by Peter Plate
The guards’ antics were drawing a crowd: clients, caseworkers, and the carpenters rebuilding a stairwell out back. Additional security men dashed into the courtyard, frightening a band of finches that’d been sitting on the nude branches of a potted tree, sending them into flight. Eldon skirted the brawl and came over to me, wearing a slight fleer on his lips.
“Great seminar, huh, Hassler?”
His disaffection for me was vivacious, intuitive and a poignant story. Middle-aged heterosexual caucasians like Eldon were the lowest rung on the social ladder in San Francisco. Everyone picked on his ilk. Nobody was more disrespected than the uneducated, ignorant white men who resided in the Mission and Tenderloin. But Eldon brought out a maternal streak in me, though he was my senior by many years.
“Yeah, I thought it was highly informative.”
“You think so?”
“Anything helps in this game.”
“What did you learn, Charlene?”
“That a good disposition will make you rich.”
The janitor mocked me. “It’s all about your mood, huh?”
His lack of worldliness was tragic, monumental, a continent of its own, set apart from the rest of us.
“Absolutely,” I replied. “What else is there? You heard what the speaker said. Money is the incentive and the goal. Don’t you want to get a leg up?”
If they could’ve, his poached, vehement eyes would have slain me. The malaise of Eldon’s spirit was physical, heady, a surrogate Oedipal miasma reaching its first bloom. Like pollen does, it was capable of spreading onto me. I told myself to watch out for the pessimistic janitor.
I walked back to my office and started to interview another client, a young lady. It was going fair enough when someone knocked on my door. I looked up; it was Matt Vukovich from SSI. He saw that I was busy and so he nodded, no problem. I didn’t know what he meant by that, but when he went outside the door and torched a cigarette, I knew he’d be around for at least another five minutes.
Meanwhile, I instructed my client to go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles on Oak Street in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park to have a state identification card made with her picture on it. She seemed to be an intelligent woman. Renee Bamberger, age twenty-six, born in Santa Cruz. She had two likable tykes in tow, named Imhoff and Nathan. They were in the waiting room with their paternal grandmother, a woman called Selma who resided with them on Lucky Alley.
seven
Bruno’s was a Mission Street restaurant that had undergone a miracle. Unlike many of the other institutions which dotted the broad palm tree-lined avenue, Bruno’s had been given a facelift. It was a jewel of gentrification, having been repainted, re-floored and furbished with personalized dining booths upholstered in red leather.
Even with the street up for grabs in a teenage gang war, the restaurant became an overnight sensation; the city’s socialites and bigwigs flocked to the establishment. People who yearned to have an adventure and wanted to be seen; this was the place they could do it.
For a weeknight, the joint was overflowing; every booth was taken. I had meandered out of the women’s lounge after washing my hands and from where I was standing, I could see the entire room.
The lighting in the place was sultry; the tables were crowded with men in suits and ties. Important men with lovely women at their side, drinking wine, picking at lobster and steak dinners, smoking cigars, and laughing at well-timed bon mots.
The new mayor of the city was holding court in a booth, surrounded by his associates and cronies. Criminal lawyers in cowboy boots, HUD officials, newspaper gossip columnists. His bald pate was shimmering in the candle-light, and the woman he was dining with smiled at every word that came out of his mouth.
Years ago, when I was alone, solo, or whatever you call it, and dating a varied assortment of bachelors, I used to smoke cocaine with one of the mayor’s nephews. Casanova was a born-again rastafarian from Ohio who’d moved to San Francisco after getting out of the U.S. Navy. I’d liked Casanova, our sex was athletic and I enjoyed sucking on his glass pipe. Before he got into dope, the rastafarian had politics. One time, he firebombed the Parkside police station in the Haight-Ashbury with a molotov cocktail. But after he ripped me off for ninety-five dollars, he got arrested and I never heard from him again.
