by Herbert Gold
Petal’s lips on his sealed them with a kiss, then opened with his kisses.
“Hey Sir,” said the man in the long black overcoat, “you look like you can use a little pick-up or calm-down, don’t you? Can’t quite afford Colombia white today, I got you some righteous Thai brown… Sir?”
The merchant, his overcoat flapping as he followed, treated Kasdan’s gray hair and eroded cheeks with respect.
“Sir? Make a first-client deal on special today only?”
– 13 –
Dan Kasdan jump-started the journey through his next day with the comfort of anonymous companionship after the anxious dreams of Sergei which crowded his night, the dark thoughts of his destination with Ferd Conway that accompanied his barefoot treks down the hall to pee, shake vigorously, send a mental salute to Doc Feldstein. In the half light from the street, he sighed, sipped from a glass of water, bid anxious dreams to stay away, including the one about Petal, returned to his bed for another hour or two. It wasn’t in his heart to pray for mercy to an all-forgiving God, so he only posted a To Whom It May Concern notice on the wall of night; then sank back down, if he was lucky, into renewed sleep without renewed dreams. He couldn’t bring back the one about Petal. The film was blank.
Sometimes, during troubled nights, he imagined Sergei as a seventeen-year-old driven to find out what to do with an erection or, if he were a rational and ambulatory boy by that time, and perhaps he might be, heading out to pick up a raddled hooker on Capp Street, the last stop for raddled hookers. Kasdan might not be around to offer guidance. D’Wayne might be.
The morning bustle at the Caffe Roma across the street from the Hall of Justice served nicely in the jump-starting mode. Lawyers, defendants on bail, morose sheriff deputies, cops managing to look full of importance even when they took their coffee, confused conscripts to the jury pool, weepy spouse-equivalents and moms of defendants, all gathered amid the clang and whine of espresso machines, cell phones and each other.
Kasdan used to be certain of which were the lawyers, which the defendants, which the guards and plainclothes personnel, but now tattoos seemed to be everywhere in the criminal justice system. Piercings were not quite as contagious, but getting there. He waited at the counter for his very large latte, served by Marta to him alone, as a special favor, in a deep soup bowl which warmed the paws of Dan Kasdan, court interpreter. Since she had no time to do anything more to express cafe favoritism, Marta only winked.
In the crowd there were whispered consultations about strategy along with family tears; also irritable demands for justice or extra hot milk. When Marta was on duty at the espresso machine, Kasdan got the extra hot milk as a matter of tradition between them; nice Marta, pony tail, lip ring, multicolored butterfly etched into her back, and Kasdan would never risk sacrificing his extra hot milk by proposing to open the butterfly’s wings. When Marta caught him eying the tattoo as she stretched her tongs to reach a muffin, separating the blouse from the jeans, she asked: “So you like my rear license plate?”
At this hour of the morning, extra hot milk, hold the foam, was more important. Nice wakeup smells of coffee, toast, and heated muffins were supplemented – you could say amplified – by spicy side dishes, such as the recent flock of teeny-tiny Asian graduates of pretty good law schools, teetering into their careers on dangerous high heels and carrying the new top-grain vinyl briefcases given them by proud fathers. It was the thought that counted; later, a boyfriend might provide leather. Occasionally, raving homeless souls pushed through, sent away with free cups of coffee, all the sugar and cream their hearts desired, by friendly Marta, she of the savoir vivre and generous spirit and agreement with Roma management that their coffee didn’t come out of her pay. It was a civic responsibility for doing business in the neighborhood. The teeny-tiny new lawyers were already accustomed to not seeing the mad persons, who were everywhere in San Francisco. America was still a nation which held to the strong belief in kindness except sometimes.
A row of storefront bail bondsmen nearby, a pawnshop – convenient for a quick cash fix – bars with the traditional purple neon martini glass installation, although as at Katie’s Meddle of Honor, martinis were no longer a prominent factor in San Francisco beveraging activity... the neighborhood offered all the services a criminal lawyer or defendant or significant other could ask for, including motels a block or so away if someone got lucky and didn’t object to a four-minute stroll on behalf of a quality erotic adventure. Whether high or low quality was strictly up to the individuals involved. Kasdan missed taking his breakfast coffee bowl with Harvey Johnson these days. It was Kasdan’s own fault for complicating his life; Amanda, Sergei, Ferd... Harvey and he could be having another chat about their prostates or Harvey could review his rap about the stories perps tell. “After the fact, therefore not caused by the fact,” Kasdan would say, the way old buddies tease each other. “I know you’re proud of your Latin, Harv.”
