Oakland Noir

Survivors of Heartache by Nayomi Munaweera

Montclair

I moved to Montclair in 2014. I was going through a divorce that had me gutted like a fish. Three years before I had married an artist. He was from Sri Lanka too, and finding him in San Francisco where I had not met another Lankan in years had felt like coming home. I had believed him when he said I was the only one who could save him from the demons: six ecstasy tabs on his thirtieth birthday, sex without a condom in the seediest parts of San Francisco after openings, and the like. He had been deadly depressed and courting death, he said, but then I had arrived like a princess in a flowing white dress and wrestled his life back from the dark. I had loved the idea of myself as savior, and then muse, and therefore I had believed him.

We had a large and expensive wedding in the fanciest hotel in Colombo. Then we returned to San Francisco, and for two years we built a life in the foggy city. At first he sketched me endlessly. I looked at the drawings and laughed, “I’m not this beautiful,” and he said, “To me you are.” He had rendered me perfect — the arch of my brows, the curve of my cheekbones, the angles on my hips far lovelier than the reality. A year later there were fewer drawings. When I snuck a look at his sketchbooks toward the end, I found myself a pendulum-breasted, hook-nosed hag.

That was around the time he realized I wasn’t his muse at all. The real angel of his salvation was a blond twenty-four-year-old nude model. After this revelation, we resided in hell. He didn’t know if he loved her enough to leave me; I didn’t know what to do with my life without him. One terrible midnight I held onto his ankles and sobbed, begging him not to go. The humiliation of this memory still scratches at my skin. Despite everything that happened, this is the only regret that lingers from that grotesque time.

What saved me? A few different things. Friends, of course. And a soft landing across the bay in a town called Montclair. When it was clear that the divorce was imminent, I tried to understand how to begin life anew. I couldn’t stand the apartment that had been the witness of my humiliation. I would leave it to him and therefore I needed a place to live. Friends said, Come to Oakland, it’s better here, the rents are cheaper, the people more diverse.

Oakland? I thought. The murder capital of America? I had lived in San Francisco for a decade and grown up in Florida before that. Oakland was just a few miles away, over the bridge flung across the glittering bay, but I had barely ever been there. There were guns all over the streets, people said. Young black kids were getting shot by racist cops all the time, we heard. From the soft, hilly embrace of San Francisco, Oakland sounded like a war zone.

My friend Chloe had lived in the Oakland Hills for more than a decade. Her house was impossible to get to without a car so I had never visited her. Instead, in the years of our friendship, she had always come to me, and every time I had opened the door of our San Francisco apartment to her, she stood there in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. I’d let her in and she’d say through chattering teeth, “It’s warm and sunny in Oakland right now, you know.” I didn’t really believe her. How was it possible that just miles away the sun was blazing?

Now, in the midst of my divorce ravages, she invited me to rent a room in the house where she lived. A roommate was moving out so it was perfect timing. She said, “You’ll love Oakland. Anyway, you won’t find a place you can afford in the city anymore.” She was right. I dragged my heartbroken self from open house to open house, but during the three years of my marriage, rents had skyrocketed. Tiny apartments with no light and moldy bathrooms were going for exorbitant prices; people lined up to fill every available vacancy; landlords could afford to be assholes.

The first time I drove to her house, across the bridge and into the hills, the sun burst through the fog and the temperature rose. I felt ridiculous in my jeans and thick sweatshirt as a misty sweat broke on my skin. I followed Chloe’s directions, winding higher and higher, thinking, What the hell is this place? The roads got narrower and snakelike, the foliage got thicker, there were hundreds of flowering plants. I glimpsed the bone white of eucalyptus, caught the scent of pine through the window. The trees were different, of course, but the place reminded me of nothing more than the upcountry of Sri Lanka. There was the same sense of driving precariously into the sky, of entering a place both magical and mystical.

There were houses set right on the cliff’s edges, and between them I caught slivers of the sea and the Bay Bridge. Even farther away the Golden Gate stretched into Marin. The city nestled between the bridges with a blanket of fog settling into its crevices. I drove past the address Chloe had given me, parked on a sharply steep climb, and walked back along the tree-fringed road to the house. She threw open the door and said, “Welcome to Montclair.”

Just like that I found myself in a new life. I lived in a room with red walls. Originally I had thought I’d repaint it a hue less intense, less womblike, but soon it felt like exactly what I needed to birth a new life. I had very little: a mattress on the floor, some clothing, and books on anatomy. This was everything I had salvaged from the shipwreck of my marriage.

I saw them from the window first — two little girls in the lavish backyard of the house next door. Around six and eight, though I don’t know much about kids and am terrible at estimating ages, so they could have been older or younger. Of course, later I would come to know everything about them, but at that time they were just two normal kids.

They were running around with their dog, a great fluffy white thing. They were blond, playing Marco Polo. The older girl was blindfolded, she reached her arms out, thin pale arms like the eucalyptus branches above, and stumbled forward blindly feeling for her sister who slipped just out of her grasp. The leaves crunched under their sneakers. I watched for a while. It was a lovely tableau of childhood joy. I felt a pricking under my skin, a terrible and fierce longing. Then I turned away and went back into my new life.

The house we lived in had five bedrooms. There were four of us — Chloe, Shahid, Dina, and me. Chloe had “inherited” it from a friend who had moved to Zimbabwe, gotten married, and settled there. The friend didn’t care that she could rent out the house for four times the price we paid. She didn’t want to bother with locating renters, and this is how we found ourselves able to afford a house in a neighborhood where Governor Jerry Brown lived a few streets away. We were the odd house out — a collection of ragtag, single people of color in a neighborhood of predominately rich white families.

One day at breakfast Chloe asked, “You’ve seen the neighbor kids? The dad’s name is Michael, he’s some kind of computer genius. Have you met the wife? She’s like a Romanian Marilyn Monroe.”

I didn’t tell her that I saw them often. Through a sliver of curtain I could watch the two children, the beautiful wife, and the computer genius. With the intimacy of people who have not met but who live in silent proximity, I knew which car belonged to him, which to her, the times they came and left, who picked up the kids on which days. I watched them in the summer months, him serving breakfast, her in wraparound glasses, the kids and dogs gamboling about.

It was some months later that we first noticed trouble. There were noises from next door; sometimes it sounded like shouting, sometimes screaming, sometimes his or her car would screech away down the hill. The kids barely came out anymore and when I did see them, they were pinched looking, as if what little color they had had drained away. They didn’t chase each other, didn’t play Marco Polo, they just sat on the bench and whispered to each other as if hatching plans, plotting. Sometimes they looked up and I could swear they were staring straight at me. I pulled away from the window, my heart thumping.

Then the dog started barking. At first it lasted only a short time and we were able to ignore it. But one night it went on and on, until the sound penetrated the very walls and ricocheted all around us. It felt like we were trapped in a cage of noise. At times the animal screams would stop and silence would fall, thick and welcome. But just when we had sighed and turned over in our beds, the agonizing noise would resume. At midnight, after the dog had been barking for three straight hours, we gathered in the living room.

“What should we do?”

“I called them. No one picked up,” Chloe informed us.

Shahid said, “What the hell? I have to go to work in the morning.”

“Let’s put a note on their door,” I suggested.

I wrote, Your dog has been barking since 9 p.m. None of us can sleep. Please make it stop. Your neighbors at 482, and offered to put it on the door. And then, in my sweats, armed with the note and bit of sticky tape, I walked out. It was November again. A year had passed since I’d moved in. The air was sharp, the trees dark and crowding overhead, the dog’s anguished voice filling the night.

I pulled my hoodie over my head and walked onto the street. Their door was down steps, shrouded, and no automatic light snapped on, so I was guided not by sight but by my feet on the steps, my hand on the railing. I felt my way to the door, my palms made contact, and with a sigh of relief I reached for the knob. Then there was a different, subtler sound. I spun on my heel and saw a figure towering at the top of the steps and coming quickly toward me. My blood screamed; in a quavering voice I said, “Hello?”

It was the wife, I realized in relief. But then her voice rose: “Who is it? Who’s there? I can see you! Stand right there or I’ll call the police.” A light shone straight into my eyes. “Fucking kids, you people come up from Oakland and think you can just break into our houses. I’m calling the police!”

“No! No, I’m your neighbor. Your dog was barking. I just came to tell you.”

A fumbling with her phone. “What?”

“I’m just your neighbor. Your dog was barking. Look, here’s my note!” I thrust it forth like a guilty school kid caught in the hall after classes have started.

She shone the light at it, said, “Oh... okay. I see... There have been so many break-ins recently. I thought...” Her eyes were still suspicious as they took in my skin, my black hoodie.

Thanksgiving arrived, the first one after my divorce. Chloe and Dina had both invited me to their family meals, but I said that I wanted to spend the day watching Netflix. It was only after they left that I realized I was terribly, awfully lonely. The house was empty, and my room felt claustrophobic, so I fled into the living room, which was cold, though I didn’t want to put on the heater because our bill was already too high. Then the doorbell rang, and somehow I knew it was Michael before he even introduced himself. He was taller than I had thought. He wore a red plaid shirt and was even more handsome up close.

“We saw your car in the drive, and we wanted to say sorry. For the dog. Will you come to dinner? It’ll just be Galina, the kids, and me.”

I saw then that as much as I knew their comings and goings, they too knew which of our cars was which and that I was alone on Thanksgiving. I nodded. “I’ll come. Thank you.”

I went at six, carrying the fanciest bottle of wine I could find in the house. Galina opened the door, smelling of jasmine and musk. When she leaned in close to pat me on the back, I inhaled deeply. She said, “Welcome to our home,” and swept me into the dining room. The floor plan was similar to ours, but this house was much bigger. While we had bits of furniture salvaged from thrift stores, things left behind by an endless succession of roommates, theirs was all luxury, light, and warmth. A fire danced. The entire back wall was huge windows opening onto the lovely garden and the woods beyond, past which was a glorious view of the bay. The children sat at the dining room table like stiff little adults. They seemed even more pale and thin than the last time I’d seen them. Their eyes recognized me, followed me.