In another booth, Lavoris and Petard were eating a dinner of swordfish and a mixed greens salad with vinaigrette dressing; a carafe of Gallo white wine was off to one side on their table. Gerald was using his fork and knife, not only to cut up the fish, but to also illustrate what he was talking about. I moved within earshot of them and paused, unseen, listening in.
“Lav, I’ve got to tell you, if it weren’t for you, I don’t know how I would’ve been able to keep my weight down. It’s torture, truly is, depriving myself. That’s all I can think about, stuffing my face. But you’ve been an asset and an inspiration, making me eat this shit.”
He pointed the fork at the massacred fillet. Lavoris, showing a great deal of cleavage, took a sip of her wine and said to him, “That’s what lovers are for.”
“Don’t get me started on that subject,” Petard grumbled. “Do you know in the last year I’ve had to get rid of most of the names that I kept in my phone book? I’m talking about old friends…like fucking bookends that you want to throw out with the trash.”
“People can get redundant, can’t they?”
“It’s the con artists and the opportunists that get to me. I’ve got all kinds of friends. I’ve got my fair-weather friends, long-distance friends and temporary friends. I’ve got my ex-friends and now I’ve got you, Lav.”
“That’s what happens to men.”
“How’s that?”
“They end up solitary in the world. Like a polar bear on an ice cap. It takes a woman to keep them from going insane.”
“Pussy is the crossroads of life, isn’t it?”
“Please don’t ruin the meal, Gerald.”
“Honey, I’m flattering you. What you’ve got? If I could bottle it, I’d make a fortune.”
“Be quiet and eat your fish before it gets cold,” she instructed him. “It has more texture and taste when it’s warm.”
“Warm or not, it’s not like pork chops, and I miss that.”
“Gerald?”
“What?”
“Close your mouth when you chew.”
Lavoris’s beauty was a peculiar thing. Under the influence of Bruno’s obscure lighting, her skin shone like burnished copper. Her cheekbones were asymmetrical and one eye was colored darker than the other. When she reached for the long-stemmed wine glass, her bracelets glittered and her ponderous breasts shifted inside a sleeveless blouse.
“I feel like eating you,” Petard replied, putting down his fork. He ran a finger over her forearm and when he began to kiss her, the backfiring of a passing car’s muffler filtered into the restaurant. This caused more than a few of the patrons to duck under their tables, thinking it was gun-fire. Gerald, uncaring, glued his lips on Lavoris’s mouth, bumping his leg on the table, rattling the silverware and dishes.
The mayor, craning his head, saw this. He thought the well-dressed couple were being classy and romantic and he started to clap his hands. This set off a chain reaction; everyone else in Bruno’s wanted to stay on the mayor’s good side and they began to applaud Gerald and Lavoris.
The DSS hetman, never one to miss an opportunity, got to his feet, posing like a boxing champion. It prompted the mayor, who couldn’t afford to be outdone, to rise, as well. The mayor’s entourage, not getting it, rose from their tables in their booths. Everybody had stopped eating and drinking.
Gerald, pleased at how easy it was to manipulate the crowd, kept his eyes on the mayor, who was beginning to see that nothing was happening. If it went on any longer, the redheaded man with the wolfish grin would make a clown out of him.
“Who the fuck is that?” The mayor asked an aide by his side. He sat back down in a huff; the women and businessmen with
him did, too. Petard, thumbs in his belt loops, laughed his head off.
eight
A home visit was a prerequisite for getting the monthly benefits. Frances Dominguez’s application was on my desk, staring me in the face. With her phone call, I couldn’t procrastinate any longer and I took a county car over to her duplex on Shotwell Street.
On the ride there, going by El Herradero, then Yip Wing’s Trading Company, the Gold Star Check Cashing Company, Tak Fok Restaurant and the Ali Baba Factory Outlet, I think I ran over a dog or a cat. I heard a thump, but since I was late, I didn’t have the time to stop and find out.
There wasn’t anywhere to park near my client’s residence, a problem on most of the Mission’s ill-paved spidery streets. So I crammed the sedan onto the sidewalk next to her building.
