Lostart Street

by Vinnie Hansen

  “Where are you going for dinner?”

  “Chaminade-Whitney.”

  “Be careful, Lorraine.”

  Even in my short time here, I’d heard of the place. Chaminade-Whitney was swanky, perched like a palace on private, wooded acreage above Santa Cruz. It wasn’t a restaurant I associated with a business dinner.

  “He’s not going to do anything I don’t want him to do,” she said enigmatically.

  “What about your boyfriend?”

  She laughed at me. “God, Cecile, you’re such a prude.”

  Prude. The tag surprised rather than offended me. I’d never been called a prude before.

  “We have to start working on that,” Lorraine said.

  Probably not a bad idea.

  Prude reminded me of prune, something drying up against a hard, inner pit.

  “But first you need to change into some work clothes.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need your help.”

  All our previous adventures—breaking into Florence’s, taking on Bobbi Headland—had been thrilling. I stood up. “Give me a second.”

  I returned in five minutes, wearing my Oshkosh overalls over one of Angelo’s old shirts.

  “So, what’s up?” I asked.

  “Follow me.”

  She led me out of the apartment, down the step, and across the asphalt. She stopped in front of Mrs. Bean’s burned-out apartment. My body jittered. Surely Lorraine did not expect me to go in there. The structure was unsound.

  “You’re just going to open the door,” she said.

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “John opened it. Everything was fine.”

  Then why don’t you open it, I thought, but her handicap prevented me. Lorraine was not the type to ask for help if she didn’t need it. Whatever needed doing, I could probably do it more easily than she could.

  “Why would anyone go in there?” I asked. “There can’t be anything left.”

  “You’re not going in, per se.”

  “Per se?”

  “If you open the door, you’ll see a hole in the floor where John fell through.”

  “So everything went fine, huh?” My voice sounded angry. “Exactly the reason we shouldn’t be fooling around here.”

  “Just crack the door a little and make some kissing sounds like you’re calling a cat.”

  Comprehension slowly dawned. “You think that cat survived the fire?”

  “John heard some animal noise,” Lorraine said. “He dismissed it as rats and I didn’t give it much thought until later.”

  “How would that even be possible?” But I already had an idea. “There was that hole under Mrs. Bean’s table,” I mumbled. “Like an opening for a heating duct, but there was no duct.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Lorraine said. “So there is a way the cat could have gotten under the floor.”

  “And if he … .”

  “She.”

  “If she was below the fire … . ” The heat would be traveling up. As I was. I mounted the step, turned the doorknob, and pushed.

  The door didn’t budge. A sense of urgency swept through me. I could be heroic like the firemen. I pressed against the blackened wood and made loud cat-calling tongue noises. “Kitty,” I called. “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  A scratching noise. But maybe it was a rat.

  “Kitty, kitty, kitty?”

  A pathetic mewl answered.

  “Oh my God, she’s there,” I said to Lorraine. I slammed my shoulder against the charred wood. The door stayed stuck. Black soot covered the sleeve of my shirt. I put my shoulder to the door again with my focus on the frame. The stuck section was at knee level. “Do you have a hammer?”

  “Of course,” Lorraine said. “Bottom kitchen drawer on the right.”

  I jogged across the drive and leapt up the step to Lorraine’s. The hammer was easy to locate and I was back at the jammed door in under a minute. I turned the knob, shouldered the door, and hammered the wedged spot.

  The wood splintered. The door cracked open an inch and caught. I peeked through the slit. “Where are you, kitty?”

  “That noise would have scared away a pitbull,” Lorraine groused.

  I got down on my hands and knees and peered through the slot. No doubt charcoal smeared my face like war paint.

  Splintered floorboards blocked the door from opening further. That must have been where Citrino fell through. But he’d been able to shut the door. Had the cat caused more wood to break?

  I put my nose to the crack. I kissed and clucked and called.

  A head popped from the hole, green eyes appearing huge with the multi-colored fur matted flat against its head. Cobwebs draped from its whiskers. The mangy, soaked bundle padded to the crack in the door and mewed at me.