Michael came in and said, “Ah, the conscientious neighbor.” He swept an arm toward the window, “Look. We have fixed the problem.”

I went to the glass. In the yard the dog circled and pawed at leaves. It opened its mouth and I got ready for the incessant cacophony. Instead it flinched and went mute, and I realized that its collar was shocking it. The muscles in my throat constricted. It had only wanted to express its primal loneliness and they had taken away its voice. Surely there was some more humane solution?

As if reading my thoughts, Michael said, “It was the only way. He was stubborn, and he refused to be trained.” I felt a flush of shame. Was it my fault that they had silenced the creature? Meanwhile, a blessed quietness fell around us. Michael said, “Enough of that, come. Galina has prepared a feast.”

We sat. Galina brought in the turkey. It was delicious and opulent, and everything was overwhelming. Later, when the turkey had been reduced to a cave of bones and the children had been dismissed, Galina sipped wine as dark as a gorgon’s blood. She looked at me and said, “Have you seen the wild turkeys that roost in the woods?”

I nodded.

“Beautiful, aren’t they? Big and ungainly but also beautiful. Prehistoric. You watch them and you know what the dinosaurs looked like. It seems such a strange thing to appreciate their beauty and then eat them.”

I said nothing.

“Living here, it’s like living in the midst of paradise. In the summertime we had the doors open and two fawns wandered in.” I must have given her a look of disbelief because she said, “No, really! The children were thrilled and we stayed quiet as they trotted all around the house. They must have been searching for water because it’s been such a dry year. But they came into the house so easily, as if they were curious. As if they wanted to know how the humans lived. They were like creatures out of the fairy tales I grew up with. They walked all around this room.” She spread her hands wide. “And then their mother was at the door and made this noise and they ran out. Their hoofs left marks but I had them erased.”

I asked, “How long have you lived here?”

“Fifteen years,” Michael replied.

Galina tapped her bloodred nails against the crystal of her wineglass. “Back then this was a safe neighborhood. Now there are all sorts of criminal elements coming up the hill — poor people, black people. They can’t find work so they resort to crime. The house at the end of the road got broken into last month. That’s why I was so upset when I thought you were one of them.”

She didn’t apologize. She was not a woman used to apologizing.

I brushed it away. I was as curious as a cat about them so I asked how they had met.

He said, “That’s a funny story,” and pulled her to him, kissing the side of her luminous face. She made the tiniest movement then, so subtle that he missed it. But I recognized it. It was how my husband used to move, ever so slightly, away from my kiss. I hadn’t thought about it for months but now a hairline crack reopened on the surface of my mending heart.

“I wanted to marry. I was ready. So I went to Romania looking for a wife.”

She said, “He wanted a mail-order bride.”

“Really?”

“Why not? I was sick of meeting women here and having it go nowhere. I knew what I wanted, and I knew where to get it. Dating in America is a terrible thing.”

I turned to her. “And you... were the mail-order bride?”

“No! I was the interpreter.”

“I took one look at her and here we are,” Michael finished the story.

I stayed late as they got drunker and drunker. She sat on his lap and they kissed as if I was not there. Then I too, like the children, was dismissed. I walked the short distance to my own door, went into my red room, and shivered all night on my mattress. I was alone, abandoned, unloved. It was the worst night since my husband had told me we were finished.

I got close to them after that. They needed someone to watch the kids and I was right next door. What could be easier? They had this idea that the girls were attached to me. I bought them toys, courted them in the way you are supposed to do with children, and they — used to a succession of brown-skinned nannies, Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, Mexicans — did not complain. I had lost my job some time before and was glad of the money they tossed my way.

I watched the girls while they played in the garden and at the park. We went for walks in the woods with the dog. There were trails everywhere. Huckleberry Trail, Redwood Regional, and Tilden Park were close. One could walk for miles and not run into a soul. Once the dog led us, panting, straight to the carcass of a stag. It lay at the edge of a cliff on its side, its antlers tangled in the undergrowth, its hoofs pointed at us. Its stomach had been slit and there were organs strewn in a jumble next to it, a bloated mint-green sack, dark viscous puddles of blood.

The children squatted, their eyes large. “What did this?” they asked me. Something big, I thought, something voracious. We looked at it for a while. Then they got bored and wanted to leave, and I walked after them.

In all that time, the kids kept getting thinner, paler. No one could understand it. They ate at mealtimes, their mother hovering over them, cooking their favorite foods, begging them to take just one more bite. But however hard she tried, the girls did not thrive. She watched them like a hawk, she said. They did not throw up, they did not purge, and yet the shadows loomed large under their eyes, their limbs got more sticklike. It was uncanny.

It was months later that I came upon Michael in his study. The girls were in their bedrooms putting away toys. I had heard his car arrive and went looking for him. His hair was bedraggled, and when he saw me he waved me into a seat and said, “I need to talk to you.” I sat. He paced up and down the room behind his desk, running his fingers through his hair. I kept silent until finally he spoke: “I don’t know how to say this... Have you ever... seen Galina do anything to the kids?”

I was shocked. “What?”

“They get sick all the time. I think it’s Galina. I think she’s sick in the head, I think she’s hurting them.”

“Why would you think that? And no, I’ve never seen her be anything but good to them.”

“I don’t know what to think. We’ve taken them to every doctor, done every test. But you see how they are? The doctor asked me if it might be her. He said sometimes mothers...” He paced some more. “But why else would they look like that, like little ghosts?”

Then he sat at his desk, leaned his head back on the leather, and I watched as tears ran out of the corners of his eyes and along the planes of his face. When he spoke again his voice was broken: “She’s fucking someone else. I know it.”

He put his head on his arms and sobbed in great, painful gulps. It was startling to see a man express pain in this way, but I knew exactly how he felt. There is no dagger more cold than betrayal. There is no wound more terrible than the thought of your lover with their lover. The idea of their two bodies together takes over, becomes the entire pulsing world.

It got worse after that. They had screaming matches; they threw things. They sobbed and hurled accusations. Some of it happened in my presence because by then I had become indispensible. I’ll spare you the details — everyone has gone through heartache, everyone knows what the end looks and sounds like.

In December I needed a break so I went to my parents’ place in Florida for some weeks. My folks were happy to see me. We hadn’t been together since my wedding in Colombo, and we had a pleasant and uneventful visit. When I got back to Montclair and went next door, she was gone.

“Where’s Galina?” I asked.

“She’s left me. She’s gone back to Romania,” he replied.

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“What about the children?” I asked, because that’s what you are supposed to say in these sad circumstances.

“They’re with my mother in Houston. They’ll be okay.”

I looked into his handsome face and said, “I went through a divorce. At first you think it’s the worst thing in the world, but it really isn’t. It might even be the best thing.”

“You know, you might just be right.” He smiled then, and I felt the hairline crack in my heart begin to knit itself together.

There was an investigation, of course. You can’t lose a rich white woman in America and not have an investigation. They suspected Michael. There was a trial, and it took a long time, but he had expensive lawyers and finally they cleared his name. There was no body and you can almost never convict without a body, so I knew it would be okay.

I see Chloe, Shahid, and Dina every now and then, but I don’t really talk to them. My life is different now. We don’t have anything in common anymore, so what would we even speak about? The girls live with their grandmother in Houston. It’s a more stable environment for them. She says they’re putting on weight, the shadows under their eyes have receded. They are normal kids now. I’m so glad. I never had anything against those girls.

It was easier than the first time. My husband’s lover had been young and fierce. She had fought me until I managed to stick the needle into her neck and push the plunger. Did I forget to tell you what my job was? The one I lost in the midst of that terrible year? I was a nurse. At San Francisco General, where the motto was, As Real As It Gets. The things I saw there, they were real. If every now and then I helped a tortured soul to their rest with a certain cocktail, who could blame me? If you were suffering and miserable in your final hours, would you not welcome an angel of mercy?

Anyway, that’s not important. I lied when I said I hadn’t come out to Oakland before I moved here. I used to come and hike the dark trails all the time. I drove my husband’s lover to a cliffside close to here and pushed her into a ravine. It was a spot not far from where we stumbled upon the dead stag. Whatever it was that ripped the deer open must have taken her too, because she was never found.

It was easier with Galina. She wasn’t strong and she wasn’t sober. We went Christmas shopping for the children on a dark December evening. On the way home she sobbed about Michael and drank from her flask of whiskey. I drove up the hill and stopped the car. I jammed the needle into the flesh of her elbow, and then, to be sure, I put a plastic bag over her head and gripped my belt around her neck while it inflated and deflated. There was a struggle and then she was gone. I pushed her out of the car, into the deep growth, and that was that.

When I moved in, the first thing I did was take the shock collar off the dog. At first he cringed away from me. But then, in the way of sweet creatures, he opened his canine heart wide and let me in. He’s fiercely protective of me now — even Michael is a little nervous of his teeth and his size — but I won’t let anyone collar him ever again. He’s sitting by my feet as I write this. The fire is blazing; Michael will be home soon. I have finally found my place, my house, my love. I rest my feet against the dog’s furry side. Both of us, survivors of heartbreak.

Prophets and Spies by Mahmud Rahman

Mills College

Waiting for Keisha to show up at his door, Gholam regrets he isn’t more into kink. He would have had the proper accessories — handcuffs and a ball gag. It would be easy to truss her up, and it would keep her from screaming. So he’ll just have to be sneaky, act fast before she wakes.

He improvises: Inside his toolbox he finds plastic cable ties of different lengths and selects the longest ones. He worries they will cut into her wrists, he doesn’t want her to feel unnecessary pain. Grabbing an old T-shirt, he cuts the fabric and wraps it around the ties as a cushion. One piece he rolls into a ball to stuff in her mouth. He considers a roll of duct tape, but it would stick too strongly. Masking tape makes better sense. Carefully, he puts everything inside the nightstand drawer, stuffing it behind the condoms, lube, and silk ribbons, and while he waits for Keisha, he cradles a heart about to burst.

