by Herbert Gold
The wife was judged psychotic and sent to Vacaville, where the devoted husband visited religiously and the couple reconciled. She was released by recommendation of a blue-ribbon shrink committee. But then, after all, her husband asked for a divorce because she refused to cook for him. He loved her cuisine. He longed for her pumpkin soup, a tradition in their household. “Didn’t trust herself,” wise Petal said. Her eyes were shining; she liked entertainment of all sorts. “Can I have a dessert?” She turned to the tasseled menu, humming to herself. “I’d like something really sweet, with sugar.”
Kasdan raised his hand and Muhammad advanced with his order pad and his suggestions for sweetness, including off-menu options. His smile displayed many teeth, both gold and silver. Fleetingly, Kasdan wondered if he were selling more than his $7.95 lunch buffet at month’s end when the welfare checks came in. A person could buy property abroad, not necessarily in Haiti, or open a restaurant in San Francisco to wash away the stains on drug money, safely returning it to the international trade economy.
“For you,” Muhammad proclaimed, “just the halva or baklava is superlative, for the digestion very good, my dear, honey, nuts, pressed leaves of home-made pastry. I recommend.”
“Right, right,” Petal said, “and seeds. Is there chocolate? I’ve been around the block a few times with Indian…”
“This is Pakistan,” said Muhammad, mitigating his hurt with a smiling bow. He hated the nearby competition, that Mr. Patel and his poisonous nest of mouse-droppings in the buffet trays.
“… Asian-type food. You come here often, Dude? Speaking of that, you like a nice haircut?”
They weren’t speaking of coiffeurs, but okay.
“… and a massage? I do a monster haircut. I’m practicing my Shit-Sue massage and you can help me map the pressure points.”
Muhammad took the hint. The conversation between the girl and the older guy was not meant to be shared by a patriotic Pakistani with only a Green card.
“Or say you buy the eggs, you got a skillet? My omelets are awesome. I won’t poison you like that lady, What’s-her-face, the Brazilian, but my massage kills, guaranteed…” She winked. She must have had previous success with winks. “… or a painless throat slit when I’m trimming the hair in back where it makes your neck look tired and hairy.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” (Old and hairy.)
She stared at the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. She could see Muhammad’s sandals – he was wearing crew socks, so she could also see fleshy ankles – and judging by his body language, he was scraping halva out of a bin. Dividing her attention to the oncoming halva, she murmured, “A Western omelet maybe? That sound good to you? I put in the chili sauce, it goes with my green peppers, my cheese, sometimes I call it my Denver omelet. Or just what’s left over – a Sacramento frittata? Isn’t it the thought that counts, Danny Dude?”
“Funny.”
“I don’t know you well enough to want to poison you. Wouldn’t even occur for a passing fancy.”
“I have every confidence. Please inform me when you do.”
Silence fell. Both of them participated in this silence. If teasing was a part of foreplay, they had made progress. They were both thoughtful – forced smiles, pressed lips, grim lines between the eyes – the silence an edge around deeper considerations about how their previous lives were contributing unshared memories to an occasion of feeding together. The world was in the state of its usual distress; the curry-imbued air here glowed pink and purple; two peculiar new acquaintances sat confused, needy, and less alone on Leavenworth at the bottom of Nob Hill. They were quick to lie to each other, to tease, pretend, and be stupid, as was fitting for how they met. Kasdan dreamed of a truth beyond this ritual foolishness. So much hope deserved a chance to redeem Dan and Petal-she-called-herself.
She broke the silence first. She was making her way in life by taking initiatives; lifelong, Kasdan’s habit had been to watch and wait while initiatives were taken. Where the hell was that halva? Muhammad’s hands suddenly appeared beneath the doors to the kitchen; he was yanking up his crew socks. A person with compassion in his heart could appreciate the annoyance of crew socks with tired elastic sliding down over the heel in sandals. The doors swung apart and halva arrived, set down with a scrape and a flourish. Muhammad’s socks were completely pulled up.
