Ambrose Bierce - San Francisco Noir 2 - The Classics

The foreman now walked past the docks outside, framed by that same window that held the onlookers. “That,” he told the two boys, for they were college students, “you won’t find in the books. Guaranteed,” he said. “Heh, heh. Guaranteed.”

At dusk sometimes, a veil of mist lingers in the twilight over the city. Coming home from the Golden Gate Fields racetracks in the winds of March, a loser in many more ways than just playing the horses, driving over the Bay Bridge, Kip Benito, an American citizen for two years now, mused over that delicate gauze curtain clinging over the jagged gray skyline of San Francisco. On the hills behind and beyond, a penciled, wispy line of cloud pointed at rows of houses and buildings baring their teeth. Windows goldened in the fading twilight, streaks of pink and magenta glowing in the darkening sky.

He was on his way to Blanco’s to down a few beers and bullshit a bit with Rudy the bartender. He was worried about Nena’s pregnancy and their planned elopement this Saturday. He was going to borrow money from Rudy. A lot of money.

He was down two thousand: He had lost his cousin Mando’s fifteen hundred dollars that he needed for Nena’s “going away” money, for she was starting to show.

But he couldn’t lose, he had said to himself. He couldn’t lose. Hard-luck stories he only liked in books, not in real life. He’d lost so many times before. “Just this once, God, let me win,” he pleaded in Cebuano. “And after this, you can let loose on me as much as you want.” He did not know whether he was bargaining with God or the devil.

Just yesterday, less than twenty-four hours ago, his wallet was comfortably padded with eighteen hundred-dollar bills that he had accumulated from various winnings here and there. Will, discipline, nerve, stamina, and smarts were ingredients for winning in that crucible of poker, dice, and horses that helped him get by in those past few months. But it still had not been enough. If he paid back Mando the fifteen hundred, that would only leave three hundred for him and Nena and Seattle and Alaska and a new life — maybe. That was their original plan.

Preparing himself to be satisfied with winning two or three hundred, he had instead lost it all, all of the eighteen hundred-dollar bills. He had borrowed five hundred more from friends at the tracks and lost that too. That day, everything fell through. And that was when he decided to go to Blanco’s and see Rudy.

Nena had been going to stewardess school and had decided that upon finishing she would head to the main office in Denver where there were more opportunities. But when she missed her period, she started to worry and told Kip about it — and he began to worry.

This money situation really started some time back when Mando was talking to him in a small Pinoy hangout on Kearny Street called the Palate of Fine Arts — right beside Mike’s Pool Hall across from Ramona’s Café, and beside the Bataan Restaurant in Manilatown. Mando was talking about money. He had tried to persuade Kip to join up with him. He would be a perfect collector, Mando urged him.

“Collector?” Kip had laughed. “Mando, I hate those guys! The blood of champions runs in my veins — and yours too,” he told his cousin in Filipino.

“Is that why you accepted three thousand dollars to marry?” Mando answered curtly in English, before softly adding: “C’mon, Kip. Everybody is stained. We’re just people.”

Shortly after the conversation, Kip accepted a loan of fifteen hundred dollars from Mando.

I can’t lose now, he had said to himself as he crossed the Bay Bridge to go into the Golden Gate Fields racetrack that morning and remembered the feeling. Everyone else had already lost. His friends had all lost, his relatives, his sometime opponents in the ring, everyone had already lost. He approached the ticket window to put in his first bets on Comes the Dawn and The Seventh Sun. “Box it,” he told the man at the window, and handed him a hundred dollars.

Well, Comes the Dawn came in around midnight and The Seventh Sun, a seven-to-one shot, came in seventh. Everyone had already lost; he couldn’t lose now. But he did.

And he was down two thousand dollars when he took the Broadway exit at the end of the bridge to head for Blanco’s. It was a good bar and a good location — two blocks down from Broadway, the tourists’ Sin City attraction, and nestled cozily between Chinatown on one side and North Beach, the Italian section, on the other. Though Kip Benito was not a regular at the bar, he understood the feeling of the place, a little corner of the world with your seat and your place and yourself. It was a refuge, he admitted — a haven, yet a battlefield. Once in a great while, when he’s had too much to drink, he felt this. Kip tried to express it in words many times, in both English or Filipino, but he just couldn’t do it. Only Nena understood the unspoken inside of him. If blades or fists were words, he would be a poet. He thought Rudy the bartender might be a poet in his own way. He did not falter with words, and Kip envied and admired that.

When Kip sat down at one end of the counter, several stools beside him empty, Rudy was already explaining something to several tourists complaining about the hills.

“But the city is hills,” he said. “That’s just another part of her sex appeal. See, you can’t drive in this town, no. You gotta ride it, up and down, in and out of alleyways, hard and soft turns, and then up and down again. All the time up and down, you see...?” Without looking down, Rudy pulled a towel from under the counter and wiped his forehead and neck quickly but gracefully, not skipping a beat, then stuck it right back under and continued: “Hills are nothing but mounds and curves...” Hidden behind the towel rack was a bolo, a long blade similar to the Mexican machete, a souvenir that he had bought from a pawnshop in Reno. It hung terrifyingly beautiful against the back panel under the counter.

Kip didn’t know exactly what the hell Rudy was telling the tourists this time, but it sounded like another one of his dirty jokes. Kip was getting drunk and horny.

“She’ll dictate the rhythm,” Rudy said carefully, “by which you must get to your destination.” And he dropped a fist firmly on the counter just as Kip downed his fourth beer. Rudy quickly turned to Kip all the way on the other end and said, “Be right with you, champ,” and continued regaling his audience of five or six tourists. “You see, Coit Tower, for those of you who don’t know, is supposed — or was supposed — to have been the phallic symbol of San Francisco. Some rich old lady named Coit, what a name, built it because she had a thing for firemen, see.”

“Firemen?” one of the tourists said.

“Yeah, the hose, you see. The nozzle, you know?” And his right hand dove under the counter, swept his brown mustached face with the towel, and disappeared again under the bar. From the jukebox, Sam Cooke was wailing “... It’s been a long, a long time comin’, but I know, a change gonna come, oh yes it will...”

Kip looked at Rudy from the other end of the counter.

“Sure,” Rudy said, sniffing and touching his nose as he looked around, “I live by there, below and behind. And in front of it is the bay, with its vessels of ferries and ships and tankers and tugboats and sailboats and cruise liners. On light windy days like this, it’s like a big parade out there.” Rudy was getting carried away with his descriptions again.

“Right, Rudy, hey?” Kip laughed from the other end of the counter.

“You’re chuckling over your glass again. You’re getting drunk, my man,” Rudy said, walking toward Kip, and as he got closer, whispered in his ear, “C’mon inside, man. I gotta show you something. Harry!” Rudy called, and a man approached the bar. “Harry, I know you’re the wrong man to put behind a bar, but what the hell. I got no choice. You got seniority.” And the men sitting at the table where Harry came from exploded in laughter and derision. “Take over for a few minutes, will you?” Rudy said.