On the gated campus, where the hills slide into the flats of East Oakland, the fall semester had begun four months ago amid meadows manicured by a small army of Mexican laborers. New students wore excited faces, returnees were happy to reunite with friends, and faculty geared up to start a new year. Only the staff who worked year-round were ambivalent, some among them blue that the summer of an empty campus had ended too soon.

Not Gholam. Tasked with keeping the computers humming on campus, his job takes him everywhere. He meets interesting people and enrolls in a class now and then. In a literature class last spring he had met Keisha, a resumer student. They had a blast working on a project together, and over the summer they cemented into a couple.

The pair spent their Labor Day weekend together, one day at the beach, another on a Berkeley excursion, the third at home, mostly in bed, their lovemaking mixed with conversations over tea. On weekends Gholam keeps a samovar going, with a ready supply of tea, sugar cubes, and mint. They eventually fell asleep, thoroughly exhausted.

When the phone woke him, Gholam’s eyes barely opened. The clock read 1:13 a.m. Calls this late scared him. Such a call had brought news of his father’s death. And that of the execution of a boyhood friend in Evin Prison. If his placid life here in Oakland was yin, his past in Iran was yang. Always a phone call away.

He picked up the phone and swung his body out of bed. When he needed to jot something down, he reached with his free hand to switch on the nightstand lamp. In the soft light, Keisha’s red-brown face glowed. Though he kept his voice low, she woke up. She didn’t understand Farsi but her eyes reacted to the tone of his voice — first quizzical, then alarmed, eventually patient.

Hanging up, he stroked Keisha’s arms. “I have to go back.”

“For good?”

He shook his head. “For a visit. Mother’s in the hospital. I’ll go during winter break.”

“Shouldn’t you leave sooner?”

“That’ll be soon enough. Let’s go back to sleep.” He put his head down on the pillow.

“Promise me you’ll be safe.”

He turned, pulled her close, and whispered, “One never knows. But more than anything else in the world, I want to come back to you.”

“Inshallah then,” she said, hugging him tight.

He nodded, but as he drifted back to sleep, he thought how people used that phrase to suggest hope, but it meant more like, It might take a miracle.

In the morning, Gholam drove to work in a meditative state. At eighteen, lurching from life as a teenager in Tehran to a foreign student in Detroit, he had wanted nothing more than the fall of the shah. Twenty years after the revolution, its dreams hijacked by the mullahs, his own yearnings for a socialist outcome long buried, Gholam now wanted nothing more than the love of a woman.

Midmorning, he trod out of his office to answer a call about a jammed printer in Reinhardt Hall. In the computer lab, a stocky man with a shaved head greeted him. With a class starting soon, he needed to print a dozen copies of a document. The man wore a black T-shirt that screamed out, Don’t Mess with Me — I’m from Detroit. He could have been more badass if he wore the hard-core version. While Gholam labored on the jam, the man introduced himself as Michael T., a visiting lecturer. The college had put him up in this residence hall that housed graduate students. He said he was fine with it, which meant he wasn’t.

“I’ll let you work,” he said, as he walked to the living room. Gholam heard the television go on and soon Michael T. broke out into full-throated laughter, chased by snorts and chuckles.

The printer fixed, Gholam walked over to Michael T. The visiting lecturer pointed to the television screen. “Dude, ever see anything like this? I’d totally forgotten you had this here in Oakland. I used to catch them late night in Detroit. They called it Soulbeat Oakland Detroit.”

“You really from Detroit?”

“Went to college near there, and grad school. I’m finishing my dissertation.”

So he attended Michigan, lived in Ann Arbor, and went slumming into Detroit. Maybe he didn’t even do that, satisfying that urge by watching WGPR-TV 62. Gholam knew the channel — it specialized in music videos, religious programming, late-night Italian B-movies, a dance show imitating Soul Train, and yes, late in the night, there had been a Soulbeat slot. It usually featured folks jabbering away outside a sun-soaked mansion that must have been in the Oakland Hills.

Learning that Gholam had lived in Detroit, Michael T. asked if he would hang around while he finished printing. They talked about Gholam’s Detroit days, and Michael said Gholam might find his “manifesto” interesting.

“I need to get back.”

“I can e-mail you a copy. The contents are delicate. You use PGP?”

“Sure.”

“I could tell you’re one of us.” He winked while ripping one of the mangled sheets of paper in two. They exchanged e-mail addresses and PGP encryption keys.

It ended up being a busy day: more printer jams, virus infestations, and one hard drive crash.

At home Gholam finished dinner and checked his e-mail. Michael T.’s document had arrived. Gholam had acted as if he used PGP all the time but it had been years since he’d needed to encrypt or decrypt anything.

The title read, Y2K: Time to Throw Down. The document aimed to provoke discussion about preparing for a social collapse. It was now September 1999, only months short of the end of the century. Decades prior, government and corporations had chosen to code years in two digits instead of four — 70 instead of 1970 — citing the expense of computer memory. It had since become clear, however, that this shortcut was spectacularly shortsighted. When the calendar advanced to the year 2000, the two-digit coding could make systems assume it was now January 1, 1900.

The corporations and state were dithering. T’s manifesto boldly predicted that at midnight on New Year’s Eve, computer systems would fail, power grids would come down, ATMs would lock up, planes might crash, and nuclear plants could face meltdowns. Without money, heat, or power, people would resort to looting and mayhem. The state would respond with force.

The population needed to prepare, although it might already be too late. Michael T.’s document proposed that his class work to develop an “action plan” appropriate for Oakland.

The manifesto slammed Gholam back some ten to twenty years. When the revolution broke out in Iran, he had been an engineering student at Wayne State. In his free time he devoted himself to “revolutionary work” — writing articles, engaging in debates, communicating with comrades back home. Their student federation shattered into factions, each believing the mullahs’ seizure of power would not last and that soon it would be their comrades’ turn.

It wasn’t just Iranians. When the 1980s began, many believed Something Big was about to happen. Gholam remembered a poster that went up everywhere: The ’80s will make the ’30s look like a picnic. In multiple tongues — English, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, Amharic — pamphlets spoke of “sharpened contradictions.” And what did the world end up with? In the US and UK, Reagan and Thatcher. In Iran, Khomeini.

Still, some held out. If you were desperate to believe, you could always find signs auguring Something Big. Otherwise, disillusionment seeped in. Some counseled that people needed to become better students of history. Despite casualties, most managed to cope. Gholam embraced this one piece of advice: he began studying ancient worlds, and learned to measure history, not in years or decades, but in centuries. In the meantime he had to make a living. He wasn’t going anywhere as an engineer, but he had learned his way around computers. When the Internet age dawned, he headed for the promised land, the Bay Area, and secured a job on this Oakland campus.

It took him four years to settle down, though it had brought him to Keisha, another refugee from the Midwest. She was fleeing a family she could no longer be near without doing harm to her spirit. She worked a couple of part-time retail jobs while finishing up a BA in liberal studies. She was smart, her dimpled smile could light up a room, and she was fierce the way you’d expect someone to be if they grew up in the heart of Cleveland. The campus drew in folks like her. Until he met her, Gholam’s life — sex, camaraderie, friendship — had been rather empty. With her, he felt recharged.

He replied to Michael T.’s e-mail: You really believe this shit? Or is this an academic exercise?

Gholam never received a reply.

A few days later when he went to eat lunch in the plaza behind the student union café, he found his regular table occupied by Michael T. and a couple of students.

“My savior!” Michael T. shouted, beckoning him over. “Join us.” He introduced Gholam as the guy who’d helped him impress his class on the first day. The two others with him were from the class, Tracy and Rachel.

As Gholam chewed his hamburger, popping fries into his mouth, he listened to their conversation. Michael T. was describing his dissertation topic. He was studying humanity’s responses to apocalyptic moments, like stock market crashes, bank runs, massive disasters, and revolutions. He pointed toward Gholam. “He’s lived through such a moment but doesn’t believe in the Y2K crisis.”

The spotlight made him uncomfortable, but Gholam had to respond. “Things don’t always turn out the way you think.” He described the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.

Tracy asked, “So you give up?”

“I’m not 100 percent sure about Y2K, but surely there’s sense in being prepared.”

Tracy said, “A handful of us being aware isn’t enough. Those with resources may be okay, but what about the poor people in East Oakland, right outside our hallowed gates? Everyone’s supercharged by the dot-com boom, but it’s precisely when your expectations are high and then there’s a collapse that you could have revolutionary implications. Here we are in Oakland, home to the Panthers. This shit could sink deep roots here.”

Michael T. nodded. “This is what I love about being here. I did a semester in Kansas and I could hardly get a conversation going. The other day at a coffee shop downtown, I sat next to someone who moved here from the boonies because of the Panthers. Another time I met a woman at a bar who campaigned against apartheid in high school. Random encounters, but both were loaded with so much meaning.”

Their youthful energy reminded Gholam of his younger self, but, he reminded himself, there’s history and then there’s myth. One needed to appreciate the difference.

Tracy said, “Getting the message out has to be our priority.”

Pointing to Michael T., Gholam laughed. “He should get a slot on Soulbeat.”

Tracy lit up. “Why do you think that’s funny? It might be low-budget, but it’s African American — owned and provides both entertainment and enlightenment.”

“I think that’s a terrific idea. We need media access,” Michael T. said with a smirk.

Rachel turned to Gholam. “We’re going to host lectures and a rally. You should come.”

“The voice of a skeptic — we need that too,” pointed out Michael T.

Gholam sighed. “I’d like to believe you all. I work enough with computers to know there is a problem. But there is an army of programmers out there working on Y2K. Some things here and there might fail, but it’ll be a blip. On the other hand, I’ll make sure to have a full tank of gas and take out some cash before the New Year.”

“Such faith in the corporate elite,” Tracy scoffed. “You’ll take care of your own self. What about the rest?”

Gholam rose to leave but couldn’t resist a parting remark. “I imagine you folks can take care of the others. Best of luck.”

In a few weeks, Gholam discovered that Michael T. had managed a weekly spot on Soulbeat. It pissed him off. They had joked about the channel, and now he’d wormed his way in there. Gholam wasn’t going to engage with these people any longer. A campus could be a bizarre place sometimes.

