Hungry Ghosts

by Susan Dunlap

  “Even on both of us,” I said.

  “I’ll have a helluva time trying,” Eamon said, grinning at Tia.

  Jeffrey didn’t smile. “Not spend, Eamon, be relieved of. You’re lured in here by my barker.” Jeffrey nodded at the thug. “Darcy entices you upstairs. Or maybe—sorry, Eamon”—now he did smile—“you don’t even get that far. Maybe my bartender gives you a Mickey Finn and drops you through— You know back then the Bay was just a few yards from here?”

  “You mean it’s all filled land for the next four blocks to the Bay, right?” Tia asked helpfully, without looking up from fumbling with her cane and purse and shawl. She gave Jeffrey a small pat on his side, the way a mother might to assure her child he was fine, then she moved far enough to be out of his limelight.

  “Filled land is a slippery concept,” he said with a little grin. “This—my saloon—was—is—on the waterfront or close to it. Let’s say close to. Close enough for me to invest in a subterranean alley from the basement to the docks. For the likes of you, Eamon. I knock you out, drop you through a trapdoor onto a cart waiting there, on top of the other victims. The cart rattles down the rail and dumps the lot of you into a ship’s hold. By the time you wake up, all you see is the Golden Gate slipping away behind you and the whole Pacific ahead. You’ve been on land for an hour, max.” Jeffrey Hagstrom was back in his stride now, as if Tia’s touch had transfused him.

  “Shanghaied,” Leo said.

  Everyone laughed. The volume of its sound made me aware that our circle had grown, with Jeffrey now holding court before half the guests.

  I had assumed that Tia was with Eamon. They had walked in as one; they looked perfect together, their contradictions creating balance: his tall sturdiness grounding her fragility, her plain khaki shawl and long skirt grounding his expensive jacket with the narrow band of navy and chartreuse handkerchief just peeking from the pocket, her understated beauty reflecting back on his flair.

  “The way to the dock was just large enough for the carts,” Jeffrey went on. “Luckily the ground slants downhill to the Bay.”

  Jeffrey had that about-to-make-it look as he held forth on the tunnel.

  “It’s still here, isn’t it?” Leo asked.

  “Oh no, those carts—”

  Leo grinned. “No, no. I mean, the tunnel. It’s still down there, right beneath us, right?”

  CHAPTER 5

  THERE WASN’T even time for Jeffrey Hagstrom to offer Leo directions to the old tunnel. Instantly, Eamon Lafferty led the charge out of the zendo into the courtyard. The light in the hall was slightly brighter than in the zendo, marking the edges of Tia’s body as I walked out behind her. She used her cane, and I could see the slight quiver in her arm as she leaned against Jeffrey, letting him support her in a way that would once have horrified her. She paused at the door, turned back momentarily, then moved on. Her jaw was tighter than I’d ever seen it.

  In school, I hadn’t known her well, but I’d run into her a lot, at the kind of parties we didn’t mention to parents, at track meets and tests, and, for a month our senior year, in a play. Not once had a wrinkle of hesitation lined her face. She had skated on her ability to see things before they changed and to adjust so fast that she was on to the future while those around her were clambering out of the past.

  But now it was not that she had seen the end of the tunnel, rather that she’d realized it had an end.

  I felt so sad for her. Or was I imagining her distress? Truth was, I was still so unnerved from the instant of “seeing Mike,” I was hardly a decent judge of anyone else’s emotions.

  We all kept walking, out the door into the courtyard.

  The potted trees threw fingers of darkness across the stones as our group followed Eamon behind the building to the fire escape I had used this morning. There were fewer than a dozen of us left now.

  “It’ll be back here,” Eamon announced, and the rest of us piled up behind him. He moved sideways, hands behind his back, scanning the base of the back wall and murmuring monosyllables that suggested impending discovery. I kept expecting Jeffrey to take over again. But Jeffrey seemed content to let Eamon drag out his failure.