This young Petal had a graspy hand. It had found his thigh again. She was saying, “Don’t you get tired of restaurant food even if it’s outstanding? How about soon I cook something for you? You could watch me bustling around, that be cozy?”
She was firing off energetically, scattering whitish and brownish halva shreds, bits meeting her teeth and spraying outwards. On her, it looked good.
“As a healthy old dude who lives alone, not that you’re old, Dude, don’t you get tired of that outside cooking? I could make one of my stews, whatever you got in the house, and you could sit there in your tee shirt, I hope you don’t wear one of those strappy undershirts, and you could be telling me the sad story of your life, how you got to be an orphan.”
“It’s not that sad. My parents died.”
“Probably. But the downward slope, man, and no loved ones to live after you…”
“A daughter. A grandson.”
“Hey, whatever! Awesome! But everybody should have a good time before they go. We tsigane believe that.”
Kasdan was startled. “You’re not a gypsy.”
She pressed the tines of her fork against the remaining shreds of halva, trying to make them stick. Didn’t work too well. She picked at it with her fingernails. She was a young woman whom God had given long fingernails with the intention that she use them. Dan could barely see the halva, or the traces of it, as she licked her fingertips against her small, plump, heart-shaped mouth. “My grandfather on my mother’s side. Or maybe my dad’s. I don’t exackly recall. Not exackly a gypsy, but a Traveler, the Irish kind, with wagons – now they use trucks, just like anybody.”
Whatever, Kasdan decided.
“And I bet I can shock you with a surprise you’ll never guess – only one tattoo on my bod! Boo!”
Whatever.
The radiator in her room at the Minerva Hotel on Turk was cold, but rust indicated occasional heat and steam leakage. Curtains decorated with a vegetable motif, tomato, carrots, bunches of radishes, hung over a window looking out on a street of castaways which Kasdan knew well. The curtains had been designed for a kitchen and may have been an urban renewal effort by a previous occupant who didn’t take them with him when he moved up to a flat, down to a shelter, or died. Kasdan wasn’t ready to trust Petal in his own apartment a few blocks away. He trusted her enough to call her by that name even if it wasn’t hers.
Three stained paperbacks lay on the radiator, Siddhartha, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Enlightenment, passed along by her doting mother as goodbye presents. Kasdan was curious about such things even if they were extraneous elements in the current situation.
“I’m a klepto-scopto-bibliophiliac,” he explained.
“Wha?”
“Means I like to steal looks at other people’s books.”
“Awesome. But if you’re being clever, there’s something I gotta tell you. It’s not working out.” But then she grinned, removing the sting and leaving only a little venom behind.
Circle designs on the book covers had no mystic significance; the books had been used as coasters. Street flicker from Turk through the carrot, tomato, and radish curtains distracted him, though it was not the worst problem he faced. Out of practice, he anticipated that the climax of his visit to Petal might be giggles and hollow reassurance: That’s okay, you’re a nice guy anyway, I appreciate the effort.
He said: “You’re pretty young... Petal.”
“Right, but actually you’re not that old.” She gestured toward a choice of chair or bed. He sat on the chair, which turned out to have room for two when she darted onto his lap. “Hey, what yo
u’re thinking? Like everybody makes that mistake. Mom named me.”
“I guessed it would be something like that.”
A moment of mutual meditation.
“... Petal,” he added in order to show complete faith, the weight in his lap squirming.
“So, French?” she asked. “You like kissing with your mouth open? Just curious – French?”
“Do you?”
She shrugged her sturdy shoulders. This was one of those life decisions about which she had yet to make up her mind. Her mother had taught her to level with herself and others about both certainties and doubts. Like Amanda, she did not utterly reject her mom. It was touching, those shoulders, which were in the process of evolving from waifiness to sturdiness. She was still thinking about the French. “Dunno, I dunno. They say there’s like a lot of bacteria in spit unless you’re a vegan. You’re not a vegan.”
“No.”