  How would I get her out?

  The windows remained in tact. The firemen had said this was a good thing, restricting oxygen to the fire. If I broke one now, would the cat come out? How could I prevent it from getting cut?

  “This is a sorry mess,” I muttered to Lorraine. “Any ideas?”

  Lorraine rolled along the drive. “How about this sub-floor vent?”

  The vent opening was big enough for a cat to pass through, but paint caked the screws holding the screen in place. I doubted I could muscle them off with a screwdriver and if I put a drill to them would the vibration bring a wall down on me?

  I climbed back to the door. The cat cried piteously.

  The wood had splintered pretty easily. “Stand back, baby,” I said to the cat. An unnecessary warning. At the first bang, it sprang out of sight.

  The door didn’t break.

  But the wood behind it cracked. The splintered floor acting as a doorstop gave way and the door opened a foot.

  Down on all fours, I coaxed the cat. It pulled itself from the hole in the floor, padded across the burned floor, and nuzzled my hand with its damp head.

  I cradled the dirty furball against my overalls. She started to purr. My heart melted.

  “I think she’s found a new friend,” Lorraine said.

  “But isn’t she Mrs. Bean’s?”

  “Mrs. Bean inherited three other cats with Florence’s apartment.”

  As I snuggled the mess, Lorraine was already making plans. “Florence left behind plenty of cat food and litter. I’ll get someone to bring it over. You should take your baby home and clean her up.”

  Breaking the Image

  The next day, Ruben lumbered up to me before class, his black eyes snapping.

  Rosaura pushed up to the lectern beside him, the corners of her mouth wiggling as she tried to suppress a smile. Others students circled me.

  Ruben stuck a sheet of binder paper under my nose. “Read this.”

  It was clearly a challenge of some sort. I looked down at the paper and tried to sound out the word formed by seven block letters. “Tahnsaltso.”

  “No, no, no.” Ruben shook his bush of black hair. “Read the letters one at a time.”

  The students’ excitement palpitated around me. “T. N. S. L. T. S. O.” I enunciated clearly.

  They giggled, but Ruben said sternly, “You have to read them faster.”

  The bell rang but the kids remained grouped around me, pressing closer until I could feel their warmth and smell their bodies.

  I didn’t tell them to take their seats, but rather complied with Ruben’s instructions, starting to get it. The T.N.S. made sense.

  “Tienes?” You have? I guessed.

  Ruben’s head bobbed with excitement.

  “El?” The.

  I studied the last part. I didn’t know any Spanish word that sounded like T.S.O. But I uttered it anyway.

  The group laughed, but Ruben was a strict teacher. A stubby finger with a dirty nail poked the paper. “Say it all together.”

  “Tienes el tee-es-o?”

  The group howled.

  I smiled unsurely, my face hot. “What does that mean?”

  A voice ca
me from the teacher’s desk. “Tieso means stiff. Sounds like some slangy version of, ‘You have a hard-on.’”

  At the sound of Annette’s voice the students scrambled to their seats. But I was sick of all this, of feeling like someone else was running my classroom. Instead of moving to the day’s lesson, I turned, wiggled my brows, and asked Ruben, “Tienes el tieso?” Do you have a hard-on?

  He jumped up from his seat, puffed up his chest, and turned in a slow 180, addressing the whole class. “Todo el tiempo, muchachas.” All the time, girls.

  At the end of class, I gathered my supplies to dash to the next classroom.

  “Slow down, Kiddo.”

  I halted in front of Annette’s desk like a delinquent student, awaiting a lecture.

  She studied me.

  My face flushed. I’d been an idiot. Even if the slang Spanish barely made sense, I had been totally inappropriate to mention “the stiff.” I had no tenure. That kind of stupidity could cost me my job.

  “They played a joke on you.”

  Well, yeah.

  Annette grinned. “They like you.”

  After school, Annette asked me if I wanted to join her and the Bobbsey Twins, Lily and Marge, for drinks at Severino’s.

