A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Nah, she wanted to get the hot art inside.

  And he settles in to cadence revisited.

  Juan Valdez. Stinky Le Pew would be more like it. But that’s French. Stinky Valdez?

  He drains the second bottle and rises to re-sort the nuts, then settles back in to blow the nose one side at a time with a finger press and thumb wipe. He peels open the energy bar with his teeth and checks the cardio: looking good at one-twelve bpm over sixty rpm.

  So it’s official, past the clubhouse turn to the home stretch.

  Did the boyfriend give her that name along with a few toasters? When was a princess ever named Rosa?

  Maybe Juan Valdez got a steal on the art. Brought it up, and she’s fencing it. But where do the kid and dog fit in? You know? You don’t put a hundred thousand dollar piece of art in a field-hand bungalow to make ends meet. Do you? No, you don’t.

  What you do is, you spread your legs for the guy who brought it up, because you got this sick craving for macho greasers, most likely because you wasted your first fifty years on overtly sensitive men in the urban core.

  Then you agree to take care of his ex-girlfriend’s kid because the ex is strung out and besides, the kid helps secure the arrangement and keeps the back door open. Rosa didn’t seem seasoned enough for such a tight-knit setup. But then she did shut down the macho asshole in a blink, so she might know more than she lets on. Tough looking fucker. No accounting for taste. Nice painting though. No accounting for taste.

  So ends the refreshment interlude of the thirty-five-miler, rounding a curve three point eight miles past California 129 and just past the Casserly Store into a headwind, which wouldn’t be so bad, but the high-energy bar isn’t coming on, and it’s sixteen miles to go with the final seven fairly uphill. And the headwind is gusty.

  Hazel Dell coming right up, and the next two miles may well pump the cardio past the anaerobic redline, where all systems will remain on go till the peddler throws a rod or seizes a piston or blows a gasket or scorches some rings and pits some cylinders, till an old, worn-out man gets off and walks.

  Not really. This is cake. Fourth time in four days, and it’s charming.

  Cadence drops to thirty-one. The sweat pours, and seeking a rhythm in his strained effort, Mulroney feels the pressure rise, head and heart and skin. Sweat goes from pouring to oozing.

  Well, you’re gonna feel pressure. He sure as hell won’t get off and walk. He’s reasonably sure. He couldn’t walk in these three hundred dollar shoes anyway. Or was it four hundred? You get off and walk; next thing you know it’s the bike shop guys passing casually and seeing the old guy walking. What a revolting development that would be. Fuck it; they don’t have a clue who Chester A. Riley is. But they got Mulroney pegged. Or think they do. But would it really be worse to be seen walking instead of straining like a bogged engine on a steep grade? Or flopping on the side of the road with the blue tinge?

  Nah, just push—and pull. Control the breathing. Keep it steady, and there, it levels already. This is only the false summit a half-mile up, a mile and a half to go. But that’s a good thing. The pressure can ease some on this level part. Mulroney can decompress a bit before digging deep for the long climb out.

  XII

  Free of the Material Plane

  Rose Berry had been around the block on the investment, equity, and creative financing thing. She viewed the game board in terms of inevitable victory if she could keep energizing the positive as only a spirit-based, urban woman can do. That is, a winner among women will know in her gut how to move the pieces to rise above the mundane, workaday world. Not that she was poor or downtrodden, but a gal wants to exhale sooner or later—wants to ease into something more, something better, something fuzzy or frilly, something plush or flamboyant—something to show for her effort. Because a game gal is on, every day.

  Youthful energy wasn’t what it used to be, but Rose could still compete in a society ruled by corrupt, white men.

  She would not see this messy relationship with Juan Valdez as two horny people deferring to convenience. Yes, he was a subsistence Mexican enamored by a classy gringa; and yes, she was a classy gringa with a taste for salsa picànte. But it was more than mutual infatuation and sex, much, much more. For one thing, the sex represented deeper meaning than mere friction of an intimate nature, much more, considering her recent issues of self-esteem. In fact, the sex proved she still has what it takes to attract a man and keep him in the home cucina at mealtime. Anyone dismissing Juan Valdez as a greaser would only be jealous of his incredible virility, his Latino machismo, his cut, his scent, his leer, swagger, threat, and truck. Only a heterosexual man would write him off, or a lesbian.

