by Arnold, Jim
“Why three-fifty?” I said, after a suitable pause to catch my breath. A check back up the stairs told me that Connie, of course, was gone.
“Why do you see ghosts, Ben?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just now tapping into this awesome power I always had but just never knew it.” I pointed the sharp end of the umbrella in his direction. “You’re always sitting down. You’re the laziest ghost I know.”
“Don’t think so. Three and a half—a dog is like a half-ghost. Most people get four.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Bernard?” Someone had started down the steps toward us. “I’m going through enough right now, without all this weird shit, too—and why does she always run away?”
He beamed up at me with such absurd delight, I almost didn’t mind when the tall black man in the sharp suit passed behind me, shook his head and mumbled disgustedly, “Fucking San Francisco…”
18
People were used to seeing others—many others, in fact—talk to themselves, the walls or the air in the Muni and BART tunnels, so I figured the nicely dressed stranger would chalk up my chat with Bernard’s ghost to homelessness, insanity, drug addiction or a convenient combination of all of these.
“That doggie has a mind of her own,” Bernard said. “I never know when I’m going to see her, but the nice thing is she can’t really get into trouble anymore—so I don’t worry.”
I leaned toward him and whispered, as there were now other people coming down the stairs who might hear. “It would be nice if she’d be friendlier, like a pet’s supposed to be—after all, I only took care of her and treated her like a queen for her entire goddamn life.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the way that works and you know it. She was a gift—like the way the cute guy upstairs is a gift, a beautiful gift you’ve thrown to the back of the closet behind your ugly winter coats.”
I stabbed him with the umbrella tip, but it slid right through his leather jacket. “Jake? What do you know about Jake, about fucking anything?”
“You’ll wake up a year from now and realize he was ‘it’—as you hear him and the new boyfriend climb up the back stairs at your place.” He floated up the wall till he was standing in front of me, face-to-face.
Bernard glided back toward the platform. “Wait a minute,” I said. Now people were looking and I was hot around the ears.
“I’ve got a train to catch and a dog to find,” he said, and disappeared into the coming throng.
* * *
It no longer seemed at all weird to me that ghosts of my dead friends showed up, unannounced, to chat.
How could Bernard, who’d never known Jake in life, be so sure he was “the one”? This was incredibly irritating and unnecessary, particularly given the other challenges of my day.
What really got me was the nagging feeling Jake understood some deep life secrets that clearly I hadn’t yet been privy to. I wanted him to explain to me how he happened to be infected with HIV—surely, this had taken place after safe-sex guidelines had become known and commonplace; so, buddy, what, exactly, is your excuse?
* * *
Pushing through the slats into the pitch-dark interior of the Slog, I was momentarily blinded, but I heard the faint ding-dong noises of the idle pinball machine.
“Well, well. It’s about time you came back to see us!” boomed a familiar voice from the dark.
If I kept walking forward, I’d hit the bar eventually.
Bartender Rickie did seem to belong, in an exotic scenario—something slightly English, perhaps, that involved gaslights and blood.
“So you remember me?”
“Yeah—Bert—I remember you. You a Wild Turkey man, am I not right?”
“The Wild Turkey part’s correct,” I said, as my ass felt around for the closest padded barstool. Slide viewer clicked on Edmund, grinning at me in his leather jacket and his jockstrap, his butt cheeks spread over the torn leather upholstery.
“It’s Ben,” I said as Rickie set up a double.
I was thankful my skin had two layers of fabric—the cotton-blend slacks and my gray 2(x)ist jockeys—between it and the barstool.
“Where’s—?”
“Eddie, the old guy without the pants?” Rickie asked, sliding the big shot toward me, a small drip filling a chink on the ancient, pockmarked wood.
There was that back mirror again. I looked surprised. Leaning over in such a way as to not have to watch myself, I licked the rim of the glass, tasting the warm whiskey sugar.
