San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis

  While Michael and Ariel told each other that their sponsors were being overcautious—after all, they weren’t here to cause any trouble—Michael understood the danger was real. The secrecy was for their own protection. What if one of them got out and fell into the hands of one faction or the other, and something happened? Somebody could make a big deal over it. And what if something were made to happen?

  What if they had already fallen into the hands of the Chou group, Ariel’s group?

  Thoughts like this occupied him while he waited for Ariel to return from a second, afternoon summoning. It wasn’t pleasant, wondering whether Ariel was plotting against him, while he was kept in a hotel room, a sitting duck.

  He went over again in his mind what would happen when they returned to Vancouver. It was his understanding that the money was to come to both of them at the same time. Everything had been prepared, he had been told between Seattle and Vancouver, to ensure that no one had a particular advantage in seizing it. A clear chain of pickups and handoffs would occur after they received it. Who would be in a certain place at a certain time. Who would hand the money to whom. If the right people weren’t in the right place at the right time, they were not to hand off the money. Instead, there was a backup handoff plan they were to go to.

  Michael understood his role once the money landed in their hands. No one was to pry Ariel away from him for any length of time, and he was to keep anyone from stealing it. There were people within the organization who might try to steal it from Michael, and both Ariel and he knew that. To avoid anyone trying to engineer a setup, each team only knew who they were getting from and giving to. No one knew the entire chain, where the money would eventually wind up. Michael supposed that the people on Ariel’s side might try to kill the people on his side when the money was given over. A balance in the number of men on each team was meant to ensure that wouldn’t happen. Michael supposed one or more people might switch teams, or that Ariel’s people might have killed his people by the time he arrived at the handoff point. If that happened, if it was only him against the others and he was outnumbered, then, Michael decided, he wasn’t going to fight. Then they would kill him, or maybe something would happen right there on the spot. Michael had traveled for four days with Ariel. Despite some testy moments, they had gotten along. He didn’t like to think Ariel might kill him or that he might have to kill Ariel. They didn’t teach you this stuff at Princeton. This was what it was like getting into the movement. Trouble was real trouble, and it came real quick.

  It was all very strange. He was in China.

  To take his mind off its current depressing trajectory, he tried focusing on the environment around him. The room they were given couldn’t be considered a cell, but it wasn’t exactly luxurious either. It was like much of what he’d seen of the entire country itself. There did not seem to be one item that was anything other than absolutely essential. Two beds, with two layers of sheets, one slightly heavier than the other. Each of them had been issued a thin hand towel, about one foot wide by two feet long, that was to be used for the duration of their stay. There was a light. No phone. No pen or paper. No ashtray, but cigarette burns in the carpet. Toilet paper, of sorts, was brought in once a day. Somehow their hosts were able to calculate exactly what amount was just enough.

  There was no mirror. In those days, Michael kept up a thin Fu Manchu. Both his hair and mustache he wore much longer in his hippie days, but these days he tried to keep up a neat appearance. It was a proletarian thing; his attire consisted of T-shirts, a single sweatshirt, jeans, boots. He’d meant to trim his mustache before he left, but he’d been in a rush to get out. Now he didn’t want his hosts to get the wrong idea about him, so with the free time fate had granted him, he learned how to shave without a mirror.

  That night, under curfew, the old man started to lose it.

  “I want to go out, see the sights, get laid. This sitting around here all night, man, is driving me nuts.”

  “Hey, at least you’re out during the day. Think about me. I burned through the two books I brought with me by the time we left Vancouver.”

  That seemed to elicit some sympathy at least. Ariel told Michael he would talk to someone tomorrow about letting him out, even just for a few hours with a chaperone.

  “You haven’t told me a thing about what goes on when you go out there with them.”

  “I haven’t told you anything because I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

  “There’s some shit going down, isn’t there? Who are we dealing with?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know these people.” Ariel lit a cigarette, one of the Chinese ones a youth stationed outside the door had given him. It smelled awful and quickly suffocated the entire room. Michael thought his roommate was using this method to kill him. Having not gotten over his jet lag yet, Ariel chain-smoked for most of the night, but by morning Michael was still alive.

