Alhambra shivered. “Rivers are an endangered species. That guy’s father maybe figures if the river dies, then his toad son come back home, become a wealthy lawyer.”
“Same no matter where I go.”
Gina took the package of not-really-frozen-anymore peas from her cheek, started to get up to put it back in the fridge.
“Siddown, you. I’m in charge here. Gimme that, it’ll be pea soup innabout an hour.” A frying pan sizzled as pancetta hit it, rattle of peas into a pot.
“Smells like hot dogs.”
“Hah. Remember when we try to learn how to give a guy head?”
“Oh yeahhhhh. Stuck hot dogs down our throats till we gagged, so we gave up and cooked em. I never yet have had occasion to use whatever it was we learned. You?”
“Sure! I’m up for whatever comes along.”
“Comes? Along? Oh yuck. Did you swallow?”
“Condoms are your friend, dimwit.”
“Not my friend. I don’t go that way.” Gina leaned forward, staring into the flames. “How long has it been since I hadda fire inna fireplace? Forever? Never? You do this a lot?”
“Every night this time of year. Drops to freezin. Sometimes, if I don’t bank it right, I need to start it up again in the mornin. But that’s not hard cause the embers are still hot.”
“You learn this up here or you knew it all already? Me…Well, I sort of figure if I don’t know it, I’ll fake it.” Gina shifted her hips, trying to get comfortable. “Like, I suppose I could make a fire…” Her voice faded. “Just never expected to need to know.”
Gina watched Alhambra cook. “We always at the mercy of rich fuckers. They want everythin to be their way—mean and narrow. Oh crap! I gotta call work! I just sort of up and left the city.”
There was a huge boom. And another. Another. Gina bolted upright. The light on the table blinked, blinked, blinkblinked, then fizzed. The house was dark except for the firelight.
“But it’s already dark, as you can see. They know you’re not comin in, Gina. Besides, power’s out. No regular phone.” Alhambra placed the pot of soup on the wood stove. “Don’t worry, if the phone lines didn’t come down, you can still call out.” Alhambra left the room, hollering over her shoulder, “Let me see if the land line is workin.”
“Land line?” Gina felt around for her pack. “Jeez. What’s a land line? A shortwave radio? I’m gonna call work on like a CB? Well, I gotta tellum I won’t be in tomorrow neither.” Her voice faded to tiny mutters, she peered out at the menacing tree shapes looming over the house. “Fuckin primitive out here. Hey, Karen? You realize I only have one workin eye and this is like purgatory? I can’t see shit now.” She didn’t mention that the trees were reaching mean spiky fingers out at her. Smaller voice, “Shit. Can’t find my cigarettes.” Gina sat back on the couch clutching her backpack on her lap. “And my eye is startin to hurt. And…” She began to snicker. “And I can’t get to work.” The snickers turned into laughter. “And I can’t call because they don’t hava shortwave radio. Hah. Haaaaaah.”
Gina grabbed the blanket loosely in her hands. “And I’m up here in total blackout boonie land with my best friend. Oh yeahhhhh.”
Alhambra came up the hallway carrying a small lantern. She said, “Phone lines are down.”
Gina leaped up, flailing the blanket in the air like a huge bat. “We’ll get the boogie man! You and me, Alhambra! We’ll scare im right back into the hellhole he keep comin up out of! Every smartass self-righteous bastard that ever EVER tried to make us small. Every shitmouth rich bitch who plays the I’m-entitled card—we will smassssh her. We’ll tear the prison walls DOWN, muthafucka, DOWN!”
Alhambra put the lantern on the floor, grabbing a corner of the blanket. She raced Gina out into the night, howling, “Down, muthafuckas! Get baaaaack! Mothafuckas!”
It wasn’t until they got right to the edge of the swollen river that Gina noticed she had no clothes on. “Oh my god.” She curled forward. “Karen! You let me go outside stark-ers.”
Alhambra leaned against the huge belly of a redwood, laughter making it impossible for her to stand on her own.
Gina wrapped the blanket in tidy folds around herself. She lifted her head with a haughty twitch. “You bitch.”
