12 Bliss Street

by Martha Conway

  Where can I go? she kept thinking. It was a bad time for renters and she did not have enough money to buy. As she stood up from her chair she kicked an empty box into the wall with more passion than she had intended.

  “What is up?” Audrey asked. “Is it diet day or something?”

  Nicola sat back down and looked at her monitor. She really didn’t feel like going into the whole eviction thing with everyone right there.

  “Oh, I thought I saw Scooter on the muni.”

  “He’s back from L.A.?” Audrey asked. She had gone to college with Nicola and Scooter, and had even lived with them for a while before she married a pierced, red-headed surfer named Declan.

  “Just someone who looks like him.”

  “Doesn’t he still owe you money?”

  “And I’m sure that’s why he’s here,” Nicola said. Why was he here? Or whoever it was. Another customer called her, got snippy over the phone, and this time Nicola was actually rude.

  “Nicola,” Audrey warned when Nicola hung up.

  “I know, but you know I get like this when I’m hungry.”

  “So get some food,” Audrey said.

  Nicola looked at her watch. There was a man who often ate lunch at a nearby café and they had begun to say hello to each other; he had dark skin and almond-shaped eyes and he usually ordered chorizo pizzeta, a specialty there. She didn’t know his name but she thought of him as Chorizo. In her purse was a small vial of angel water—orange flowers mixed with myrtle and rose—which she planned to sprinkle on her neck and behind her ears and maybe a little bit under her teddy before lunch. He didn’t usually get there until one, but she was so hungry.

  “Do a cookie run while you’re out,” Carlos said.

  “Chocolate ones,” Louise said.

  “No, the ones with sprinkles.”

  “Those are carcinogenic,” Nicola told him.

  “How can sprinkles be carcinogenic? They’re made for like three-year-olds.”

  “Survival of the fittest,” said Christian, a vegetarian who maintained a very active Web site on meat production in America.

  “You’re maxed on sugar anyway,” Audrey told Carlos. “Look, you’ve lost control of your line.”

  “It’s supposed to look that way.”

  Nicola walked over to his desk to look at his drawings.

  “Christ, Carlos!” she said. “Are these Fred’s? These are supposed to be in the computer by Monday! You’re going to have to call Fred and ask him if we can reschedule the meeting because I am not talking to him one more time today, and then you better dose up on caffeine or something, because if we don’t show him something soon he’s going to walk, and I wouldn’t blame him. Put your dart gun down, I’m not kidding. You need to organize yourself; this table is a mess.”

  “Whoa,” Carlos said. “Mommy’s back.”

  “Oh, all right, but you know how I am; you’re cutting it too close for me.”

  “Go get some food,” Audrey said. “Carlos will work on it over lunch, right, Carlos?”

  “It will be fine, Nicola,” Carlos told her. “I have something in mind that’s absolutely bulletproof.”

  “Bulletproof?”

  “Don’t get hung up on the negative vibes,” he said.

  Nicola stared at him. “I’m going to lunch,” she decided. She picked up her purse and tried to normalize by telling herself they were a good team and they always came through, but meanwhile she could feel Carlos watching her with that little grin on his face which at times like this she hated.

  “But you’ve absolutely got to work on this while I’m gone,” she couldn’t help adding.

  Carlos said he would and then watched her, still smiling, as she closed the office door behind her. A few seconds later when the elevator dinged he looked over at Audrey.

  “She needs a lot more than food,” he announced.

  * * *

  Outside it was windy and cold and the man Nicola thought of as Chorizo was already sitting at the West Portal Café reading an article about pigeons poisoned near City Hall. It was a bit soon for lunch, but his mid-morning massage had ended earlier than usual and he decided to sit and look over the afternoon paper, which had just come out.

  The front page featured a grainy black-and-white photograph of a policeman touching a dead bird with his foot, and as he looked at it he found himself thinking about his wife, who was currently imprisoned in Cyprus. His common-law wife. But is it still common law if you haven’t seen each other for over five years, he wondered?

