Chance

In the Little Thai Hut

Carl had photographed the furniture before it left the building, mounting the pictures on black paper then arranging them in a black cardboard folder that Chance now carried. He’d thought, after visiting the warehouse, to get back to his office and Bernie Jolly. His report was due by week’s end and there was still the matter of arranging for an interview. But the sale of his furniture had put him off stride and late afternoon found him having a beer on the waterfront, Oakland across the bay. He’d placed the eighty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check from Allan’s Antiques in a safe-deposit box at his bank. Given his troubles with the IRS, it seemed prudent to consult with his attorney before actually depositing the money. But that was only the half of it and did not account for the intermittent waves of vertigo, palpitations, and excessive perspiration the check had inspired. The furniture had been sold as a set of originals.

“But I thought it was what we had agreed upon,” Carl had said, surprised by Chance’s initial reluctance to accept the check. “It was why we did the work.” And so it had been, but hadn’t he also imagined some final opportunity to rethink his position when the time came and the buyer at hand? The set had gone to a Mr. Vladimir of San Francisco for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars with Carl holding back twenty for D’s work and his own commission. “And that’s a deal,” Carl had added. “D likes you. So do I. And we know what you’re going through.”

D’s work was of course not the issue. He was welcome to whatever was fair, as was Carl. It was the other side of the thing that bothered him, what for lack of a better term he was coming to think of as the dark side.

“I thought you’d be happier,” Carl had said.

What was left but thank you and good-bye?

That done, he’d returned to the office just long enough to give Lucy the afternoon off. He’d imagined leaving the folder but found the pictures required looking at now and again as some means of reassurance, that the pieces really did look like other pieces, in other books, the ones with all their parts intact.

“Vladimir?” Chance had asked, his final query before vacating the warehouse. “He’s a Russian then?” The thing was complicating by the second. He was thinking of an article he’d read in the Chronicle on the presence of the Russian mob in San Francisco. But Carl had only clucked and shaken his head. “The stuff looked terrific, my young friend. Mr. Vladimir is very rich. And now he’s very happy. The set will probably be in his family for the next hundred years. You should be happy too.”

Chance had agreed to try. He placed the folder on the bar before him and sat looking at it yet again by the pale light of the room’s high windows with their views of the Bay Bridge and the Oakland hills but the happiness continued to elude him. The water separating the cities appeared gray and forbidding, lashed by a late wind and a good deal of the charred hills lost to a thick haze that lay across the entire region as might the gauze upon a weeping wound, but he knew what lay beneath, the treeless summits, the skeletal remains. He knew the score, as would the Russians, should his cover ever get blown, in which case it was hard to imagine them taking it well.

The haze had turned to a light mist by the time he left the bar for yet one more questionable destination. He supposed it not too late to phone, call the whole thing off. He held Carl’s folder containing his photographs flat against his leg in hopes of protecting it from the damp air. The evening seemed unusually charged, the citizenry agitated. It might have been him. Walking to a BART station near Powell Street, Chance was made witness to a homeless woman defecating in a phone booth. She was a woman of color and hopelessly obese. It was a booth of the old-fashioned sort that till that moment he might have thought extinct. This one seemed to have been restored, the gleaming artifact of an age gone by and yet absent the grotesque display he might well have passed without notice. As it was, the unfortunate woman filled it completely, her tremendous buttocks flattening upon the glass where they appeared to contend in the manner of bull seals or perhaps the phantoms of H. P. Lovecraft as she made to hike a crimson dress above ample hips. One could see what was coming. People averted their eyes, quickened their step. Some appeared to actually run. It was all too terrible. Chance was no exception. That, the exception, was to be found at the entrance to the station, propped against a tiled wall, a stick-thin man of indiscernible age, his scrawny arms tattooed like a sailor’s, if not homeless then surely the denizen of some Tenderloin flophouse, as in making for the underground Chance was brought close enough to see that till the moment when the man’s eyes met his they had been fixed with great interest on the horrid spectacle in the booth. Finding himself now eye to eye with Chance, the man favored him with the bright, sun-blasted grin of the long-haul drinker.

“Boy that’s rough,” the man said. He inclined toward the booth.

