Chance

The great ice-cream hunt

They had by now entered the city though you’d be hard-pressed to know it. The car’s wipers swept the windshield, squeaking audibly with each pass while doing little to improve visibility.

“Wasn’t that bad, really, when you stop and think about it,” D said. “I was wearing latex. Cop never had a clean visual and nothing of mine left at the scene. All in all I’d say it was a pretty clean op. Not perfect, but still pretty clean. Exit was a little fucked up but that’s on you, brother.”

Chance didn’t trust himself to speak. He had taken to imagining what it must have looked like, a man hooked through the ocular cavities.

“You know what I’d like?” D said. “I’d like a fucking malted. The old kind, where they actually put the malt powder in so it’s not just milk and ice cream.” A moment passed. “My mother turned me on to those,” he added. “There was someplace in the city she used to take me. You know where we can get one?”

It was, Chance thought, the first he’d heard D mention family of any kind, and what’s more, that till this moment, he might just as well have been willing to believe the man at his side not only without the usual progenitors but sprung fully formed from his own forehead, the product of some mysterious singularity. That said, Chance was more than willing to go engage in such an outing and no chore too absurd. In truth, he was grateful that D had come up with something for them to do. Anything short of more bloodletting would have served, anything to spare himself the empty apartment he knew to be lying in wait for him out there somewhere in the fog, rather, he imagined, like the proverbial beast in the jungle, waiting to spring.

The great ice-cream hunt, which is how he came to think of it, began somewhere near Fisherman’s Wharf while the night was yet young. It ended at a place called Ruby’s at the far end of Ocean Beach, where one had the feeling that a good many other things had ended as well. The air smelled of wet sand and dying kelp. Unseen waves thundered at them from across the Great Highway. A number of drinks calling themselves malteds had by now been purchased and consumed along the way but none were to D’s liking. This didn’t keep him from pounding them down. Strawberry was his flavor of choice. Chance had pressed on in hopes of finding an actual drink but none had been available till Ruby’s.

Ruby’s was the real deal, a genuine full-service establishment, all worn plaster and chipped Formica. The linoleum flooring was laid out in old-fashioned checkerboard patterns of green and black. Memorabilia covered the walls—enough to suggest the place had been there since before the Great Flood. A black-faced clock with white hands and the likeness of Mickey Mouse at its center read twelve o’clock straight up when they came through the door that opened to the highway and the beaches beyond. It was half past two when they left. In the interim they sat opposite one another in a red Naugahyde booth like any other pair of nighthawks. Food followed drinks, at least for D, who opted for the bacon-wrapped cheeseburger times two, french fries, and a large Diet Coke. Chance watched, nursing a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. “My God,” he said finally. It was perhaps D’s mention of his mother, this in concert with the fact that Chance was a little drunk, that led to his addressing the big man as if he were just one more of the planet’s mortals. “Do you ever worry about diabetes?” He was looking at the array of food and remnants thereof spread out on the table before them.

“I take medication for that,” D said matter-of-factly.

“Ah. And your cholesterol?”

“Cholesterol is great. Blood pressure is great.” At which point D embarked on an elaborate apology for the use of salt in eliminating fat from the diet. The theory, such as it was, appeared to hinge on the notion that salt had been shown as an effective cleaning agent in removing grease from skillets. The big man went on at some length, all the time adding ever more salt to the food on his plate, but Chance was finding it difficult to follow. Nor did it occur to him to ask if the other was serious. Four years of medical school, an internship, two residencies at prestigious hospitals, credentials up the wazoo… who was he to question anything? He was the guy who’d run away with the schizophrenic dancer, robbed the family money and broken his father’s heart, failed husband and father, now wheelman in flight from a murder and botched robbery on the outskirts of Oakland is who he was.

Whatever sleep he was granted that night came behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile in the small garage beneath his apartment where he reclined the seat as far as it would go and covered himself with a jacket. He was afraid to go inside, for any number of reasons.

He was awakened the following morning by the computer programmer come to get his own car from the garage. As to whether or not the programmer had seen him there, asleep at the wheel, he could not say. The two had not spoken since the night of Chance’s struggle with Jackie Black and had in fact gone so far as to avoid eye contact at those times when they might otherwise have exchanged pleasantries, though Chance put this more on the programmer than on himself. He was still willing to be friends. When the man had at last managed to extract his Toyota from its hopelessly cramped space and the door swung shut in his wake, Chance went upstairs to shower and shave. Later he rode the bus to his office, where men in suits were awaiting.