  It was Leo who spotted a grunge-encrusted half door behind one of the tree pots. Eamon leapt forward to do the pulling, and the effort took all of his body weight and the help of a crowbar someone fetched. The door was only thirty inches high. A tiny flashlight materialized and its straw of illumination shone into a shaft narrowed with slick, hardened black substances. It looked about ten feet long. I’m not claustrophobic, but what came to mind were those grim stories of children falling into wells and fire departments lowering ropes and drilling parallel holes and none of it ever able to save them. Similar foreboding thoughts must have crossed half the dozen minds here as we all peered down into the blackness. One woman said something about wearing high heels, a man muttered about it being better by daylight, someone else stammered of dinner plans and made a beeline for the street. Flashlights glistened off slimy walls. Jumping into that chute would be like going through a mummy’s wrappings with a hole in the bottom. As unappealing as it looked, still the seduction of the tunnel’s lurid history kept us poised on the edge, that and the unwillingness to be the first to admit fear. I glanced hopefully over at Leo, but there was an odd look of determination on his face. It wouldn’t be Leo who’d save us. Tia tottered at the edge. Her jaw was set, her gaze unwavering, like the Tia of old. “It can’t be more than ten feet down!” She pulled off her shawl and thrust it into the nearest hand.

  I couldn’t let her do it. “Make way!” I called out. “Professional here. Stunt double into the hole!” I held a hand out for one of the torches.

  “Stop!” Jeffrey called from behind us. “You’re in the wrong place. The entrance is here.”

  I stepped back so fast I smacked into Leo.

  “It’s over here, on this side of the courtyard,” our expert insisted.

  We hurried to the front of the courtyard, in the corner behind a five-foot-high brick wall that connected to the entry arch. Two of the potted maple trees stood on the metal doors. Relieved as I was, a dull wave of disappointment washed through me at the sight of this prosaic entryway, the type of loading hatch found in sidewalks in all big cities.

  “Then what was that back there?” Tia demanded sharply.

  “Sewer, probably.” Jeffrey bit his lip. “Or just a hole. This area is sprinkled with little holes like that, particularly here where rock meets fill. Tunnels made it worse.”

  “You’ve been in the tunnel?” Tia demanded.

  “Well, no.” He moved another step back. “You know I’m not crazy about closed spaces. The entry to the tunnel’s here. I can tell you all about it, but, well, I’m not going to go down there with you.”

  “You could have told us before Darcy almost jumped into God knows what.” Tia grabbed her shawl from his hand and nearly smacked his face with it as she flung it around her shoulders. It was almost as if all her concern for him earlier had never been.

  “Here! I’ve got it open!” Eamon pulled the big metal sheet up, letting it clank open to the cement. Again the flashlight circled around, but this chamber was the size of a boxcar, with a metal ladder—clearly a later addition—on the wall. Tia was over the edge so quickly the metal cover was still reverberating. Lowering herself onto the same leg step after step, she steadied herself with arms that were working over capacity. Eamon followed, then I, and Leo and four others, till the tunnel was crowded and the small rhomboid of dusky light wasted in illuminating our own bodies. The odor of must and decay was so thick it was hard to breathe and made it seem as if everybody who’d passed here on his way to death had left a part of himself, a part I was pulling up my nose.

  “To your right,” Jeffrey called down. “The tunnel slopes toward the Bay. If you look down, you can still see track marks from the carts, I know.”

  “Uh-uh! I’ve seen enough,” a woman said. “I’m not staying in any grave till I have to
.” She grabbed on to the ladder and was up over the edge before anyone reacted.

  A narrow band of light shone on the damp earth and stone walls. The stone was encased in an unnatural grime that must have been the residue of the nineteenth-century traffic and its passengers’ blood and vomit. The still-damp mud clung to our shoes, as if trying to hold us here in the same earth as the long-dead sailors and dying prostitutes. I started to breathe through my mouth, but it didn’t cut the stench. Someone aimed a light around the edges of the floor and ceiling and held it overhead to scan the tunnel roof for signs of the trapdoor. The dark sucked up the tiny beam of light and the chill echoed the icy water of the Pacific.

  “There it is!” The light shone on scratches in the ceiling two yards along that must have been the trapdoor from the saloon-turned-zendo.