“History is coming for the empire,” Chance told him.

The man offered to high-five him but Chance went on by. Leprosy was not unheard of in the city, nor were the new, antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis, a product some said, in their most virulent form, of the Russian prison system.

For Chance, fearing earthquakes, the passage beneath the bay was unpleasant as always, made more so by some brief but irritating delay getting out of the Powell Street station. Lights flickered and went out then came on again. Passengers exchanged glances. A garbled announcement issued from the train’s sound system, impossible to understand. Chance, always a bit claustrophobic, reacted accordingly. The essential feature of a panic attack, as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is a discrete period of intense fear in the absence of real danger that is accompanied by at least four of thirteen somatic or cognitive symptoms. Given that the Bay Area was the meeting place of at least three major fault lines and dozens of minor ones and years past due for a seismic event of catastrophic proportions, Chance was willing to categorize the current episode as at least marginally situational, this accompanied by two somatic and one cognitive symptom for a total of three and therefore short of a clinically diagnosable event. He was nevertheless, by the time of his arrival in Rockridge, not feeling altogether well.

It was Chance’s inclination to believe in problems surrendering themselves to reason, if one could only come at them with a clear eye and open heart. It pained him to see a soul in torment. It pleased him to imagine that he’d found a way out. To be frank, it had pleased him to imagine himself Jaclyn Blackstone’s knight, though he was aware, as Janice Silver would have been quick to point out and in fact had, that this was dangerous ground, even for a man without Chance’s particular history and predilections.

The fact was, the sale of the furniture, the finality of it, had forced a new perspective on certain recent behavior. He was suddenly less certain of himself than he had been only hours ago, leaving his office for his meeting with Janice. Perhaps, he thought, it was not too late to set things right, to return them to their natural order. The very idea seemed to lift his spirits and he resolved to do just that. Every thing up to now, in his dealings with both Jaclyn and Allan’s Antiques, had been a kind of aberration. But the veil had been lifted. The coming meeting would be brief and to the point. He would not imbibe. And that was only the beginning. He began to think about clearing things with the Russian as well. The money after all had not been spent. He would not put anything off on Carl or D. He would explain that it was all on him. The furniture was as the Russian had bought it when Chance brought it to the store. He, Chance, was the one who knew its secret history and he alone. But now that the set had actually been sold, he was just not feeling right about it. Or, and here he was willing to hedge a bit, he might claim himself as victim. It had only now come to his attention that the furniture was not as he had thought. They had all been deceived. News had reached him by way of some anonymous tip or some other fucking thing… whatever, really. The point was, he would offer the Russian his money back, or at least some portion of it, should the man still choose to purchase the set. He would go to Carl in the morning. He would make it plain. He would be equally clear with Jaclyn. He was sorry but his plan with the DA’s office was simply not working out. Janice was willing to make herself available but Jaclyn would have to manage the rest on her own. Chance had done what he could to put things into motion, but that was as far, ethically speaking, as he was prepared to go.

One might have imagined such waffling accompanied by guilt, or at least some slight twinge thereof, given the recklessness with which he was apparently willing to abandon all previously held plans and positions. And while he would not have ruled such feelings out of his future, what he really felt just now, exiting the train for Market Hall and Highwire Coffee—one of their blends being a particular weakness and his reason for choosing the Pittsburg/Bay Point train over and above the more direct Richmond train—was a great weight lifted from his shoulders. He could after all live with guilt. What else was new?

Having completed his purchases, coffee beans and a number of breakfast buns he intended to share with his daughter, he entered a cab near the station, continuing his journey in the company of a wizened black man of perhaps eighty, his driver. Chance took him for a man of Haitian descent, in part as he was listening to a strange religious program that smacked of Santeria, though how and where such a program would and could exist was a mystery. Perhaps it was a tape or CD, the recorded program from someplace more exotic than the present. But then these were strange times, the skies parting at day’s end, allowing by the last long rays of light for the occasional glimpse of the blackened hillsides, of burnt structures like ruined teeth, as nearing the campus, he became aware that the old man at the wheel had begun to chant softly in concert with the radio, beneath his breath in a foreign tongue.