Gholam’s life settled into a routine. During the week he saw Keisha in passing, but on weekends they usually spent one night together. Sometimes he visited her at the huge Victorian behind Highland Hospital she shared with a couple of roommates, but mostly they spent their nights together at his apartment.

His mother’s condition had stabilized, and they’d spoken a few times. Through a travel agent he purchased a consolidator ticket to Tehran via Frankfurt. The only ticket he could find at a reasonable price had him flying out on New Year’s Eve.

The afternoon he booked the ticket, he returned from a service call to find Keisha waiting outside his office. She said she’d stopped by just for a minute. “I got my thesis proposal approved. Dr. Browning loved my ideas.”

“That’s wonderful, I didn’t have any doubts.”

“I needed the affirmation.”

“I have some news too. I just bought my ticket.” He showed her the printout.

She slammed her backpack on his desk and shouted, “How could you do this?”

“What?”

“You’re flying out on December 31? You’ll be in the air when it turns January 1. Do you have a death wish?”

Y2K had never come up in their conversations, but apparently a few days ago Keisha had attended one of the lunchtime meetings. She was usually a grounded person, but there was a side of her drawn to the beyond-rational. Like many in California she readily took to the “spiritual not religious” tag. That meant layering her Baptist upbringing with flakes of Buddhism and Hinduism, some references to Islam, and an added coating of radicalism. Something about how she blended her philosophies fascinated Gholam. Normally it was all talk, but now something seemed to be shifting.

“Walk with me to my car.”

Gholam agreed, and while they headed to the parking lot, Keisha quoted Michael T. as if she’d memorized his manifesto. She sang his praises: how deep he was, how he could break things down to the essentials, how disciplined he was... etcetera, etcetera. It nauseated Gholam to see her fall under his spell.

Once they reached her Honda Civic, she popped open her trunk to show that she meant business. She had made a trip to Grocery Outlet to stock up on bags of rice and pasta, bottled water, beans of a dozen kinds, crackers, cereal, and a mountain of canned goods.

“When the new year comes, I’ll be ready, and I’ll be damned if I let you fly out the day before. You’ll have to change your ticket.”

“It’s not changeable.”

“You... we... will have to find a way.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think much will happen. Sure, there could be a few glitches, but there are enough people working on the problem that widespread disruption is unlikely.”

“That’s just your opinion. How closely have you studied the subject?”

“I read a few articles.”

“Michael T. has studied the problem in depth.”

“Why don’t we get dinner somewhere and talk it over?”

“There’s a lecture at the Greek Theater at five thirty. Why don’t you come?”

He thought for a moment. It no longer seemed possible to ignore the Y2K crowd. “Okay, but I have to get back to work now. I’ll see you there.”

When Gholam arrived, the event had just begun. The discussion focused on Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower. The organizers couldn’t bring in Butler but had lucked out with a PhD student from Berkeley who was researching her fiction.

About thirty students came. Most sat at the bottom of the theater and others moved down after being asked to come nearer. The speaker didn’t refer to Y2K; she merely talked about how Butler had written this novel set in the immediate future based on an assessment of current trends: gated communities, homelessness, and drugs.

Michael T. followed by summarizing points from his manifesto. Then Tracy took the platform. She said the power of Butler’s work was that she could project where things were headed. In the book, Lauren Olamina coped by creating her philosophy, but otherwise she was unprepared. Wouldn’t it be better if the Laurens of the world were better prepared when chaos breaks out? That was the purpose of the Y2K Campaign: preparedness. Survival kits with cash, water, food, fuel, stoves, tents, sleeping bags, and other essentials needed to be assembled.

Rachel spoke about broadening their outreach. They had distributed flyers around the city, Michael T. had a weekly slot on Soulbeat, and the next step would be a postering campaign downtown and in high-traffic areas — Fruitvale, MacArthur BART, Grand Lake. She held up a poster they had designed. On gold paper, in bold red letters, it read:

The poster also called for a rally at the campus student union on November 18.

Rachel appealed for postering team volunteers, and Keisha marched down right away and signed up. As she and Gholam left the meeting and headed toward their cars, he asked, “Is this something you really want to do?”

“I was going to ask — why is this something you don’t want to do?”

He remained silent.

“Yes, this is something I really want to do. I believe in the cause. I should put something on the line.”

“I think something will happen, but I’m not convinced it will be a big thing.”

“On this, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” She sounded disappointed. “I thought it’d be fun to do something like this together.”

It was an ongoing grievance, and she had a point: they didn’t do much together other than sharing some meals, a few trips to the beach, a movie now and then, and sex. He wished he could go with her on this.

“I’d do it if I was convinced of the cause, but I’m not. I’m willing to come hear what people have to say. I won’t argue you out of it — if you believe in it, you should do it.”

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know why I even hang with you.”

It was chilly and Gholam suggested they continue talking in his car. Once inside, they went back and forth without resolution.

Finally she said: “Every relationship faces a test. This might be ours and it looks like we’re failing. Gholam, I like you, but you think you know everything. I was ready to buy you a new ticket, but I’ve lost the desire.” She turned away from him and clutched her backpack.

He was stunned to see her belief so strong, moved by such a generous expression of love. She didn’t have that kind of money to spare.

She opened the car door and was about to leave when he reached out and caught her arm. “Okay, count me in. This might be fun.”

They went out midweek just after ten p.m. Before Keisha picked him up, Gholam fortified himself with a shot of bourbon. The arrangement was that Keisha would stay in the car, he would paint on the glue, and Rachel would slap up the posters.

Two teams headed downtown. Their territory was east of Broadway to Harrison, from Grand Avenue down to 14th Street. They covered blocks in lightning strikes, encountering only homeless people or other youngsters who gave them words of encouragement. One kid joined them for half a block.

Only once did a police car come their way. They had prepared for the contingency: Rachel and Gholam dropped their bucket and posters on the ground, stood next to the car, and began arguing loudly about a movie while Keisha pretended to mediate. When the police car slowed to observe them, Rachel explained they’d just come from watching The Bone Collector and their differing reviews had become a bit heated. The cops bought it. It helped that she was white and acted earnest.

Once they’d finished, Rachel declared she was ravenous. Could they stop at Sun Hong Kong in Chinatown? Gholam and Keisha locked eyes. Keisha said she just wanted to get to bed, Gholam said he was exhausted. Though Keisha lived closer to Rachel, Keisha said she would drop her off first.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to take Gholam home first?” said Rachel. When there was no response, she said, “Oh, I see.”

After they dropped off Rachel, Gholam and Keisha had their hands on each other’s thighs in the car, their fingers sliding ever higher. As soon as they were inside the apartment, they stripped off their clothes, rushed to bed, and made fierce love.

Afterward, Keisha said, “See, we should go out postering more often.”

Gholam smiled. It had been a good night but as they drifted off to sleep, he felt soiled by the knowledge that he had joined Keisha out of love and lust, not any faith in the cause. By morning, this feeling consumed him and he felt like a total fraud.

So sordid did Gholam continue to feel that he cooked up an excuse to not show up for the Y2K rally at the student union, telling Keisha his mother had been hospitalized again and he needed to call home.

Keisha came over late, brimming with excitement. The rally had succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams. More than a hundred people had shown up. Michael T.’s appearances on Soulbeat had brought several dozen people from the community. Students had come from a number of other schools. A supermarket owner had promised discounts for emergency packs of food and water.

“And your friend Michelle was extremely helpful,” she added.

“My friend Michelle?”

“Yeah, she said she went to college with you in Detroit, an engineer.”

“What does she look like?”

“Full-figured black woman, light complexion, probably your age. Smartly dressed.”

Gholam was puzzled. He didn’t know a Michelle and there was no one in the area he knew from his Wayne State days. He questioned Keisha some more, but all she could say was how helpful Michelle had been with potential contacts and new ideas about how to reach the mainstream media.

It would take one more night for the mystery to be solved. As he got ready for bed, the phone rang.

“Is this a good time?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.

“Who is this?” said Gholam.

“Your old friend Michelle. You don’t remember me?”

“No.”

“Your classmate from database theory with Professor Lee, the Chinese guy.”

“No, I don’t remember you. What do you want?”

“Can we meet in the morning? Say nine a.m., on the walkway around the lake, across from the cathedral?”

“If you’re not telling me more, I’m not coming.”

“Oh, you’d better come.” She hung up.

He wasn’t going to go, but the edge in her voice suggested it would be risky to ignore her.

Gholam noticed a woman on a bench fitting Keisha’s description. As he approached, she said, “There you are. Come sit.”

Gholam scrutinized her face. He was certain he’d never seen her before. “We’ve never met. Who are you?”

She opened the book in her hands and fished out an old photo of two men on a bench: Gholam, a bit more boyish looking, with a white American in a suit. “Remember Leicester Square, 1989?”

Gholam felt a stab in his chest. In his life he’d done some stupid things, and here was a reminder of one. On his way back from Iran that year, his first visit since the revolution, he’d met some old comrades in London. One of them had talked him into meeting with this man. He was probably from some US intelligence agency, and the man had pumped Gholam for information about his visit. He had not shared much.

“We need a favor. We’d like you to maintain my cover. There’s something dangerous going on and we want to make sure the kids here don’t do anything crazy.” She showed the photo again, tapping the image of the American. “A shame Bill’s cover was blown. Now he’s recognizable and he had to be pulled back stateside.”

Gholam understood the implicit threat. If this photo was ever shared with Michelle’s counterparts in Iran, Gholam would be marked as an American spy.

It had been a long time since he’d felt fear so close. He walked home and lay on his bed, beginning to sweat, although it was not a particularly warm day. Then he felt chills. He tried music; jazz usually soothed him. Today it annoyed him.

There had been a time when fear was a daily companion. When they were active against the shah, Iranian students weren’t safe even on American campuses. The shah’s secret police had kidnaped some of their leaders, and Washington cooperated by deporting them. Gholam was too unimportant to be noticed in Washington, but there were even spies in Detroit. For the last ten years he had built a life away from engagement with Iran, and fear’s grip on him had weakened, only returning when he visited home. There he had to be extremely careful who he visited. He rarely took chances.

