Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

Uncle Bob had four rooms, an ocean view from each, and a staff of nurses ’round-the-clock: eight thousand dollars a month.

“Wait here,” he told her. “You can sit right there if you like. I can make tea or coffee.”

“That’s okay. I can’t stay long.”

She sat at a small Formica-topped table while he went into the next room and rummaged around. A narrow band of sunlight cut through the window, slicing between buildings across the alley. Bud Callum came back with a scrapbook, which he set in front of her.

“Just look at it for a minute,” he said. “So you’ll know. You’ll know I wasn’t making that stuff up. You think there’s something wrong with me, that I’m ready for the nut house. But I did all that. Here, look. It’s real.”

She slowly turned the black pages, scanning a procession of brittle clippings that told the tale of Bud Callum’s rise. It was a hell of a life, a lot more dramatic than anything Uncle Bob had ever done. Looking at a big halftone of Bud throwing a punch, Hanna had to laugh. “My lucky day,” she said, tapping the picture. “At precisely the right moment, this guy came into my life.”

Bud smiled and went back to the other room. From the top shelf of the closet he pulled down his old foot locker and flung it on the bed. He started digging through it. Nora’s pictures were in there. Weren’t they? This is where he kept them, where they’d always been. She’d see the resemblance, once he showed her. Nora . He hadn’t looked at those pictures in ages. Or had he? They’d better be here. Joan better not have moved them, or thrown them out.

Hanna opened an envelope that had been set inside the scrapbook and slid out the contents: photographs of a dark-haired woman with shining eyes and sharp, pretty features. In some of the pictures she was dressed in a bridal gown. Bud was right-they did look alike. He was in a lot of the photos, too. After flipping through them for a moment, Hanna put them aside. She felt she was violating an intimacy. Also in the envelope was a section of newspaper, quartered. The San Francisco Examiner, dated June 11, 1951. An article gave details of a fire on Jerrold Street that claimed the life of Nora Callum.

Hanna quickly put everything back in the envelope, then placed it carefully in the scrapbook.

“Why are you crying?” Bud asked as he stepped into the room.

“Just looking at all this. You’ve had quite a life.”

“Stop crying,” he said. He hated it when people cried. He could understand crying at beautiful music or the finish of a great ballgame or a terrific fight, but he couldn’t stand it when people cried out of sadness or regret. It made no sense. Crying solved nothing. If something hurt, you stowed the pain and kept on punching. You just banged your way through it, that’s all. You banged your way through to the end.

“I have to go,” Hanna said, standing up. “My daughter’s having a birthday party and I’m supposed to be getting everything ready.” She couldn’t stop the tears. “My God, I must look a mess. I’m sorry.”

“Here, hold on.” From the rear pocket of his trousers Bud pulled a folded white handkerchief, perfectly fresh.

Hanna laughed, which made her cry more. Nobody carries a clean handkerchief, she thought.

She drew in a sharp breath, almost a gasp, as he cupped the back of her head in his huge hand. “Don’t cry,” he said. He dabbed the black streaks from her cheeks and she forced herself to look into his eyes.

“I’ll walk you down,” he said. “This isn’t the best building.”

Out front, as they approached her car, he said, “Thanks for listening before. I go on sometimes. And the ride, thanks for the ride.”

Before she knew what she was doing, she kissed him, half on the cheek, half on the mouth. Maybe she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t sure. “Thanks again,” Hanna said. “I’m glad I met you.”

She buckled herself into the Lexus and drove away. Bud went back upstairs to the room at the end of the hall.

He was re-stowing the footlocker when he heard the front door open.

“Who was that woman?” Joan called out.

He hated how she’d walk in and start talking, not even knowing if he was there. Loud, so loud.

“What woman?”

“Don’t start with me,” she said, entering the bedroom. “I saw her kissing you on the street. What’s been going on?” She eyed the mussed-up bed, which he always kept obsessively neat.

“Did you go in my foot locker?” Bud asked. “Did you take things out of my foot locker? I’m missing some important papers.”

“Bud, you hid those pictures yourself. Don’t change the subject. Who was that woman? Why was she in here?”

He hated her accusing tone, making him feel like a child being chastised. But she was all he had; without her he could barely negotiate a single day.

“I saved her,” Bud explained. “This guy was gonna rob her and I was across the street and ran over and I nailed him-three good shots, all right on the button, and she was so grateful that she gave me a ride home and then she came up and we talked for a long time, maybe an hour, about all kinds of things.” Bud brushed past Joan, reaching for the scrapbook. Had to put it away, before something happened to it. “She wanted to see my book, ’cause of the way I knocked that guy out.”

“Uh-huh. And did you remember to go to the drugstore? Bud? Did you remember to get the medicine? Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Bud just stood there, holding the scrapbook, keeping his back to her. His face burned. When he didn’t answer, Joan came up behind him and reached into his trouser pockets. His knuckles bled white as he clutched the pebbled leather book.

“Goddamn it! You still got the prescription, Bud! What have you been doing! Where’s the goddamn money? You gave it to that whore, didn’t you? Saved her, my ass! You bought yourself a fucking blowjob, you son of a bitch! With money I gave you. Goddamn it! Is that how little you think of me? Is it? Look at me, you fucking idiot!”

Bud turned around. Joan was crying. Crying solved nothing . If something hurt, you stowed the pain and kept on punching. You just banged your way through it, that’s all. You banged your way through to the end.

“Budweiser, all ’round!” Danh shouted.

Even if he drank ten more he’d never tell anybody what happened that morning. Shit. Sucker-punched by an old fuck. He nursed his jaw, tossed the hundred he’d rescued off the sidewalk onto the bar, and chuckled to himself.

It was like his mother used to say, back home: Sometimes, Fortune doesn’t need a reason to smile.

Polk Gulch

Eleven o’clock Monday night I was standing in the nasty skank stink of a body-fluid-scented room trying not to pant as I basked in the glow of the Snow Leopard. She was decked out in black jacket and sleek black boots, the long of her straight black hair leading directly to the short of her barely-there black skirt that hid little of the loveliest legs I’d had the pleasure to gander in God knows how long. Coal eyes with glowing embers in the center made my breath synchopate, and I could almost feel her long red claws at the end of her paws digging into the small of my back.

I couldn’t quite pin down exactly what she was. Asian? African? Mexican? Italian? Spanish? She seemed to shape-shift as she sized me up from the lone chair in room 211 of Felipe’s Massage Parlor. There was no Felipe. No one was there for a massage. Behind her the wall was stained with what looked like splattered brain, and if you listened hard enough, you could hear the ghosts of ho’s past screaming.