“Yeah, so this corner boy says he was just boppin’ on past the store, when this kid I never even knew ask me if I hold his gun a minute and it jes blew up in my hand. How was I to antici-perate the lady was gonna scare all up on me and drop her payroll?”
Kasdan nodded.
“Res ipsa loquitur Not, Ossifer.”
Instead, with Harvey pissed with him, Kasdan sat alone this morning. The detective must be doing his breakfast elsewhere, or sitting in his car on a stakeout, or just offering an implied statement about old friends who make stupid choices in new friends, such as Ferd Conway. Dan wouldn’t bring up the Petal subject, at least not yet. Alone at the Roma, warming his hands around the extra-large bowl (it felt Spanish to him, or at least French), Kasdan heard keys nervously jingling at the next table. A middle-aged, middle-paunched lawyer was leaning forward to explain the facts of life, what he hoped would be the facts of her life, to one of the cute, teeny-tiny, newly-minted public defenders. Perhaps she could think of his ardent key-jingling as chimes instead of an annoying tic.
With age, Kasdan had not become less nosy; eavesdropping was a bachelor’s recourse, vicarious sociability, which used to keep him from speeding even faster on the downward slope. He was interested in what went on around him, across the room, and in the street. He guessed that pudgy key-jingling hand – the lawyer jingling his keys like a horny kid playing with himself – was accompanying a hint of options for the lovely legal waif: use of an upscale office and a fine German automobile if she preferred a quickie, a weekend stay at Tahoe or on his a neat little boat docked at the St. Francis Yacht Club if they really got along; various proposals in store for her, but only by mutual consent, this being the twenty-first century, although of course without any formal stipulation in writing. No letter agreement or any other feminist crapola.
Clash of keys against keys; a persuading baritone monologue; an answering stare out of almond-shaped eyes, exasperatingly unreadable, just as in the days before high-IQ Asian waifs entered the market.
Kasdan sipped his coffee, wiped foam off his lips. Thank you, Marta. He wondered if the bunch of keys, rabbit’s foot attached, really unlocked all the many doors they promised. The waif only listened, but now was gazing intently into the attorney’s eyes. She smelled of a good lotion, warmth rising around her; she smelled of what a Boalt Hall graduate might dab on her neck and wrists in the morning. She gazed with the concentration of someone who wouldn’t mind career help, but wasn’t sure this bozo could provide it. Still, let him dream...
Oh, no. Kasdan was late for Pasqual, once more his client, on the road to a three-strikes conviction, a life term in exchange for minor felonies. Kasdan, breaking professional standards of strict boundaries to his service, had tried to warn him the last time; Pasqual was a stubborn slow learner, like Dan Kasdan in that way.
He left an inch of his double latte in the bowl and hurried across the street toward 850 Bryant. Waste not, want not, but Kasdan also believed in promptness, the kindness he owed clients who weren’t on the receiving end of many kindnesses in t
he legal grinder. As he hurried past Judge Gonzalez, stately Gustavo Gonzalez, the magistrate greeted him with a restrained multicultural salute – his raised pinkie with a bright stone shining, sending its glare into Kasdan’s less prosperous court translator’s eyes. Unlike “Speedy” Gonzalez (never called that to his face), Kasdan was the sort of non-outgoing loser who was incapable of finding a chica thoughtful enough to give him a pinkie ring on a religious holiday or personal birthday. Poor Pasqual didn’t reach for the stars, probably because the stars were out of his reach.
Pasqual was waiting in the holding pen. At the elevator, a young woman with a black beret aslant on her head and a shiny black miniskirt, her legs stretched by too-high heels, an alert Fifi in historical Apache drag, greeted him: “Hey? Hey?” A crooked smile twisted the heart-shaped mouth, there was a chipped front tooth he hadn’t noticed before, and her expression was wide-eyed and inquiring, as if expecting not to be acknowledged.