  “Sheesh! Do you think—”

  Suddenly Tia was running down the tunnel. The dark engulfed her. Her heels and her cane clattered erratically. There was a thud—and then a scream.

  “Aim the light at her!” Eamon ordered the man who had the other flashlight. But the beam was eaten by the dark in less than two yards.

  “Tia?” I called.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tia!” I yelled. “Give me the light!”

  The man with the flashlight started toward me, but a hand grabbed it and vanished into the dark.

  I started after.

  “It’s okay!” It was Leo. “I’ve got her! Here!”—he aimed the light back so it made a dim path. “Help me get her out of here!”

  “I’m fine. Just hit my head,” she murmured unconvincingly as Eamon and Leo half carried her, their own feet sliding in the damp mud. Jeffrey was at the top of the ladder, and Leo passed her to Eamon partway up, then with one arm hoisted her far enough for Jeffrey to pull her up and steady her on her feet.

  “Get away!” She rammed both fists into Jeffrey’s shoulders. He jolted, veered over the edge of the hole, and jerked away. “Just get away from me, Jeff!”

  Behind me someone gasped.

  “She must have really hit her head,” I said, without turning around. The whole thing was so unlike Tia, or at least the Tia I used to know. Never had she come close to anything so uncool with a boyfriend; it would have humiliated her. What was going on?

  But by the time I waited my turn and got up the ladder, she had her cane and was barely leaning on it. She was shivering a bit but smiling at Leo, nodding in apparent thanks for something as he walked off.

  Eamon patted Tia’s back and took off at a lope, leaving her pulling the miserably damp, muddy shawl tighter around her thin shoulders. The stench of earth and decay clung to the shawl.

  I grabbed her arm. “Tia, what’s going on with you?”

  “I’m fine!”

  “Really? Lucky for Jeffrey you didn’t send him flying down there.”

  “Jeffrey?” Her face went blank momentarily. “I didn’t . . . He wasn’t that . . . I wouldn’t have let him fall,” she said, looking more herself. “He’s fine.”

  I caught her eye. “Listen, you whack your head and you’re not always the best judge of what’s what. I speak from experience, experiences.”

  She laughed, but it was a forced sound. “I’ve done worse and survived.”

  “What I’m saying is—”

  “Where are you staying in the city? With your sister . . . with Grace?”

  I gave up. It was her life. “At Mom’s. But Gracie’s living there for now.”

  “Do you have her phone—”

  Eamon pulled up to the curb and waved.

  She squeezed my shoulder. “Gotta go. Eamon’s driving me home.” She turned toward the car, took two unsteady steps, stopped so suddenly she had to grab the cane with both hands. “Come to lunch tomorrow?”

  It wasn’t an invitation one declines. “Sure.”

  “Noon?”

  “Fine. I’ll get you Gracie’s number, but if you’ve got signs of concussion, don’t wait to ask Gracie. Heads aren’t her specialty.”

  She laughed, and this time it sounded real. She pulled a business card from her pocket and by the time she extended it to me Tia seemed as in control as she always had. “I’m really looking forward to lunch, Darcy. It’s time you came home. So, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She walked slowly, but without weaving or using her cane, across the pavement, folded up the shawl, and slid into the green convertible.

  In the open car, Tia looked just like she had at that high school track meet, sitting next to Mike, grinning as the fog-laden wind blew her silky hair off her face. Eamon hit the gas, and as they drove off, a gust wafted her hair and she leaned in toward him and smiled as if the past ten minutes had never happened, as if the last twenty-five years had dissolved.

  I followed them with my gaze, suddenly unable to move. Concern for her, loss of Mike, that glorious moment when I believed Mike had come back, Tia so undone: the whole swirl of emotion engulfed me. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the car, lest I come apart.

  And then the convertible turned the corner onto Columbus and was gone.

  Slowly I retraced their route back to the curb in front of me. But now the parking spot was empty. No car blocked my view of the chair boutique across the street, and Jeffrey Hagstrom running around in the window like a crazy person.

  CHAPTER 6

  I WAS ACROSS the street and banging on the shop door before I had time for second thoughts.