  For another thing, getting involved with Juan Valdez confirmed her wits, still the most proven fundamentals of her survival to date. Maybe she dismissed him at the outset as well, but that wasn’t racism; the guy was just so obviously on the make for white pussy. She did not appreciate that phrase one bit, but in the context of the misery, hardship, and deprivation his people had been through, white pussy took on new meaning, less heinous and sexist than when hatefully used by the general population. Juan brought a different value set to bear on the overall context—more compensatory, a balance in nature, a just reward—reparation, as it were. Or his usage could be simply idiomatic and phonetic: pu-sē. To him the potentially vile word was merely English.

  After the fact it hardly matters. A guy that macho, that virile, that oppressed and exploited, a guy who rings the bell and keeps it ringing, can call it white pussy or sideways sloppy Joe, cooter, snapper, hairy taco or whatever he wants to call it …

  But God, she hates that language, and he’s white too, in the racial sense, unless the Mestizo influence makes him … Who cares? He’s more man than she’s ever had, and she only points out the importance of perception relative to preconceived prejudice in the socio-racial matrix because, in this case, she was right!

  A guy comes on staring at your breasts, your crotch, your eyes. What does he want, approval? You size him up for violence and write him off as a no-count scum who’s bound for friction with a woman or his hand before midnight. The streets are crawling with those guys.

  Or maybe he’s bound for a swift kick to the gonads, if he insists.

  Then you play what you might think is a smarter angle—or at least a safer one—than the one you played with what’s-his-name, the stuffed shirt, the prissy-priss-paper-pusher, Professor Smoke ’n Mirrors, who taught the accelerated course in hocus pocus, with a bang on the head and again in the shorts. You get swept off your feet and left for dead. You try to stand up from down, and short of that, you just crawl out of the mess. Then you get back in stride a bit smarter, a bit tougher, which is maybe all you ever need to do.

  Anyone who ever played Monopoly can learn about money: She who finagles the most properties rules the world. It’s easy if you get the ivories to lay down right.

  Rose Berry never wanted to rule the world, and she would likely decline the opportunity if offered. She merely wanted to improve her position and maybe her love life and place of residence. Is it so unreasonable for a woman to have the same opportunities as a man, to expect a nice place to live with above-average-to-excellent accessories, professional and artistic neighbors who have dinner parties, and a heterosexual male mate with a six-figure income closer to seven figures than five, whose manners and apparent love for his woman are envied by all other women, whose body fat does not exceed eighteen percent, and whose stamina and appetite for romance are impressive and from time to time exhaustive?

  No, that is not unreasonable, which is to say it is reasonable. She was, however, sick and (excuse me) fucking tired of lonely nights after tedious days of nothing to show but chump change for eight hours’ work—by the clock! My God, where’s that at?

  Nowhere is the short answer. And nowhere was where she felt stuck, watching the world wallow in prosperity, while she worked away the endless, awful hours in one menial job after another. Ameri
ca got richer and richer, and she got the rest. Hostess in a medium chic restaurant, manicurist, dog walker, exercise class for fat women leader, temp, substitute teacher, fashion clerk in a massive department store, telephone solicitor, shampoo station girl, and on and on and on …

  Bo-ring.

  Every day the news lamented gas, groceries, tuition and real estate, all up, up and up. But who kept coming up with the cash to make those markets? Does not supply reflect demand? Wouldn’t prices fall if nobody could pay? And who got the higher prices?

  Let’s face it: America is filthy (excuse me) fucking rich. So how could a smart woman get her share of the plunder?

  That was the question.

  Here, too, the obvious answer was so simple that very few could see it: she would borrow. What better time to jump off the high board than into a pool full of money? No better time was the answer, which just so happened to be the time she’d had her eye (and her heart set, somehow, some way) on possibly the most fabulous Victorian house in San Francisco. Sure it was in Noe Valley, which is thick as it gets with hip, chic, radical, political, artistic, and prohibitively expensive essence. But the place was so quintessentially delicious, scrumptious, perfect and then some. Talk about classy digs and hot and cold running hetero men.