“Yeah, Edmund, that’s him,” I said.
“Checked into Hotel VA’s what I hear, yes sir.”
From somewhere out in the darker reaches of the Slog, a man and woman laughed. Perhaps he tried to seduce her with a bad joke, and she decided to politely giggle, although this bar wasn’t likely to attract either jokers or polite listeners.
I must’ve looked confused, even with a shot glass attached to my lips. Rickie elaborated: “He’s out at Fort Miley, vets administration hospital.” He leaned over the bar, closer. “That Eddie got some liver problems.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said.
Rickie raised a bushy eyebrow and smiled wider, showing off his braces. “He’ll be in for a while now; you ought take a trip out and visit—sure he’d be happy to see a boy like you.”
Rickie reached behind him for the Wild Turkey bottle and put it on the bar in front of me.
* * *
The image of Dallas that stuck was from that awful December morning in New York. She’d crossed Sixth Avenue against the light, outrunning a line of taxicabs racing toward her, short black spiked heels scraping the uneven asphalt. That was the last I saw of her, in that morning-after-ecstasy sadness, even though we’d promised to meet up back in San Francisco, back here at the Slog.
I opened my eyes to another full double shot and looked around. There was the outline of that couple at the table in back, who still chattered away. A man with dark curly hair sat at the end of the bar. His eyes were glued to Rickie’s small TV—tuned to Oprah.
“What about that girl—Dallas?” I asked Rickie.
He eyed the old clock on top of his cash register. “She comes in most every night, still most days, too.” Rickie winked at me. “Why you ask, Ben? You holdin’ out on us?”
“Just wondering about her.”
“I bet you are.” He leaned in again. “If it’s not pussy, then it must be the dope.”
I sucked back the rest of the whiskey and licked the bottom of the glass. “You just think you know, but, Rickie…time for me to get to work.”
“If you come this far—why bother?” He arched an eyebrow.
As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Jason had been promoted—let him do the goddamn work.
Hadn’t a swank new SoMa bar catering to the straight-ish dot-com crowd just opened down the street?
* * *
Tanga was almost arrogant in its design—floor-to-ceiling windows, the usual industrial let-it-all-hang-out and show-the-innards minimalism—which I’d always thought was really taking things to the extreme.
It was a radical change from the old SoMa of closed-up warehouses, ancient brick edifices painted gray—or even better, black—that served as hideouts for successive generations of the criminal element as well as the pre-AIDS gay sex locus of the City. Now the same shaded doorways meant refuge from Pacific winds for the homeless—at least until dot-com money arrived.
At a low table in back, filled with more glowing votive candles than drinks, sat five or six Dockered software engineers from Safe Harbor. Fuck. If these guys were here, undoubtedly there’d be more company employees lurking.
Tanga attracted the typical singles age-grouping of fashionable and well-employed twenty- and thirtysomethings, with the occasional older individual of either gender hanging around looking desperate and late.
I hid behind a large ficus tree illuminated by a sole ceiling spot. A curly, pointed leaf tickled my nose. The pol
ished, blond wood bar—nothing about which appeared the least bit Brazilian to me—was about six feet away.
I wanted another drink.
“Everybody can see you there—it’s not a very effective cover,” a female voice said through the branches. I could make out a girl in a short black dress holding an empty tray with her right hand.
Busted. But, hey, this was a cocktail waitress and she’d get me what I needed. She came into full view and I realized it was Dallas.
She pointed at me. “It’s you—so where’s your fat friend?”
My face tingled with embarrassment and the unwelcome connection to Paul Sutcliffe.
“Funny, I just came from the Slog.”
She laughed. “Little early to be bar hopping, Ben. I mean, look—sun’s not even down yet.”
Long rays of the setting sun reflected back golden orange from car mirrors parked outside on Folsom. I was going to have to ride my bike back home in the dark.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I just like carrying drinks around and communing with assholes.” She smiled. “Occasionally a girl has to supplement her income. I bet you want something to drink.”
