Oakland Noir

A Town Made of Hustle by Dorothy Lazard

Downtown

Poppy Martens trotted out of Selden’s Gym close to midnight, his wallet heavy with the cash he’d just won on a prizefight all his friends had advised him to lay off. But Poppy was partial to southpaws. Their stubborn survival in a right-handed world always surprised people. No doubt the favorite in tonight’s bout was surprised when a left hook sent him sailing backward, nearly out of the ring. Poppy smiled, remembering the fellas around him falling silent, their cigarettes hanging loose from dry lips. All Poppy could do was laugh at the sight, slapping the shoulders of the guy seated in front of him.

Now he strode up 7th Street, toward downtown, snapping out of his reverie as he passed the French laundry, the shuttered storefronts, and the darkened factories. Just a couple of years earlier these foundries and fabricators would have been buzzing with activity, lights on twenty-four hours a day. There’d be people all over the streets. Guys coming home dead tired from the shipyards, clothes sooty with metal dust and smoke. Apartments functioned like hotel lobbies back then, people occupying them in shifts, sleeping in closets, beds, even tubs. Oakland teemed like an engine. Everybody was working, making something or other for the war. All that is done now, Poppy thought as he lifted his jacket collar against the cold.

He smiled again, thinking of all those saps who’d come rushing out here for jobs they thought would never end, to support a war they thought would change their sorry lot in life once and for all. But end they did. And as soon as they did, what happened? What always happens: colored folks were the first to be let go. And where are they now? Back bowing and scraping for a living. Pumping gas, sweeping floors, and slinging hash to the vets who were handed their good-paying jobs. Back to the end of the line, just like before.

The lucky ones got jobs on the Pullman cars, in offices, or at the auto plants in East Oakland. Too smart now to go back home to the fields. And who could blame them? Where could they go, what could they do but stay here and make a way?

These days Poppy made a meager living watching all this change happen, writing down what he saw and what it meant to the Negro. His paper didn’t pay him much, but he didn’t need much. He was alone now. Wife and kids back east and — he hoped — still safe. Away from the trouble he seemed to always deliver to them, like fresh milk. He scraped together a living at an outfit that could barely eke out a weekly edition, but he liked the job. Cobbled things together with temporary gigs of all sorts. It gave him freedom to roam during the day, talk to people, find out how the city worked and the endless number of ways it didn’t. He liked to test his ability to get into their heads and hearts and, sometimes, a little closer. The wad of money he’d just won could certainly help with that.

He headed up to police headquarters in City Hall to sit with the drowsy night desk officer and listen to the police radio.

“Poppy Martens!” the officer called out, his hand held high in greeting as Poppy entered the booking area.

Poppy nodded a greeting, but was all focus. He sat wide-legged in a chair across from the desk and flipped open his notepad, ready to retrieve any leads coming over the speaker. “Anything up tonight?” he asked.

“Nothing yet, but soon enough. It’s Saturday night. Still early.”

Right then a pair of patrol cops dragged in three men who looked too young to be as drunk as they were. When a cop shoved one kid up to the counter, the guy staggered a bit then hurled his guts across the desk. The night cop jumped back just enough to avoid the bilious spray.

Poppy suppressed a laugh.

“Poppy!” Sergeant Webster stood across the room, hands braced against the doorjambs. “Come in here, I wanna talk with you.”

Webster, a burly white man with a perpetually red face, wrestled the jacket off his broad back and draped it over his swivel chair. Poppy approached the man’s desk tentatively. The detective expected him to tell a story; that was their deal. Webster fed Poppy leads for his news stories, and in exchange Poppy dropped the names of a few of West Oakland’s less savory characters. Poppy felt no guilt about this arrangement. Oakland was a town made of hustle and that’s how it would always be. The few bills Webster skimmed off his money clip and gave to Poppy were tucked away, a security blanket in uncertain times.

“Have a seat,” Webster said. “What’s the latest on Raincoat Jones?”

Charles “Raincoat” Jones was a mover and shaker in West Oakland, working both sides of the law. He ran a gym, nightclubs, gaming houses, and a pawnshop. Folks in the neighborhood loved him. Poppy loved him. You could always count on Raincoat to keep a widow’s lights on, or to buy uniforms for some kid’s baseball team, or forward you a loan to start up a little business. And because of that, Poppy never leaked a thing about him to Webster. Oakland needed people like Raincoat.

“Haven’t seen him,” Poppy lied, “not for a while. Heard he was out of town. Reno, someone told me.”

“You mean you haven’t seen him at Selden’s? Not for any fights? I know there’s been a lot activity down there lately.”

“Raincoat doesn’t go to Selden’s. You know, he has his own—”

Webster raised his hand. “Yeah, I know, I know. I just wanted to check it out.”

Poppy wondered why Webster was suddenly after Raincoat. Maybe the dick wasn’t getting what he felt was his due from the protection money Raincoat paid the OPD.

It was nearly two in the morning when Poppy reached his apartment on Jefferson. He found his old friend David “Tak” Takiyama on the sofa. Poppy could smell the bourbon on Tak’s breath before he crossed the room. The war had not been kind to Tak and his people. For all their flag-waving patriotism, pledging allegiance, and Boy Scout merit badges, they were still considered the enemy. Two years after the war Tak still couldn’t catch on with any paper. No detective agency would hire him either. He and his camera, which had been so productive before the war, had both been stilled. Tak’s reentry into society was heartbreaking for Poppy — all the sun had gone out of his pal. It was a daily tragedy to witness. Tak was once the best cameraman in Oakland, but none of that mattered back in ’42 when he and his parents and sisters were rounded up like convicts and shipped to Topaz, Utah, to spend the war years in shame and isolation, away from everything and everybody they had known.

Tak had been the first man to offer Poppy a hand in friendship when he landed in Oakland right before Pearl Harbor. And Poppy didn’t forget it. He welcomed Tak into his little place, happy his friend had been strong enough to survive such humiliation, but the experience had killed something fine in him. He didn’t read anymore. He wasn’t up for club-hopping down 7th Street. No more lusting after the white salesgirls at Owl Drugs on San Pablo. Betrayal had washed him clean of vices, all except one — hatred.

“You’re in the same spot I left you in this afternoon,” Poppy said as he entered the apartment.

Tak didn’t reply.

“You wear a hole in that couch, you’re paying for it. I’ll rat you out to the landlord.”

Tak shifted his body, but said nothing.

Poppy took off his coat and threw it into the bedroom where it landed heavy on the chair. He smiled, remembering the money from the fight. He turned and stepped back toward the couch.

“Man, you shoulda come with me tonight! That light-heavy Selden was bragging about was all bluster. Turns out he had a glass jaw! Went down in the sixth round, hard as a redwood. Bam! Bloody nose, big swollen jaw, one eye closed shut!”

Poppy grew excited as he recalled the details, bobbing and weaving to bring the story to life. The fights used to be one of Tak’s favorite pastimes, prewar. He had a taken an enviable collection of fight photos to prove his devotion to “the sweet science,” which Poppy had saved for him, but Tak showed no interest in doing anything with them now.

Poppy went to the kitchenette and scrambled an egg, made some toast, and drank cold coffee that he or Tak — he couldn’t remember who — had made the previous morning.

Poppy wanted to be loyal, but he couldn’t bear too much more of Tak’s inertia. You gotta move, man! Poppy was always telling him. You still got air in your lungs, use it! Today he thought he’d try a new approach.

“Hey, Tak, let me use your camera.” He said it casually, as if he routinely asked for his pal’s most precious possession.

Tak turned, propped himself up on his elbows. “Have you gone insane?”

Poppy shook his head. “Nah.”

“If you’re asking to use my camera, you have. Are you drunk?”

“No,” Poppy said, amused at this accusation coming from a drunk man.

“No is right! You touch my camera, I’ll break your wrists.”

Poppy, a whole head taller than Tak, waved his hands in mock-fright. “Oh no, not my wrists!”

“Yeah. Your wrists. See how many stories you write then. See how many, mister!”

Poppy wanted to laugh but decided not to be cruel. “I’m serious. I need your camera, man. I won’t damage it. I swear.”

“You don’t know nothing about cameras,” Tak said.

“What I need to know you can teach me.”

“I could, but not using my camera. No way, no how.”

Poppy finished his food and placed the plate in the sink. He stretched his long body, raising his hands high above his head, and yawned loudly. “All right, my friend, I’ll use somebody else’s camera. No problem.”

Poppy pulled his shirttails out of his pants and headed toward the bedroom. He scratched his head and his balls, said good night, then went into his room, closing the door behind him. He was pulling a shirt over his head when he heard Tak through the door.

“Take pictures of what exactly?”

From there it was easy. Poppy opened the door. “I got a tip from a guy who works the elevator at the Athens Athletic Club.”

“Yeah? About what?”

“So, this guy says that there’s some shady characters coming into the club through the back service entrance, who’ve been wheelin’ and dealin’ with the guys running the place.”

“Dealing what exactly?”

“He doesn’t know, but it seemed to be something important.”

Tak waved his arm and headed back to the couch. “That could be anything.”

“True enough. But most people don’t go to the Athens Club with muscle. In this case, some thick-necked Irish goon. With something heavy in his pocket.” Poppy raised his eyebrows for emphasis and detected a flash of interest on Tak’s face.

“So, who’s this guy you know?”

“Just some guy.” Poppy headed toward the bed, suddenly fatigued from a long day that had already ended. The lure had been set in the water. Tak would be up and dressed early. “See you tomorrow.”

The lobby of the Athens Athletic Club may have been serene, but the back rooms buzzed with activity. Negro waiters and busboys bustling through swinging doors, dishwashers orchestrating the flow of dirty dishes into the huge sinks, maids wheeling overloaded linen carts. Negroes ran the back end of this club, although they could never lounge in its plush lobby chairs. Every folded linen napkin bore a Negro’s fingerprints.

Poppy and Tak entered through the service entrance, past a gang of smoking waiters blocking the door.

“Say, where’s Willie?” Poppy asked a maid.

He was directed deeper into the bowels of the grand building. Poppy and Tak waited for the elevator to touch down in the basement, and Willie stepped out.

They exchanged greetings and Willie sized up Tak. “What’s with the camera? You can’t bring that in here.”

“Sure he can,” Poppy said, gently moving Willie back into the elevator and pressing a button at random. “Haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”

The elevator started to move.

“Man! What you do?” Willie blocked the panel of buttons with his body.

A call rang in from the sixth floor, so Willie hurried the two men out at the lobby floor, then ascended up to six. They paced anxiously, waiting for Willie to return. Marveling at the detailed painting in the coffered ceiling, Poppy wandered down a hallway.

“Get back here, man!” Tak seethed through his teeth. “C’mon, let’s take the stairs.”

Poppy was distracted by all the grand architecture, the enveloping chairs and couches, the insouciant privilege that made places like this club so foreign to people like him. No one was on the hustle here. No one was doubled, tripled, quadrupled up in their living quarters. This place was all summertime, where the living is easy.

When Poppy turned to rejoin Tak, he found his friend nose-to-nose with a much larger white man. Poppy paused, peeking into the lobby, assessing the situation. Certainly there’d be guards. They wouldn’t look like guards; they’d be in suits, tight across their chests. Poppy knew Tak couldn’t take this guy. He shook off the apprehension and hustled back to his friend. Tak had just enough hate in him not to back down from a fight, even one he couldn’t win.

“Hey, hey, what is this?” Poppy said as he approached, his left hand already balled into a fist. The man had clutched the shoulder of Tak’s coat and was shoving him backward, toward the corner of the vestibule. By the time Poppy reached them, the man had landed two sharp jabs in Tak’s gut. Tak clubbed the man’s ears with his fists. Poppy grabbed the man’s starched shirt collar and pulled him off Tak.

“You back the hell off!” Poppy shook the stranger like a chastised dog, then pushed him away.

The white man stumbled, gasping, and twisted around. He righted himself quickly, ready to swing, but pulled the punch when he saw Poppy had about three inches on him. Tak lunged, but Poppy held him back with his other hand.

The attacker regained his balance. “Don’t you touch me,” he snorted, straightening his jacket and tie. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, you black bastard!” The man pulled his shirtsleeves down, ran fingers through his blond hair. “Neither of you should be here. And what do you think you’re doing with a camera in here? If you don’t leave at once, I’m calling the chief of police.”

That’s right, white man, Poppy thought, take it to the extreme. Just a patrolman won’t do.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Poppy said. But when Tak just stood there, primed to lunge again, Poppy guided him away from the white man and toward the elevator. The stranger was on their heels.

The elevator chimed just as Poppy and Tak reached it. Willie stepped out, putting on a deadpan expression when he spotted them. He stood erect.

“Willie, did you let these men in here?”

“No sir. I just came on shift, sir.”

Poppy sneered at Willie as he and Tak boarded the elevator.

“Well, get them out of here! Right now!”

Willie nodded. “Yes sir. Right away, sir.” He looked at his riders with scorn.

As the elevator doors closed, Poppy regarded the man he had tussled with. A finely dressed business type with pomaded hair he smoothed down with a hand. Indignant, the man met Poppy’s gaze. Something clicked for Poppy. He noticed the sickle-shaped scar that ran from the man’s lower lip to his chin. Incongruous on such a refined, aquiline face. Beads of sweat sprouted on Poppy’s upper lip. It came to him like thunder. He exited the elevator quickly on the ground floor, his heart pounding.