Her apartment was in a crumbling, sub-divided Victorian perennially occupied by aging bikers; the landlord used to ride with the Gypsy Jokers. Huge body bags of garbage were piled up on the curb. The bar next door was overflowing with the intoxicated shouts of unemployed men whooping it up with a live mariachi band.
None of the bikers were around when I clambered up the stairs to Frances’s tiny porch. I scraped my feet on a red, white and blue rubber mat, got my hand inside my blouse to adjust a bra strap, then rang the doorbell.
The bell’s hyper trilling caused the door to open, exposing a woman’s wan face. She had chopped black hair, age spots intermingling with the lines on her forehead and shaved eyebrows. She peeked out, nose first, puzzled, as if she’d been woken up from a deep and terrible sleep in a dimension where no one had ever returned, an underworld.
“Frances? Mrs. Dominguez? Hello, it’s me. Charlene Hassler. We talked earlier. I made an appointment, remember?”
“Chale, you were making so much noise with the chingadera, I thought you were the police. But now that you’re here, why don’t you come in.”
She stepped aside and let me pass over the threshold. I discreetly shook a fleck of dog shit off my left shoe and adjusted my eyes to the mean, small angles of the apartment. I was struck by how much it affected me; the cobwebs on the high ceiling, the flaking paint in the vestibule, a neighbor’s television blasting through the floorboards. The living room was devoid of furniture; the hardwood floor, the walls and windows were bare.
Taking me by the arm, Frances ushered me into the kitchenette; her fingers were butterfly-light on my sleeve. I saw a woman, a stranger, sitting at the table in the breakfast nook. A rugged looking woman in a vinyl windbreaker, spike heels and a miniskirt. Who was that? Mrs. Dominguez did her best to play the accommodating hostess.
“This is Mary Louise Klein. She’s just been released from, uh, Frontera Women’s Prison in Southern California. Mary, this is Charlene Hassler.”
“Pleased to meet you, Charlene.”
My client was grizzled and stocky, and Mary was tall and voluptuous. And a convict, too. I had no idea where she fit into the scene, but Mrs. Dominguez, with the wisdom of a veteran client sensed my consternation, knowing that I wouldn’t tolerate any complications. She said to me in a reassuring, buttery tone of voice, “Mary is here to have coffee and rolls with me this morning as part of a community mental health outreach project.”
“Who’s sponsoring it?”
“The Wells Fargo Bank, the Mission branch.”
“And you’re part of this program, too?”
“Sure am. I’m doing it, too.”
I noted that she didn’t offer me any coffee. After a few seconds of grotesque silence, both of us were aware of what was going to happen next. I said to her, “Ah, Frances? Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, and have a peep into your cupboards and refrigerator, you know, the routine?”
If there had been any cheer in that squalid, diminutive kitchenette, it died on the last syllable of my question. Mary Klein froze in her chair; she glanced at me with eyes that said I was a charlatan, an oaf, a pustule that needed to be excised. She was no doubt on parole and to her, I was just another cop interfering with her life.
Mrs. Dominguez stood near the stove, manufacturing a smile that must’ve taken a toll on her mouth.
Was I feeling guilty? Who knows. I did what I was supposed to and explored her cupboards, where I discovered the usual suspects. A box of Morton’s salt, two bottles of Walgreen’s brand vitamins, a can of Del Monte halved peaches in a viscous syrup, a jar of chili powder, and a pile of paper napkins.
Actions like this symbolized the essence of my career. It wasn’t poetic and Frances Dominguez’s refrigerator was the same. I opened the door and found a quart of milk, three Safeway chicken dinners defrosting on a shelving grid, a bag of apples and a pitcher of iced tea.
Why did I always feel like a proctologist doing this, sticking my fingers up the assholes of everyone in the room? And why did my clients take these cupboard and refrigerator searches so personally? It was a small price to pay for food stamps, wasn’t it?
“Everything okay, Mrs. Hassler?”