“Petal,” he stated. But he had to get to the holding pen (poor Pasqual); duty called. “Petal Jihad.”
“Awesome,” she said. “You believe that name I told you.” Not living up to her Apache costume, she repeated like a high school kid, “You are awesome, dude.” She was grinning and shaking her head. “But how could you forget?”
“Wouldn’t, and you know that. What’re you doing here?”
“So I got a new job. You want my telephone number, did I give it to you? No, I couldn’t, it’s my new cell phone. You want to call me?”
Sure do, thought Kasdan, and then said: “Sure do. Yes.”
Amenities taken care of, her smile flashed off as they were jostled by the morning crowd pushing into the elevator. She handed him a torn piece of paper. “I got to talk to you, really. Are you up for it? Talk? I made a promise…”
“To me.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the sliding elevator door. She seemed to be giving him bad news, saying, without meeting his eyes, “I stopped about the needles. I’m supposed to keep my promises, that’s part of the program. Promised on my honor, God’s honor, too. In the program. So I got to say I’m sorry…”
“Never mind – sorry for what? Petal, there’s no harm in you.”
She was startled at the judgment. Kasdan remembered the lava flow of warmth that had engulfed him with this strange creature from another time, this visitant from the Summer of Love; it was daytime in another century now, it was work time; and Pasqual, if he knew Pasqual, was probably still drunk and sick from last night, standing in the reek of a holding pen. Despite his limits in language and IQ, Pasqual always managed to find the means to get high, even when unjustly harassed by lying racist accusations that he was always getting high. The elevator door slid open again and Petal cried in a bereft voice, “Take the next one!”
“Got a client needs me, I’m late – we’ll talk later – you have nothing to be sorry for.”
She was shaking her head. She just gave up. He was not available; not available was something she knew all about. She could make her 12-step apology when he was ready to hear it. There was harm in her. She could break her promise another time.
He stood in the elevator and she stood outside and they stared at each other as the door slid shut. He caught a glimpse of her turning and running toward the security guards. He couldn’t recall any promises to be broken by her. But just now he had to think about Pasqual and help to prep him as best he could; the public defender was there already, exasperated because Pascal’s court translator, usually so reliable, was running late.
– 14 –
He picked the torn scrap of paper out of his breast pocket, his “office pocket.” He called her new cell phone number. Voicemail answered: “Hi! Petal! Shine on!” He didn’t expect her to pick up.
It was dusk, not raining or gloomily cold, not yet anyway, and nothing especially worse than usual had happened today for Kasdan’s client Pasqual, twenty-four years old, career car-washer and purse-snatcher, up for a possible third strike and life imprisonment – nothing unexpectedly bad and nothing especially good, either. My colleague, Kasdan thought about Pasqual, even if they weren’t colleagues. The same nothing bad, nothing good applied to Kasdan, who left ladies’ purses where they belonged and let his eight-year-old Honda Civic sit uncleaned except by the street people who occasionally wiped off the dust or pigeon droppings with their butts by sitting on it. Amanda, D’Wayne and Sergei were also doing okay at the moment, according to Amanda, Sergei waking to the sound of his own screams only twice today.
Kasdan headed for a brew. He was wondering what Petal had on her mind. There were ample unknowns in this stranger who had caused commotion, stirred him, for reasons of Kasdan and reasons of Petal, certainly different ones for each. Despite the dreaminess of great and authoritative poets, this was the case even when true, deep, and everlasting love is out of the question.
Now that his duty with Pasqual was done for awhile, and he had spent all the compassion he could spare, he turned to his own problems. There were a few. The late afternoon, early evening blues needed no justification, they were normal, but his newer worry, Petal-she-called-herself, added to his excuses for a cold glass in a quiet corner with his eyelids drooping just a little and the spool of his life stuttering in his head. Remedies were called for. The beer would ease him down toward minestrone, a hunk of sourdough bread, and early bed. There was always a price to be paid for an evening Anchor steam followed by another. He would wake to pee more often than usual, but when he needed a beer, it was useless to worry in advance about sleep interruptions. A price was demanded for every consolation.