  He read the first paragraph of the article again. No one had seen anything. The police claimed the act was deliberate, done at night, chicken feed dipped in poison then scattered on the curb. He thought how his wife would enjoy this sort of thing. Did she ever get newspapers, he wondered? There was so little he knew. Did she read? Exercise? Did they even have pigeons flying around where she was? The article, he noticed, did not say what kind of poison was used.

  He put the paper down for a moment to examine one of his fingernails. He had not exactly been physically faithful, but then again neither of them had ever been physically faithful even when they lived together. What they had was different. More. Americans could never understand this. He thought of a television talk show host he had recently seen, who called people like him spiritually defunct. She understood nothing. The first principle of Shambhala is to be unafraid of who you are.

  Turning his left hand toward the light, he noticed the thumbnail could use some shaping, and he rubbed it gently with his forefinger. It had been five years, almost six, since he had seen his wife, but he would not give up on her. He would not give up, but in the meantime he knew she would forgive him his needs. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t wait for her. He would wait. He would wait, save money for the legal expenses, for the bribes, for whatever it took to get her out. All the money he earned was for her. He would never tell her about the girls, there was no need, but if she knew she would understand. They were all dead anyway.

  Chorizo picked up the newspaper, folded the page back, then began to read the article about the pigeons once again. And he thought: Well, and perhaps she has girls herself, there in the jail on Cyprus.

  * * *

  Nicola left the building without her jacket and immediately regretted it but didn’t go back. A man reduced to selling flowers from the back of a Volvo station wagon was cleaning the sidewalk with an industrial hose, and a spray of water caught her arm as she passed. West Portal was dry and flat, once an arroyo, and it was said that its winds would drive you to sex or suicide. Someone was always spraying the sidewalk and the wind carried droplets up onto passersby, mostly women with strollers and men begging change wearing army jackets and unusual headgear.

  What is the point, Nicola was thinking as she gave one man some change. Usually she enjoyed doing all the little tasks that spelled survival—mailing her tax returns or buying stamps or scheduling dental appointments—but on days like this she could imagine letting everything go until she was one of those people with unpaid bills in a shoebox under her bed and an eviction notice served—the last of which, of course, had already happened. And then what? The man begging change could imagine what; at some point he could see himself here on the street. Or at least, Nicola thought, he could not not see himself here on the street. Well, thank God, she wasn’t that far gone. Or was this the beginning of that kind of nightmare? It seemed unlikely, given her job and her taste for trendy shoes.

  The café was only a block away and as Nicola pushed open the heavy glass door she was surprised to see Chorizo already sitting at a far table. The café was small and narrow with white plastic chairs and red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloths that wrinkled in hard little waves.

  There was an open table near Chorizo and Nicola took it, smiling when he looked up, since they were at that point. He was older than she was, in his late forties probably. She liked that. Maybe he was even older.

  He dressed well and was tall, or medium tall, with t
hick dark hair like the feathery waves of a raven—or did she mean vulture? A black-bird, that was it. Today he was wearing a button-down shirt in an unusual shade of blue, and dark pants. As she looked at the laminated menu Nicola stopped thinking about Guy and Scooter and her landlord, and she began to alternate instead between fantasies of a short passionate affair with Chorizo—food in the bed sheets, et cetera—and a milder, long-lasting relationship as she saw him through his later years, listening to his stories about dinners with Noam Chomsky or Butros Butros Ghali and helping him step into the tub.

  Her waiter resembled a goat, with glasses so small they looked like eyelids. “I’ll have the chorizo pizzeta,” Nicola told him.

  Chorizo looked up briefly at that. “They do those so well,” he said to her, then returned to his paper.