“Who is that guy?” Poppy asked Willie once they were outside.

“You gotta be kiddin’,” Willie said. “He’s an assistant DA. In the paper all the time.”

“What’s his name?”

“Daniel Coopersmith. A real comer, they say.”

Poppy frowned. “Boy, you wouldn’t know a comer if one fell on you.”

Daniel Coopersmith had certainly cleaned up his act. When Poppy last saw him, years earlier, the guy was leaving a Buffalo warehouse, wiping off a bloody hunting knife with his pocket square. Coopersmith had been the silent, elegant lieutenant to the area’s top bootlegger. Poppy’s employer of the past few years had gone into the warehouse that night but had not emerged. Young and desperate, Poppy had stood obediently in the shadows, waiting to bring the car around to his boss once a signal was given. But there was no signal. After a few minutes Poppy headed back to where the cars were parked in the rail yard. He stood between his boss’s car and one belonging to the guy his boss had come to meet. The whole thing should have taken no more than ten minutes. He had checked his watch. Something was bad wrong. He’d started to breath deeply, then he began to pant, his heart galloping in his chest. Running liquor across the border had become downright dangerous. It had taken only a few seconds to make up his mind. He climbed into the other car and found the satchel of cash on the front seat that was supposed to go to his boss. He regarded the stacks of neatly packed bills, longing for it like you would an unattainable woman. As he drove away he didn’t think about freedom so much as justice. A life for a life.

But somehow Coopersmith cheated what was coming to him. Poppy knew someone would be hunting for him soon enough, so he fled Buffalo with his family that night. How many years ago was it? A whole war’s worth and then some. Coopersmith might be legit these days, but Poppy knew he still had to steer clear of him. He knew exactly how lethal the man could be.

The advantage of being a Negro was that, most times, no one paid any attention to you. You were just a black hand that white folks dropped change into or passed luggage to. You were not an individual, a particular set of physical features and behaviors. Poppy counted on this. He couldn’t afford to have this man recognize him and threaten the comfortable life he had built in Oakland. Running counter to everything he stood for, he now willed himself to be invisible, hoping Coopersmith wouldn’t recognize him and set the dogs loose. Or worse yet, come after him himself.

Poppy fell asleep that night thinking of all the public meetings and social events he had attended over the years, places where Coopersmith must have been. The danger he thought he had escaped was there all along, he just hadn’t known it.

The following morning Poppy woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamed of days spent endlessly driving to feed the bottomless thirst of upstate New Yorkers. He had wanted them to stay drunk, to drown in the amber liquids he transported. Keep drinking! Suits me fine! It had been an adventure, one he hadn’t given up easily. He could finally clothe and house his young family properly. Like a man should be able to.

An undercurrent of fear coursed through him for two days. He called in sick, something he had never done, and laid low. But three days after the encounter at the Athens Club, itching to get back out into the world, Poppy felt like himself again. After a hot shower and a few cups of fresh coffee, he headed out, striding up Jefferson, then up 9th Street to Fitzgerald’s Diner on Washington. This was the place where deals were made and promises were broken. This was where the political types mingled with police, delivery men, and office girls. Gossip here was as free-flowing as the coffee.

He wanted to find out how Coopersmith had gone legit, who his political cronies were, if they were alumni from that same unsavory school of business he had left behind in New York.

He sat at the counter listening to chatter from the red leatherette booths and the nearby tables. He had built his reputation on picking up key bits of information, often without even interviewing people directly. Everybody in California talked too much. This, he hoped, would never change. In the long mirror mounted on the wall that separated the dining room from the kitchen, he could see the people behind him. He was dipping his toast into a sunny-side-up egg when he saw four suits enter. These fellas looked slicker than the usual crowd, more buttoned-down than the regulars. Folks you’d see coming out of the Athens Athletic Club. Here they were slumming.

“Say, you finished with this?” Poppy said, nodding at a copy of the Post-Enquirer the guy next to him had dragged through spilled coffee.

The man looked down at the wet paper. “Damn! Sure, take it.”

“Thanks, man.”

Poppy snapped the paper open, reading about last night’s fights and the lingering union fallout from the previous year’s general strike. He searched for anything coming out of the DA’s office, anything about Coopersmith. One of Coopersmith’s colleagues, a young cat with lots of promise, had been summarily fired. He had been charged with taking bribes from a developer who had swooped into Oakland after the war to buy up and convert properties belonging to the evacuated Japanese. Now some Japanese families were fighting to get their properties back, charging the federal government with theft and displacement, and this ADA was stalling the proceedings.

Tak would love to get his hands on this guy, Poppy thought. He took a long gulp of coffee, glancing from the paper up into the mirror again. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled — Coopersmith had joined the group of slick men. Poppy took a deep breath, thought about leaving, then exhaled slowly. He surveyed the room. He was the only Negro in the place, so he figured his departure might cause notice. He studied the group. Coopersmith was the top dog; the others leaned in when he spoke and nodded like acolytes to a great master.

Poppy wondered how many bloody knives Coopersmith had cleaned off since that night in Buffalo.

When a group of rowdy workmen came in to grab coffee and day-old donuts, Poppy scurried out behind their hubbub. He headed toward police headquarters, his mind racing as he approached the 14th Street entrance. He pulled the soggy paper from his back pocket and reread the article about the misbehaving ADA. He took out his notepad and scribbled some questions down, not sure of whom to ask them.

White folks do not like to be questioned. Poppy couldn’t think of a time when he didn’t know this fact, but questioning people was his job. Who’d be safe? He headed to the public library on 14th and Grove and asked the librarian for the newspapers from the past few weeks. He combed the Tribune and the Post-Enquirer for stories about Coopersmith or his beleaguered colleague. The district attorney had been railing hard against corruption in the city and county governments, so this case had legs. Surely Coopersmith’s name would come up soon.

Over the next few weeks Poppy dropped a few lines about the case in the Negro newspapers on both sides of the bay. He got Negroes wondering how much deal-making had impacted their judicial outcomes. Stories began to swirl. Coopersmith and his leadership were called into question, which put the district attorney’s office on notice.

In no time, patrol cops started to stop Poppy for the most minor infractions: jaywalking, tossing a gum wrapper on the street, loitering while he was waiting for a light to turn green. When he related these incidents to his buddies at the barber shop on 7th Street, they were not compassionate.

“You may be a reporter but you still a colored man,” the head barber told him. “Don’t let that byline think you above it. You ain’t.” All the fellas in the chairs nodded their agreement.

When a pair of cops stopped him walking out of the Roxie Theatre on 17th Street, they were unusually rough. One smacked him in the face when he asked why they were stopping him. The other called him Raincoat Jones and said he was wanted for questioning. And though Poppy tried to assure them that he wasn’t Raincoat, they prevented him from reaching into his pocket to pull out his driver’s license or his reporter’s ID. Detective Webster pulled up as the policemen had Poppy’s face pressed against the hot hood of their squad car, his arm bent high behind his back. He grimaced in pain, clenched his teeth.

“Let him go,” Webster instructed coolly. The cops released him but they didn’t retreat far enough for Poppy’s comfort. Webster shook a cigarette out of a pack, lit it, then studied the burning tip. He was calm.

“What’s up, Webster?” Poppy asked, straightening his clothes. “Why does everybody all of a sudden have a hard-on for Poppy Martens?”

“They just like you, I guess.”

“These guys called me Raincoat when you all know who he is. What am I getting shaken down for?”

“You piss people off, Poppy. Always have.”

“What did I do?”

“Putting your nose in someone’s business, messing in things you don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand, Webster?” Poppy felt his anger rise.

“Lots. You can’t understand how things in a city work. People have to maintain relationships in order to get things done, to keep the city functioning, growing. You get my meaning?”

Poppy shook his head. He got someone’s meaning, but it wasn’t Webster’s. He knew Webster well enough to know that these were lines he had heard someone else say.

“You can’t go around getting people riled up about something that impedes progress.”

Poppy squinted, intrigued by the transformation in Webster’s diction. “Can I go? Are you arresting me for... something?” he said with his arms outstretched.

“You just mind yourself. Stop being a busybody. And know that the paper that hired you can easily fire you.”

“On what grounds, exactly?”

“On poking your big nose where it don’t belong!” Webster dragged on his cigarette. He blew smoke in Poppy’s face.

“Does any of this harassment have to do with Coopersmith?”

Webster’s eyes widened. “What about Coopersmith?”

“He’s the one who fired the young turk in his office. Whatever that kid was doing, Coopersmith must’ve known about it. Had to have sanctioned it. Right?”

Poppy knew he was treading on thin ice. One nod to the rabid cops behind him and Webster could have him pummeled into the sidewalk. But it was a chance worth taking. He realized Coopersmith was now the big boss, with his own henchmen who had their own bloody knives. No need to get his hands dirty unless Poppy came too close. Like he had at the Athens Athletic Club.

The next time Poppy went to the Athens he walked right through the front door, his reporter’s ID pinned to the lapel of his coat. A man from the front desk stood up, startled, and asked him if he had a delivery to make.

Poppy looked at his own suit then at the man, but decided to ignore the question. “Is Mr. Coopersmith here?”

“The whereabouts of our clients are private. This is a private club.”

“Yeah, I know it’s private. I’m not here hunting a membership. Just Coopersmith.”

“If I see him, who should I say is looking for him?”

Poppy had to think on this. Coopersmith must know his name if he was behind these run-ins with the police. He drummed his fingers on the desk and scanned the lobby of potted palms and tranquil white faces. Then he left the building.

He walked home with images of that night so many years ago coursing through his mind. He felt now that he had been hiding all along. If not from Coopersmith, then from all the rotten shit that he had to endure just to have a life, to thrive in that life. Coopersmith had gone about his business, had reinvented himself, safely, successfully. Poppy wondered why he couldn’t. For the first time in a long while he felt himself unlucky.

Poppy came home to a darkened apartment. He flipped on the light switch, tossed his keys in an ashtray, and turned to find Tak sitting on the couch. His arms were raised above his face, shielding his eyes. Poppy walked closer and saw that Tak had a split lip and a black eye.

“Man, who did this to you?”

“I fell down the back stairs. I told you those stairs were going to kill me one day. Well, today they almost did.”

Poppy studied Tak’s face. His nose wasn’t broken, but his lip would take some time to heal. “You are the worst liar in the known world. Who did this?”

“A couple of guys. I don’t know them.”

“Where’d it happen? Here?”

Tak closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, man. I was on 18th Street, coming from the bus terminal.”

As Tak iced his eye, Poppy looked around the small apartment that so many people had found safe harbor in during his time there. He didn’t want to run. He hailed from a family of runners, fleeing captors, family, and responsibility. Oakland felt like home — warm and nurturing, the way a home should feel. This raggedy apartment was the first stable house he’d had since leaving his family. As he studied his friend’s battered face and eased him out of his bloodied shirt, Poppy Martens decided he wasn’t going to run anymore. This shit stops now.

With Tak watching in silence, Poppy disemboweled the apartment. From the seams of curtains, from the bottoms of cupboards, from the rotting floorboards behind the toilet, from an envelope pinned to the back of the couch, Poppy Martens pulled all the money he had in the world. Money that had come all the way from Buffalo.

“What the hell is that?” It was the most excited Tak had sounded in years.

Poppy counted the loot, considered moving it, considered giving it to Tak so he could be safe and away from whatever hell was coming, considered asking one of the hop-heads he knew in Cypress Court to dispatch Coopersmith and have this cat-and-mouse routine done once and for all.

He went to his typewriter instead and scrolled in sheet after sheet of white paper, hammering furiously on the keys. Then, on an envelope he wrote, Open in Case of Emergency or Tragedy, and slipped the folded pages inside. He waved it at Tak who stood nearby, watching. Poppy placed the envelope on the table. He wrote out a letter in longhand and put it and some cash in another envelope addressed to his wife. This he placed in the breast pocket of his overcoat. He forked over enough bills to Tak to keep him in high cotton for quite awhile. He smiled, feeling as though he was making tithes at St. Francis de Sales.

“Where the hell did you get all this cash?” Tak wanted to know. “What have you been up to?”

“It’s from a long time ago. Before California. My rainy day money,” Poppy said.

“Is it raining now?”

“Once I drop these letters off, it’ll be pouring. You best be ready, my friend.”

From the tiny closet Poppy took a leather satchel he’d always been too self-conscious to carry. Though he bought it second hand, it screamed prosperity. In it he put a letter, wrapped five hundred dollars in the funny papers as if it were catfish, and carefully tied the bundle of bills together with twine. He snapped the case shut and handed it to Tak.

“I want you to take this to the courthouse when you’re feeling better. Ask for the district attorney.” Poppy saw the doubtful look on Tak’s face. “Of course, they won’t let you see him, but tell whoever’s guarding his door that the satchel is for him and him alone. Make a fuss if you have to. But make sure you put it in his hands.”

“Why me? Why can’t you do it?”

“Poetic justice.”

Tak didn’t have to navigate a gauntlet of underlings at the courthouse. That very evening Poppy and Tak found the district attorney’s car parked outside the courthouse and placed the satchel on the passenger seat. In it was an unsigned letter, implicating Coopersmith in the Japanese property scandal that had cost his colleague his career.

It was no bloody knife, Poppy realized, but it would serve.