He could try to sort out the long inconclusive day with a beverage session at Katie’s Meddle of Honor. It had nothing to do with having met Petal there; he assured himself of this. Every man in any situation deserves a destination where he can take a corner table at the back and stare into the darkening street with purple reflections radiating off the purple neon martini glass, although not every man realizes this. Tough for them. Didn’t they understand the concept of “home away from home?” The sign was a comfort. Random street noises – automobiles and trucks, dialogues by solo conversationalists raising their voices to be heard by the other half of their personalities, the sharp snapping of electrical neon connections, dim evening cries and scrapes – all that was familiar to him was Kasdan’s familiar reassurance. It filtered his reality, which needed filtering. The world might be okay, even if sometimes more interesting than was desirable. The world had never asked for Kasdan’s approval. Okayness would be a little more prevalent after his evening sorting-out procedure, aided by the single draft of Anchor steam beer, a prudent man’s respite.
Even if Kasdan had to face the fact that, actually, after due consideration, he was imprudent and on the way to being more so. And then another single moderate draft.
Despite his fuller understanding of the day only a few minutes ago – no, an hour ago now – it had turned dark, rainy and gloomily cold. He was tired. He had lost track of time. He might skip the soup and torn-off sourdough hunks, have another Anchor steam instead. More than his past was on his mind. Both the weather and general life events moved in irregular lurches on the sea-bound peninsula of San Francisco. The city was enclosed by the bay and an ocean. This man, he decided, was not an island – he too was a peninsula. Walls of water separated him from the world, except at one corner. He was not fully cut off.
Tonight, during a gust of wet, the purple neon reflections sparkled in droplets sliding down Katie’s front window. Kasdan sneezed. He was allergic to the hay stacked for Katie’s pony, farm aromas blown in from the back room, which Katie called her “corral.” Or the sneeze might have been a sneeze of compassion for Pasqual. Despite Kasdan’s skill at translating abusive, obscene, pitiful Spanish into indignant English, Pasqual was looking at a future of incarceration until the three strikes law was repealed. Win hardly any, lose many.
A chilled half pint with beads like cold tears streaming
down the glass was always helpful. Around the time of Amanda’s conception, twenty years ago, Kasdan had learned that two half pints were not twice as good as one; learned in general, not always in particular.
In the “corral” Katie was cuddling her pony’s cute little head, smoothing back its perked-up ears, tending its hooves, and then fixing her own makeup, which had smeared in the rainy garden. The biceps of Fabulous Frank, the tattooed bartender, were slowly deflating, like balloons – he did curling exercises before his night shift – as he polished fly specks, lipstick stains, or other adverse blotches off the glasses, protective of Meddle of Honor ambiance. The evening biceps display was part of his general keeping up of standards. Something was clicking in the martini neon, needing a replacement cord or a new switch. If the click segued into a sputter, it would short out – this had happened before when it rained. All was, if not right, at least normal with the world.
“The usual, Big Guy? Sure you don’t want a shot with that, just for fun? Cure the damp? But the farmers are happy, they adore this weather.”
There weren’t many farmers on Ellis, Turk, or Leavenworth in San Francisco. Fabulous Frank winked as Kasdan took a nice swallow before carrying a rare additional half pint to his table.
“Feel better already, don’t you? And let me grant you this, it do not tend to give you the downer blahs some folks get from crank or that shitty ice they were smoking couple-three years ago, but no more.”
“No more,” said Kasdan, which was about the extent of his polite banter with Frank this evening.
“You’ll grant me that, Big Guy.”
Their friendship was firmly rooted in an understanding of leave-me-mostly-alone. Frank was a bartender who understood the clients. He offered dialogue, an exchange of views, working up to philosophies of life; then the choice of either further ramification or benevolent silence was up to the person buying the drinks. Tonight, Kasdan chose an early halt to view exchange. No probing. Frank’s biceps were deflating even as they spoke. His curling exercises were a strictly on-duty phenomenon. The gain in masculinity esteem which was achieved before they deflated lingered through the process of gradual beveraging by Katie’s regulars. No hissing tire-leak sound betrayed the temporary nature of Fabulous Frank’s outstanding biceps.