”
“You used to cheat on me to get me to do the dishes, Auntie. Where's the money you won?" Kath asks.
“This is my apartment, and it's my money! You stay out of my business! And that director makes a fortune off me for this place, and off the medicine I buy from him!" Bella screams, spittle flying from her mouth. Her sugar-coated cards spill off the table and her wig tilts back on her head, exposing her yellow hairnet.
“Let me handle your bills. He’s serious about the money. You want to keep this place, don’t you?” Kath says.
Tiny Bella faces off against her grandniece, curling her nose as if she’s ready to toss out an Italian gypsy curse. She gives in instead. "It's behind the television set."
Kath walks two steps and reaches behind the oven-sized wooden box of a TV set and pulls out a thick envelope of cash and thumbs through the bills. “Are your track winnings in here?”
“I keep that separate. Track money is crisp and fresh. That money smells like old socks.”
“You’ve got fifteen hundred here. You’re a busy old lady, Bella.”
“And you’re not busy enough if you have to worry about an old lady like me. Don’t you have any men to occupy you?” Bella asks as she starts another game of Solitaire.
“No one worth talking about.”
Bella stops laying her cards down and stares at Kath as she puts the envelope of cash in her coat pocket. Kath looks up, and they lock eyes. “What?” Kath asks.
“There is someone.”
“Let’s just say someone is trying to set me up with someone and I can already tell that I don’t like the guy. It’s awkward.”
“You can’t give him a chance?”
“There’s no spark, Auntie. Trust me.”
Bella goes back to her Solitaire game, carefully laying red on red and black on black. Kath watches her for a few seconds, then sits down across from her, her eyes welling with tears.
Bella looks up. “Katerina, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not a bad person, am I?”
Bella reaches over and grabs her hand. “You appeared from nowhere to take care of me, my sister’s granddaughter. You’re the only family I have left. You pay all my bills with money that comes from I don’t know where. I don’t deserve you.”
“I’m not that wonderful. I’ve hurt people. And I’m afraid I’m going to do it again.”
Bella moves her chair closer to Kath. The old lady with the helmet wig runs her tiny fingers through the younger woman’s thick locks.
“It’s impossible to go through life without hurting or being hurt. You can’t sit on the sidelines. You just jump in and do your best and follow your heart,” she says. “And be honest.”
“Be honest?”
“It’s the most important and hardest thing. Be honest with yourself, and others.”
Kath nods, not saying how impossible that is for her right now. She sniffs and smiles instead. "What is it about you and me? How come we get along?" Kath asks.
Bella gathers the deck of cards, shuffles them and splays them face up on the table with the speed of a blackjack dealer, and pulls out the Queen of Spades and the Queen of Clubs. "Birds of a feather flock together, and we're both dark-haired ravens," Bella says, holding up the cards.
She then grabs a Jack of Hearts and holds him up.
"Now see if you can catch the Jack of Hearts," she ways, and then bends the cards slightly and moves the three of them on the table, back and forth, faster than a hustler playing three-card monte on a cardboard box on Market Street.
“Follow my hands, watch him close, see if you can catch him…”
Bella stops moving the cards, and Kath points at the card in the middle. Bella turns it over, and it’s the Jack of Hearts. “Got him,” Kath says.
“This time. But sometimes us ravens end up alone, like me. Don’t let that happen to you. You don’t have to take crap but be honest and forgiving. You don’t always have to win.”
The two women reach out and grab hands across the tiny kitchen table, surrounded by National Geographic magazines and with tin cans stacked against every window.
CHAPTER TWELVE
S am gets off the Noriega Muni line and takes a rambling walk for several blocks, making turns on streets past bodegas and Chinese restaurants just to make sure Dozer and Cliff aren't following him in their Lincoln Town Car. He turns up the collar of his stonewashed jean jacket to both hide his face and to protect himse
lf against the fog. Stonewashed jean jackets are cutting edge fashion in 1980, but it will be several years before Sam will think back and remember how silly he looks.
He cuts back to 28th Avenue and Ortega Street, passing all the little houses with their bright colors, and stops again at the stucco house painted burnt orange with the black wrought iron balcony and the red geraniums on the sill. It's where he and Rose and her son used to live, in another life so long ago it feels like it didn't happen, but it did. Sam stares at the house for a minute and then realizes that either the geraniums are fake, or someone is living inside and watering them. He walks closer and stands in the driveway and stares up at the tiny balcony and sees dirt on the underside of the pots, and a few red petals are falling off.
They're alive. Someone cares about the geraniums, which means someone cares about the house. Maybe Rose is there. Maybe Rose is coming back, or Mrs. Wilkenson is going in and watering them for her. If Rose had sold the house, someone new would answer. He darts up the stairs and knocks on the door, then rings the bell. There are no lights on, and there's no window he can use to peek inside. He can't decide whether no one answering is a good sign or a bad sign.
He pulls an envelope from his pocket and darts up to Mrs. Wilkenson's house, next store. These homes in the Sunset have their mail slots on the ground level, next to the garage door, right under a tiny square window that helps illuminate the inside of the dark garage. That way the mailman doesn't have to dart up hundreds of staircases a day. But before Sam can drop the envelope in her mail slot, Mrs. Wilkenson dumps dirty water on him from her front window above, drenching his new stonewashed jacket.
“Did I surprise you, punk?” She still wears her black eye patch and her bright Hawaiian housecoat.