“You haven’t forgotten.”
“You’re a whiskey guy, right?
Dallas turned and headed to the waiter end of the bar but was intercepted by a couple of uneasy-looking men in their forties. She jotted down their order. One of them wiped his brow with his navy fleece.
“Ben—surprised to see you here.” It was Jason. Apparently, I hadn’t hidden well enough.
“Oh. Jason, it’s that time already? Thought I’d stop in and check this place out. I was curious.”
“It’s really bumper-to-bumper on Fridays,” he said. “Met my last girlfriend here, the one you met—Rachel, that archaeologist from Brandeis.”
“Right.” How could I forget Rachel, who dripped money, education and connections? She was in a different league altogether from Jason—though the plain truth was, he was much better looking. Today he wore yet another designer—might have been Kenneth Cole or John Varvatos.
It was so irritating having a traitor in my midst who was also magazine material.
Dallas returned, held out my whiskey, an orange napkin with Tanga’s chocolate logo deftly held between her ring and little fingers. I took both.
“What are you drinking, Jason?”
“Just a beer, Dos Equis,” he said, leaning Dallas’s way.
“Got it,” she said, and winked at me.
“It’s not what you think—not in your wildest dreams.” I laughed—once, and Jason turned red. “Get him a beer.”
She looked him over quickly before leaving. She wouldn’t have been Dallas if she hadn’t.
I leaned close to his ear, which required standing on my toes. “You want to be very careful if you go there,” I said. “I know this girl, and, well, she’s been around.”
Jason looked at me like I’d been born yesterday. “You think I haven’t?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not your…your kid,” he said, spraying drops of saliva on me.
“I didn’t mean to imply you were. I was trying to save you some—”
Dallas was back, with that odd little cock of her head, like she’d missed something, something she would’ve liked to have heard.
“One Dos Equis, tall friend of Ben’s,” she said, and Jason took the beer. “How’s that whiskey?”
“I haven’t had time to drink it, but I’ll want another.”
Dallas turned on her heel and flashed her smile at yet another thirsty youngster.
Jason looked down at me as I brushed his inadvertent spit off my face. “Aren’t you having chemo or something? Should you be drinking?”
“It’s radiation and, no, I probably shouldn’t be, but then again, you’re not my parent, either.”
“I’ve got to leave,” he said, belching, lamely trying to disguise it with his fist.
* * *
“I don’t think you need any more, Ben,” Dallas said as she pulled the glass from my hand. “They got a ten-thousand-dollar Italian espresso machine back there—why don’t I get you some?”
Even though we hardly knew each other, Dallas knew how to take care of me—there was that bond we’d forged though altered states—in both New York and California.
She found us a table, took a long break and heard the story. I hadn’t mentioned cancer at all in Manhattan.
I told Dallas everything, about the operation, the radiation, even about the sperm-bank donations. Either she listened intently or she was bored. To her credit, she squeezed my hand the entire time and told a coworker to “go fuck off” when informed her break was over.
She called me a cab—which I had drop me at the next corner.
I couldn’t leave my bike at Safe Harbor.
Riding back to Douglass Street, which was basically one long but very gradual uphill climb, I was grateful for the dark because it meant the ocean wind had died down. It had rained slightly while I was marooned in Tanga, and Seventeenth Street was slick.
As I headed further west at Dolores, fresh rain hit the street and me, the drops flying against my face so hard, they felt like pinpricks. I’d stop at that Castro Street liquor store and get a small bottle of whiskey. I’d curl up in my bed, under the comforter where it was warm, have a sip or two and then sleep peacefully, getting plenty of rest to face the radiation.
The image of Davis Sternberg’s handsome, albeit a bit dorky, doctor’s face was the last thing in my mind as my wheels glided over the wet Muni tracks at Church Street and abruptly flipped the bike and me sideways onto the gritty pavement.