“Seems to be,” I replied. “Can I ask you some questions, and then I’ll be out of your hair?”
Mary Klein crossed and recrossed her legs under the table. Mrs. Dominguez had a I-will-get-through-this-or-I’llkill-myself look on her face.
“Now then,” I said, clearing my throat. “Do you have any undeclared income for the last three months?”
She took a moment before supplying an answer to my question, playing peekaboo with me. Frances made me wait, like she wasn’t sure of what she wanted to say and as though she wanted to test me with it, before admitting, “No.”
“Very good. Do you have any savings at a bank here in the city or anywhere else, something we should be informed of?”
“No.”
“Has anybody else been giving you contributions of money as gifts, to help you pay your bills?”
“No.”
A denial to every interrogative was the key to success for most welfare recipients. A plain yes or no was the dividing line between receiving a month’s worth of food stamps, or not getting them. That was the beauty of the English language; its vocabulary led to action.
“What else should I know about? Donations from charity? Loans from family members?”
“Absolutely not. My husband, the kids, they’re gone. There is nobody.”
Another female on her own. I studied Mrs. Dominguez and Mary Klein, how they glanced at each other. Were they lovers? It wasn’t likely. Then I did my mathematics. Adding up the numbers, I saw my client was qualified to receive her benefits for the next month.
For this, I was glad. I was never happy about denying food stamps or GA to any of the adult women and men on my caseload. This was something most people failed to realize. For example: a policeman didn’t want to arrest people and send them to jail, and the typical eligibility worker didn’t enjoy cutting off social services to needy people. But the rules had to be obeyed.
“I guess that covers it. Is there anything else I should know about?”
“No. What else is there?”
My work limited fraternization with the clientele. I had to stay inscrutable and uninvolved. I had to keep my distance from women like Frances Dominguez or Mary Klein, because there were a million of them in the distance, and they were traveling single file in my direction. The manila folders in my storage cabinets were filled with information about people like them. I stood up, put away my notebook and edged towards the door, saying, “That’s it then. The food stamps and the vouchers will be in the mail.”
Everyone smiled, and Frances Dominguez showed me out, burbling when I was on her porch. “It’s been great, Mrs. Hassler. Really great. We should do this more often.”
nine
My duty done, I cruised north on the Mission’s miracle mile, swishing by Ming’s Garden Restaurant, Lady Seikko’s Japanese Restaurant, Starlight Furniture Co., the Hong Kong Cafe, Saifi Fabric, Marian’s Women’s Apparel and the Wing Tai Sewing Inc.
Most caseworkers didn’t have access to the
DSS vehicle pool. For me, the privilege was a holdover from my earlier days at the complex. Back when Petard had selected me, the eager girl, from the other rank and file social workers who were kissing up to him. It had been an electrifying moment when he’d introduced himself to me at a general meeting.
“Mother of god, how delicious. You must be Charlene Hassler.”
“You got it.”
“How old are you, child?”
“I’m twenty-two.”
He chortled from his belly. “Well, don’t be shy about it.”
I’ll never forget his smile; a dazzling great white shark bite of a smile. He made sure everyone else in the conference room saw how he treated me, and with that showy gesture, my climb began. Petard, arrogant and narcissistic, didn’t care about other people’s opinions. He’d preened over me, asking, “How long’ve you been here, Charlene?”
“Nine months, including my probationary period.”
“You like working here?”
“Yeah, it’s very satisfying.”
“And what about your plans? Are you going to stay here on Otis Street with us?”
I didn’t know what to say to a man who’d been on the news shaking hands with the President. Everyone knew that Gerald was in favor with the current Administration, that his star was ascending. I gambled with my answer.
“My future is to be here. I’m willing to give it everything.”
“I know you will, and let me ask you…are you willing to go for the long run? There’s a lot of work to be done.”
He stared into my eyes and I could not oppose him. You only live once, and I wasn’t about to say no.
“I’m prepared for any eventuality,” I said.
Starting there, Petard began to groom me as his heir apparent.