Too early in the morning, Alhambra put the kettle on a small butane gas ring, the hoo when it reached a boil woke Gina. “Coffee?” she said. “Still no power, so we’ll go into town for the next cup. Phones probably work there.”
The rain rattle-crashed on the windows, the evil trees slammed their devil branches on the roof of the little house, Gina pulled the covers over her head. “Oh ow oh ow oh ow.”
“Shshshhh. You’ll annoy the demons. Be brave, oh blackheart babe, be brave.”
“Hey, I’m dyin here. One eye, purple cheek, held captive in a wilderness hellhole.”
“What time they expect you at your place of gainful?”
“When I get there. I’m just the inventory monster trapped in the basement, any shipments get there before I do, they pile up. I suit up, show up, count em, log em, sort em, shelve em. Simple. I do it inna speed-stupor. Work one all-day-all-night shift and it’s done. Commerce recommences. And I get paid. Do it again after I’ve slept some.”
“You wanta callem, or what?”
“Yeah. I better. They aren’t likely to call my PO, but they might start callin hospitals. Or morgues.” Gina rolled off the futon onto the floor, crawled around for a while patting the slate. “Cigarette? Grrr. Cigarette? Ahhh.” Inhale. “They think that highly of me. Right. Let’s hava shot of coffee here—I’ll take another Percoset, thank you—then make a break for civilization.” She held out her coffee cup.
Alhambra poured. “Not civilization. I’m not happy with civilization. Yunno? It don’t work for me.”
Gina held her coffee cup in both hands, cigarette dangling from her lips, she couldn’t figure out how to sip since the cigarette was in the way and she wasn’t about to let go of the cup with either hand. Mornings were filled with dilemma. She growled, “Civilized is soothing drugs. You have soothing drugs. Ergo. Civilized.” She sucked the cigarette down to the filter, put the cup in one hand, pinched the cigarette out of her mouth, and tossed it into the embers of last night’s fire. She held her hand out for the pill. “Thank you.”
Alhambra said, “Civilization treats pain with lectures. You know that.”
“Right. I came all the way up here to get my face mashed in so I could get properly loaded. Got it.” Gina pulled her shirt on. “Beats whatever else I had in mind.”
They rattled into town, avoiding the fallen branches, hydroplaning through the rivulets streaming across the road. Monte Rio. Vacation Wonderland. Two bridges, one street. No beach in the winter, the river ate it. There was a movie theater in a Quonset hut with an immense mural on its side, runny with water. The metal ridges of the hut blurred the painted trees into menacing shapes. Gina muttered, “And my granma tol me this place was friendly. Ha.”
A large red amanita mushroom graced the sign for the Wonderland Diner. Alhambra said, “You’ll like it here, Gina.”
Gina looked dubious, but as they entered she murmured, “Whoa. A real diner. Cool.”
Knotty pine walls, sweet breakfast smells, a waitress with a sharp take-no-prisoners grin greeted them. “Good morning. Sit yourselves wherever you’re most comfortable. Coffee?” Not even a small blink at Gina’s broken face. Maybe smashed up faces were common. Maybe the waitress was just good.
Alhambra grinned back. “Mornin. Two double espressos, please, to start.”
“Comes double. You want double double?”
“Yes, please.” Alhambra whispered to Gina, “Great coffee. They tested every kind they could get their hands on—”
The waitress pulled the handles on the old espresso machine like an Italian barrista. Serious. No shortcuts like the machines at Peet’s.
“Sounds like my kind of job.”
“Pffft. You would be the worst waitress on t
he planet. It’s an art.”
Grumbling, “I wanta be the taster, not the server.” Gina bit the lemon peel, sipped her double espresso. “Damn. Well. All right then.”
“Country pleasures.”
Gina didn’t respond, she got up, bringing her coffee with her, walked to the side of the diner, called her job. They hadn’t missed her, really, but they were aware that the work wasn’t done. Not to worry. She’d deal with it when the roads opened up. Sometime in May. Monte Rio had a certain appeal.
“Okay, so tell me: What do people do up here?” Gina spoke through a mouthful of biscuit ten minutes from the oven with real Maple syrup poured over. She stabbed at her bacon and spun it around on her fork, pointing the whole arrangement at her friend.