If he chose now to never return home, he could maybe walk away from this, but he had to see his mother, perhaps for the last time. He couldn’t jeopardize this visit.

Buoyed by their rally, the Y2K folks decided to host one last event in December. With students dispersing for winter break, they wanted to make sure the community members mobilized for December 31.

Juggling her final projects and these activities, Keisha didn’t have much time for Gholam. They met up for tea now and then at the cafeteria. He’d hoped they would spend Thanksgiving together but she had begged off, saying she needed marathon study sessions. She did invite him to the final rally and to an after-party at a family apartment on campus. It would double as a planning meeting for the run-up to December 31. Gholam told her he wasn’t sure he could make the rally, but he’d come to the party. She didn’t try to change his mind; he worried he was losing her.

When he arrived at the apartment, there were only six people there: Michael T., Keisha, Tracy, Rachel, Michelle, a woman named Isabel, and the hosts, Raphael and Allison. Everyone acted as if they were at a funeral, and Gholam quickly learned why. The rally had only brought out six people beyond this core group. Not even the other students in Michael T.’s class had shown up.

Gholam was relieved: now they had to face reality. But he had forgotten how the human mind works.

He would have expected Tracy to make the proposal, but no, it was Keisha. She believed the drop in their numbers meant more radical action was required to rouse the people. She related anecdotes from her work distributing flyers at Eastmont Mall, Bayfair, and the 12th Street BART. Everywhere, people had been sympathetic, and when warned about what would happen on December 31, they were incensed.

“Just to save a few bucks, they toy with the lives of millions. We can’t let them get away with it.”

The conversation turned to action ideas. A debate broke out: symbolism vs. substance. There would be no rising of the masses, so they could only prepare for the coming chaos on their own. Should they do something spectacular to make people notice, or should they do something to help others prepare? Take over a TV station? Hijack a food delivery truck and distribute the food to the poor?

Isabel felt this was stupid. Decades back she’d come to the Bay Area to join the Symbionese Liberation Army. Back in Gallup, New Mexico, this had seemed romantic. By the time she arrived, the SLA members were either dead or in jail. She ended up meeting some Marxists, who convinced her that violence without the masses was not revolutionary, they’d be better off working for the longer haul. She’d tried it, but even that had gone nowhere. She’d come tonight to see if this group had any fresh ideas — but clearly they didn’t. She gathered up her coat and walked out the door.

What followed made Gholam’s heart sink. Michelle, who’d mostly been silent, came over to Keisha’s side. She was smooth. She struck a skeptical posture, she asked leading questions, and she allowed Keisha to persuade her. Falling for her provocations, Tracy and Keisha competed to present the most radical ideas. The choice came down to robbing a bank to gather funding, or commandeering a food truck to distribute groceries.

When Gholam tried to interrupt, Michelle cut him down: “There was a time when Gholam was courageous, but he’s lost the spirit of his younger days.”

Tracy muttered, “Sellout.”

Keisha looked confused.

Gholam understood Michelle’s game. Here was a group of overzealous students and one ABD, and sure, in the hothouse of a campus, students and would-be professors might easily fantasize about apocalyptic or utopian scenarios, but come final exams, things would usually fizzle out. Unless, of course, espionage agencies sent instigators in to stir the pot.

Gholam caught Michael T.’s attention and said he’d like to speak to him outside. Michelle gave him a warning look.

They stood out on the landing.

“Look, this is getting out of hand. It’s time for you to tell these people this was all just part of your dissertation, an exercise to see how people react. It’s not real.”

“I can’t,” Michael T. responded. “I’ve set it in motion, I need to carry this to the end.”

“Even if it means you guys end up in jail?”

“I’ll make sure there are no weapons involved.”

“But the other side will have weapons. You can’t risk people’s lives and future.”

“They’re adults, free to make their own choices.”

“Damnit, Michael, you’re not being much of an adult.”

He could have spilled the beans on Michelle but his own self-interest restrained him.

When they went back in, Michael T. informed the group that since Gholam didn’t agree with taking action, he should leave. Only those who wanted to be involved should help with the planning. Gholam saw confusion in Keisha’s eyes once again but she remained paralyzed. Michelle was smug.

Gholam desperately sought a way to stop this disaster in the making. He tried to engage each of the players. Tracy was contemptuous, Rachel shut him down, and Michael T. was unreachable. Keisha stopped coming over but they met once for tea after her last final exam. She wouldn’t say what they were planning but was insistent on her duty to act.

“What about us? Is it over?”

“No. But if you cared for me, you’d join me. The least you could do is change your plane ticket.”

Gholam tried to contact Michael T. through e-mail. He offered detailed arguments, providing scenarios of how Michael T. could pull these students back and still maintain respect. When he received no reply, he concluded these people were beyond reach.

Still, he could not let Keisha come to harm. He had to find a way to get through to her. Gholam decided to forfeit his plane ticket, and bought a new one for a flight leaving on January 2. It cost him twice as much. He called to tell her, but he had to leave a message, so instead he wrote a passionate e-mail. He knew she was busy New Year’s Eve — but what if they had one night together on December 30? He was headed to the other side of the globe. If something did happen on January 1, he wouldn’t be able to fly out, but if he did fly out and then something happened back home, would she not want to see him one last time?

Somehow this desperate plea worked; Gholam didn’t have to come up with an alternative plan.

When she arrives at his door, there’s a tentative look on her face, as if she’s not sure why she’s here. Her face brightens when she sees the spread he’s laid out. He’s even lit candles. Gholam’s about to open a bottle of wine but she says no, she needs a sharp mind for the following day. That’s her only mention of the next day, and she seems relieved when he doesn’t press.

After they finish eating, they play Scrabble. Then they make love slowly and fall asleep. He wakes her one time and they have another go.

Gholam hardly sleeps and wakes before dawn. When he slides out of bed, she’s still lightly snoring. He quietly opens the drawer and takes out his accessories. With the silk ribbons, he loosely ties her ankles to the bed frame. He can tighten them later. With one of the cable ties, he carefully clasps a wrist to the headboard. Before he can use the second tie, however, Keisha wakes up.

“What... are you doing?” She has a curious smile. She doesn’t seem surprised, perhaps because there have been one or two times they’ve used light restraints in bed.

“Hush.” He kisses her left nipple. She moans and closes her eyes, he sucks harder, and in her moment of confused pleasure he clasps her other wrist to the bed.

“Gholam, not now. Maybe after you get back.” She pulls her hands and realizes it isn’t just ribbons holding her wrists but something tighter. “What the fuck?”

Before she can get another word out, Gholam stuffs her mouth with fabric. Now Keisha’s eyes are open wide. She’s scared, confused, and hurt.

He sits next to her, one of his hands on her belly. “Don’t be afraid. I can’t let you go today. You don’t know what’s waiting out there, so I have to keep you like this for the rest of the day since I don’t know what you guys have planned. I’m really, really sorry, but I have to tell you the full story.”

Her eyes fill up with pain, tears, and blazing hatred. No matter what story he tells her, he doubts she will forgive him. He doubts whether he will forgive himself, for it is his cowardice that led to this.

Gholam extends his mind ahead. In ten, twenty years, what will he remember? What will she? Will it be a story of him as a savior, a betrayer, or both? Whose story will stick longer? Will it depend on what happens when the calendar turns and the prophecy fails... or proves true? Or are the myths that survive built much deeper?

He needs at least one certainty. In the wreckage he’s created, he doubts he can get on a plane. Unless, of course, he obtains forgiveness. Only tomorrow will tell if he has a chance.

“Inshallah,” he whispers.

Black and Borax by Tom McElravey

Haddon Hill

Sean swallowed the hard fact that being the doorman at the Nitecap wasn’t the most lucrative position he could get in Oakland. So he supplemented his income as a small-time dealer of low-grade narcotics — never inside the bar, but the gray area outside left him overlooked although not invisible.

Thoughts of bottom-shelf tequila shots soothed the endless supply of his cutthroat bump-and-grind, although this gave him access to the local clientele, most of whom ended up drunk and interested in increasing their high. He was the man.

The jazz clarinetist inside improvised Davis’s “So What,” as Sean swayed in his seat and watched the stage lights blinking above his head. Funk Town Arts Street.

“Everything you’ve got, motherfucker! You did that, baby...” Danny’s laughter beat the musicians back into their two-dimensional heaven while Sean picked himself off the sidewalk.

“Piece of shit! What’d you do that for?”

“Cuz you an easy target.”

“I didn’t hear you walk up.”

“You lucky I didn’t run up. What were you doin’? Dreamin’ of that girl you don’t have or somethin’?”

“More like... remembering yours from last night.” They gave each other that TV dinner grin — half plastic and no meat.

Sean changed the subject: “So, supwitchu?”

“What you think, man? Same shit, same ol’ shit.” Danny dragged his vowels like he dragged his spliffs. He paused a moment, lighter in hand, and cupped the end of the stoge. He had just finished rolling another one and it bounced between his lips. He handed Sean the last of his spliff. “Lemme know when you ready to get your ass whooped. I’ll be back,” Danny said, stepping inside.

Sean inhaled, shifting his attention toward the mural across the road, back into his daydream. The spiff burned his fingers with the second drag, and he tossed it toward the gutter.

The music slipped through the doorway like greasy fingers with painted nails, red and chipped from the wrestling match between tunes. A chill went down Sean’s back as applause drowned his daydream with the first lines of “St. Thomas.” He rocked the barstool, shoulders supporting his lean body against the stone wall, head cocked against the window.

The clink-clank-bling of bangles snapped Sean back to attention. He sat up and gave a quick half-smile to Hershe. She was neighborhood royalty, commanding an impressive air of confidence as her footsteps popped sharply on the cement. Her Diana Ross do bounced lightly, contrasting with the heavy jewelry hanging from her wrist and neck. The studs on her leather jacket glistened as she passed in and out of the shadows.

“Honey! It’s been too long!”

It hadn’t been that long, maybe a week, but Sean reveled in Hershe’s affection. He stood to greet her, blushing. She swayed her heavy bag with practiced instability in her matching Gucci heels, leaning down to receive his kiss.