The Streets Don’t Love Nobody by Harry Louis Williams II

Brookfield Village

A fat roach trekked silently across his bloody brown hand. It flicked its antennae as it waddled across fingernails caked thick and black with dirt. Outside, the piercing howl of sirens racing down 98th Avenue collided with the heavy pounding of hip-hop beats from the fifteen-inch speakers in a passing car.

A moan came from the dark couch rank with old beer stains. Super Blast was startled to find that it had emanated out from deep within his own parched throat. Anticipating the call, his homeboy Lyle stepped over to the couch where Super Blast lay sprawled. Lyle bent over and rested the open end of a plastic water bottle on his bottom lip. Then he untied the fat laces on the brand-new Jordans before slipping them off Super Blast’s feet.

A damp crimson blotch spread out across the chest of Super Blast’s once-white Raiders T-shirt. Lyle had tried to stop the bleeding, to no avail. The .44 slug had hit Super Blast in the center of his chest, sending bone fragments scrambling toward his heart and lungs. It had hit so hard and with such fury that it had actually set his shirt on fire. It scalded his belly and shredded his breastbone.

“Am I... going to die?” Super Blast asked.

Lyle chuckled, “Fool, you too rich to die. You got ’em, dude. Don’t you remember?”

Yes, he did remember. Super Blast had slipped through an open bedroom window in one of the Black Christmas Mob’s trap houses. He had cracked open the safe in the bedroom with an ax. There were two kilos of raw cocaine packed in clear plastic packages, along with three fat stacks of folded money tied with red rubber bands. Super Blast chucked the kis and the dough into a duffel bag. He was home free until he heard someone holler, “Hey, did you hear that? Somebody’s in the bedroom!”

Super Blast zipped up the duffel and tossed it through the open window. His mistake was instinctive: turning to see who was coming through the door. And they came in blasting. The first slug hit him before he could jump on the chair to leap over the window ledge. He heard seven shots in all before he fell down into the tall grass outside. For a moment he lay there in the dark, twisting like a snake, waiting for death to come. Somehow, he summoned the will to stand. This feat achieved, he grabbed the duffel bag and ran for his car.

The front door of the trap house opened. Super Blast ducked between parked cars, running with his head down. Bullets whizzed overhead. A Corvette’s rear window exploded, showering glass all over him. It wasn’t until he’d made it two blocks that the adrenaline rush subsided. He dashed to the Jetta that he’d stashed at the corner of East 106th and San Leandro Boulevard. He started the engine, veered into traffic, and raced in the direction of Sobrante Park in East Oakland. He couldn’t go home — War Thug had seen his face, so they’d be looking for him. He took a right on 105th Avenue at Edes, sped past Scotty’s Liquor, zoomed across the railroad tracks, and took a left into the stony heart of Brookfield Village.

Super Blast was headed for Lyle’s crib. Lyle was the one person he felt he could trust. Once people learned he had those kis, they’d be trying to take everything away from him. But not Lyle. Lyle was his crime protégé; Super Blast had introduced Lyle to the game.

He parked the car around the corner and limped up to the tiny brown wood-frame house at the center of the cul-de-sac. It took Lyle forever to get the door. He was laughing into his cell phone when it swung open. The pain in Super Blast’s chest was nearly unbearable; white flashes of light blinked in his skull. His shirt was soaked in blood and the duffel bag dangled from his fingertips. Lyle’s eyes settled on the bag and rested there.

“What’s up, my dude?” Lyle asked.

“What it look like, playa? Let me in.”

Super Blast stumbled through the doorway right into Lyle’s awaiting arms. Lyle draped his right arm across his shoulders, then half-carried, half-dragged him into the living room area. He let Super Blast down slowly onto the couch. Finally, he noticed the bleeding chest.

“Damn, man! How is you still alive? What happened?”

Super Black gargled and spit out a mouthful of blood. “War Thug got me.”

“War Thug? That Black Christmas Mob capo?

Super Blast nodded. For the moment it was all he could manage.

“Why he do this to you, bruh?”

“Look in the bag.” Super Blast thrust it in Lyle’s direction, never letting go of the handle.

Lyle unzipped it, peered inside, and grabbed his own chest. “Holy!.. Man, that’s two kis in there. How much money is that?”

Super Blast’s smile broke into a laugh but he cut it short. Hurt too much. “C’mon, dude. You know how I get down in these streets.”

Lyle’s face darkened. “Yeah, and I know how they get down too. Drama probably got a whole platoon out in those streets right now looking for this... and you.”

“Drama don’t scare me. He ain’t nuthin’ but a sucker.” Super Blast put up his middle finger. “I got this for Drama.”

“I hear you talking, Super Blast. But it’s only a minute ’fore they come through here looking for you.”

“I know that.”

“So then you know you can’t stay here. ’Cause they’ll kill us both.”

“Now that’s where you wrong, Lyle.”

“’Scuse me?”

“Lyle, go pick up my mama. Tell her to come here and get me.”

Lyle scratched his scalp. “Why don’t we just call her?”

“Mama ain’t got no phone. You gots to go get her.” Super Blast pulled a car key from his pocket and thrust it in Lyle’s direction.

“Blast, that’s crazy. They gon’ be looking for that car. I pull out in traffic and those fools will start knocking at the light.”

Super Blast sucked his teeth, then raised his voice. “Fool, Mama ain’t got no phone. If you too ’fraid to drive my car, that only leave you one choice.”

Lyle held up his hand. “No, don’t even think about it.”

“Yes, youngster. You gon’ have to walk it to Mama’s house.”

Lyle’s phone rang.

A nervous tick caused Super Blast’s jaw to pulsate. “Who trying to hit you? Cut it off.”

“This is my cell. I ain’t cutting it off.”

“I said cut it off. You forget who I am, fool?”

For a second, a bolt of hatred made Lyle’s eyes glow in the dark. No, he hadn’t forgotten. It was Super Blast who had turned him out, took him on his first drive-by, made him a lookout on his burglary team. There were a dozen or more licks, but Lyle always seemed to come out on the short end of the split. Once, they were driving down International Boulevard near East 83rd when blue lights started flashing behind them. Super Blast said, “I got a .22 in the glove box. If they turn this car upside down, it’s your gun. I’m on parole.” That was the first time Lyle ever had to do jail time. Now he had a record.

“Where your sister at, man?” Super Blast suddenly said.

“She ain’t home.”

“Call her.”

“I ain’t doing that.”

“You really feeling yourself tonight, huh, lil’ homie?”

Suddenly, Super Blast grabbed his chest and fell back on the couch. To Lyle he appeared asleep, eternally so.

Seconds later, Super Blast’s eyes opened. He felt a shadow and smelled Listerine breath. “Fool, why you leaning over me?”

“What you mean?” Lyle said.

“Second ago you was on the other side of the room — now you all over me like a damn vulture.”

“You trippin’, OG.”

Super Blast reached beneath the couch and felt for the duffel bag. Still there. “Now, what was we talking about,” Super Blast asked. He propped himself up on his elbows.

“My sister Tanya, ’member?”

Despite his pain, a lewd grin crawled across Super Blast’s face. “Yeah, so what’s up with old Tanya?”

“You know Tanya got the herpes, right?”

“How would I know that?”

“’Cause she got it from you.”

Super Blast smirked and diverted his eyes momentarily, almost displaying a tinge of embarrassment. Then he was right back to his old self. “The herpes ain’t nuthin’.”

“Ain’t nuthin’? My sister started breaking out all over her private parts with these blisters. The doctor say that disease don’t never go away. Never.”

Super Blast turned slowly on his side to face Lyle. “Tanya want to be my ride-or-die chick. She want to share my glory, she got to share my pain. We all got a price to pay in this world.”

“She asked you to wear a condom, man. Why din’t you?”

“Didn’t want to take away the feeling.”

“Blast, why you feel like you can just do people any kind of way you want? You use people, that ain’t right.”

“Ain’t you caught on yet, my dude? The streets don’t love nobody. You can’t understand that, you’ll never understand a man like me. I bred you from a pup, but I must’ve done something wrong ’cause you weak. You soft, my dude. You ain’t nuthin’ but a follower. Sure, I used your sister, and I ain’t ready to stop there. Is your mama home? ’Cause she can get it too.”

“Mama’s at church.”

Lyle’s cell phone rang again.

“Fool, I told you to turn that thing off!”

“Just a second.” Lyle looked at the number and then lifted the phone to his mouth. “Can’t talk now, I got company.” He ended the call.

“Who was that?”

“Telemarketer. Now, let me call a cab so I can get over to your mama’s crib.”

“Fool, you ain’t calling no cab so they can see who’s up in this house. Hell naw! You walking.”

The phone rang once more.

Before Super Blast could say anything, Lyle picked up the cell and hollered into it, “Don’t call here no more! I got company!”

“Who was that, Lyle?”

“Same damn call.”

“Fool, why you tell a telemarketer you got company?”

“Only way to get rid of ’em. Law says they can’t call you back if you say you got company.”

“For real? I never heard of no law like that.”

“It’s new.”

Super Blast sucked his teeth. “Damn, I hate telemarketers.” He began to shiver, his teeth chattering. He moaned, “I’m so cold,” then gripped his pistol close to his chest as though it were a baby’s blanket.

“Try and relax,” Lyle said. “Let me go get your mama, now.”

Super Blast grunted his approval before slipping into unconsciousness.

He heard the back door open. How long had he been out? No way of telling. It was all good, Mama was here now and she would get him to a doctor. Maybe they’d have to make a run for it. They had family in New Orleans. The money would give them a fresh start, they’d get a nice apartment and a new car. He’d break those kilos down and then cook the rest into rocks. He’d make a killing.

“Mama, I’m in here!” Super Blast cried out.

“Mama? I ain’t your mama, fool!”

It was a man’s voice: cold, angry, ruthless. Super Blast recognized it and almost screamed. He aimed his pistol toward the voice.

Nothing. Just two clicks.

The lights went on. And there he was: the hood god, Drama himself, and two of his goons. Lyle stood behind them.

“Lyle, I told you to go get my mama,” Super Blast said.

“Is that what you said? Huh. I thought you said go get Drama.”

Even Drama laughed. His trademark ponytail jumped on his back as his head bobbed up and down.

Super Blast winced as the pain shot through his spine. “Judas, you set me up.”

“I ain’t Judas, because in this scenario that would make you Jesus Christ, and you far from that.”

“I hate to break up all this good church talk,” Drama cut in. “But Super Blast — where my merchandise at?”

“I ain’t got nuthin’, Drama. Five-O ran up on me and I dropped the bag.”

Drama cursed, then crossed the room and stood over Super Blast. “Where my stuff at, fool?”

“I ain’t got—”

Drama slapped Super Blast in the forehead with his pistol. Blood gushed out.

“I can do this all night, player. Do not make me ask you again — where my yay and my money?” Drama’s right hand reared back.

“Okay, okay! It’s under the couch.”

“Give it to me.”

A tear slipped from Super Blast’s eye as he reached for the duffel bag. A puzzled look came over his face. His hand slid back down and started feeling around under the couch once again, frantically. “It’s gone.”

“Chump, you halfway to death’s door and you still want to play me?” Drama turned to the thugs behind him. “Get him up on his feet.”

And the truth hit Super Blast like a cement block falling from the sky. “Lyle! You stole that bag! When I passed out, you came and took the duffel. And you took the bullets outta my gun!”

“Get your story straight, Blast! First, you says you dropped a duffel bag when you were on the run. Then you say it’s under the couch. Now you saying I got it? Player, it looks like your run is over. A gangsta who can’t keep his alibis straight — I don’t know what’s to be said for you.”

“Let’s go,” Drama ordered. “I see we gonna have to torture your ass to get my money back.”

The goons scooped up Super Blast by his armpits; he was too weak to fight.

“Lyle, don’t do this to me! Tell this man something.”

“I don’t know what I can tell, Blast. But I can tell you like you told me: The streets don’t love nobody.”

Drama wrapped Super Blast’s mouth with duct tape, then pulled a ski mask over his head so he couldn’t be recognized.

Before they left, Drama said, “You done good, Lyle. Letting me know this fool was still here when I hit you on the cell. Otherwise he and his deadbeat mama might’ve got out of town. Come see me at the spot tomorrow — I’ll hit you off somethin’ proper, just like I promised.” Drama was known to be a man of his word, and generous to boot.

Super Blast twisted his head back, his eyes begging. As he was led out, he saw his protégé smile and say, “Have a lovely evening, gentlemen.”

Bulletproof by Carolyn Alexander

McClymonds

Lisa and Leon didn’t know each other, but they both felt the same way.

Lisa knew she was alive because she was hurting. Once again she had caused her own pain. Nothing could staunch the greedy and needy monster inside her who begged for more attention, more words of affirmation, more acts of affection, more, more, more. Her boyfriend finally peered down the bottomless pit of her need and he too ran off, to save his own life.

Leon had always felt he had to buy love, starting with his parents. His brother was an athlete, Leon was only an A student — commendable, but there was no glory in it, no trophies. His brother attracted girls. Leon earned them with gifts and begging. He was actually better looking than his older brother, taller and with dimples. But girls took Leon for granted, got bored, and eventually hooked up with some bad boy who screwed them over and left them, who they could never get over. Yet they would never take Leon back.