Alhambra chewed her BLT on rye, considering an answer. “Same as anywhere. Folks try to get by, grab the energy of the earth and put it to work.”
“Energy of the earth? Crap.” Gina wasn’t going to be mollified by an outstanding breakfast. “Diddlin. That’s what happens when you don’t have the energy of the city. Ya go soft in the head and spend all your time diddlin.”
“Define.”
Gina’s mouth opened, closed. She scowled. “Eh. You know what I mean.”
Alhambra looked up.
Gina felt a large ominous shadow on her right. She craned her neck, wincing for effect, focused her one functioning eye on the steel worker who stood by their table.
“I know you.”
Gina’s lips parted, starting to snarl then wiggling into a limp smile. “Yeah?”
The six-foot steel worker with the blond buzz cut spoke in a melodic soprano, she stood sort of shy, one foot on top of the other. “Uh-huh.” She shifted to another self-effacing position. Her eyebrows lifted, her head tipped to the side, one shoulder raised up—a sort of traditional body language for you-know-where-we’ve-been.
“Jail?” As soon as Gina spoke she would have eaten her own head if only she could’ve fit it in her mouth. In for a nickel. “Which one?” In for a dime.
“Bryant Street. You were on your way somewheres else, probably don’t remember me. Name’s Joey. They called me Big Rig.”
It would be impolite to admit she didn’t remember anyone quite so large, impossible to say she had no memory at all of someone who tried so hard to be small. And failed so utterly. “Ah.” Perhaps the woman was smaller then?
Joey pointed, a small movement, at Gina’s arm. “That my design, that one there.”
Gina took a long breath, blew it out. This person was too sizable to insult, but truth is truth. “No. It ain’t. It ain’t yers. It’s from the hand and mind and soul of a monster great master in the Mission. I watched it bein born in his psyche, I watched it get drawn here on my arm, and I watched him, in total tattoo trance, ink this sucker by hand with needles he tied together right there in front of me with secret knots, and with ink he ground up hisself from pine sap. So don’t give me no shit about it’s yours.” Her lower jaw stuck out: Nobody fucked with Mission history.
Joey shrunk back, her lilting voice floating as if it was a whisper of wind. “Oh. I see.”
“No. You don’t see.” Gina made a small grunt as Alhambra kicked her under the table. “Yesterday a complete toad haulin around a Day-Glo wheelchair told me the same thing.” She moved her chair back in order to speak directly up at Joey. “I apologize for bein harsh to you, but the skinny fucker popped me in the eye when I told him to go fuck himself.”
“That asshole! He been stealing my designs, calling them his own.” The color rose in Joey-Big Rig’s face, her eyes went glinty gray, her arms swelled up like pumpkins as she clenched her fists. “That gnarly bastard couldn’t put a tattoo on a fucking grapefruit.”
Gina thought better of pointing out that the design on her arm wasn’t Joey’s. Instead she nodded, glad to have support in her appraisal of the man. “Dead eyes? Mummy face? Crap ink?”
Joey nodded, her color shading to something less volcanic. “He kills people. He uses the same needles on everyone. Steals other folks’ work and twists it into something ugly.”
“Carryin bad tattoo art is death in itself.” Alhambra spoke, cool waters to soothe a restless soul.
“You know what I’m talking about, then.” Joey became their comrade again. “You staying clean and sober? Yes?”
“Yes. Well, no. I mean…”
Joey laughed, a hearty trill—it would have been a trill except it came from a mountain, so it was, well, hearty. “Been seventeen months for me. Clean. And. Sober.” The laugh stopped and her eyes went flinty. “I ain’t never going back.” She paused, looked at each of them in turn, her huge hands opening and closing in spasm. “Never. Never going back.”
The air had gone out of the diner with a psychic whoosh.
“Never. You got that?”
Alhambra sighed, softly refilling the place with air. “We got it, Joey. Good for you.”
“Good for you.” Gina’s voice clicked in her throat, stuck on something she hadn’t known was in there.
The big woman’s face shifted into a smile, she leaned forward and knocked on the table, “Good talking with yas. Hope to see yas around, then.” She straightened up, “Don’t forget what I told yas. None of us ever going back. No way. None of us.”
The door closed behind her with a small plock.
“We done here, I think?”