“Me neither, but someday...” More thought, silence, dreaming of a future of ingesting rather than eating, oxidizing only products which support the beauty of Planet Earth and encourage fulfillment of it as a bountiful, pesticide-free, planetary space. Veganism would give a person abundance to share, fruit, vegetable and grain protein, all created under sunshine and rain with the help of God’s green chlorophyll. It would lead to germ-free French kissing, including unlimited tongue action. Would it involve bad-vibe discussions with non-vegans? This was a problem grass and cows never face, unless you consider mowing or slaughter a kind of bad-vibe discussion.
He tried to relax while she followed the lonely winding trail of rumination. Better to let matters unfold as if everyone in the entire solar system, Dan, Amanda, Sergei, D’Wayne, Petal, even Ferd Conway, really did have all the time in the world; and why not? It should be so.
Finally she came to a conclusion, sighing, “Well, a blow job’s okay, I guess.”
“No worries about...”
“Right. It’s marginal they say, health-wise. I really appreciative you’re letting me work this out for myself and not being an asshole about it.”
“Thanks. This is the twenty-first century, no problem.”
“Right, right, I’ve got a calendar. So you do a lot of Thai, Mexican, Hunan, like that?”
“The spices,” he said. “A taste treat in many cultures.”
He was trying to communicate with this stranger, just as he tried to adapt to his Hispanic miscreant clients (Hispanic or Latino, whatever they preferred). He shouldn’t be here in her room at the Minerva. His precarious grasp on his own future didn’t reduce his obligations as a careworn imminent senior citizen.
“Spices,” she murmured. “Since you do, when they’re filtered through the body…” Kasdan was thinking: liver, spleen, gall bladder, prostate. “… but I like you, so never mind.”
“Appreciate.”
“But probably I won’t swallow.”
“Thank you for sharing.”
“Hmmm.” This was humming. “You’re very polite, dude.” Her following silence called a time out for silent courtship. He accepted guidance. There was an implication during the silence of tenderness, trust, a closeness between strangers who had discovered each other by happenstance in the eddying gusts of the Tenderloin, the coziness of Katie’s Meddle of Honor, on ground hallowed more than a hundred and fifty years ago by the tramping of miners from the gold fields, out to get blasted; then by immigrants from the far East, sometimes selling, under the terms of art, “massage” and “outcalls;” by runaway adolescents offering what they called “great shit;” by mumbling veterans of wars to bring democracy and freedom to the world; by old folks who had failed to make adequate arrangements for their sunset years. Also by Dan Kasdan.
He played his part, the loser with no visible hard feelings about being a non-winner. Aiming toward murder soon, he welcomed whatever came along today. In the matter of Ferd Conway, this was his secret and treasure, and if all went well, no one would be in a position to complain.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Petal asked.
“Make a better offer.”
She did so, but he remained stingy with his thoughts. Dust, curtains, shiny orange carrots slowly and rapidly fluttering in the winds of Turk and Ellis, lifting the peeling plasticized curtains as if someone were spying through the window and asking, Dad, what the hell you doing with her?
She filled his arms with warmth. Oh, how long, how long? How long since, how long for? This flooding was not yet finished for him. His blood and hers were joined although she belonged to that stranger, herself. The truth could be forgotten just now.
“Who are you?”
“Shush, why ask questions? Take what there is, sweet man.”
After they lay there silently awhile, letting the slick dry, hands lightly touching with that creature fondness which is everyone’s due, Petal decided to read his mind. She read incorrectly, a clairvoyant with cloudy vision: “I do too have a sense of humor.” She sat up, bent over, kissed, sat back up, observed the rising. “Magic,” she said. “Hope springs immortal.”
“Hope isn’t what it’s called. I wasn’t thinking about your sense of humor.”
“You weren’t? Can’t distract you?” She bent, again did what she had just done to incite what she called hope and encourage its ascension. “Right now, the wrong thing to think about is your wife or your ex or your kids if you’ve got some.”
In fact, a thought of Sergei had floated through his haze. Here with Petal, he was firmly based on terra incognita. Despite Marvin Feldstein’s urological pessimism, the little gland had consented to do its traditional job. Thank you, agreeable little gland. “Watchful waiting” was one of the options Marvin had offered; watchful coitus was one of the byproducts. Veteran Prostate, You’re My Friend.