  I mean, those 1930s classic kitchen cabinets with the white frames and antique glass were perfect, and the huge deco bathrooms, which isn’t Victorian, I know, but still, make the place more perfect.

  It was a tantalizing, exasperatingly exquisite example of the hip-prosperity movement that fueled the run on Noe Valley. Imagining life in such a house felt warm and fuzzy and perfect—and stimulating without end. How could anybody get tired of that stuff? It reeked of attention to detail, and if ever a thing existed that had to be possessed, and a person simply had to have it, this was that, the match made in Heaven—or Noe Valley, a little lower than the angels, maybe, but not by much and so much easier to relate to, if you knew what was up.

  Prospects tingled on her skin, signaling the receptive mind that maybe, perhaps, if the goddess within was willing, it was meant to be. And maybe it would be, but you can’t make a down payment with a tingle. Well, you can put the tingles out there, meaning that you can visualize a thing to facilitate its evolution, and that’s an important step, and if you think it’s not, then you’re the (pardon me) fucking fool.

  And don’t think for a minute that a material item does not evolve into ownership by a particular person, because it does. It’s the same as spontaneous generation, like when they made flies happen on that meat. That was flies for chrissakes, and this was a Noe Valley Victorian. It was a wish upon a star either way, but different; this was grown-up and really real. Besides, at two point six million, what difference could it make? She couldn’t afford the point six, much less the two. So putting it out there and having a little fantasy fun didn’t hurt anybody. Did it?

  Till she had a date with Rommel Dunbar—his real name, he insisted, and so she challenged, “Swear to God?” He sneered but would not swear, and she later learned his real name: Randy Davis, and that he’d upgraded on the name issue to enhance compatibility with the high-end, dominance-based real-estate market, focusing on your better blocks in Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, the Upper Haight, and so on. He said he wouldn’t trifle with Noe Valley; “It’s so, well, we won’t go there.”

  “We could at least talk about it.”

  Rose and Rommel met by chance, though both shopped at the Marina Safeway for better odds on the random payout of the relationship-based society they lived in. They lingered in produce for the freshness and fertility most ambient and suggestive there.

  Dairy could also be productive but remained second to produce with all variables factored, because of your lactose intolerants, which, let’s face it, are more prevalent in the mix than you might imagine. Would you hate to miss a fabulous catch because of that?

  Gluten is another matter altogether, and you simply can’t know till it’s too late.

  Meanwhile, in produce, they browsed broccoli heads, on sale, with subtle touching and peripheral observing leading to brief eye contact confirming common knowledge of life and its organic niceties, cruciferous vegetables not the least among them. She agreed to meet him for wine in spite of the obvious age difference. He couldn’t be more than thirty. Maybe thirty-five. But he was cute, peevish, and foppish with his studied lexicon referencing debentures, take-out paper, underwriting and, of course, IPOs relative to maturity or pre-maturity.

  Pre-maturity? Isn’t that a sexual problem?

  She didn’t ask, immersed in the initial phase of romance, where discretion and good taste rule, speaking of which, this guy knew how to present. Overall was his cashmere topcoat with the tag hanging out the collar, maybe to show that it cost four grand on its initial offering. She read it aloud, apparently pleasing him.

  “Oh, that,” he reached back and plucked it off. “I didn’t really want it, but it got cold and I was passing by Wilkes Bashford and Harold, my main man there, was standing in the doorway hugging himself and he called out that I looked chilled, and you know, he was right, and I could just, you know, put it on my running charge there. So, what the hey?”

  She took his meaning to heart. This casual declaration of vast expenditure en passant to effectively marginalize a surface discomfort, on the fly, as it were, literally defined him as impulsive, playful, tasteful, appreciative, and warm—and he had no charge limit at Wilkes Bashford, which meant all his drawers were top drawers, just off Union Square. How could anybody not admire such an up-and-comer who transcended the discretionary with the supremely, casually convenient?