  “Hey, Ariel,” Michael asked as the dawn was breaking. Neither one of them had said a word for hours. “Are we in trouble?”

  The old man detected the note of fear in the younger man’s voice and his stony expression softened.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said.

  Michael didn’t know what to make of that. Did it mean that Ariel wasn’t? Or was he just reassuring Michael? Either way, Michael felt ashamed.

  On day three, there was considerably more traffic going back and forth from the room, and Ariel spent more time out than in. His pleas on Michael’s behalf worked to the degree that Michael was handed a stack of English-language Peking Reviews.

  Michael felt better in the morning. At least he got the sense that the old man was as confused and frustrated as he was. Of course, all of that may have been a put-on, but he preferred not to think so. He seized the day, trying to make the best of the hospitality that was offered. He sat down to read the Peking Review. In the first issue he read, he found an article, in the “Arts” section, with the headline, “Music with No Words Is Reactionary”:

  Beethoven’s music is inherently reactionary. Because there are no words, you can’t know what it means.

  The prose style and reasoning reminded him of something Camus had written about Saint-Just’s writing style: “It is the style of the guillotine.” This, then, was the style of the dull butcher knife.

  In the afternoon, he poked his head out the door and saw a girl sitting in the hallway. He assumed she was “guarding” him, though this was the first time he saw someone sitting instead of standing. Maybe they were getting the idea he wasn’t going to challenge them.

  When she looked up, he was startled. He thought he recognized her, but that would have been impossible: He didn’t know anyone in China. Then it occurred to him that she resembled Cletus Dong’s sister, Candy. It took a bit of imagination to make the transfer: imagine Candy without makeup, her long, straight hair chopped off just above the chin, wearing a sexless blue suit. When she stood up, he could tell they were about the same height, too.

  “I’m sorry. I fell asleep for a little while,” she said, in only slightly labored English. That was a major plus. Every single person that had been posted outside his door until now hadn’t said a word to him.

  “Uh, that’s okay. If I’d known earlier, I would have made a run for it.”

  “Do you enjoy your visit to China?”

  “Sure. It’s been great.”

  “Good. Please let me know if I can do anything for you.” Michael pondered that when she followed up with a question: “Where are you from?”

  “Me? America.”

  “What city?”

  “San Francisco. Well, not exactly the city itself. I live in the East Bay.”

  “Is that near New York?”

  “No, it’s on the opposite side of the country.”

  “Really? I thought it was next to New York.”

  “No. You’re thinking of New Jersey.”

  “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “Do you smoke?”
r />   “No. I am offering you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Yes, or no?”

  “‘That’s okay’ means ‘no’.”

  “Strange. You don’t like Chinese cigarette, eh?”

  “I don’t smoke…tobacco.”

  “American cigarette taste better, right? That’s what I hear.”

  “My friend,” he gestured inside, meaning Ariel, “says that Chinese cigarettes are better. More tar.”

  She shook her head. “How much does one cost in America?”

  “One cigarette? Or a pack?”

  “Pack.”

  “I dunno. I never bought one.”

  “That’s very strange. Is it true Americans eat raw vegetables?”

  He blinked at that one. It took him a moment to realize what she was talking about. “Yes. We eat salad. You don’t eat salad in China?”

  She shook her head. “We cook. Only barbarians eat raw food. Like Japanese.”

  He nodded. It made sense.

  Their conversation went on in this manner, with her peppering him with questions that sounded genuinely curious. It was the most fun he’d had in days, though he couldn’t help noticing that every time he tried to come back with a question about China, she would clam up and ask another question about America. He got the message after a few tries: Talk about America, don’t talk about China.

  “You’re very curious about America.”

  “I would like to travel there someday. I know it’s difficult right now, but I think the relationship between our two countries will improve in the future.”

  “I hope so. There are a lot of Chinese people in America, especially in San Francisco.”