  “It’s a fairly quiet bar, out of town, about halfway to Santa Cruz.”

  Because I’d survived my first couple of months and Annette had witnessed the first period students liking me, they apparently felt I was now safe. “I don’t know,” I said. “Things are hectic.”

  I thought of the cat in my unfamiliar apartment, left alone all day. I’d cleaned her with a damp towel. Then she’d gobbled food and snuggled up on my bed for the night, where she’d remained in a ball when I left for work. I should get home.

  “I hate to tell you this, Kiddo,” Annette said, “but I’ve been teaching seventeen years, and things are always hectic. Give yourself a break. You have a three-day weekend coming up to recoup from the big adventure.”

  “Okay.” I might not receive another invitation. “Veteran’s Day weekend comes in the nick of time, doesn’t it?”

  “You got that right.”

  As the four of us sat around the bar table, we politely chatted about the death of Leonid Brezhnev and what we thought would happen in the Soviet Union.

  I nursed a brandy alexander. Lily and Marge both sipped the same type of light beer as if to reinforce their Bobbsey Twins moniker. Even up close, they looked astoundingly alike—both short, chubby and blonde with apple cheeks and blue eyes. They commuted to work together, ate lunch together, and sat together at faculty meetings. I couldn’t help the thought that either they’d been separated at birth, or they were a couple who had started to look alike over time.

  Annette drank Jack Daniels neat, a tough drink for a tough lady. As a second round of drinks loosened us up, Annette made no bones about her brazen attitude toward men. “They’re good for one thing.”

  But our conversation didn’t linger on men or our personal lives.

  “Do you know why the DeLorean is called a vanity car?” Annette asked us.

  We all obliged her with, “No, why?”

  “It has a mirror in the glove compartment.” This was a reference to the famous automobile engineer John DeLorean’s arrest for drug trafficking. Cocaine.

  We chuckled, grateful for the light note.

  “How about those grosser-than-gross jokes the kids are telling?” Lily wrinkled her nose. “Do you want to hear the one I heard today?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What’s grosser than gross?” Lily obliged.

  “What?” I asked.

  “A truckful of dead babies.”

  My brandy alexander smacked onto the table. I’d heard other grosser-than-gross jokes before, but this one landed a blow to my stomach.

  Marge nudged my shoulder. “You’re supposed to ask what’s grosser than that?”

  I couldn’t speak, so Marge jumped in. “What’s grosser than that?”

  “A live one at the bottom,” Lily said.

  Marge and Annette emitted groans.

  “Do you want to know what’s grosser than that?” Lily asked.

  Annette must have sensed my discomfort because she said, “Please, Lily, we are trying to drink here.” She motioned over the waitress.

  I begged off on a third round, ordering a cup of coffee, so I could hang out and sober up. The talk slipped into gossipy stuff about certain male teachers.

  “I feel it’s my duty to warn you we have some notorious skirt chasers on the staff,” Annette said, “and, Kiddo, you may even be young enough to attract them.”

  The alcohol emboldened me. “Kiddo?” I said. “It’s time for a new name.”

  Annette leaned back in her chair as though pressed. Lily and Marge fell silent. “Okay,” Annette said. “How about Boss?”

  “How about Cecile?”

  “Sure thing, Ki … Cecile.”

  “And I can guess who the guys are.” I rattled off three names.

  Annette raised eyebrows. “I’m impressed.”

  “They’re pretty obvious.”

  “Rumor has it that they even fraternize with students.”

  “Why doesn’t someone report it?” I asked.

  “You need hard evidence to make that kind of charge,” Annette said.

  “So to speak,” Lily quipped.

  We all laughed.

  As I sat in the bar, I thought about the women at work. The two with husbands and families remained ephemeral characters who arrived after school started and disappeared before the end of the day. All the full-time women remained unencumbered by relationships. Besides Annette, Lily, Marge and myself, the department contained two others, a widow with grown children and a nun-like, middle-aged woman. We all bore the mark of dedicated female English teachers, a certain sexlessness, or, at least, the absence of the demands of a man and family.