“It has been too long! I used to see you twice a week at least! Where’ve you been? You’ll never believe what happened around here the other day. Tommy, you know Tommy, came in blind drunk—”

“That’s wild, honey!” Hershe interrupted. “As to where I’ve been, I’ve been through it. Good thing I can always count on a kiss from my favorite doorman.”

“Well, I’m always here.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’ma go talk to our favorite proprietor, don’t go far now.”

Another kiss, and she disappeared into the dark bar.

He listened to the eruption of friendly greetings as she walked toward Ms. Shirley, who took her arm as they disappeared to the back office. The Thursday shift was usually slow and full of regulars and tonight was no different. Sean looked forward to shooting a couple games of pool with Danny and talking business.

Sean stayed within his means — he never sold larger than dime bags, half-grams, and Norcos. It was his principle to keep his head down and he’d yet to have trouble with the local hoods. Danny was his connect, one and only. They never passed goods close to the area, but they did talk inventory over a game of pool and friendly gambling.

“Fuck it, I’m off tonight.”

“Man, you ain’ never on when I’m around. Bring it back.”

The colorful balls rumbled down the chamber, and a resentful crack sounded as Sean forced the eight into the center of the triangle. Danny cocked his cue for the break.

“Hershe lookin’ fly as fuck.”

“You think you’re real clever, huh? Rerack that shit.”

“Just thinking out loud. I’ma make you play it though, ball touched a rail.”

“You hustlin’ ass cracker. Fine, I’ll play and I’ll still win. Double or nothing.”

Hershe and Ms. Shirley emerged from the office. Both had the looks of actresses, insincere and pleased with themselves. Ms. Shirley took her seat where the bar bent. Hershe catwalked to the pool table.

“Gentleman playing fair?”

“You know Sean can’t shoot, ’specially when you around. Poor kid’s distractable.”

“He’s got taste is all. How’re you faring, honey?”

“’Bout to come up twenty bucks.” Danny let out an overzealous “Ha!” earning a scowl from Sean.

“Just another night.”

“Another night when you buyin’ my drinks! Where you been, girl? I h’ain’t seen you in a minute.”

“I been layin’ low, you know, focusing on myself. It’s not just beauty here, a girl’s got to stay sharp to get ahead in this world. Can’t be spendin’ all my time in bars like you men.”

A sleek black ’87 Cadillac pulled up to the front door and honked twice.

“That’s my ride, gentlemen, see you two later. You don’t go takin’ all the baby’s money. Be safe now.”

Sean stared at her ass while she strutted to the car, her strong thighs shifting with hip-shaking grace.

“That woman really is something. What does she do, anyhow?” Sean asked. “I known her for years and never got a straight answer.”

“Man, would you ask me what I did? Mind your own damn business,” Danny replied with a knowing smile. “A beer says I run you out.”

He did as he said. Sean swore as his opponent sunk the eight ball for the third time. Now twenty in the hole, Sean reluctantly returned to his position at the front door.

Danny beamed. “I’ll take that beer anytime.”

Back outside, Sean took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and stuffed it into a rolling paper, shaping the cigarette into a small cone. The smoke floated into his eyes, blinding him. As he blinked through the tears, the pain began to recede. Sean held his eyes closed to expedite the process.

“You sleeping on the job?” came a stern, melodious voice from his right. “What I pay you for anyhow?”

Ms. Shirley had an interesting sense of humor, though her employees were rarely subjected to or included in the comedy. Sean was caught off-guard and froze, looking like he had a pocket full of wallets. He smiled, attempting to interpret whether this was one of those rare occasions. She smiled back, confirming his doubts and setting him at ease.

“Taking off, Miss Shirley?”

“I’m the boss.” She smiled ferociously. “Get back to work,” she chided, and swaggered to her car.

He shook his head, confused again by their interaction. Several minutes crawled by before he heard an engine growl to life. She took the intersection at a dangerous speed and drove toward East 18th, not bothering to stop at the light.

Ms. Shirley was a reckless, intelligent, self-made, and selfish Korean woman in her forties, known throughout Park Boulevard as a shrewd businesswoman, a “dragon lady.” She was genuine, not generous, and could diffuse a disagreement with simple totalitarian logic: My bar, my rules.

She was also mindful of her patrons. Sean had seen her help more than one “fly who lost his job” or “friend of fly who needed work,” considering it was mutually beneficial. She was well connected; receiving in return an owed favor, a new body added to the roster of regulars, and more cash in the register.

Sean was considered a “fly who lost his job.”

Six months back he had hit bedrock, his shit job washing dishes at a greasy burger joint making just enough money to cover rent and buy smack. Repeat. Until a scratcher won him five hundred dollars. Cash in hand, he walked straight to the dealer, buying enough black for a two-week spree, enough to disregard responsibility and lose his job. With the change he went to the bar. A week later he woke up facedown under the “borax king’s” train of plastic donkeys in F.M. Smith Park, the late-afternoon sun pressed against his thick field jacket. A plaque within arms’ reach became a crutch as he struggled to his feet: Mules in Oakland? The letters danced across the information board — a brief history of the commercialization of borax. Describing F.M. Smith’s mule teams as they marched to the center of the Mojave and back, so he could be rich

This image of tired mules trudging to their sorry destination forced Sean’s exhausted body three blocks to the bar. He vividly remembered falling into the swinging door with force enough to make the walls shake.

Ms. Shirley was tending the bar, a factor he hadn’t considered. Her disapproving scowl glared up from the well. Slurred, incomprehensible words dribbled from his mouth, and he watched her face distort into perturbed sympathy. She shook her head no, igniting a passionate rage. He flew from his stool, shouting incoherently until a local fly threw him to the floor and gave him a singular punch to the nose. Submitting, the large man picked him up and pushed him out the door. He lay against the wall outside, drunk and defeated.

“I like you.” Ms. Shirley’s voice had a reverberating effect as thick blood pounded in his ears. “But you especially stupid lately. Come back tomorrow when we’re open, or never come back.” She gave a final huff and opened the bar door. “Go home!”

He stumbled toward the “shortcut,” an overgrown staircase designed to connect Oakland’s old trolley system, now forgotten. His final memory of that afternoon was gazing at the city skyline from the top of this stairway, attempting to pick the pocket lint from the last of his black.

The next morning Sean awoke, guts aching; he lay in bed attempting to recollect the evening before. Ms. Shirley’s threat reverberated through his skull. He glanced at the time before pulling on his cleanest clothes. It was two thirty p.m.

The Nitecap had been open for an hour before he timidly pushed his way inside. Ms. Shirley looked up when the door creaked open and greeted Sean with a solemn nod. He slunk to the seat adjacent to her and waited. She dramatically finished polishing a glass, held it up to the light, and said, “Johnny quit. We need a new bouncer, you it. Clean up and come work. You have one week. No show, no work.”

He agreed to the terms, spent a week sweating in bed, and began his new career.

His pipe had one hit left, maybe two if he scraped the bowl. Sobriety made him feel, and weed dulled that edge. It was twelve thirty a.m.: he didn’t want to stick around any longer. The night had been painfully slow, not a full gram sold, not a single argument escalated. Bored and profitless, he felt like a waste of space. An evening like this would keep him awake until daybreak.

A black Lincoln Town Car stopped in front of the bar and turned on its hazards. It wasn’t unusual to see a luxury cab pick up an individual from the Nitecap. A fair number of professional drivers used it for respite, shooting pool and drinking between shifts. Sean shouted through the door, asking if anyone ordered a ride. A small chorus of “No” came back so he remained in his seat, arms crossed. Both passenger doors opened and Ms. Shirley, escorting a gentleman he didn’t recognize, stepped out. Flashing a crocodile smile, she walked past Sean without introducing the guy. Repeating this tactic as they walked through the bar, they strode confidently into the back room. The door shut quickly, fanning an air of intrigue throughout. Sean never asked Ms. Shirley about the significant other that supposedly had part ownership, but he had at least met him, and the gentleman in the office was not her blue-collared Irishman.

The bartender whistled for Sean’s attention. “Th’ fuck was that about, you think?”

“What’m I s’posed to say? Ms. Shirley got friends. Not really my business.”

“She’s never brought another man since I’ve been around. Just seem like something’s up.”

“I don’t know, dude, just ask her later.”

“Hershe and her were in there earlier.”

“You mean like, whenever Hershe stops by? C’mon, man. Look, tonight is dead, lemme go. I don’t have shit to do, but I’d rather not do it here. Fill me in tomorrow?”

“All right, get out of here, I will. G’night, Sean. Everyone say g’night to Sean, lucky bastard’s off.”

He headed toward the door and tossed up his hand, an impersonal goodbye to the few voices that obliged the bartender.

It was too early to go home. The antiquated Casio wristwatch he wore beeped one a.m. as he walked past the Parkway Theatre, an old 1925 movie house still boasting a Wurlitzer and intricate décor. It had been unused for years, leaving a feeling of urban blight in a neighborhood the city recognized as “up-and-coming.” The sign board that used to list what was playing now simply read, We l-ve you Oakland. The feeling didn’t seem mutual.

He turned right on East 18th and made for the “gem” of Oakland — Lake Merritt. It had been recently polished, the water glowing as it reflected the string of Christmas lights hanging between old-fashioned streetlamps. They illuminated the fresh landscaping and two-year-old Kentucky bluegrass. It was a pleasant aesthetic: paid for by us to be enjoyed by them.

Three years ago those lights, had they been there at all, would have shown the bloated corpse of a retired champion pit bull, half-submerged in the shallows by the shore. They also could have revealed the young hood who once snuck up behind Sean and drove a fist into his kidney, a hit that threw him into the dried dirt and used prophylactics. He walked away from that episode with a broken wrist and without the server’s generous fifteen-dollar donation. That type of thing didn’t happen anymore, which he supposed was a positive. It also drove up his rent.