  Jeffrey Hagstrom looked worse than Tia. Half hidden amid shiny gum-ball-colored accent chairs, he looked like a disoriented mole frantically rooting in a dahlia bed.

  “Did you drop something?”

  “What?” He jerked upright, pale round face flushed, eyes quivering as he took me in. “No. Well, nothing important. I was just . . . What are you doing here?”

  “I figured you’d lost your mind . . . and you were looking for it.” I held my breath.

  But I’d guessed right. After a slow double take, he mustered up a shaky grin. He glanced around at the tangle of chairs, hesitated as if about to apologize, then shrugged as if putting his emotional state into words was beyond him. The color was draining from his face now. Seeing him in this light, I realized he was taller than I’d thought, and thinner. But he looked like he would be fat—or should be. His short sandy hair seemed almost painted on. His shoulders sloped so steeply when viewed straight on, his arms seemed to sprout from just below his neck. Everything about him murmured: Pay me no mind, or if you’d prefer, kick me.

  Which was just what Tia had done.

  He let his fingers linger on the armrest of a brass pipe throne in the window as if it were the only friend who could be counted on to help him. “Jeffrey,” I said, “is the coffee shop down the street still open?”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on, we’re going. Coffee’ll be the thing for both of us.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I was too busy at the reception to eat anything. I’m starved, and I need coffee. You can’t refuse me company.”

  He stood, fingers tightening and releasing the tubular armrest, as if weighing the danger of trusting me as he had Tia. Finally, he jerked his hand free. “Just let me straighten things up.” The shop was small for a business with such a narrow specialty stock. To survive in this pricey area Jeffrey would have to sell a lot of chairs made to please the eye rather than the butt. But he hadn’t crammed in stock. Each piece stood as if it was the focal point. The effect was to create an awed urgency in the viewer as if he were at a cocktail party of the stars. Even now, well after closing time, Jeffrey moved methodically adjusting chair after chair. The arrangement had to be a work of love, and of art. No wonder Jeffrey and Tia had connected.

  But by the time we finally stepped outside, I was thinking, No wonder he drove her crazy. Pacific Street was as empty as a back lot at night. No traffic, just swaths of curb with no parked vehicles, no one walking but us two. And no lights from the café on the corner, either. “Damn! It’s closed!”


  Jeffrey made an odd noise I took to be a laugh. “I’ve got a key.”

  “You own the café?”

  “No. Renzo’s the block’s keeper of the keys. He’s got one for my shop, your place, too. Handy when you forget or the alarm goes off. He gives keys to us regulars, you know, in case of emergency.”

  “Emergency? You mean food emergency?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, for Renzo, there are only two kinds of emergencies: earthquake and lack of coffee. Not in that order.” He unlocked the glass door of the Barbary Caffè, a space even smaller than his. Three tiny tables with two round chairs each and a bar packed it.

  “Are all these tables ever full?”

  “Huh? Oh . . . yeah. But you don’t slide your chair back without apologizing to at least three people. Coffee? Food?”

  “Is there any?”

  Jeffrey managed a laugh. “That would be the third emergency: no food. Focaccia?”

  “O-kay!” I sat while he took charge of the espresso maker and put the focaccia bread in the toaster oven. I had the feeling he was glad for the counter separating us, giving him time to pull his mind out of the store—or away from Tia—and focus enough to carry on a conversation with me. The familiar tasks seemed to calm him. He didn’t look at home behind the counter, but at least like he was visiting home. With the blinds down and the smell of garlic mixing with the aroma of coffee, the place seemed cozy, particularly after that wretched tunnel. Still, I was shivering, and when he brought the espresso I held the cup to my sternum till it nearly burned.

  He passed me the plates with the puffy, steaming bread and we wolfed it. Eating the warm bread together gave the occasion the illusion of normalcy, as if Tia hadn’t just lost control or Jeffrey had not been prowling his shop like a crazy man. I wanted to ask him about her: was she on serious pain meds? And the cane! Why was Tia Dru of all people walking with a cane? I took another bite of focaccia.