  I yearned to do an excellent job, but I shuddered at the apparent cost. The old maid school marm. Like most stereotypes, it embraced a measure of truth.

  By the time I got home, it was dark. A day that had started with laughter ended with sadness.

  But then, carrying my load of stuff, I opened my door. The cat greeted me and wrapped around my leg.

  The next time I went to Annette’s classroom, she was standing in the doorway. A second lectern hulked up in the front, a rolling one with shelves in the back.

  “That’s for you, Kiddo,” she said. “So you have a place to store things.”

  A spot to organize materials before class started! The difference this would make in my life was immeasurable. Gratitude welled up in me. I turned toward Annette. “Thank you so much.”

  She flapped a hand at me, gathered up her papers, left the room, and stayed gone the whole class period.

  After school on Veteran’s Day proper, I saw Lorraine again.

  “I thought you’d be off,” she called to me. This sounded like an accusation. Perhaps she was rankled by the lack of observance.

  “We roll the holiday into the weekend.” I dumped my load into the apartment and strolled to her window. The damp cold penetrated my turtleneck and skirt. I rubbed my arms to stay warm, but she didn’t invite me in.

  “Ask about my hot date.” I could hear a wink in her voice.

  “How was it?”

  “Citrino asked me to marry him,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Cecile,” she said, “did you know they’re removing the word gullible from the dictionary?”

  I hesitated. “Right.”

  “A lot has happened,” she said. “Vince came over today and gave notice on Punky’s apartment. They’re moving in together. Just as I thought.”

  The news made me wistful. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d responded to Vince. “He was off today?” I said to maintain the conversational flow even though I was starting to shiver.

  “He’s off indefinitely, but he’s filed a grievance.” Lorrain
e told me what had happened with Vince. “He’s taking care of Todd and searching for day care. That means two vacancies to fill, but I have someone coming to look at Lefty’s tomorrow. He’s a friend of my boyfriend’s, a sous-chef up at Chaminade-Whitney. I combined a little business with all that pleasure,” she teased me. “I got Florence’s and Lefty’s stuff put in storage today and tomorrow I have painters coming to Mrs. Bean’s.”

  “I guess you got the advance you wanted.” I vigorously massaged my arms.

  “John Citrino’s a pussycat,” she said. “It’s no wonder Bobbi got away with the shit she did.”

  “I thought you said he loved his money, that he was capable of shooting her.”

  “Oh, he does love money, but he’s smart enough to know a person has to maintain property at some minimal level. He has a broker’s license.”

  “I’m freezing,” I said.

  “Well, since you’re off tomorrow, why don’t you drop by for scones and coffee?”

  “What time?”

  “About ten?”

  “I can manage that.”

  I knew, however, that I’d sleep around the clock as I usually did at the end of a school week. My dreams were less predictable.

  A man falls from the sky. His name is John DeLorean. He has curly dark hair, blue eyes, and a big dick. He is naked and wants to make love with me. We frolick in my bed, on my desk in the English Office, in Mrs. Bean’s charred apartment, on the Golden Gate Bridge, moving effortlessly through a kaleidoscope of places in one continuous fuck.

  Mac

  At ten o’clock I did not smell any coffee at Lorraine’s nor did I see any scones. The cat had awakened me at six by pushing its head against my face. I would have gladly dreamed a couple more hours. Now I had bags under my eyes and didn’t appreciate the delay in getting some food in my belly.

  “Malcolm’s bringing the scones, and the coffee will be ready shortly.”

  “I didn’t know someone else was coming,” I griped.

  “The guy to see the apartment,” Lorraine explained. “I told you about him.” She rolled into her kitchen.

  “If I’d known I was going to meet a stranger, I would have dolled up a bit.” I picked at the pills on the gray wool sweater pulled over my blue turtleneck. Old blue jeans completed my ensemble.

  The fragrance of coffee floated like a warm, billowy cloud from the kitchen.