“Dayam. We be done and done again.” Gina stared at her hands clenched tight as two poodles fucking. “Holy crap.”
“Let’s walk down to the river and catch a breath of massive water power?”
“Wash away all our sins?”
“Take more than a river in full mud raging flood to do that.”
They passed a sign: Welcome to Monte Rio! HATE STOPS HERE.
“You guys hava different definition of hate up here than we do down in the Mission where folks aren’t all completely bonkers?”
Alhambra, lost in her own thoughts, nodded uh-huh.
They crossed the parking lot, started down a scrubby slope to the curve of the rumbling river. “Jeezuz! She’s goin in the water!”
Joey-Big Rig, hip deep where the water curled against a set of rocks, was wrestling something out of the scrub.
“Holy Christ, it’s that wheelchair I tossed.” Gina didn’t know whether to jump right in, in some goofy heroic attempt to help, or back away in shame at the calamity she had set in motion: Joey was going to be slushed away to drown.
Alhambra’s hand touched Gina’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine long as she doesn’t go past the rocks. Water boils around in there but there’s no big current, that’s more to the center. See the logs out there?”
“That’s not a log—”
One of the logs flipped upright at Joey’s side, eye-blink fast he grabbed for the chair, hissing.
“Crap. That’s the guy.”
“Too right.” Alhambra’s full lips curled up. “This is gonna be good.”
“Uh, Alhambra? Karen? Those two people can drown in there. What happened to Miss Sunshine No Sorrow?”
Alhambra stepped to the edge of the icy water, a short leap away from the spectacle. “The snake and the elephant.”
“Should we interfere? Or scream?”
The wheelchair, flung by one of the combatants, skidded on the gravel to their left. Someone screamed.
“Ah. Screaming is what we do.” But Gina didn’t scream. It wasn’t in her nature to scream. She shouted, “Tha’s right, Joey! Pound that slimy fucker! Tha’s right, Joey! Take im out!” The chant swelled, backed by the river’s grumble, “Take im out! Take im out! Take im out!”
Joey had the fake gimp’s arms twisted up behind his back, held easy in one of her huge hands, with the other she had hold of his hair, dunking him face first into the river. The muscles of her arms pumped up and down, relentless pistons pushing him under the water, out again, snap back into the river. Her eyes had gone flat and gray, her mouth twisted.
Alhambra said, matter-of-
fact, “Let him get a breath now, Joey.”
Joey shrugged, lifted his head, peered at the fake gimp’s face with scientific detachment.
He gagged, green-brown river water puked from his mouth. He took a stuttering gulp of air, his eyes fluttering.
Joey shook him, wrinkled her nose, straight-armed his head back under.
Gina stepped toward the river. “That fucker isn’t never comin up.”
Bubbles.
“He ain’t worth it, Joey,” Alhambra said. Simple statement.
Gina’s voice rose up over the river’s howl, “Hey! Never goin back? Joey—you ain’t never goin back. Remember?”
Bubbles. An eternity of bubbles rising pock pock pock to the surface.
Joey looked up, took a breath. Nodded. She thrust the man from her, into the current, staggered up to the shore. “Thank you.” She popped her knuckles, tipped her head left and right to get the tension out of her neck. “Thank you.”
They watched the limp form spin in the current, catch on the next curve, and lie there for a moment before the man began to pull himself up the gravel.
Gina muttered, “Fuckers like that never die.”
Joey sighed, “I’m keeping the wheelchair though. Damn.” She folded the thing up, hoisted it over one shoulder, waved to Alhambra and Gina. “Have yerselves a jolly day. Clean and sober. Oh yeahhhh.”
The rain had let up, Gina and Alhambra were walking down the same path they’d rocketed down the night before. The only sound was the steady noise of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water rushing to the sea. Billions of gallons?
“Tell me, Alhambra. What you find up here you never got in the city?”
“Look up at the damn trees, Gina. Listen to the goddam river. Pay attention to what’s right here.”
“I want answers to questions this here river and tree world doesn’t care about—lookin at trees ain’t gonna make the hurt stop.”
“Sometimes it’s the only thing make the hurt stop. Come here and look over there across the river.”
San Francisco Noir Page 6