  She turned to see what he was reading—another article about the dead pigeons, she saw—but although she had a comment ready he didn’t look up again. Nicola pulled out her SF Weekly and opened it, angling the paper so Chorizo could see she was reading the Personals if he happened to look. This she had planned in advance. All around her people were dressed casually but well, typical San Francisco. The café was cold, also typical, and Nicola found herself craving hot chocolate. It was said Montezuma drank fifty cups a day on the days he visited his harem, and she thought about the plumbing system in Mexico, then lifted her hand to her nose to smell the angel water on her fingertips and glanced at Chorizo.

  Was he Russian? Mexican? There was definitely something Asian or Indian or Slavic about his wide, flat cheekbones and almond eyes.

  The goat served him his pizzeta and a small side salad with feta cheese and lime, then brought a basket of mini corn muffins to Nicola’s table. The food here was unusually good. Chorizo ate the European way, keeping his fork in his left hand. Turkish, Nicola decided. His fingers were thin and long and there was something a little wolfish about him, but in a sexy way. Looking down at the stained tablecloth she let herself imagine his fingers unbuttoning her blouse slowly, and the feel of the shirt over her shoulder blades as he drew it off.

  When her own pizzeta came, she plucked three paper napkins from the metal dispenser, then ate the American way: with her hands. The sauce ran over her lips and she wiped her mouth and imagined how his hands would trail from her neck to her shoulders to her spine, his thumbs on the small of her back, his mouth on her throat. She imagined him lifting her chocolate-colored teddy over her head. If she turned slightly Nicola could see his dark hair in the corner of her eye, and she liked this, a little frisson of reality in playland.

  “Did you enjoy the pizzeta?” Chorizo asked softly.

  She could feel him unfasten her bra. She could feel his warm breath on her back.

  “Lost in your own world?” he said.

  At that Nicola looked up. He was watching her. His slanted dark eyes made him seem worldly, knowing, as if her mind were an unrolled map before him. Was he wolfish, or more like a fox? All at once Nicola felt both caught and excited—he knows exactly what I was doing, she thought. There was a sign she had often noticed down the street: “Suspicious activities are recorded and forwarded to the appropriate authorities”—a titillating idea. A wave of power rushed through her.

  “Exactly,” she said, looking him in the eye.

  Did his expression change? He looked at her more closely.

  “I’ve seen you here a few times,” he said. “You must work nearby.”

  “Very close.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a dental hygienist,” she said.

  The lie—where did that come from? As soon as she said it Nicola felt another electrical charge, and the thought came to her that she could do anything, it didn’t matter, what did it matter? The morning was a waste; the whole year, let’s face it, was not so great, but forget it; here she was now, here she was, and she was ready for something unplanned and unordinary.

  “You must like mouths,” Chorizo was saying, then smiled, showing his teeth.

  And she thought: they have their uses.

  * * *

  Chorizo looked Nicola over. She surprised him, she really did, and he liked that in a woman. He put away his paper, then moved his chair slightly closer to her table, turning so she could see the birthmark on his neck, which other women said was sexy. Not his wife, never his wife, but some of the others. A vampire’s kiss, one called it. He liked that.

  She was bolder than he had imagined. He saw it in her eyes: something pleased her. A woman who likes pleasure; well, well. In the last few weeks he had pegged her as the administrative type—one who pays an unhealthy attention to details. The nurse with pursed lips. But here she is, smiling and showing her palms, which everyone knows is a sign of flirtation.

  And then, when she bent down to pick her napkin up from the floor, he saw the shiny chocolate-colored strap under her blouse.

  Well, well, he thought again.

  Lingerie.

  She’s wearing lingerie. And all at once he could picture how she might look without the business suit. Wearing just—was it a camisole? And perhaps matching panties? He could see her on the bed he used, her skin going cold. The peculiar shininess that comes at death. She could be the next one. He definitely saw it. She could be next.

  He moved his chair closer.

  * * *

  “And what do you do?” Nicola asked, picking up her napkin.