Lisa walked out the back of McClymonds High School, past her car in the parking lot, and out the gates, wandering aimlessly down 28th Street. When she crossed Myrtle she entered into the ho stroll of working girls. Even on the sunniest days this block was in shadow. One skinny, saggy-tittied prostitute, smoking a cigarette, eyed her. Lisa was too sad to fear for her own safety. The prostitute wore resignation like the mask of death. A car slowed, the driver leaning over the passenger side and scrutinizing Lisa, but when he didn’t hear the question, Are you looking for a date? he moved on to the other woman on the block, didn’t like what he saw, and sped off. The prostitute took the cigarette out of her mouth, peered at Lisa with pure venom, then settled in against the wall of the storage mart.

Sturdy brown legs under a white skirt skipped by, the trudging steps of her mother right behind, smiling absentmindedly. There was joy in West Oakland, even in the dark shadow of the ho stroll. Lisa always felt sorry for herself after love went bad. It was time to rewrite the script. She reminded her students that most papers could be saved, in fact were not complete without a good and thorough edit. But like her students, she didn’t have what it took to do it, at least as far as her life was concerned.

She assessed herself. Five foot nine (too tall), caramel skin, size 12/13 (too big). Thick black hair that was prone to getting poufy in this curly weave world, round face, big eyes, negroid nose, and full lips, wearing a black pencil skirt and a fitted white blouse. Not exactly bad-girl attire.

Leon turned his ride at the corner of 28th Street and saw Lisa standing there. She was a different type of prostitute, one for the guys who wanted to take down a businesswoman, a proper girl. Maybe he could pay up front and have exactly what he wanted.

In her sad, suicidal mood, Lisa decided if he slowed she would get into the car. He looked harmless enough. A voice in her head whispered, This ain’t Black Pretty Woman, you know. She ignored the voice and got in. There was something about his face, something about him that made her feel it was okay. Leon drove off. He didn’t speak and neither did she. He turned right onto Market Street. The light caught him on 27th Street. Lisa opened the door just to see if she could, in case she needed to get out in a hurry.

“What’s the matter?” Leon asked. He would be relieved if she got out, but he was also relieved that she stayed. Her energy felt good, it was electrifying.

“Nothing.”

Leon looked at her. “How does this work?”

“How do you want it to work?” Lisa didn’t even know where that came from.

“Uh, I don’t know.” Leon’s cell phone rang and he reluctantly answered it. “Where...? Yeah, I’m just getting off work but I have someone with me... Maybe I don’t want to bring them along... All right! I’ll pick you up.” He stole a glance at Lisa. “A slight detour, I need to pick someone up.”

“Okay,” Lisa whispered. She thought, Is this the setup for a gang rape?

He sensed her fear and instinctively reached for her hand. But he caught himself; this was no date. What the hell was this anyway? Lisa pulled her hand away at his first furtive movement. Maybe he was trying to hold her so she couldn’t jump out.

What type of prostitute is she? Leon wondered. She seemed too shy to be a whore, but if she wasn’t, why would she get in his car? Why didn’t she talk about price up front? Maybe it was an act to fleece him at the end of the evening. The bitch!

“I would say a penny for your thoughts but I know that wouldn’t be nearly enough.”

“Thoughts? Thoughts are free. I was just thinking it’s good to be with a gentleman.” She was hoping.

“A gentleman?” Leon snorted. “You find many of those cruising 28th Street?” He turned right on 7th Street.

Lisa didn’t answer. They both were thinking, What the fuck have I got myself into?

Leon pulled into the West Oakland BART station. A tall, thin, nut-brown guy with a pile of nappy hair approached. Lisa jumped out of the car and Leon’s heart lurched with the same feeling of relieved if she does, relieved if she doesn’t. Lisa opened the rear door and got in the back. Nobody would slip a garrote around her neck.

Leon frowned at her. Lisa managed, “We can talk later,” before his friend got in, his shock of hair scraping against the ceiling of the car. “Take care of your friend first.”

“Thanks, man,” the guy said. He turned around with a semi-smirk on his face. “Who is this?”

Lisa disliked him immediately.

Leon stammered, “This is—”

“Lisa Boudreux,” she said, extending her hand. The guy turned away without taking her hand.

“This is Ajani,” Leon said.

“Well, Leon, I see you are up to surprises.” Ajani cupped his hand to light up a joint, then turned to Lisa. “You a smoking girl?” He had that same quizzical smirk on his face.

God, she couldn’t stand him. “No,” she said, and shook her head gently.

Leon turned and looked at her. She really was a different type of prostitute. He could use some herbal encouragement.

Lisa noticed the early winter sunset as she watched the bright orange-red end of the joint grow brighter when Leon took a toke.

Leon drove past the Shell station on 7th Street and Market. “I gotta get gas but this place is too high.” He headed down to the ARCO on Grand. When he jumped out to pump gas, Ajani stepped out to get something from the AM-PM store.

“So, who’s this chick?”

“Somebody I picked up.”

“C’mon, man. You don’t pick up chicks.”

“Today I did.” Leon turned his back to the car and leaned toward Ajani. “She’s a prostitute.”

“A prostitute?” Ajani glowered at her. “She ain’t no prostitute.”

“I slowed down where the working girls are. She was there and hopped right in my car.”

Ajani peered at Leon, then over at Lisa.

As soon as the guys got back in the car, Ajani twisted around to face her and asked, “How about a threesome?”

Lisa stared at Ajani unflinchingly and casually said, “A threesome is more. Who’s paying?”

“I don’t want a threesome,” Leon cut in. “This is between Lisa and me.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Ajani muttered. “Tell you what. I got a spot; it’s a place not too many people know about or can know about. You heard about the Power Exchange in San Francisco?” Crickets. “Of course not. Well, this is like the Power Exchange only more relaxed. No one is required to do anything. The place has a really chill atmosphere. It’s called the Upside of Pandora’s Box. You guys seem up for an adventure today, so let’s go.”

Ajani directed Leon back down Market to 18th and made a right and then a left, stopping at a huge house on Linden Street. The ground floor had been turned into a separate apartment. Ajani ran ahead. A hunky black man in a pinstripe suit opened the door and he and Ajani laughed. The brother let Ajani head inside. When Leon tried to walk past, the guy said, “Twenty dollars a person.” Leon paid for Lisa as well.

The smell of sage greeted them as they stepped over salt sprinkled at the threshold. The air was hazy and blue light barely illuminated the place. “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane was playing, followed by Prince’s “Do Me, Baby.” As Leon and Lisa made their way up the stairs they passed Ajani sitting with another guy, pulling on a bong. His eyelids were already drooping. Ajani handed the bong to Leon, who hit, and he passed it to Lisa, and she hit it, and the bong began making its rotations. They didn’t feel anything... and then they did. The world changed. All their senses were heightened. They became hyperaware of everything. Their bodies felt lighter. Gravity was no longer in effect.

Couples were dancing sensuously. A man bent a woman over and ran his hands along her breasts and down the length of her body, grabbing her hips and pulling her into him. A girl came in, demure and sad. “Why you feeling blue, Meg?” a man asked. He cleared a long oak table and helped her lie down on it. He began to disrobe her and others joined in. They rubbed her down with oil, from the bottom of her feet to her scalp, massaging her slowly. Some guy bent over and suckled her breast and a girl on the other side did the same. Meg’s eyes were closed as she drank in the tactile pleasures. A man sunk his middle finger between her legs. She gasped and then began a low moan. He mounted her while the others continued to caress her, holding her hands out and rubbing her arms. In a short while she arched her back and pointed her bent legs toward the ceiling. Everyone applauded when they saw the shy smile on her face.

Lisa slurred, “That was lovely.”

“You think so?” Leon whispered. Ajani had disappeared to parts unknown. Leon leaned forward and gently kissed her. “You’re lovely.” He kissed her again, parting her full lips and tasting her.

A wide-hipped woman, looking like Pocahontas with two thick braids, stood up and began dancing alone. She was dancing so slowly and smoothly that in their drugged state, one of her movements seemed to blur into the next as if her body had no lines or boundaries. Lisa leaned in clumsily and kissed Leon and they both fell over. He rolled on top of her luscious thickness and the weight of his body felt delicious. Their pleasure was liquid and insuppressible. He bunched her skirt up around her waist. Neither was conscious enough of their surroundings to care. Leon began tugging forcefully on Lisa’s panties.

“Wow! Can I be next?”

It was as if a beautiful love song playing on vinyl had the needle abruptly ripped off. Lisa and Leon opened their eyes to find Ajani, grinning stupidly at them. The hunky guy in the pinstriped suit was shaking his head at Ajani — his behavior was improper etiquette for the Upside of Pandora’s Box.

“Man, can’t you find yourself a woman?” Leon said. “And find yourself a ride home!”

“Aw, man, is it like that? Over this bitch?”

Leon tilted his head and just looked at Ajani.

“Yeah, man, I can get a ride,” Ajani finally muttered.

“Good!” Leon reached for Lisa’s hand and they made for the door.

When they stepped outside, the cold air dissipated the sexual intensity they had felt inside.

“You want to get a room?”

Lisa looked down. “Yes, I do. But I have something to tell you.”

“You’re not really a prostitute.”

“You knew?”

“I guessed. I don’t really have any experience with this, but what prostitute doesn’t talk money from the jump, unless they want to blindside the guy with the price later? You didn’t seem hard enough for that. But why in the world would you get into a stranger’s car? That’s damn dangerous.”

“I know, but you had a look and I had a feeling. I was feeling low and so I took a chance.”

“Man, that could have been the deadliest chance of your life.”

“Well, why did you pick me up?”

“I was feeling down too. I looked at you and I just did it. Paying for sex, however you want it. At the time it seemed like a good idea.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“It’s getting late. I better go back to my car.” Lisa said.

“Are we going to exchange numbers?” Leon asked.

“No, the night was perfect. It would probably go downhill from here.”

“You’re probably right.”

“But if I ever see you again...” they both said at the same time.

“We’ll know it was fate,” Lisa finished.

He drove her back to 28th Street, the block between Myrtle and Market. A car passed by and Lisa thought she saw Ajani’s face. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride to your car?” Leon asked. “You already dodged one bullet.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Let’s keep the mystery going.”

He kissed her once again and let her out. She was walking back to McClymonds, one short block, when she noticed a lump of something on the sidewalk. When she got closer she saw it was the prostitute in a heap, her eyes half open, a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth. Lisa didn’t know if she was alive or dead. Either way it was too late for the woman to rewrite this chapter of her life, and Lisa wondered if it was too late for her too. She pulled out her phone to call 911. The heavy footsteps behind her came so fast she had no time to feel fear or dread.

The Three Stooges by Phil Canalin

Sausal Creek

Tonight the three guys felt good. All of them had scored some schwag and were about to blaze big in a minute. But they sat, stalling and shooting the shit for a little bit, knowing that the first hit was always the best hit, and waiting for it could be almost as good.

They were hanging out in the forgotten back end of Austen Square, near East 22nd Street. Not far from them, a mural had been gloriously painted on the old concrete retaining wall along that portion of Sausal Creek. The mural, about thirty feet long, depicted a woman’s face with a series of scared and startled expressions, ending, or perhaps beginning, with Pinocchio’s cartoon face, also startled, even horrified. Meaning what, exactly? That someone cannot tell a lie? Or that someone’s about to tell a lie? It depended on the direction in which the observer viewed the painted mural, maybe. Either way, a lie about what?

The three of them were all but hidden by tall, grassy weeds and wild shrubs, broad-leafed, hollow-limbed, and ignored for years. None of the boys cared one bit about the artwork or its intended meaning. The boys — really, they were men in stature — sat sprawled atop a portion of the low wall of cheap, crumbling concrete. The city had probably saved a few cents on the dollar using inferior product back when they first put the wall up ages ago, maybe saving a few more cents by hiring inferior city workers.

What was supposed to be a wall to stop Sausal Creek from eroding the land was now a crumbling, unkempt eyesore, like the rest of the creek trail most of the way down to the Oakland Estuary. Hell, a lot people lived in Oakland all their lives and didn’t even know Sausal Creek existed, let alone that it ran from the northeast hills up near Mountain Boulevard down to the estuary and San Leandro Bay. It didn’t help that city forefathers had installed metal culvert pipes to direct much of the creek underground, causing a lot of it to dry up. Even in the winter months many parts of Sausal Creek were thin, filthy beds of jumbled rocks embedded in flat sections of gray, smelly clay. All this was why the three of them could hole up there forever most nights, rarely bothered. Of course, their ragged, dirty clothes and overall grossness kept folks at a distance too.

On one end Maurice was holding up a cheap plastic sandwich baggie, shaking it and gleefully bragging in front of the others. Maurice was eighteen, originally from LA. He’d dropped out of high school after the very first day of freshman year, just never went back. No one cared. His mother and father were already long gone and his sister was a whore. She worked in West LA, making just enough cash to sustain her meth stash and keep a room in a cockroach-infested motel where Maurice crashed. She was so out of it she rarely knew that Maurice was there, sleeping in the bathroom tub, eating stolen food or fast food he bought using money pinched from her. After finally taking off, Maurice never saw or heard from her again. Hell, she may not have realized he was ever there and gone. If she was still alive. Sometimes, in his dreams, Maurice still heard her (fake) and her johns’ (scary) moans and groans, bleeding through the bathroom walls from the living room. Maurice used to cover his ears and pretend to sleep through it. He was better off alone.

“Got me two good ol’ blunts here, you know. Took them right off that crazy white mo’fo at the 26th Avenue bus stop,” Maurice said. “Dude was soft, man, couldn’t do a thing, you know what I mean? I just took his backpack, took it right from him. Snatch. He thought I was sleepin’.”