He reached the lake and turned right; he had his beat. Before he was a junkie, the walk would take him past several bars while he meandered home. After he started using, it took him to Hanover Hill, where you could always score. The top of the little hill held a public restroom which no one used but the addicts. It was a storefront the city occasionally attempted to lock, and the doors were scarred from countless boots which had broken the blockade. Sean’s favorite joke: It houses the world’s most effectual plumbing design. He grimaced as the polluted memories bubbled into consciousness, quickening his pace to avoid an imagined silhouette of the dealer. A Town Car passed as he stepped off the curb and crossed Lakeside Drive. He would walk to the tip of Adam’s Point, sit on his bench, and roll a cigarette. It was a fifteen-minute stroll, time spent attempting to breathe through addiction and loathsome nostalgia. His self-developed methods forced him to have patience and a ritual.

The odd Greco-Roman structure which marked the Point was shining in the moonlight, growing brighter with each footstep until it was washed in the pale, artificial glow which soaked the interior. The heels of Sean’s boots echoed closely behind, like an assassin’s. Emerging from the other side of the covered embarcadero, he came to a stop in front of his bench — a coated figure lay across it. He was snoring. The first snore brought relief — Sean held an unpleasant notion that every body outside after two a.m. was a dead body; the second brought disgust. It was his bench, his cigarette, his ritual, ruined by this odious breathing overcoat. He gave the bench an angry kick as he about-faced, settling for one of the more exposed and less comfortable spots which lined the promenade.

The excited clamor of a startled flock of geese could be heard from the unlit interior of Lakeside Park, a final frontier for activities that appreciate the cover of darkness. Further listening divulged a muffled argument.

His cigarette burned to the butt, Sean stood up. Back down the promenade and homeward bound. As he approached the intersection of Brooklyn and Lakeshore, a flock of geese burst from the darkness and flew, shrieking, into what was left of the evening. He looked up to watch them form a ghostly chevron, the flashes of white from their exposed chests blinking like so many eyes. Crossing the street drenched him in fluorescent light from the now-closed Quikstop, and he quickened his pace till he reached the softer light of the streetlamps.

He began the ascent up Haddon Hill. A Venetian child tailed him for twenty feet, skipping behind his steady gait. He turned around to catch a glimpse of a romantic city built over water, threatened by an innocent leaning tower. “Leaning Tower of Pizza,” he said aloud as the mural ended.

It was a childish and misguided piece of art that always captured his imagination: hope, romance, anonymity; a fresh start that guaranteed success. He would never get there. “Santa Lucia” spilled from his pursed lips and carried him to the hill’s peak. He wheezed as it leveled, cutting the song short. The terrain began to slope in his favor, restoring the energy needed to roll another cigarette.

The traffic light which marked the intersection changed and then changed again: stop, go. An inane ode to structure and authority at such an untrafficked hour. The squeal of tires announced another presence, and Sean jumped over the low concrete wall of Smith Park, out of the way where he was able to watch the show. The car spun a donut and roared toward the hills. He applauded the driver’s reckless abandon and turned; Smith Park was empty and unlit.

Walking through the moist, dead grass, he glanced over his shoulder, imagining the sounds of a potential assault. There was a picnic table in the center of the park. A quiet place to lie and look at the city’s few stars. Sean’s refuge for his last cigarette and final bowl of the night. Sitting down and rolling up, he sparked his nightcap. A shining object reflected the moon, diverting his attention. Fast money, he hoped.

Instead he found a single stiletto, useless to him and everyone else, not worth a dime without its partner. He picked it up anyway. Fuck, it was Gucci. If he could find the other one he could make an easy twenty-five dollars.

Sean scanned the grass around him using the light from his phone. Looking up, he saw he was near Smith’s plastic mules, locked in their perpetual train to the Mojove. Then he noticed that he was not alone; there was a sleeping body lying comfortably in the dirt behind the mules, with a small bundle near its head. This bundle could contain the missing shoe.

Sean crept toward the body and braced for a reaction, but there was none, so he bent down and dragged the package to a safer distance. He reached inside, immediately jerking his hand out in violent surprise and falling backward. He scrambled to his feet. It was soaked, sticky, and warm. Gathering his wits, he waited to see whether his reaction had disturbed the sleeping individual, but it had not. Regaining confidence, he approached again, this time inspecting his mark thoroughly.

Her legs barely stuck out from under the overcoat, and just one black-stockinged foot covered the other — which held the missing shoe. Sean froze. He then listened for breathing, and hearing none, he gave a hard shove on her shoulder. As the body rolled over, the overcoat fell off. Sean stood shocked; he recognized that face. Or what was left of it.

“Hershe!” he cried, shaking the body. It was cold — she was dead.

He looked for her purse and found it under her knees. It snapped open with genuine Gucci ease. Pulling out the matching clutch, he removed its cash contents; as an afterthought he looked at the ID.

“Karl.”

A moment of hesitation gave rise to a strong, sickly emotion which he suppressed. I was a favorite, she’d understand, he thought. Tossing the wallet back near the body, he began to run in the direction of home. His knees collapsed. Doubling over, he vomited through choking sobs. It didn’t make sense, he’d seen her hours before, broadcasting her contagious charm throughout the neighborhood. Her neighborhood. There wasn’t a soul in their lowly underworld who didn’t like or respect her. Sean gathered his wits and rose to his feet, forcing them once again in the direction of home.

At the foot of the old staircase he changed his mind, crossed the street, and dashed down a road he hadn’t used in six months. Taking a sharp right up the driveway of a solid old Craftsman, he found the hole in the fence and crept through, heading straight to the neighbor’s recessed garage. Greg was awake, at the very least half-alive, and Sean needed his advice and company.

Greg was an old friend, a moderately successful artist whose philosophies stank of France. Sean pounded the door with the bottom of his fist, hearing a snap of rubber and a groan from the tired mattress, followed by the soft opening of a drawer.

“The fuck?! It’s three o’clock. Who is it?”

“Sean, Greg. It’s Sean. You need to let me in, some fucked-up shit, man.”

“I haven’t seen you in months, you’re square, right? We’re square? I’m not opening this door till you promise you’re not here to steal my contentment.”

“I promise, Greg! It’s nothing like that. Fuck you, man, open the door!”

The dead bolt clicked and Sean pushed his way in. The place hadn’t changed — a pack of needles lay next to the sheetless mattress on the floor, along with tinfoil and a half-burned candle. Greg’s silver spoon hung on the bleach-white plaster wall by two rusting nails, one of which held a corner of his latest piece: A Chaotic Nightmare of Purples. He stepped over the mess of strangled tubes of acrylics and fell into the lone piece of furniture, an ugly old yellow rocking chair with shredded upholstery, and began to sob.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Greg moaned, picking up a heavy brush and firing it into Sean’s chest. “What is wrong with you?”

Sean choked his pitiful version of the recent events through a refried cig he’d found on top of a beer can.

“It’s Hershe, man. She dead. Face all smashed to bits, teeth missing. Damn, I’ve never seen anything like that before. She’s wrapped in a giant coat under the donkeys. I went to the park, you know, for a nightcap, maybe see a star or two. Anyway, I found this shoe — her shoe, I guess — and went looking for the other. I found it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Shit” was all Greg said for several minutes; by the fourth minute Sean was growing impatient and began frantically asking what they should do.

Greg gave him an annoyed look, silencing his outburst, and looked back down at his feet. “Did she have anything on her?”

“Like clothes? She was definitely wearing those... Uh, her bag was between her legs, full. I grabbed her wallet, Greg. License said Karl. She only had eighty bucks in there, I have that here.”

“The wallet? You took her fucking wallet?!”

“No, no. The cash. See?”

“Christ! A bizarrely rational reaction. Still kind of fucked, though... Then, it wasn’t misplaced tranny-bashing. Nothing, we can’t do anything.”

Sean was appalled. “We can’t just leave her there, man, can’t you call someone? Can’t we give an anonymous tip to the cops? Something?!”

“No, idiot. First: there’s no such thing as anonymous anymore; and second: this was a hit. You don’t get involved in a hit.”

“A what? What’d she do?”

“She was big-time. Damn, you’re slow. Big-time Chicago. Her and Ms. Shirley been doing big business in the neighborhood for years, and you don’t do big business without making enemies.”

Sean again looked appalled, and dropped his head into his hands — contemplation wasn’t his strong suit. He didn’t change position until he heard the snap of rubber. Greg had just tied off and was attempting to light a pine-scented candle while his right arm still had motor function. Sean watched the lighter spark with each attempt until it finally took. He stared into the flame.

“Can you spare any black, Greg?”

“What? No, Sean, I knew you were after my contentment. You’re clean, remember? I’m just gonna take this hit and try to mute all the fucked-up shit you walked in with. You, go home.”

Sean watched the white powder dissolve into a silver pool of serenity. “Please, Greg, I know it’s been a fucked night, I’m the one that found her. Look, I’ll buy it from you, I have money.”

“You really are fucking screwy if you think I want stolen money from a dead friend. Fuck you, you know where it is.” Greg pushed the plunger and fell slowly into his mattress.

Sean opened the drawer and unwrapped a moderate-sized rock. He laid the requisite tools at the foot of the chair as he sat back down and cut a piece of foil. Everything set, he tipped his plane and chased the dragon.

He awoke just after dawn. Greg was snoring painfully, and Sean moved the needle from the bed to an overflowing Schlitz bucket. He pinched another small rock from the drawer and tossed a tenner in its place. Cops were swarming the park as he walked up the short hill. He could just make out the now-covered body of Hershe through the throngs and police tape. The sight made him pause for only a second. He was exhausted, terribly confused, and still very high. The night had been too much, the following would be worse, and he would have to disguise his using again. He fingered the rock in his pocket as he unlocked his door, stumbling up the stairs and into bed.

The alarm went off at five thirty p.m. Just a small hit, he thought, finding his foil and lighter where he’d left them, between the bed and wall. His shift started at six thirty — an hour of oblivion before he talked to Ms. Shirley. He figured the news had already saturated the block. A car alarm went off in the distance, rousing him enough to begin clawing away the sheets. Accomplished, he got dressed and locked the door behind him.