  “I would like to see them. There are a lot of things I would like to see in the world.”

  “Light out for the territory, huh?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “‘I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.’ That’s from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.”

  “Marx…?”

  “Not Karl Marx. Mark Twain. American author.”

  “I don’t know him. Have you read any Chinese authors?”

  “Just Mao.”

  She took him down to the basement, where he met the hotel kitchen staff. Nobody could speak English, but they all waved at him, smiling. A crowd began to grow around him. He was, he supposed, something of an attraction. The enthusiastic reception he received seemed to go beyond mere obligation. The spontaneity was a welcome relief from the uptightness of the bureaucrats and flunkies he’d encountered so far. His guide asked the staff to show him what they were making, and they took him around the kitchen. In one spot, a group of women were wrapping what looked like won tons. The people there had the friendly, unpretentious appeal of blue-collar workers who, while they weren’t exactly happy, weren’t as miserable as they once were. It reminded him very much of the post office.

  The next day, he and Ariel were taken out for a drive to a village on the outskirts of Peking. He got a good look at the countryside surrounding that gray city. It was a brisk autumn day, and the trees were in full color.

  Their hosts were going to treat them to a banquet and took them to a restaurant that resembled a union hall. Michael and Ariel and a group of men in blue suits sat around a table and ate and drank. One of those in attendance, Michael believed, was Wang Hung-wen, the former Shanghai cotton mill worker who had been promoted by Mao to the number-three position in the party hierarchy, and who later joined Chiang Ching in promoting the “Criticize Lin Piao, Criticize Confucius” campaign.

  Their hosts ordered a number of “delicacies.” There was an ugly thing that felt like eating a dead rat. Then they ordered a round of sea slugs, which didn’t have any taste at all. It was like sucking down snot. What fucking culture considered this sort of thing a delicacy? Michael thought their gracious hosts were bringing out these dishes out of sheer perversity—they weren’t delicacies at all. By the end of the night, their hosts had drunk them under table with moutai, a clear liquor that tasted like turpentine. They repeatedly toasted the Americans in Chinese and laughed, and the whole time Michael thought they were saying, “Don’t hold your breath waiting for the revolution in the U.S.A. This is the best we got! Ah ha ha ha! ”

  That was their last day in China.

  Michael picked up his luggage at the carousel. There was the suitcase he’d originally packed, and following, the suitcase he’d received in Vancouver, which he hadn’t seen since he’d checked it in for the Pan Am flight to Tokyo. It felt heavier than he remembered, but that was hard to say. He looked at Ariel once he had it, expecting some kind of response, a raised eyebrow, smirk, or nod, but Ariel had his poker face on. They went through customs. The officer checked his luggage ticket and waved him through.

  They entered the arrivals lobby. There was no one to pick them up.

  In the seconds that he scanned the crowd again, looking for the people who should have been there but weren’t, a flood of thoughts went through Michael’s mind. He was sure the exact same thoughts were now going through Ariel’s mind. Michael was carrying the suitcase. It wouldn’t be hard for him to outrun the old man. Pushing him down or hitting him would only cause a disturbance that would draw attention to him. If he just ran, it would take the sparse crowd around them awhile, whatever Ariel’s response, to realize what was going on, and even then, if that, security was light. Ariel didn’t have a chance.

  He could lie low in Canada. There would be a lot of people out to kill him. It was a lot of money. He could steal the money and become a capitalist.

  The two men from the Seattle group came running up.

  “Sorry we’re late. Traffic.”

  They followed them to their car.

  In Seattle, the four met another two, and the money was handed over. The two with the money left in a separate car. Michael and Ariel were driven back to Seattle HQ.

  Michael thought he was driving to San Francisco with Ariel, but Ariel told him he would be staying on.

  At the curb, Ariel stopped him. “You weren’t thinking about running off with the money back there, were you?”

  Michael just smiled. They didn’t say goodbye or shake hands. It was the last they saw of each other.