Maurice was one of those big, really fat homeless guys. Huge. Gross. He had to weigh at least three and a half bills and he was only five foot five. Maurice rarely had a lot to eat, so keeping all that weight on must have been some biological DNA thing. It didn’t help his girth that he spent so much time lying around sleeping, wherever and whenever he could find some quiet place, alone. Hell, it was all he could do, dragging his humongous body around was exhausting. He had on the usual three pairs of sweatpants, old now, the top one black, soiled and ragged, torn at both knees, a dirty gray one showing through. Maurice also wore a giant navy-blue hoodie beneath a 5XL cotton shirt, fading green and orange plaid, ripped at both elbows and a foot too long for his squat body. When Maurice found something that fit over his huge frame, he held onto it, never sure when the next load of Bigandbigger clothing would come. Covering his fashion ensemble was a simply made poncho, a hole cut out for his head, his arms sticking out of the corners on either side. That poncho was big enough to be a kid’s tent, made of some dark indoor/outdoor material that was soft and pliable, but waterproof and tough. It looked like something a giant cowboy would have worn to survive long cattle drives through harsh winters atop beautiful Wyoming mountain ranges. It was Maurice’s prized possession, cinched at the waist now with a piece of rope, but big and long enough to curl his large body into later, keeping him warm and dry at night, right here atop the ugly, dirty Oakland city streets.

Lawrence Booker, in the middle, spoke: “Lessee what you got, Maurice... hhssssp... make sure it’s real stuff, not dried-up nickel ragweed. Hhssssp. Don’t want you burning out a lung or anything... hhssssp.”

Lawrence sat there on his cold perch, both hands pulled up into the sleeves of his green army coat. The coat was stained and had a nasty stench from years of use and limited washings. His messy, gnarled Afro was stuffed into an equally gnarled black knit hat that more than suggested he needed a larger one. Puffs of Lawrence’s dry ratty hair stuck out randomly along the edge of the hat; it wasn’t easy to tell what was hair and what was unraveling hat yarn. “Come on, Mo, first spark up a little of your stuff... hhssssp. I’m a little light right now. Get it? A little light? Hhssssp. That’s what we need.”

As he talked, Lawrence had this habit of sucking air into his mouth through a gap made by two missing teeth. Not his two front teeth, but the first two immediately off-center on the top right side. About two years ago, Lawrence “found” a pretty fat wallet in a coat hanging in a coffee shop down on International. Later that night he bonged a boatload of kick-ass hashish while guzzling a quart of cheap tequila — eventually he passed out and keeled over, smashing his face on some steps. Those two teeth had taken the brunt of his fall. When Lawrence awoke, sleeping in a small pool of his own congealed blood, he had his own permanent mouth instrument to keep him amused.

Lawrence had been living on the streets longer than either of the other two. An orphan, he had never known his mother or father, living in a multitude of foster homes in the East Bay as a child, a vagabond in a woebegone government system that neither budgeted enough money to monitor what was really happening out there in Foster Kid World, or cared enough to even give a rat’s ass. Maybe government folks figured as long as you were in a home and had a place to eat and sleep, well then, you damn well must be happy. After his millionth beating from the last of a series of foster parents who used his stipend money to buy booze and drugs, Lawrence had simply said, Screw this, run off, and permanently escaped. He was eleven years old then, and no one was going to know what Lawrence had had to do sometimes to survive all this time. He’d take that crap to his grave. No one. Hhssssp.

The last guy on the other end, that was Champ, who chimed in, “Yeah, Mo, you know that dirty old dude coulda been rollin’ anything, man, you know like he had no cash to get nothing rich either, right, know what I’m sayin’?”

Maurice chuckled low. “Yeah, I hear you, Champ. Come on, man, I already had a couple early tokes. Stuff’s for reals, I’m tellin’ ya. Fo’. Reals.” He smiled and winked at the others, teasing them with his fluttering joint bag. “Wutchoo idiots get? More to share? Cuz you know, two fatties ain’t much to pass around, you know, mostly good for me, maybe a free toke or so for you, maybe not.”

“Dang, Mo, you jumped the gun on us, man,” Champ replied. “You know, shoulda waited on us, man.”

His real name was Champion DeLeon Cromarté. He told everyone he was named Champion by his proud father, who was once the Este Región Guantes de Oro Peso Welter Campeón. In English: the East Region Welterweight Golden Gloves Champion — in the Dominican Republic. His father moved to the States in ’91, fell in with some bad gamblers, and didn’t make it in boxing. Finally, fifty pounds over his fighting weight and sporting an obnoxious cauliflower ear, Señor Cromarté got hired as a thug for some nobody drug pusher. As was usually the case in that line of work, Señor Cromarté was paid in drugs, booze, and a place to crash, and even then some woman loved him enough to marry him and bear his only child.

Champ told everyone, “Yeah, man, you know, my father held me up in the county clinic, right, and shouted at the top of his lungs, He’s gonna be a champion, a champion like me! That was just a week before he and my mother both OD’d on some shit smack, you know. So you can call me Champ — more like Chump — but don’t call me Champion, cuz it ain’t so, know what I mean?”

Child Protective Services took custody of baby Champ and eventually found some long-disconnected uncle and aunt and, bless them, they at least consented, raising Champ as best they could. But they were barely making it themselves and never really knew his father, who was only some very, very distant third cousin or something, and they knew Champ’s mother not at all. So forgive them if they didn’t lavish much attention or support on the kid. Hijo de punto, he wasn’t their kid anyway. Champ understood that, even at age nine when he ran away for the first of many times, and definitely at fourteen when he ran all the way away once and for all.

Champ sat there, outfitted like the others that evening, in layers of smelly, dirty clothes, anything to keep warm at night: two or three hoodies, the requisite knit hat, khaki pants over sweats; indiscriminate colors, since colors don’t matter when the clothes you’re wearing are torn, filthy, reeking rags. Champ did sport a greasy red, white, and blue do-rag tied around his head, crammed under his knit hat — not for the good old US of A, but proudly for the colors of the Dominican Republic national flag. Champ looked tired, like the others, dark bags beneath sunken brown eyes. He had unruly facial hair growing in uneven patterns on his mocha-colored face, dirty and mucky from being on the street without a shower or shave for over ten days now. Champ was thin, medium height, but his frazzled appearance made him look twenty years older than he was. His frazzled life made him feel forty years older.

Earlier that day Champ had made a couple of bucks and some change sweeping out King’s Gym alongside the disgusted glances of the sweaty regulars working out. Mr. Gordon, or just Gordon as he was called, was the head janitor and had worked for the Kings for many years, had even known Champion’s padre years before. Gordon felt badly for Champ, so occasionally the old janitor would let the kid sweep or pick up garbage and towels in the gym for a few dollars and loose change, anything to help him out. But the handouts came less and less frequently, especially as Gordon saw that Champ was more and more often just hanging out with the other alley bums, not even trying to help himself. And Champ smelled flawed somehow, like all the bums did, slipping further and further into that gory morass of wasted human lives. Gordon saw it too often and it pained him to no end. He knew for certain that if Champ’s father were still alive, he would never have let this happen, no way. He would have knocked some sense into his only son, literally.

“Self-pride is another long-lost art, like the art of boxing,” Gordon often tried to explain when he thought he had Champ’s attention. “You gotta learn to take care of yourself. You can train and train and work out all you want, but once you’re in that ring it’s only you.”

Gordon even tried to get Champ to go back to school — a program at Laney College for dropouts and homeless kids he had read about in the Tribune. Gordon went so far as to contact the school’s director, someone named Tom Gelman. Coach Gelman told him all Champ had to do was call and Gelman promised he’d take care of the rest. Seemed like a good guy. But when Gordon invited Champ into his messy, cramped supply office to explain about the school and have Champ make the call, he saw immediately in the kid’s eyes that he didn’t give a crap. Gordon realized he had just been wasting his own time, and why should he do that? Hell, he was no Mother Teresa, he had a job to take care of. Too lazy to get off the streets? Welcome to the streets, kid! But every once in a while, Gordon still felt badly and he’d help Champ out, for old times and for Champ’s padre, Señor Cromarté, the last real champion of anything from around there.

“Dudes,” Champ was now telling his street buddies, “you won’t believe what happened today, you know. Ol’ Gordon gave me two-fifty for sweeping up his ratty ol’ boxing gym. What an idiot, you know what I mean? So I bought me some sweet old boots from the Salvation Army, perfect size and everything, no holes, and warm too, like new!”

“That old fart is always giving you handouts, man, what’s up with that?” Maurice said. “A little sumpin-sumpin cooking there?”

“Yeah, Champ... hhssssp,” Lawrence added, “he must, like, like you or something, dude. You better... hhssssp... watch out for them old geezers like that.”

“Come, on, holmes,” Champ replied, “it ain’t nothing like that. Old dude just knew my papá once, tries to help me out sometimes. It’s cool, it’s cool.”

“Yeah, okay, but really, what the hell are you talking about, Champ... hhssssp?” Lawrence scoffed. “Look at your raggedy ol’ shoes... hhssssp... they’re filthy and they’re leaking oil, dude!” He laughed, pointing at Champ’s black sneakers that were caked with dirt and mud, one shoestring tied in numerous knots to hold together, the rubber sole on the other just a paper-thin strip.

Maurice laughed too. “Yikes! You crazy Mexican, if you bought those shoes for two-fitty you must be back in Mexico and smokin’ some donkey-piss weed on the tequila farm or something! Them shoes are messed up!”

Champ eyed them with disgust. “Not these shoes, you a-holes. You idiots don’t have a clue, man. Some other shoes, bro, some other boots, right? Dude at the Army sold me a cool pair for my two dollars and fifty cents, a bargain, know what I’m sayin’? Winter boots and the tag said six-fifty, man, no bull! And I told you, I ain’t Mexican, you know, how many times I gotta tell you I’m Dominican, man. Dominican Republic represent!”

Lawrence looked at Champ like he was from outer space. “Well, you talk Mexican and you buy shoes like some dumb-ass Mexican too... hhssssp. But you wasted your money on those crap no-Cons right there... hhsssp!”

Maurice added, “And whatever you are, homeboy, those dirty kicks you’re wearing are definitely representing the facts, loud and clear, that you’re a crazy Mexican, or Dominican, or whatever, and your dang feet are gonna freeze tonight, know what I’m tellin’ you?”

“You’re both screwed, dudes, fubar, you hear me?” Champ said. “I sold those other boots to Raymond. His feet and mine are the same size, like a coincidence, you know. Well, you know, really, I actually swapped those boots with Raymond, man, no moolah changed hands.”

“Well, lay it on me, brother man,” Maurice responded. “What did you and Raymond barter for those amazing boots, which I ain’t ever seen? I’m just sayin’, why the hell did you trade those amazing boots to the sorriest drug dealer on the West Side, Raymond Donahue, who you know mixes dried-up old herbs and real grass with his ragweed to sell to crazy-ass rich-douche reefer-heads who wouldn’t know great smoke from the kind blowin’ up and through their booties, you know what I mean?”

“Damn, Mo.” Lawrence peered at Maurice with pure awe, and in the moment forgot all about playing his toothless mouth instrument. “You shoulda been a poet or politician or something, boy. Your rap is greatness as anything I ever hear on TV at the Y.”

“Both of you are wigging me out, really spazzin’,” Champ said. “Come on, now, I’m gonna show you what I got from Raymond for those boots. Ray-Ray told me he mixed in some extra-special dust into this one here. You know it’s good, homeys, Ray-Ray ain’t shit but he don’t lie to me.”

Champion reached the fingers of his dirty right hand up and under his cap and into a fold in his Dominican do-rag, pulling out a dark-brown joint, not even half as thick as a No. 2 pencil. Champ displayed it proudly with his thumb and forefinger. “We gonna get high tonight, boys, you know what I’m sayin’?” he declared in a reverential tone.

To which both Maurice and Lawrence exploded with laughter.

“What the hell’s that?!” Maurice guffawed. “A doobie for a dwarfie? A baby phattie for baby rattie?”

“Aw, hell no!” Lawrence joined in. “It’s a toothpick joint, in case our dinner steaks and lobsters get stuck in our teeth... hhssssp... well, you-all’s teeth, anyway!” Which set him off laughing hysterically, so much so that he choked on his own final, “Hhssssp... hack-ack!”

“Quick!” Maurice faked a shout, holding his hands megaphone-like over his mouth. “Call in the troops, call in the FBI, call in the FDA, the NSA, NIA, CIA, and all them other IAs — Champ’s got hisself a major drug deal going down tonight, lemme tell you, boy!”

“And mind that special dust from Mr. Donahue!” Lawrence called out as well. “Special dust in da house!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mo added. “Keep them vacuums cleaners away, beautiful ladies and gentlemens, cuz we got us some special dust in this here special joint... the Champion Joint Smoke is what it is, Champ’s Champion Joint Smoke!”

“Funny, fellas, funny for real,” Champ said. “Well, you know, if that’s how y’all feel about it, guess I havta enjoy this little toke all on myself, you know, all on myself.” He waved the joint at the others. “Say bye-bye to the spliff, jokesters. This little baby’s all mines.”

That stopped Lawrence. He still hadn’t shown his own stash, didn’t want to show his stash, and no way wanted to share his stash with anyone, even his homeys. “Man, come on, Champ dude... hhssssp,” he said, stifling his giggles. “You know we playing. Right, Mo? Just... hhssssp... playing.”