  She smiled playfully, surmising that this pup was a cutie, and she just might go All. The. Way. He would at least be more durable than the men she usually met. Or should be, anyway, given his tender age. And a woman likes a bit of, you know, staying power, if only in the short term.

  Rommel mentioned the Victorian in Noe Valley also en passant, which seemed to be his preferred mode of reference. It was their first really meaningful talk of lifelong dreams: retiring at thirty-five for him, allowing forty if the money was good enough to keep him on the job—and the job could keep him stimulated. Owning a Victorian was her passion, her dream, her lifelong wish and desire, as soon as possible. She loved the idea of a single house costing two point six, but it might as well be eleventy point twelve for her.

  He scoffed at the notion of anyone’s life on hold, with so much money at hand, with so much to be enjoyed right now for a measly three mil, which would be more the case with closing costs, remodeling and furniture, realistically. But what’s the diff, two-six, three-oh? It wasn’t chump change, that was for sure, but it was hardly an amount to retire on or lose sleep over, not in this arena, not with the vision and the daring and the …

  He paused to catch her, eye to eye. The … let’s face it, the balls to call yourself a player in the Bold Economy.

  In a week Rose would consent to sexual relations with Rommel in gratitude for his help and to silence his plea. Rommel lamented that he’d never known love and couldn’t be sure what it was or when he would feel it, but he felt something; he was sure of that, and he thought, maybe, this was it. God knew: this was something.

  He sent a dozen long-stemmed roses, with scent, the hundred-fifty dollar variety. She sniffed and blushed. He blushed too. She imagined a romance starring him and her, beginning with her showing him the nature of gratitude and a thing or two about true, lasting love. She felt light as gossamer and as delicately lovely. Sensations warmed her heart from within, like tequila can do.

  His thought bubble was a single, boyish scene of pornographic sex over the caption: So what? You work. You go to school? What?

  At least Rommel Dunbar’s mannerly good taste made him more tolerable, once she swallowed his high-finance affectation. And he must have been smart; he’d done so well. That is, the roses seemed heartfelt but in their way also casual. And he’d secured the Noe Valley Victorian with
such easy facility, on two phone calls.

  What? That’s all there was to it? Well, he was admittedly loose with the term “secure” but a verbal on a rate lock was nearly money in the bank. Just you watch. He’d get it closed, which would be a great favor for him to do for her, though the transaction was of such, shall we say, small proportion.

  “Small? Three million dollars?”

  “Well, it’s not like … real money, you know.”

  “It’s not like real money?”

  “No. It’s a number. That’s all it is. A relatively small number.”

  “Yeah. A number of dollars.”

  “No. It’s not dollars. That’s where most people fail—in their perception of danger. You know I’m a Kaidofu master, but I don’t want to go there, except to tell you that we train with wooden knives, so that we can see a wooden knife, even if the attack is with steel. You see? It’s not real dollars. It’s ink on paper. Or a blip in the ether, if you will. It’s not the same as cash. It’s a simple measure of faith, or, more accurately, it’s a measure of the faith no longer necessary in our mixed free enterprise system, because we have more money than faith requires. Listen, dear: America is swollen fat with money. The money is pouring over the flood banks. This economy has more money than Niagara Falls has water—and the difference is that Niagara Falls keeps a fairly constant flow where we, America, are flowing stronger every day. You think you can dam it up? You can’t. So you jump in and ride the current. Get it?”

  “You mean like over the falls?”

  “Now you sound like one of the workadays who can’t see the forest for the trees. Let me ask you something: Do you like cashmere? Do you like caviar? Do you like Noe Valley?”

  “Well … yes.”

  Just like that, the very next evening materialized with Rose dining at Rommel’s to sign docs on the deal that was going more secure all the time. Sho’nuff, he wooed her, answering the door in silk briefs and a cashmere sport jacket. Allowing no time for reaction, he led her to his computer and sat her in his plush, doeskin throne with twenty-two ergonomic adjustments including lumbar support, a moveable ottoman, and a subtle massage function that rolled the sides of the lower back. “I call it Dunbar lumbar. What do you think?” He didn’t wait for her thoughts but told her she was in the driver’s seat. She liked it.