Watching as if this was a movie in slow motion, I felt my head strike the roadway from the force of the fall, bounce up, then strike it again with a loud crack. Thinking at first it was my skull but still apparently conscious, I realized the sound was my plastic bike helmet shattering.
* * *
I woke up with a pounding hangover. Since my slip at the Slog a couple of months prior, I’d managed my intake of drugs and alcohol judiciously—at least by my estimation—and hadn’t suffered the unfortunate side effects of addiction remembered so clearly from earlier in life.
Until now.
It was just like it had always been, when I struggled to piece together the reasons for the malaise, then remembered and dreaded the task at hand, all the while desperately trying to put myself together well enough to hide this from the rest of the world.
Sometimes a curious horniness accompanied my hangovers, and I had it in spades that morning.
On the slab I kept my eyes closed in case things started spinning. Like always, we listened to Bocelli, but I asked for the volume to be lower. I’d downed five ibuprofens for the headache.
When treatment was finished, Davis’s voice boomed into the room over the speakers.
“See you in a few minutes in my office, Ben.”
Had he really said “Ben”?
* * *
That inviting, friendly attitude—especially coming from Davis!—lifted my spirits and made me feel better by the second. Ignoring the crabby older guy whose open locker door blocked mine, I simply pushed it aside. “I’ve got a consult with my radiologist in five minutes, so I’m in a hurry.”
He grunted, and in my enthusiasm to assert my territorial imperative, I’d bumped his blotchy arm with the cold metal.
“Watch it, you little…creep,” he said, sliding farther away from me on the bench.
“Didn’t mean to hit you—sorry.” I lied about the sorry part, even though my clumsiness may not have been intentional. The bike helmet—with its side cracked and partially shattered—fell out of my locker onto the floor. I had the abrupt urge to tell Blotchy Guy I hoped whatever treatment he was getting wouldn’t work.
I bit my lip. This was so nasty, it surprised even me.
There was a small wall mirror in Davis’s basement office, so I checked quickly for eye puffiness before he came in. All
looked passable, if not great—truly, I was nearing forty-five and undergoing aggressive cancer therapy, so there had to be some wiggle room here.
“Ben,” Davis said, as he entered and closed the door behind him.
I sat down. “Eyelash hair. Got it out.”
He pulled up a castered stool opposite. His legs were spread wide and I wanted to look down at his nice doctor basket but didn’t dare. It would be so blatant, just so…queer. Still, that’s probably what he wanted, for me to push things.
He frowned. “You look a little drawn—after only five treatments—that’s a little unusual.”
“I feel pretty good. There’s no stomach problem or anything like they’d said there might be. Truth is, I had a late night.”
“It’s really important, Ben, that you eat right and get as much rest as possible during this treatment,” he said. “There’ll be time to have fun later; that’s what we’re working for here.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I can see it. I can smell it, too.”
Shit.
“One of my colleagues had the big four-oh birthday yesterday, and we went to Martuni’s for a couple of drinks.” I said. “Probably should have said no, but it was one of those work things.”
I thought it sounded sincere.
“Just watch it.” He closed my file. “Now, tell me what you had for breakfast this morning.”
* * *
When I sheepishly told Davis I hadn’t had time to eat anything solid, not even a piece of toast, he practically forced me to accompany him to the coffee shop across the street.
The Old Bay Diner wasn’t full, as it was now past prime breakfast hours, the clientele an odd mixture of San Francisco regulars and assorted medical personnel on breaks from Mount Horeb and Presidio.
The booths were upholstered in colored vinyl, a curious, alternating green and blue pattern, with a sparkle effect reflecting the hanging brass pendants above. On the walls were a succession of dusty photographs of the Presidio, Baker Beach, the Marin Headlands, and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Looks like there’s a free spot against the back wall,” Davis said, athletically avoiding a busboy who lurched toward him holding a gray tub piled high with dirty dishes.