“Yeah, Champ, chill.” Maurice had his own two joints, but the more high the merrier, he always said, especially if he didn’t have to work for it. “We gotta have us a laugh once in a while, right, man? Street homies need to get some laughs any time we can. Otherwise, what are we, dudes? We just like them folks working nine to five, know what I’m saying? One foot in the grave, one foot in the poor house, man, and another foot up our asses. Day after dang-dog day. Come on, we gotta chill and laugh with each other, at each other, whatever. Just chill and laugh.”

“Dude’s right on, Champ. Hhssssp. Speaking the truth as always, Maurice,” Lawrence agreed.

“Yeah, dudes, I hear you, all right,” Champ relented. “Okay, maybe I share a little bit, as long as we all are. Just don’t laugh at me no more... AND QUIT CALLIN’ ME A MEXICAN!”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Maurice said, a baby-blue BIC lighter magically appearing in his hands. He flicked the BIC and held the small flame to the already burnt end of the joint now clasped gently between his yellowed teeth. “Light ’em if you got ’em, boys.”

Maurice squinted his eyes as he gently inhaled, long and steady, holding the marijuana smoke deep in his lungs. When he finally stopped, a third of the blunt had burned away. Still squinting, he then held the joint’s red ember tip to his mouth and with his last spare lung-space sucked in the wispy smoke trail.

“Gettin’ high like ching chong, Mo, massive hit, bro.” Lawrence smiled, reaching out nonchalantly for Maurice to pass him the Mary Jane. They had done this many times over the last month or two — they didn’t always share, but if they had enough to go around they usually did, no questions asked either way. Tonight Mo passed Lawrence the lit joint.

Lawrence raised his eyebrows with a quick “Thanks, dude.” He sucked on the jay in three rapid inhalations, filling his lungs with the thick and pungent reefer smoke. Lawrence smiled at Maurice, exposing the gap in his teeth, then cocked his head slightly in Champ’s direction; Maurice responded with a simple nod of his head — Lawrence understood it was okay to pass Mo’s joint over to Champ for a toke. About an inch of the original joint was left.

“Thanks, fellas,” Champ said, accepting the offering and placing the smoldering jay between his tightly squeezed thumb and index finger. “High Mo-amigo,” Champ also said in his personal thank you, then took a long drag on the small butt. By the time he finished, only a tiny portion of the joint remained, an eighth of an inch or so. Champ’s lungs, like the others’, were used to taking long, full drags and holding the smoke deeply to allow the drug to fully work its magic. A doobie never lasted very long when the three of them shared it. And Maurice was right on too — the pot was damn good stuff.

Maurice expelled the reefer smoke he’d been holding in his lungs and reached into the front zipper pocket of his grimy Adidas backpack. From there he pulled out a small silver medical clamp, now serving its pharmaceutical duty as a roach clip. “I’ll take that roach, dude,” he said, reaching across Lawrence, deftly accepting the joint from Champ, and locking the clip’s teeth-lined jaws along the slightest edge of the butt. Pulling back, Maurice held the roach clip up as closely as possible to his lips without touching the sparked end of the roach, and, once again squinting his eyes, tenderly smoked the rest of the joint. Finally, with nothing left but a tiny scrap of rolling paper, he opened the roach clip and released the particle.

“All right, all right,” Champ said. “That was some good puff, Mo, good start, know what I’m saying? What’s next? Lawrence, what you got, bro?”

“Yeah, mo-fo Lo-Ro, whatchoo got, man?” Maurice asked, his eyes beginning to redden, his eyelids drooping slightly. “You got us a treat, High Lo?”

“Aw, man, you know how it is, fellas... hhssssp,” Lawrence began. He held his up his hands, palms facing out, wiggling his fingers. “Ain’t got no smoke, dudes... hhssssp.” Lawrence was lying; he was holding out on an eighth-ounce of Grade-A skunk weed, and felt no qualms about doing so.

“Aw, brother man,” Maurice cried out, “you messing with us or something, dude? Hell, you just smoked my ganja and now you tell us you buddels?”

“What the hell, Lawrence, you gotta be more weedsponsible than that, homeboy,” Champ chimed in. “We oughtta kick your butt up and down the creek for pulling that crap, you know.”

“Well, you guys are my street buds, right?” Lawrence replied. “I told you I was light earlier, remember... hhssssp?” But then, smiling, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a full pint of booze. “All righty then... hhssssp... tell you all what, you can kick my butt after we drink this here bottle of José Gold. Sí, sí, amigos?”

“Aw, man, thass cool!” Champ laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t hold out on us, Lawrence! Nothing goes better with getting stoned than getting drunk!”

“Hell, I’ll drink to that!” Maurice said, and when Lawrence passed him the bottle that’s exactly what he did.

The pint didn’t last too long, enough for just two rounds of glugs and guzzles.

Maurice finished the last sip, then tossed the empty bottle into the tangle of bushes on his right. “You crazy, drunk, high idiots, let’s quit BS’ing around and spark up my other joint.”

In just over ten minutes, the three homeless friends, sitting atop the creek’s crumbling retaining wall in the gloom of early night, had smoked a pretty phat joint and polished off a pint bottle of tequila. They were feeling no pain. This, however, did not stop Maurice from using his BIC to blaze his second joint. The smoking, passing, and sharing resumed at a more leisurely pace.

“Damn,” Maurice sighed, caressing his mountainous belly with both arms. “I got the damn munchies.”

“Yeah, me too,” Champ agreed, patting his stomach.

“No, dudes, hear what I’m sayin’, man,” Maurice said. “I mean I always got the munchies, but this time I really got the munchies.”

“Mo,” Lawrence said, “just don’t think about it, man... hhssssp. We gonna get some food later.”

“Yeah, right,” Champ said. “From where? You hear what I’m saying?”

“Hell,” Maurice wailed again, “I’d do anything for a burger and fries.”

“Don’t say that.” Lawrence glared at his homeys. “Don’t ever say you’d do anything for anything. Ever.”

There was a moment of silence while they each contemplated this advice. Either that or they were still thinking about hamburgers, fries, and tacos.

Champ broke the quiet. “So, real question: like what would you homeboys do for a regular place to stay, every day, regular food coming too, man? Like every day?”

“Shit ain’t gonna happen,” Maurice responded immediately. “So I ain’t answering.”

“Yeah,” Lawrence said. “Hhssssp... Why you asking, Champ, you ain’t asked stuff like that before.”

Maurice and Lawrence looked at Champ with their puffy eyes, red and bleary from partying, hunger, and feeling so dang tired.

Champ then explained about Gordon and the school at Laney, the school for homeless kids, dropouts, and fuck-ups. How Champ could get into that school, even have a place to stay, maybe a part-time job. And more than anything: how he could get off the damn street.

His two stoned street buddies thought he was crazy.

“Come on, Champ,” Maurice scoffed. “You? Back to school? Think about that, go back to school after all this? Come on, man.”

“What,” Lawrence added, “you think they gonna hand all that shit over to you for free? Hhssssp! Sure, sonny, come to school and, hey, live here too, and don’t forget your three squares a day — no cost, no payment. Just for you!... hhssssp.”

“Right,” Maurice said. “Sounds like prison to me. Don’t it sound like prison, homeys?”

“No, it ain’t prison,” Champ replied. “It’s some government program. And why not me? I can do it. I wanna do it. I didn’t even tell ol’ Gordon, but you wanna know what I done? I called that school. I spoke to the head dude! And we met at the school, man. Coach Gelman was cool, man, he told me I could do it!”

“Uh-oh, here we go again,” Mo shook his head. “Another homo-erecto freak, lookin’ for some Champ-action, yeah? What is it with these old dudes and you, amigo?”

“Come on, Maurice,” Champ answered, “it ain’t like that, you know. Not at all. Dude, Coach Gelman’s gonna deal with the details, I just gotta show up there Wednesday morning. He told me that.”

“Wednesday morning? At the college? Hhssssp. You gotta be totally messed up! You’re dreaming, Champ, look at you, dude... hhssssp! You’re a mess! You? In college? Yeah, right. And I’m going to the White House next Monday, meeting with the first lady and the prez! Maybe they gonna fix my teeth too... hhssssp.”

“Nah, see, I shoulda known,” Champ said. “I thought you guys were my homeboys, but you ain’t shit. Screw you both! Believe me, man, I’ma take care of my business, ain’t living like this no more. Coach Gelman even gave me his card — with his direct number and the day and time I’m meeting with him.”

Champ pulled a business card from another do-rag hiding place, holding it up close to his eyes to read it in the evening shadows. “See? Right here: East Campus, room 324. Gelman’s card, dudes. Says here: Tom Gelman, Track Coach and Director, Home Place School of Education, Laney Peralta College. Laugh at me all you want, but that’s where I’m going.”

With that stalwart declaration, Champion DeLeon Cromarté tapped his tightly closed fist against his heart three times in a solemn promise to himself. He pointed his finger and shook his head contemptuously at the others. Damn ’em, he thought, I’m better than that. I’ma live up to my name — I’ma be the Champion. And he reached for his special joint — Champ’s Champion Joint Smoke, as Maurice had named it. He pulled a matchbook from his pants pocket, and sparked the reefer between his lips with a big, bright flame. Before he inhaled, his thoughts flashed that this flame signified his own big and bright hopes for the future.

Champ squinted his eyes like Maurice had earlier — high like ching chong — as he sustained a long, drawn-out hit, two, maybe three times longer than any Maurice and Lawrence had taken. The other two watched with amazement and desire burning in their dull-lidded eyes as this monster toke demolished that Champion Joint Smoke. It was the MVP award — winning Champion Doobie Puff of all time! And Maurice and Lawrence held their own breath as their friend utilized years of experienced reefer smoking and overall drug abuse to draw that weed directly into his burnt-out lungs, along with whatever special dust had been added. They watched in ignorant appreciation as the doobage, bartered seemingly ages ago for a pair of used winter boots, quickly disappeared: one-quarter gone, one-third, one-half, two-thirds, then slowly — charred — completely away.

Champ closed his eyes momentarily as the last spark disappeared. The other two saw him relax his shoulders, holding the pungent smoke deep in his lungs for full effect. Suddenly, Champ made a snorting noise with his nose as he felt the hot, thick smoke begin to burn. A wilder snort erupted as a wispy smoke trail escaped a corner of Champ’s lips. He raised a finger to block the smoky exodus, but then his eyes flew open wide as, finally, he could hold his breath no longer. He groaned, letting out raspy, heaving coughs as the remaining smoke rushed from his lungs, flying up into the chilly darkness of the night. The dark pupils of Champ’s eyes raced wickedly back and forth across the scene — from Maurice to Lawrence, from Lawrence to Maurice — as his coughing fit continued, spewing jagged, painful rasps. And at exactly that moment when Champ simultaneously caught both of his street friends’ astonished stares in his own, he fell from the crumbling concrete wall, collapsing to the ground in a heap. Champ thrashed in agony for three counts, his body seizing up in massive, racking convulsions, his breath coming in gagging gasps. And then, in a flash, his body suddenly lay limp and quiet.

The special dust that Raymond Donahue, the sorriest drug dealer in West Oakland, had added to that Champion Joint Smoke was very poorly manufactured fentanyl, the so-called King of All Opiates. The drug, fifty times more powerful than 100 percent pure heroin, may have been king on the streets, but in the cheap and deadly way it had been produced, distributed, and smoked, it was the Killer of Champions.

When the chemical in smoke form had seeped into Champ’s lungs and entered his blood system, he’d immediately convulsed and vomited, the puke mixing with his saliva, gushing quickly in reverse down his esophagus, and flooding into his lungs. Champ had begun choking to death instantly. His heart, already vulnerable from years on the street and hundreds of bad choices, couldn’t handle the potency. He had suffered a mammoth spasm, then crashed. No time for reflection, no time for regret.

“What the—” Maurice whispered, stunned.

“Holy shit,” Lawrence said, barely audible.

Their fallen street bud’s body lay on the ground, a few feet away. Maurice and Lawrence slowly got down from their concrete seats, faces masked in dumbfounded, dazed expressions — equal parts weed, booze, and shock. Maurice slowly reached out a toe in a dirty shoe and pushed it into Champ’s shoulder. Nothing.

“Shit, he’s dead, Lawrence.”

“Holy shit,” Lawrence repeated.

Maurice reached to pick up his backpack without taking his eyes off the body. He threw the pack over his pork butt — sized shoulder. “I’m blowing Dodge before the cops come,” he said. But massive Maurice hesitated, slowly and carefully bending down and pulling off Champ’s dirty knit hat and then his do-rag. “I’m taking this,” Maurice said, either to Lawrence or to no one. And he rambled off, keeping close to the concrete wall, quickly swallowed up by the dark tangle of overgrown bushes and thick weeds. In a moment, he was gone.

Lawrence stood completely still. Without turning his head, his eyes followed his friend, quickly losing sight of him. Lawrence dropped his gaze to the lifeless body on the dirty cold ground; he realized he had but one choice to make.

He squatted down beside Champ and touched the dead kid’s left hand, which still clutched that business card. Lawrence pulled it from Champ’s fingers, straightened up, and tucked it in his jacket pocket, all in one motion. With a last furtive glance in the direction Maurice had gone, Lawrence turned and loped off the opposite way, into the darkness, into the cold Oaktown night.

