Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

“Let’s just be here now,” Clarissa says. “We know the rules. It’s play time.” Her mouth glistens with a red lipstick that seems to have small stars encrusted within it. There are implications in the sheen Zoë doesn’t want to consider.

The wharf is almost deserted. It’s mid-day, mid-week, in an undifferentiated season. It’s another windswept early November. They walk hand-in-hand down the pier past occasional immigrant men fishing and stray teenagers who appear eager for corruption. Zoë and Clarissa know where they live. They, too, grew up in tenements designed for transience, already shabby decades ago, festering like sun sores. They were an integral part of the blueprint for the millennial slums in the sun. They were the penciled-in stick figures on the diagrams.

“Don’t look,” Clarissa cautions. “They’re contagious. We’ll get a contact psychotic flashback.”

The Last Edge Saloon perches on the furthest border of the pier. Their reunions begin here. They choose a booth facing the bay on three sides. They might drink coffee, perhaps with Dexedrine. Or get drunk on something festive, like White Russians or champagne. Since Zoë is technically in AA, she decides to let Clarissa set the tenor. Clarissa orders Bloody Marys. From a caloric standpoint, it’s the obvious choice.

“You still look like a hippy,” Clarissa observes. She regards her with a smile that is speciously conciliatory, perhaps even condescending. Zoë interprets this as disturbing. Anxiety is inseparable from the air. It’s in the oxygen molecules and how their biochemistry fails to correctly process them. It’s a perpetual uneasy truce.

“It’s my signature classic bohemian style,” Zoë replies. “And I want to formalize our alliance.”

“Do you want to get married?” Clarissa asks.

“I want a document with terms, precise specifications,” Zoë realizes. “And I want a weapons check.”

“Contracts are worthless,” Clarissa points out. “They’re a wish list for Santa.” She’s a lawyer, after all. She knows.

“We could become cousins,” Zoë suggests. This appeals to her.

Survivors of cataclysmic childhoods defined by poverty and isolation compulsively seek validation. They know they lack proper emotional documentation. Cousins evokes a blood connection that would both substantiate and obviate certain complexities, the ebbs and flows, droughts and monsoons of their relationship. Such a device would highlight and justify their erratic and pathologically intense con-junction. In regions of bamboo and sun-rotted petals, wind propels sand like tiny bullets, and there are always too few artifacts. Cousins is an inspiration.

“I could draw up the papers,” Clarissa is expansive. “But adoption is superior.”

Zoë came to San Francisco when she was seven. Her father, Marvin, had terminal cancer. Her mother was mentally ill. They were bankrupt. She used to think heaven was a foster home. If Marvin would just finally die, perhaps she could even get adopted.

“I’ve missed you like a first love,” Zoë says.

“I was your first love,” Clarissa reminds her. “And you mine.”

They lean across the faux-wood table etched with knife-gouged gang insignias and logos of metal bands and kiss again. They are both manic this autumn day. Zoë and Clarissa share numerous personality disorders. They are both bipolar 2 with borderline features. Substance abuse is a persistent irritant. Recently, they have both been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Today, sun turns San Francisco Bay the purple of noon irises in country gardens in July. To articulate such facets, to know and chart them, is a spasm of thunder inside, a tiny birth the size of a violet’s mouth. If she extracted this entity from her body, she could give it to Clarissa like an infant.

Zoë examines her almost cousin’s eyes. Even through dark sunglasses, they are inordinately bright. Zoë senses that she, too, is also glowing. Yes, her eyes are brass corridors reflecting fluorescent light. They are both candles today, unusually in sync, radiant with clarity and energy. Clarissa wears a silk scarf, a vivid purple implying motion. It might contain vertical waves.

“Do you like it?” Clarissa asks. “Hérmes. Take it. I just stole it on Maiden Lane.”

“You still shoplift?” Zoë holds the scarf. It feels moist and sanctified, an embrace around her neck.

“It’s an attitude like guerrilla warfare,” Clarissa explains. They’ve finished their second round of drinks. “A thrill kill requires mental discipline. Put it on and keep walking. I know, I’ve had it for years. I bought it on the Champs-Élysées. It was raining. I was at the George V. I remember the details absolutely. No one could dare question me. And no one does. Let’s ride the carousel.”

They carry their drinks across the stained wooden planks of the pier. The carousel is closed. Clarissa makes a cell phone call and a man appears. She produces three hundred-dollar bills. They wait for the right seats, choosing recently painted twin horses, white and intricately decorated like certain porcelain, and ride for half an hour. Clarissa vomits twice.

Zoë searches her theoretical arsenal. Is it time for a hand grenade? Should she call for a chopper with medics? Then she remembers her mission. “Are you okay?” she manages.

“I understand how children discover bulimia,” Clarissa reports, excited. “It’s an accidental miracle.”

“Maybe you’ll get retroactive psychiatric insight points,” Zoë says.

Despite the gym-suit camouflage, it’s obvious Clarissa has gained weight. But even they have taboos. Eating disorders are a forbidden topic. They meet on neutral ground, but there are still no-fly zones, areas of fragmentation bombs and landmines. Shrapnel is a constant.

Clarissa borrows the purple scarf to wipe her mouth. She has contaminated the silk, but Zoë still wants it back. She thinks, suddenly, of flower bouquets and their inadequacy. The floral arrangements of her life have been too much and not enough. The petals stained. They were debris.

“If a contract is insufficient, what can we do?” Zoë wonders.

They are standing on the pier where the carousel is no longer operating. Gone are the circles they inscribed in the loitering too-thin aqua air. Her body carved the afternoon as they whirled and spun, engraving trails of midnight-blue ink like marks made by fins. Somewhere these etchings floated into a river winding down to a bay, more invisible origami.

“We could get a tattoo,” Clarissa proposes. “Our names together in a heart.”

“A tattoo?” Zoë repeats, delighted. “Won’t it be painful and dangerous? The possibility of AIDS and infection?”

“But you love needles.” Clarissa is annoyed. “You’re a professional junky.”

“I’m in remission,” Zoë replies quickly, unexpectedly defensive.

In truth, during one particularly virulent carousel rotation, she began to think about a drug dealer she knew in North Beach. It’s walking distance, over a steep sequence of stone steps and hills, through a sudden unexpected gate. There is a combination lock. Within, a creek is dammed and trapped, the water a stalled green with slime and duck excrement. She knows this Victorian house, the grain in every wooden floorboard and the way sunset displays itself through each glass pane in every room. There is geometry to how sun impales and dissects the Golden Gate Bridge. If you comprehend this mathematics, you can construct spaceships and time machines with common household appliances. You listen to the radio and talk to any god. This is encrypted information she will be buried with.

“You always relapse,” Clarissa observes, as if stating an historical date or chemical formula. “And don’t you already have AIDS?”