Fondness led to murmured confidences. Petal was a self-taught massage therapist, but rejected invitations to do, yucch, the kind of massage those Asian girls, they don’t like to be called Oriental, or those former boys now proudly trannies, or all those others in the neighborhood were selling. “Yucch,” she murmured into his ear, “that’s so degrading. I might give somebody a handjob if I want to take a day off for shopping, not have to pick around at Goodwill for my stuff, but no... you know,” she added shyly.
Kasdan thought he knew. No deep soul-to-soul tantric celebration of oneness.
“But I like whatever you like. Tell me what you like. I’m just a girl, so what else you like?”
Kasdan was open to her suggestions. She waited. After a sigh, warm breath in his ear, she commented, “Whatever.” Kasdan inclined his head; it was a gesture like piety; his ear tickled. How could he ever repay her compliments? Well, first, not to take them seriously. Compliments were a kind gesture, a validated ritual in love-making, even after short acquaintance, part of the interplay of hormones and civilized tradition, like a companionable back scratch or nuzzle.
He raised his head off the pillow; prayer concluded. Her breath still warmed him. Prayer not quite concluded; he added a codicil: And thanks also to Doc Feldstein for the concept of watchful waiting. As she opened to him, her eyelids drooped in lonely abstention; and then they widened with the luxurious blank stare of arousal, frightened, her eyes rolling back into her head as if she had fainted. Briefly, she was present; then she escaped. She seemed to have fled in panic from her body. Kasdan should have been happy; he was lying there with a warm, beautiful, and strange young woman; a marvelous turmoil had come to him; but he was not happy. There were regrets.
She sighed and shyly smiled. All these accidents were more than he deserved. Now he knew what he regretted – that it was no longer 1969 with the Grateful Dead playing a free concert under pine and eucalyptus trees in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, when marvelous accidents and turmoil seemed to be everyone’s due.
Dan Kasdan was far away; he had been there before, he no longer remembered the time, the place, the life, himself; he was gone to Dan Kasdan. He must have slept.
“Was that nice?”<
br />
He opened his eyes. The curtains with their vegetable patterns, tomatoes, peppers, the ferocious orange of the carrots, were still stirring and lifting in the winds swirling down Turk. Grit had eaten at the curtains. Night had come and a streetlamp flickered. The bulb needed changing. It would be replaced someday, when the city bureau in charge of filaments took notice. Here in San Francisco, it was generally not urgent either to close the window or to open it, but grit had sifted through the curtains, the plasticized fabric eroding, and only the carrot dye stood out in its bright, bright orange. For a moment, Kasdan, flickering like the filament in the streetlamp, returning from his brief elsewhere, that blessed nonbeing convulsion, feared that the spirits of past loves, uneasy and unremembered ones, had lifted the desolate rag of curtain. They were spying on him. They were ready to take their revenge. The wind down Turk found him.
“Are you happy now?”
He turned onto his side and bunched the sheet between his knees, drying the stickiness. “I’m not sad.”
“Just not sad, that’s all? Dude, you are sickening.”
He leaned up into her anxious face. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Learn to be polite, okay? Just lie when a person asks you, okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. She was used to disappointment. “People never – I’m a person wants things my own way, always was, always will be – but people never... They don’t do what I want them to do or say what I want them to say.”
“Not an uncommon problem. My experience, too.”
She seemed pleased by this. Despite the age difference, they were tight, like brother and sister, even if brother and sister wasn’t the kind of tightness going on. She wanted to talk. He owed her some confiding conversation. He ran his finger along her eyebrows, smoothing them – they were damp. It had always been trouble for him to lie. The social ramble was difficult and it was more comfortable to keep it to a minimum. Okay, Harvey Johnson, his Roma pal, sometimes a dinner and a brew – that was about it. Marriage, children, long friendships, the prospect of these arduous matters had made him uneasy and he chose a life without them. No doubt it was a life that chose him.