Cabbie by Judy Juanita

Eastmont

March 21, 2009

The last day in the life of Lovelle Mixon turned out to be a big holiday in Oakland — the Day of Reparations. Too bad no one knew. Everyone could have prepared, the way they do for Columbus Day or Halloween. Macy’s could have sent circulars with 50 percent off. Even the coolie-hatted immigrants recognize holidays as an inappropriate time to dredge for bottles in the recycle bins. Too much clamor for the homeowners in the hills (not so deferential to us in the flatlands). Weekdays they make noise, Sundays they let people sleep. Mystically, they know which holidays to trample on. I call it the commotion-sensibility quotient. For instance, Thanksgiving — they know everyone’s too tooted up to be bothered by container-hustlers.

Some newspaper called Mixon a cowboy, but he wasn’t. Drug cowboys run weed from Arizona and New Mexico up through California. Lovelle Mixon was a gun runner. Dope dealer is an occupation. Gun runner is a different occupation, but he didn’t make it as a dope dealer. He went to UC, the University of Crime, and found there were openings at several levels. Lovelle came out of jail with the ability to make new connections. They told him, Why you wasting time dealing weed and coke instead of products that move faster and are more profitable? Like guns, illegal weapons, flesh. The new criminal doesn’t have to deal dope. And he’s not going to get into gambling, fraud, or cybertheft because he’s not trained for it.

I intend to put Lovelle Mixon in my book, the before-and-after-I-started-cabbing book. Of course, it doesn’t exist outside of the parameters of my thick skull, packed with these streets. But what a spot it holds there.

New Year’s Eve, 2008

My baby brother Terence was broadsided by a hit-and-run as he rounded 66th Avenue and Foothill. Crazy fool didn’t even stop, just clipped his Toyota and kept going. Terence’s son, my nephew, barely two, was sitting in the backseat, strapped in his car seat. Terence said, “I wouldn’t give a damn except that drunk motherfucker in his Humpty Dumpty — looking Benz coulda killed my kid.” When State Farm said they wouldn’t pay a dime unless he could identify the driver, Terence was so pissed he started a block-by-block search on his off days. Everyone else was carrying on over Oscar Grant getting shot by the BART cop on New Year’s Day, except Terence, who was fuming over his car.

It took a few weeks. Right after a Martin Luther King Day celebration, he spotted it on 74th Avenue. Terence said he sat there, angrier by the minute, waiting for the driver to come out. The car, a green Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG, was dented on the right passenger side. Some of the Toyota’s maroon paint was on the dent like blush on a woman’s cheek. Twenty minutes go by. Terence had to get to work at Kaiser. Nobody came out so he took down the license plate number. As he drove to the corner, he saw through the rearview a burly man come out, get in the car, and pull away. It was the hit-and-run driver. He wanted to confront him, but now he had the license number. He drove back and got the house number too. I know that house, a notorious drug den. I’ve picked up fares there. No bueno — bad actors in and out of that place. I told Terence, “Don’t give your info to the insurance people.”

But Terence is hardheaded. He yelled at me, “Man, I’m not paying for what some hopped-up junkie did to my car!”

“Listen, lil’ bro: you mad, you sad, you all that. But if the police or insurance give him your particulars, his crew will come by your house and do a drive-by. And they ain’t gon’ be mad or sad, just taking care of biz. No emotion. Just boom, boom, boom, blow you and whoever’s in your house away. Forget it. End of discussion.”

My bro stewed for two months, like a pressure cooker about to blow if the jiggle-top gets popped too soon. He was intent on driving back by that house on 74th Avenue, where he saw the Benz. The day he chose to go there was the Day of Reparations.

March 21, 2009

It was after three p.m. Terence goes to 74th Avenue and runs into a hundred cops, a crazy scene. He told me there was nothing he could do but stand outside his car and watch. I can’t believe he didn’t hear on the radio about Mixon and the first two cops he shot. But that’s Terence — he goes to work listening to jazz, mows his lawn listening to jazz, watches his kids play listening to jazz — he’s the most predictable guy in Oakland.

By the time Terence got there, the cops were frantic, all over MacArthur Boulevard. Terence said it looked like nobody was in charge. The cops started going house to house until they knew Mixon was at 2755 74th Avenue — right in the part of Oakland that is under relentless siege by the po-po. Then they zeroed in, like bees to the queen. That black boy was queen for a day. Otherwise known as a clusterfuck. Terence said it was almost like a party and the people in the streets behind the barricades were talking shit, taking bets on when the po-po would go in like stormtroopers. There’s no such thing as a standoff in Oakland. We don’t have that kind of patience on either side. Either the po-po are gonna let it fly, or the target will. This ain’t a TV show like Law & Order — this is town biz. Terence said the cops were angry, confused, and frustrated, running back and forth. But the street was not even nervous, not hot or bothered.

Terence had been so worked up over his car. But all that went away, he said. Everybody there — police, onlookers, all of East Oakland — turned like a kaleidoscope. He felt like he’d taken LSD, and Terence doesn’t do drugs, not even Novocain at the dentist. But there he was in the middle of hell, with his poker face and the ghosts of Emmet Till, Nat Turner, and Huey Newton all looming larger than billboards. He found himself cheering for the brother, for Lovelle Mixon, for Oaktown, for the convict, for the guy who had murdered a cop, and by the end of the day would take out a total of four.

March 21, 2009, 1:08 p.m.

The first cop that Mixon shot knew him, and knew he was a gun runner. It was a routine traffic stop, but it’s unlikely the cops knew his level of desperation. Every cop generally knows, on a first-name basis, the criminals on his beat, and the head criminal knows who’s short on the money. They’re in it together, this one pays that one, that one pays this one. That’s why there are so many street deaths in prison, acts of retribution. I think Mixon was buying time. He wanted to bag up money and weapons, go to LA, and disappear. A great many people in the inner cities have no ID, no SSN — they’re nonentities. You think you fingerprinted everybody, but you can’t fingerprint the entire population. He probably knew that some of his schemes would lead him back to jail, where he was already a marked man. So that brings up — how did they know precisely where he was and who they had stopped? One of his known refuges was his sister’s apartment, where the second battle took place.

Incarceration was not the major problem for Mixon. He was trying to avoid retribution. For an African or Latino man from the hood, incarceration is not the worst thing that can happen. You find friends, associates, and mentors in the prison system. It’s just another neighborhood when you’re sent to jail, leave one hood and move on to the next. Three squares and a rack on the inside, three squares on the outside. He didn’t kill the first two cops because he was afraid to go to jail, he had decided to affect his own retribution. Understanding the end was near, he did not want to depart this world alone. He knew those cops had been sent by his superiors; he was just a pawn in the game now, traded off for something else. How many pimps are killed so that someone can acquire their hos? In the arms trade, how many runners are killed so that someone can acquire their guns?

In the Warsaw ghetto, how many Jewish husbands were turned in so the snitches could take their wives? It’s an old story, been going on for hundreds, thousands of years. Squeal on somebody so you can get their land. Mixon’s death was part of an old script, not such an individual thing as people thought. The things that didn’t add up, though, are Who did he know? and When did he know them?

March 21, 2009

For people whose Saturdays start at four a.m., like mine, that Saturday was a day like any other in Oaktown. Weekend commuters tunneled north and south beneath the stretch of earth called Richmond — El Cerrito — Albany-Berkeley-Oakland — San Leandro — Hayward-Fremont before going into the long, submerged BART tunnel in San Francisco Bay. At intervals, the snake pops up and offers a tour through the backside of Oakland and its lower bowel, East Oakland, from which those looking east can glimpse the Mediterranean hillside that runs for eighty miles. Tourists making their way to the airports pass under downtown Oakland, speaking in German, French, or Japanese about the wine country, the mud baths, and the crooked street in San Francisco which they navigated in rental cars, with pedals on the left instead of the right. But if they see East Oakland, it’s because of Ron Dellums — or in spite of Ron Dellums. As a young Berkeley councilman, Dellums argued for putting BART underground so the residents of his lovely town wouldn’t have to see the snake crawling through it. So here’s some cabbie wisdom for you: past, present, and future all exist in the same moment. Berkeley got BART underground, every other place got it aboveground, and my man Ron ended up the mayor of Oakland. Folks like to knock the boss, I don’t care if they’re white, black, or Mexican. That Dellums, he’s asleep at the wheel. Folks, Jerry Brown had already sold off downtown Oakland. He said he would get it built up like Rio de Janeiro, tall buildings downtown, flatlands the same. Nothing left for Dellums to do. End of discussion.

People say Lovelle Mixon’s going to hell because he killed four people. Hell must be a helluva place. There’s death on practically everybody’s hands, one way or another. The police chief of Seattle said recently that soldiers follow orders, police officers make decisions, and police officers are not soldiers. Something happened when the police heard that the first two cops had been gunned down that Saturday. That’s when the clusterfuck started. That same police chief said we’re a nation of 300 million guns. When they put on the Kevlar vests, you knew the SWAT teams were about to come in the DMZ. The police stopped being police and turned into soldiers. But who was giving them orders?

The po-po, cabbies, neighbors — they all knew 2755 74th Avenue. Notoriously, a woman was found strangled with her own drapery cord. Police knew it was her ex, but they classified it as suicide. I never heard of suicide by drapery cord. I rode her around a lot. She could buy out a dollar store with a twenty and still have cab fare left over. She didn’t take her own life. Murder, yes. Suicide, no. But the po-po say what’s convenient and let the badasses roam wild.

Here’s a parable: I call it the Parable of the Two Brothers, both dead now. Before Brother #2 died, having been a drug dealer, user, convict, hustler, parolee, he went around in his last days to see his kids, grands, and say goodbye. Even went to his social worker, caught up to her on his old stomping grounds, heard her telling a user, “If you can, stop using between tests and not just the day of the tests.” Brother #2 told her, “Scolding won’t work. Give him something he can’t get out here.” She didn’t know what that could be. Brother #2 said, “You can’t give money, or drugs, or women. Give him praise. That’s what you gave me.”

Brother #1 was dying, same period. Drugs, they shorten your lifespan, don’t matter if you’re a rock star or a hustler. Brother #1 hustled me out of three hundred dollars twenty years ago, so you could say I’m biased. But in his last days — he had AIDS — he kept travelling to Africa, back and forth, back and forth. Word is he had women over there under his ladies’ man spell. I didn’t buy that. It’s just that AIDS is so out of control there that he didn’t face a stigma.

Brother #1 and Brother #2, different paths to the grave, one got more wisdom than the other, but he had done more dirt on the whole. They went the same, six feet under. Which one’s going to the crowded place?

March 27, 2009

Here’s the definition of awesome. Twenty thousand police and citizens converging in Oaktown for the funeral of those four dead cops. They came from all over the country. Even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And all 815 OPD attended, according to the Chronicle. So who was minding the shop? Fifteen law enforcement agencies from Alameda County, CHP’s, and local police departments. Bagpipes, a twenty-one-gun salute from a military cannon, and of course a couple dozen helicopters buzzing overhead, more than the usual four circling the hood. Ah, man, and the OPD told Dellums, Shut your black mouth and sit your black ass down. They wouldn’t let him speak. If we have to let you be here, then be unheard. Word is that the mayor had mispronounced the officers’ names at a previous memorial. The PBA didn’t want that again.

Yeah, a likely story. Remember lynching, back in the day? Crackers went for the black middle class, the shopkeepers, the folks who were coming up in the world. Envy, pure and simple, it’s human. But what you do with it is the right or the wrong. One week before 9/11, Colin Powell was at an international conference on racism in South Africa. He said the US wasn’t about to apologize for slavery if that apology involved reparations, and the United States delegation got up and walked out, in front of the whole world. What a meathead.

New Year’s Eve, 2010

I dropped my last fare of the day downtown and stopped at the Bank of America near Lake Merritt at two thirty p.m. Later that night the bank showed up on the TV news. It was the scene of the last homicide of the year — at three twenty p.m. That meant I had dodged a bullet by forty minutes. Witnesses said two Latino males and two African American males had a parking lot altercation. The Latino used an ethnic slur, and one of the black guys pulled out a gun and shot him. The two blacks drove off. Bruno, who was from Brazil and delivered pizza, for God’s sake, died on the spot.

May 5, 2013

I drove a white Lovelle Mixon home one night from the Oakland Arena. Rolling Stones concert. You could hear Mick all the way to the BART station. I went to pick up this white kid, twenty-two or twenty-three, high as I don’t know what. Gets in my cab and my dispatcher says, “Take him to Sebastopol” — that’s a four-hundred-dollar ride. His father called in the fare. This kid is high out of his mind, all the way up there, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. But we get about a mile from his house and he sobers up enough to give me clear directions. The kid stumbles out, the father pays me double fare, and then he pulls out two more hundred-dollar bills. And thanks me for my troubles. White, black, same stupid kids, different outcomes.

The guy that’s teaching me dispatching says I’ll never be unemployed, right up to the end of my life, because there’s always a need for good cab dispatchers. I know, though, that dispatchers don’t have to see what cabbies see. Nevertheless, I like security as much as the next guy. I’ve seen enough to last me.

Two To Tango by Jamie DeWolf

Oakland Hills

Love is a straitjacket you’re waiting for someone else to tighten.

Oakland, 2004: I’m fresh out of the ground zero of a break-up with apologies stitched vertically on my left wrist. I move out of my ex-girlfriend’s house before she gets evicted; just another waiter with a misanthropic streak and cheap tattoos he buys with tips. I’m saving up by sleeping on any couch I can beg for, or any bed I can charm my way into. I’m homeless, living out of my backpack, hopping couches and BART stations. I have an appetite for destruction that wants dessert.