The restaurant was as he remembered it, small and dark, outfitted in bamboo and party lights. He was a bit early. There were only a handful of customers, students mostly, seated at windows with a view of the tree-lined street, the campus beyond. Chance moved to the back of the room, seated himself in a booth that was finished in dark red vinyl, and ordered hot tea. He was still composing imaginary conversations regarding both his future and his furniture when a man entered the room. Chance did not at once take his full measure. When he did, he saw that it was Raymond Blackstone.

The detective stood for a moment framed by the doorway that opened onto the street. When he spotted Chance in the booth he waved off a hostess and crossed to where Chance sat. To Chance’s great surprise Detective Blackstone said nothing by way of greeting but moved to sit opposite him in the booth, taking occupancy of the very place where Chance had thought to find Jaclyn. The detective didn’t say anything right away and neither did Chance. There was a place setting on that side of the table and a second cup. The party lights strung gaily upon a wire above their heads bathed them in a rosy glow, as outside the evening had grown dark with a light mist falling once more.

“Expecting someone?” Raymond asked. He looked to the unused place setting and then, before Chance could respond, “Dr. Chance, isn’t it?” He spoke in a pleasant, conversational tone.

Chance nodded, not immediately willing to trust his voice.

“We met in the hospital,” Raymond went on in his pleasant manner. “You were looking in on my wife.”

“Yes,” Chance said. “That’s correct. I remember you now.”

“Now. As opposed to when you saw me walk in?” He made no adjustment in tone for the bullying nature of the question.

“You looked familiar. I meet a lot of people in the course of a day. That was some time back, as I recall.”

“Uhm,” was all Detective Blackstone had to say. He turned over the cup before him and reached for the pitcher. “Do you mind?” he asked. He poured without waiting for a reply.

“Please,” Chance said. “Feel free.”

The detective nodded and poured a bit more for Chance as well. “Thank you,” Chance said. It was an absurd response. He could not imagine what was next. A waitress approached but Blackstone waved her away. A certain amount of time went by. The folder containing the photographs of Chance’s furniture rested on the table between them. Raymond Blackstone took the liberty of turning it toward him and flipping it open. He looked at a number of the pictures. “Would this be what they call Art Deco?”

“It is. French Art Deco. Probably from the late thirties or early forties. Prewar. These you’re looking at happen to be signed by the designer.” Why he felt inclined to add this last bit was at that moment a mystery to him.

Raymond lifted an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. Yours?”

“It was. I recently sold it.”

“Well,” Blackstone said, “I hope you got your price.”

“Yes, so do I.”

Raymond smiled a little. He closed the book and looked at Chance. “So… what brings you to our side of the bay, Doc?”

“I sometimes see patients here. I enjoy being on campus now and then. It reminds me of my student days.”

The detective nodded. “Are you on staff at any of the hospitals here?”

“I was asked by Jaclyn’s therapist to look in on her. She was worried about possible trauma to the brain. She wanted to make sure they weren’t missing anything. So I came, but I’m not on staff.”

Chance was aware of the detective’s hands on the table, one of which seemed to remain in more or less constant motion, opening and closing as Chance spoke. Raymond Blackstone was not a small man. Chance took him to be about six feet in height, with the lean, rawboned build of a light heavyweight fighter. Even so, the hands at play on the table seemed unusually large and powerful, the veins prominent across their backs. They were also, Chance noted, quite well groomed, manicured even, if he was any judge. There was a plain white gold wedding band on his left hand, an expensive-looking watch on his wrist. “Well,” Raymond said at length. “I shouldn’t intrude. I saw you sitting here and thought I’d come over and say hello.” He paused for just a beat. “You did say you were meeting someone?”

To Chance’s great displeasure, he was aware of the perspiration beginning upon his brow. He’d be damned, he thought, if he was going to sit here and sweat in front of this man. As far as that went, he was damned if he was going to continue to sit here. “Actually,” Chance told him, “I didn’t say that. Not at all.” Exit strategies were much on his mind. A cup of tea, that was all, a walk down memory lane, the lines by which he might excuse himself and be gone. Unhappily, it was at just this moment that Jaclyn Blackstone walked in from the night, shaking the rain from her ash-blond hair.