  In 1983, long after he’d stopped being a Communist, Michael came across an obit in the Chronicle. Ariel Rabenstein, a patient who had suffered from Alzheimer’s, passed away in a Jewish old folk’s home in East Oakland.

  Some time after that, on a trip very unlike his first one there, Michael stepped into a bar in Vancouver and saw behind the counter a woman he believed to be Candy Dong. Her youthful beauty had long since withered away, but the vitality she had displayed that night in Chinatown was still in force.

  He reintroduced himself, and she remembered him. He told her this story and mentioned how he had passed up a chance to run off with the money.

  “I was going to take it and find you. I still kept the chopstick wrapper with your friend’s phone number on it.”

  She looked at him with an unreadable expression. Then she mentioned she had left for Vancouver shortly after they’d met and hadn’t been back to San Francisco since. Was the restaurant still there?

  He had tried looking for it, but couldn’t find it. Chinatown hadn’t changed much, though. In that way it seemed to exist in cyclical as opposed to linear time, life went on there much as it had before. Of course, politically, everything had changed. All the old battle lines that had been drawn up and which they’d all fought over so heatedly had been irrevocably erased. Things that used to matter, like the Kuomintang, now mattered little. The old I-Hotel, he didn’t know if she’d heard, had been torn down after a great struggle. All that was left on the corner of Jackson and Kearny was a hole in the ground that had remained for almost twenty-five years.

  “And your friend Francis? How’s he doing?” she as
ked.

  “He went to jail and kind of disappeared from view after that. What about your brother, the filmmaker?”

  “He went into real estate,” she said. “He bought up properties all over the avenues, and now he’s immensely rich.”

  LARRY’S PLACE

  BY MICHELLE TEA

  Bernal Heights

  It was the beginning of October and it felt like the height of summer, even way the fuck up on the rotting hillside that was my Bernal Hill neighborhood. Not that the weather would dry my moldering basement apartment; we’d need a year of San Francisco Octobers for my home to become livable, to staunch the flow of moisture that dappled my crumbling walls—my own little waterfall, I liked to think of it. This was when I wasn’t depressed, when I had some levity to spare. My own little waterfall, like I’m living in the tropics.

  And it’s true that my back door opened up to a lush backyard, it’s true that though it was horribly overgrown and almost entirely weeds, it was green. On the days when my depression had receded like a landlord’s hairline, I could appreciate it all—the chest-high weeds tossing in the perpetual wind, the sheen of dew pimpling the walls of my subterranean apartment, my overall fungal existence. I was some sort of elf, a smallish person dwelling in a mushroom, which bloomed on the gloomy backside of Bernal Hill.

  Two things happened that first week of October, and they both involved breaking and entering. First, I was the victim, later, the perpetrator. I’d come home from a call and I was feeling cranky. It was an early-morning client, unusual, a business guy from Seattle in town for a conference. I should pay more attention to what my tricks do. Some of them are almost certainly controlling the world—balding white businessmen, past middle age, with a lot of cash to blow on hookers. Their suits are expensive and their briefcases look like they come from the leather of a superior cow. I visit them at the Fairmont, at the Mandarin, at every single downtown hotel; a blur of elevator buttons and soft-carpeted hallways that muffle the clack of my heels. These guys are involved in dirty business, they’re profiting from the war, are Republican, are getting rich on the backs of girls like me, I know. Sometimes, I think I should be a spy, fuck them better, make them like me, seduce them into telling me the secrets of their occupations so that I could do—something. So close to these rulers, in plush locked rooms, with their curdled white bodies. Surely I could do something; a certain sabotage seems close, so close, but no. I zone out when they speak to me, leave my body when they climb onto me, give them the dullest fuck, and they don’t bat an eye. They’ve been having lousy sex since they were fourteen, they’ve been getting it on with women who want nothing to do with them since puberty, they can’t tell the difference. They roll off me and I’m gone. Down the elevator, I’ve got my hand jammed into my purse, wrapped around the money, counting the bills from touch, discretely. I’ve already forgotten what he looked like.