The night I meet her is a slow night at Van Kleef’s on Telegraph, and the saxophone player is six drinks in, slurring blues to the empty street. I’m writing poems on bar napkins but the ink keeps bleeding through with whiskey. I can’t afford a psychiatrist, but Jameson picks up the slack. The future is laid out in front of me like a railroad track I tied myself to. I have no idea what’s gonna fix anything, besides a deposit, two months rent, and anything that will make me forget today.

And in walks my future — Bettie Page in combat boots, damage in a dress. I smell her perfume before I see her, cinnamon mixed with cigarettes. She takes the empty stool next to mine. She doesn’t look like the other girls in the bar, with their thrift-store fashion sense and flower prints to complement the pretty umbrellas in their drinks. This girl has eyes dark as a black hole, lips red as an opening curtain.

She orders a whiskey neat, but a meathead stumbles into her, spilling her drink. She turns with her fists out, but he’s already moved too far past the sucker punch that had his name on it. She meets my eyes straight on and apologizes for the spill. I tell her it’s all right, she asks what I’m writing. I hold up the ink-blurred napkin — it’s my autobiography drenched in whiskey. Art imitates life.

She asks about the scorpion tattoo on my arm. I tell her poison should always be labeled. She’s a Scorpio herself, tells me her name is Syd, short for something she doesn’t want to tell me. She was just in the neighborhood, back home from a year alone in the mountains. She takes kickboxing classes and is working on a photography portfolio. She asks if I want the next round here or in a mansion alone with her. Easy question.

Fifteen minutes later we’re driving up in the Oakland Hills and she pulls up to a house at the top, buzzes open the gate, and I’m walking up the plush staircase past seascape paintings. Daddy’s liquor cabinet has got Scotch an Irishman can’t pronounce and sherry glasses. She pours us a Cognac, takes me to the basement, shows me her portfolio. Every picture is a self-portrait on a timer where she’s standing naked on a box with the words Whore and Slut scrawled across her in lipstick. She says this is how the world sees her, as if the Scarlet Letter was an entire alphabet written across her flesh.

She holds up the largest print, a photograph of her blindfolded in front of a mirror. She says this is how she sees herself. She says she loves how photographs take weeks to finish, like watching a scar heal.

In the living room, I toast to the ashes of the past. She says, “We can be as loud as you want,” and smashes her glass against the wall. It shatters across the living room, then she grabs my hand, puts it around her throat, and tells me: “You won’t break me. But I want you to try.”

She kisses me like anger is an aphrodisiac. We hit her carpet, our bones crashing into each other like a wet car wreck. After, she blows smoke rings at the ceiling, says, “You can stay here, you know. This house is too big for me and I can’t stand it alone at night.”

I was the right blend of poverty and horny. When you’re drowning, a partner can make you feel like you’re swimming instead.

The next night she cooks me a blood-rare steak, cracks open a bottle of champagne. A week later we’ve drunk half the liquor cabinet. We toss the empty bottles out of the third-story windows into the pool. We live every night like we broke in.

Every evening starts to get more physical. She shows me how she trains at her gym, swinging fists into my hand in combinations. Then she wants to wrestle and throw me against the wall. Syd rakes nails across my back until it bleeds, scratches her name into my chest until I can still read it the next day. We hit the walls so hard paintings fall. She wants a knife to her throat, she wants me to say things to her I’d never repeat. She wants me to love her like I want to kill her.

Self-destruction is lonely; she’s made it into a duet.

One night we lie there after and her hands trace my rib cage. She traces where she’d cut out my heart and keep it with her. I tell her this is moving a little fast. She says restraint is for hospitals and cops — don’t hold myself back.

I need a breath, a break. I tell her I gotta work double shifts for three days, and I don’t have a cell phone yet so I don’t have to worry about ignoring her calls. My friends haven’t heard from me in weeks. A buddy asks me why I keep picking poison. I tell him it’s because I learned to love the taste. I need to try something else.

I go on a date with a librarian, a quiet girl who wants to discuss Dostoevsky and Dickinson. She paints in watercolors, writes poems about trees, about weeping willows. We go to a café; she wants to kiss over a cup of tea. I see a life of yoga in the mornings, of easy nights reading in bed.

But I tell you, I was still hungry for the girl in the mansion who could make every night feel like my last one on earth. I kiss the librarian goodbye, tell her I have to go. I catch the BART to Oakland and Miss Matte Black is waiting at Van Kleef’s, smoking and smiling as I walk in.

“I knew you weren’t going anywhere but back to me.” She grabs my leg and says, “Just don’t do it again.”

Three rounds later and I’m back at her house, she’s pouring champagne down my chest. It feels like back to high times again until she breaks a wineglass and begs me to cut my name in her chest, brand her, make my words become flesh. She tells me the flesh is weak, but love is permanent. This isn’t love, this is a tango that’s turned into a mosh pit. The deeper we go, the harder it’s going to be to find the surface.

This time I vanish for a week, go back to waiting tables, and then the hostess tells me I have a new table in my section.

There she is, smiling, with a bandage on her arm. She unwraps it; a scorpion tattoo exactly like mine.

“I had to draw it out from memory but it’s pretty close, isn’t it?” She holds it next to my arm. “See? Now we’re a reflection of each other. You said poison should always be labeled.”

I tell her I’m not going to Oakland tonight. She says, “Don’t worry, I got us a hotel room. There’s a champagne bucket waiting for you.” She puts a bag on the table. “Open it.”

Inside is a pair of handcuffs. She says, “Come commit some crimes with me and when we’re done, you can arrest me.”

What kind of crimes?

She says that’d be premeditation. “It’s nothing you haven’t done before.”

I’m thinking, I haven’t even told you what I’ve done.

If she’s my reflection, then I wonder what I’m afraid to see. I ask her again what kind of crimes, but she says it’ll ruin the surprise.

She’s quiet on the ride there. We pull up outside a café, she turns the car off and points inside. “Now you can stop a crime about to happen.”

I look through the café window — the librarian girl I kissed a week ago is sitting at a table, sipping tea. “What the fuck is this?”

Her eyes flash. “You can stop a beating if you want to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, it’s simple: you could have stopped this girl from a beating if you didn’t kiss her last week. But you did, and now here we are.”

“You watched me? When?”

“It was by a window, you know. You weren’t exactly being sneaky about it.”

“You drove here from Oakland? You were fucking stalking me?”

“I missed you, that’s all, and you didn’t want to see me. And you didn’t see me. But I saw you. And her.” Her fists clench on the steering wheel.

“You’re just gonna walk in there and attack her? In the café? In front of everyone?”

“Unless you stop me. Just tell me you love me and you don’t love her. And you’ll stop a crime.”

I stare at her. “Tell you I love you. And then we’ll leave?”

“And then we’ll leave.”

I tell her I love her. I lie. Her fists come off the steering wheel.

I’m in a game I don’t know the rules of anymore. She drives away from the café, the librarian vanishing in the rearview. We’re back at the hotel, champagne in an ice bucket. She throws the handcuffs on the bed and says, “Good job, officer. Throw the book at me.”

I realize we’re alone in this room. No one knows where I am.

I open the champagne instead, start chugging until it froths down my shirt. Someone could die in here. She gives me that smile again over her shoulder. I feel sick. She’s a spider in skin.

She tells me that anyone can learn to love anyone, it just takes time. Then she tells me my time is running out. I pour the rest of the champagne on the floor and hold the bottle by the neck. I tell her, “I’m walking out of this room, and don’t follow me. Don’t show up at my work again.”

She doesn’t stop smiling but her eyes are blinking at a weird rhythm. Like a TV starting to fritz. “You’ll come back.”

I don’t see her for a month and I can’t believe I still miss her. I miss the champagne, the pornographic prologue turning into a horror film.

A month later, she walks into my birthday party, says she was just in the neighborhood, didn’t even know it was my birthday. She sits in the back corner while I’m going round for round with my friends.

She moves closer, joining conversations, buying me drinks. After the fifth round her hand slides up my leg and I don’t stop it. It’s closing time, my friends are offering me a couch to crash on, but she whispers in my ear, says a birthday boy should stay in a bed.

No, I’m done with that madness.

She says just for old time’s sake. I tell her no.

“Okay then, I’m sorry. How about a ride to your friend’s house at least?”

I slam back the last of my drink. “All right. It’s a ten-minute ride — but nothing more than that.”

“Nothing more than that.”

As soon as the doors lock to her BMW, I know I’ve made a mistake. But she’s got child locks, and I didn’t think of that. Thirty seconds later she’s driving 45 mph down a 25 mph street and has a slur in her voice I didn’t notice before — maybe I didn’t let her talk long enough, maybe I didn’t ask the right questions.

But then her voice gets real cold and quiet.

“Anybody can learn to love someone, it only takes time.” She’s not even looking at the road, just at me. I tell her to slow down. We hit a speed bump so hard my head smashes against the ceiling. She’s listing off the reasons why if I knew myself, I would know I was in love with her. I would love to debate this paradox of me not knowing what I should know, but all I hear is the gas revving, horns blaring. I realize I’m going to have to jump out of a moving car. Every action movie I’ve ever seen is replaying in my head, like how the hell to roll once you hit the ground.

She blasts through a traffic light like it just wasn’t red enough.

“Slow down,” I plead.

She’s says, “What, am I taking it too fast for you? You want me to slow down? Tell me you love me!”

A man pushing a shopping cart leaps out of the head-lights. She doesn’t even notice. A three-way intersection is coming up fast ahead of us.

“Tell me you love me!” Syd screams.

“I love you, all right? Stop the car!”

“Love doesn’t stop.”

I watch a stoplight fly past above us. I put my forearms out in front of me.

We smash headlong into a sedan that goes spinning into the crosswalk, glass shattering across the street. There’s the sickening screech of metal grinding, the windshield cracking in pieces, the hood crunching into a twisted mess, then just broken glass twinkling down to the asphalt. I sit heaving for a second, hands on my face, moving my toes in my boots. Everything is spinning. My forearms are wet with the spit that flew out of my mouth on impact.

The other car is twenty feet away, spun out on a crazy axis. A black woman is at the wheel, holding her head, checking herself for damage. I turn to Syd. There’s blood trickling down her forehead.

“I knew it. I knew you loved me.”

I slowly unclasp my seat belt. Metal scrapes and glass falls into the street from across the intersection.

“What happens now?” she asks me.

“What happens now? There aren’t many choices here. What happens now is the cops come, you get a DUI, and you go to jail. Or you can try to run, but that woman you just hit doesn’t look like she’s gonna let you get too far.”

The other woman is outside in shock at the wrecked metal of her sedan.

“No, what happens now between us?”

I want to wipe the blood off her forehead but I’m afraid to touch her. Now the other woman is outside Syd’s window. She has her phone in her hand. There’s a fight about to go down in the street. I know well enough how hard Syd can hit, but I don’t think she would win this one — the other woman is yelling already: “Are you crazy, woman? Girl, what the hell you doing? Get out the car!”

Syd undoes her seat belt and unlocks the child lock. I get out, making sure my ankle isn’t broken. One of the headlights is busted. Syd steps out on wobbly high heels. The woman in the smashed car is livid.

“Bitch, is you drunk? You better have insurance, bitch!”

Syd isn’t even looking at the woman, she’s got her eyes locked on me. “I knew you loved me. I always knew it.” Sirens are approaching from a few blocks away. “Help me.”

I can’t. I back up slowly as blue and red lights come around the corner. I’m fading into the shadows past the streetlight. I walk ten blocks, turn, and circle around, long enough to see Syd in handcuffs in the backseat of the cop car.

She leaves me a message from jail that morning, tells me she loves me, says her parents are flying back. She leaves another message the day she gets out. I stay away from the old bars. I don’t go to Van Kleef’s for a year — the game is over.

It’s ten years and three girlfriends later. I’ve been paying rent on a house at 53rd and San Pablo for a decade. A friend gives me a free pass to a yoga class. I usually train at a kickboxing gym but I blew out my knee during a sparring match so want to try an easier route. I’m stretching out my tattoos and scars on a mat, enduring the slow meditative music, ready to sweat out years of toxins. The clock hits eight p.m. and the instructor walks in.

It’s Syd, now impossibly toned and tanned, her hair cut short. She’s wearing all black. Our eyes lock. That smile comes across her face. She looks away, starts the class. I can see the scorpion tattoo faded on her arm. I follow her instructions up to the point where she asks everyone to close their eyes for deep breaths — I keep mine open and she stares at me in silence. The class ends, everyone rolls up their mats. I’m ten feet out the door when I hear her say my name. She’s standing there with her keys.

“Want a ride?”

I take a deep breath.

She smiles. “Nothing more than that.” She points at her car. It’s a station wagon with two child seats in the back, and she holds up her wedding ring. “Just kidding, there’s no room.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I live nearby anyways.”

“You still writing suicide notes on napkins?”

“No. Now it’s to-do lists.”

“It’s all a choose-your-own-adventure. I hope you get the ending you want.” She points at her tattoo. “Poison’s always labeled.”

I tell her I’m sorry; she was right. We were reflections of each other, and I’ve learned I can’t look away anymore.

“We were young. We just weren’t the right antidote for each other.”

She clicks her car open and I keep walking. I don’t look back as her headlights pull away behind me, just another car going the opposite direction.