  “Oh, like everyone else I’m in computers,” Chorizo told her. On the wall behind him stood a picture of a spiky asparagus, and Nicola strained to listen as Chorizo spoke about high-potency something or other. The truth was she didn’t really care about his job. On his wrist he wore a thin silver bracelet and he had a birthmark like a dark fingerprint on the side of his neck.

  He had very good manners, she could see that. His eyes never left her face. She wiped pizzeta sauce from her hands and considered. He was kind of a smooth guy. Too smooth? To be honest he wasn’t really her type, but she was feeling good now for the first time all day, possibly all week. And maybe the whole point was that he wasn’t her type.

  Plus the mark on his neck was kind of sexy.

  “Are you from California?” Chorizo was asking.

  The café’s fluorescent lights blinked for a moment, a line of long, sharp clouds overhead, and Nicola hesitated then told the truth. “I was born in Ohio.”

  “Ohio. I’ve always liked the sound of that name.”

  “But I grew up all over,” she lied, twisting her napkin. She told him her parents were in the foreign service and her first memory was when she lived in Nigeria and a chicken attacked her—a story her college roommate once told.

  “I’m from Turkey,” Chorizo told her. Nicola nodded, she’d guessed that, and looked down at his loafers—polished brown affairs that seemed to be woven from thin strips of bark and then glazed.

  “A little town you’ve probably never heard of called Kas.”

  That surprised her. “Kas!” she said, looking up at him again. “I’ve been to Kas! I bought a rug in Kas! I loved that town. I ate fresh calamari for breakfast there every day, just caught that morning.”

  This was the truth, though on the last day there she felt too sick to go out afterwards, and later Scooter wouldn’t let her buy a lobster-in-a-box in the Boston airport while they waited for their connection home. Chorizo asked her where she had bought her rug and when she described the store he said, oh yes, the owner was married to the Australian who worked in a jewelry store next door. They spoke about the cafés along the harbor and the underwater excavation led by a professor from Massachusetts, which Nicola and Scooter (she didn’t mention Scooter) had seen from a tour boat.

  “Kas is a beautiful town,” Chorizo said, picking up his water glass. “It’s unfortunate that it has no beach.”

  “The ports aren’t deep enough for the cruise boats. You’re lucky in that.”

  Chorizo pulled in even closer and put his water glass down on her table—a gesture Nicola found o
ddly intimate. His hand so nearly brushed hers that she could feel, for a moment, a sudden warmth. “Ah, but they bring in money,” he said. “Now, Egypt. Have you ever been to Egypt?”

  “I’ve always wanted to see the Temple of Isis,” she told him.

  “An interesting cult. There’s a legend that she preferred eels for her breakfast. She sent her best fishermen to catch them and they always went in the dark, when there was no moon.”

  “Because eels come out at night,” Nicola said. “To feed.”

  “That’s right.” He nodded. “The ancient priests who took care of her temple bathed five times a day.”

  “After visiting the purgatorium,” Nicola said.

  Chorizo said, “So you know about this too?”

  He smiled then, and Nicola, placing her twisted-up napkin on the table like some kind of offering, smiled back. Her heart was racing. She didn’t just feel good, she felt great. She felt as though she were flying, or might fly, or at least knew what it felt like to fly—the sensation of strength in her arms (or wings or whatever), and the lift and the power and the speed.

  * * *

  Chorizo watched her listening to him and he couldn’t help smiling, she seemed so young and so genuine, and she smiled back not knowing that he had his plans and they might include her.

  The waiter came to take away the spidery nest of food left on her plate, and while she was looking away he calculated quickly: about five feet five, say a size eight. Many things were in his favor. They were in a corner, no one was looking at them. A chance meeting, that was good too.

  What comes is meant to come, he thought.

  The waiter stepped away with the plates. Nicola looked back at Chorizo.

  He understood the signal. It was his move.

  “I have an idea,” he said. He looked at her steadily. If all went well he would never be able to return to the café—he couldn’t risk it. A pity. He did so enjoy their pizzeta, but that was—what was the phrase?—the downside of the trade.

  He smiled again.