Sean trudged down the block toward the bar, heavy legs sticking in the black. As he turned the corner the clarinetist looked him dead in the eye and played a single, long note that followed him into the bar, ending when he was greeted with an unfamiliar, “Hello there!” He waited for his eyes to adjust. A man, the same man Ms. Shirley had with her yesterday, sat at the bar with Danny.

“You must be our beloved doorman. I’m Rich, new owner, pleasure to meet you.”

Sean shook the hand held before him and without a word sat on Danny’s other side. This was too much, too soon. Danny looked at him with a gentle, knowing gaze and asked if he’d heard about Hershe. He responded with a solemn nod.

“What happened to Ms. Shirley?”

“She came back last night after you left and told me, told us, that she was taking an impromptu visit home, dead aunt or something. She didn’t mention she’d sold the place though, I found that out when I walked in the bar about a half hour ago. Cops are saying it’s a hate crime, just another tranny killed because—”

“Fuckers.”

“Anyway, Shirley must’ve made a tidy profit from the sale. I’m surprised though — her and Hershe had a good thing going, and after all these years I never would’ve guessed she would... Well, this is New Oakland, I can’t even guess anymore.”

Waiting for Gordo by Joe Loya

The Handyman by Eddie Muller

Alameda

First time I set foot in Alameda, I moved there. Laurie and I had been searching all over the East Bay for an escape route out of San Francisco, and not long after emerging from the tube that links downtown Oakland to Alameda, we spotted a For Rent sign in the upper window of a place on Central Avenue. It was a late June afternoon, and the sun cast a warm glow across the majestic Edwardian-style structure and the gorgeous garden that bloomed out front.

There was a phone number on the sign, too small to read.

“Let’s just go ring the bell,” Laurie said.

We’d seen more than two dozen places that week and this was the first one that had made Laurie excited. She was out of the car before I could get my glasses on. That’s crucial, looking back now. If I could have seen the phone number on the sign, if I had told her, It’s getting late, let’s call tomorrow, maybe everything would have turned out differently. Maybe not. I’ve thought a lot about how things might have turned out differently. It’s all I do, really.

We crossed the garden to a pathway leading up to the entrance. A woman was leaving the house, an attractive African American in conservative business dress, with a young girl, her daughter I presumed, holding her hand. We smiled in passing. I dismissed the possibility that she was the owner, or the current tenant. She said to our backs, “You don’t want that place, believe me.”

Laurie was nonplussed, and I turned around, saying, “Why’s that? Is there something wrong with it?”

“Yeah, I want it!” She tried to laugh it off, only it wasn’t funny. “Oh my God, the place is fantastic,” she said. “It’s everything I ever wanted. And a good school just blocks away? I won’t ever find a place like this in Oakland.” She picked her daughter up and hugged her, appearing to be on the verge of tears. Grimly, she said, “You looking to rent this place?”

“Driving around, that’s all,” Laurie said quickly. “We just like to look.”

“I could actually afford it. Maybe.” She stroked her daughter’s head. “But we’ll probably never get in a place like this.” She surveyed the lush grounds — a gorgeous Japanese red maple formed a canopy over a bubbling koi pond — then gazed at the house looming above. Finally she said, “C’mon, baby, we got to get home.”

“Okay, that was uncomfortable,” I whispered, climbing a few steps to the front door, which was still open.

We rang the bell, knocked, called out — that’s how eager we were — and presently a tiny figure appeared, coming rapidly down the stairway: a petite Asian woman, her wiry gray hair pulled back into a bun. Hard to figure her age; could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. She wore a simple denim smock and slip-on sandals. Stepping between us, she glanced down the pathway, squinting through delicate, wire-framed glasses.

“She gone?”

“Who?” Laurie said, playing dumb.

“The black. She gone?”

We shuffled awkwardly, coughing a few noises that weren’t words.

“Single mother never good tenant. They bring home men. Men make them do drugs, maybe gamble. ’Specially blacks. Black woman means black man. No trust. She pay rent, maybe he steal her money, gamble.” She looked us up and down and grinned. “You last ones. Agent gone now, but I show you place myself. I live bottom unit, other side. You need something, I always here. My name Phi.”

Laurie loved the place so much it made me jealous. She certainly hadn’t oohed and aahed and carried on so ecstatically when she’d first laid eyes on me. The original house — probably a second home for some nineteenth-century San Francisco Gold Rush millionaire — had been converted into a duplex, and the upper unit was nothing short of glorious: two spacious bedrooms with high coved ceilings, big picture windows with leaded-glass panes, tasteful new carpeting, a large fireplace in a grand living room, built-in bookcases and china cabinets, a deck off the dining room, a remodeled kitchen with a Jenn-Air range — it was insanely great. And it was okay for us to have a cat. Our recently rescued Burmese would be moving from the streets to a dream home.

“Everything top-notch,” the landlady kept repeating. “You make sure keep good condition.” In the main bedroom, she gestured at windows on the east and west sides. “Best thing! Sun rise this room, all day never go way. Sun circle house this way, evening sunset living room. Light very beautiful, like Renaissance painting.”

We were ready to sign a lifetime lease even before she opened the narrow door off the central hallway. “Come up. Show you what I do in attic.” She led us up a slender switchback stairway almost too small for me. We emerged into an entirely separate apartment, which included a brand-new, unused bathroom. Skylights made the cloistered space feel airy, even expansive. Laurie dug her fingers into my arm. “Oh my God,” she whispered, more emphatically than when we had sex. “This is unbelievable. This is perfect. I can run my business here. I don’t need an office — look at all this room.”

As we took a final look around — we didn’t want to leave — we spewed our life stories to Phi, lying that we were married and otherwise convincing her that we were model citizens with abundant bank accounts, rock-solid credit, guaranteed lifetime employment, and no vices beyond having recently rescued a small black cat. She finally raised a hand, stanching our flow of self-aggrandizement.

“You handy?” she asked, measuring me with a level gaze.

“How so, exactly?”

“Handy! You good fixing?”

“Oh... handy. Oh, yeah, sure. She calls me Mr. Fix-It.”

Laurie was tall enough that Phi couldn’t see the comically incredulous expression on her face. Truth was, I couldn’t hammer a nail straight and I had a talent for stripping every screw I’d ever tried to tighten. But to score this place, I’d damn well become handy.

“Happy, happy,” Phi said. “Glad you handy.” When she smiled, she looked twenty years younger. She’d been an attractive woman once. She patted my chest. “You nice couple. I like you. You live here. I call company, tell them apartment rented.”

Before I met her, Laurie had been a high school teacher, but that didn’t work out, I figured, because every male student had crushed on her. She was a prize — smart, funny, empathetic, and beautiful in the most disarming, unself-conscious way. She had everything — but didn’t like to be reminded of it. A public job, she’d decided, was not her style. She didn’t like to be the center of attention.

By the time I’d fallen madly in love — and convinced her we needed to live together — Laurie had been seized by the entrepreneurial zeal that energized lots of young people in the early nineties. Bush was out, Clinton was in, and suddenly for us lefties making money was a capitalist continuation of the counterculture we’d missed out on. Fight the Man by making dough your own way. Find a live-work space. Build your own business. Make a few million and then sell out to a big corporation. Retire young and do fuck-all for the rest of your charmed life. That seemed to be the strategy, based on the few examples I’d seen. Follow your bliss, business-wise.

For Laurie, this meant founding a greeting card company. She dreamed of doing it all, bottom to top: designer, illustrator, manufacturer, marketing manager, distributor, CEO. All this responsibility, of course, would be just until she established her brand. Then there’d be expansion and outsourcing, maybe fewer eighteen-hour workdays. It’d take maybe a year or more to reach that stage — but in the meantime she’d found the perfect place to build the ship, rig it just right, and set it sailing.

That’s no casually chosen metaphor, by the way. I’d gotten a job in the traffic department of a big shipping outfit based in downtown Oakland. My department sold space on trans-Pacific ocean carriage. All those cranes you see lining the waterfront as you drive the bend of 880 — they’re all picking containers from gigantic ships off-loading the endless tide of shit that keeps the American economy humming. Not much goes the other way. My job was to figure how to reposition empty boxes — dead-heading, it’s called — without the company taking too big a loss in the westbound lanes. Fascinating stuff, maybe even important — but not as gratifying as creating and selling a greeting card.

I didn’t have much involvement in Laurie’s business — beyond bringing in the steady, relatively substantial paycheck and the company medical plan, which allowed her to invest so completely in the development of her dream. I was left with plenty of time to learn new things on my own — like how to be handy.

After four months of blissful residency in the Garden of Eden, our cat disappeared. This would lead directly to my initial display of handiness. But first, for two days, the loss of our beloved Cricket threatened to capsize Laurie’s unbridled determination. Did I mention empathy was one of her overwhelming traits? She could not function with Cricket gone. Thoughts of the cat injured, crying for help, killed by a predator — all too much to bear.

We were walking back from our third round of posting Missing Cat notices when Laurie heard a tiny meow overhead, from the deck of our apartment. Cricket, I surmised upon closer inspection, had strolled between the posts of the guardrail, slid down the shingled eaves, dropped into a rain gutter, and instead of clawing her way back up the shingles, had gone under them, into a tiny crawlspace beneath the deck. The hundreds of long nails that attach the shingles had been hammered right through — the poor cat couldn’t crawl out without getting impaled.

I rang our landlady’s doorbell. She came to the door wearing a silk robe and a frightened expression. It was already dark, but we couldn’t stand the thought of Cricket alone for one more night.

“It’s our cat,” I explained. “We found her but can’t get to her. She’s stuck right up there, under the deck.”

“Why you not get her?”

“I have to cut away part of the roof. The nails, there’s hundreds of ’em, all in at an angle. She can’t get past them.”

She considered this for a moment, then said, “No back up. Tire damage.”

I laughed. “Exactly.”

“You can do? You cut hole, you put back — good as new?”

“Of course. Good as new. Better.”

She knew I was a bullshitter, but didn’t seem to care. All she said was, “You do now. Must do tonight. Tomorrow, no noise.”

“Thank you so much, thank you, Phi.” It was the first time I’d called her by name. Trotting down her porch steps, I tried to figure out how I’d pull off this rescue mission.

“Hey!” she called after me. “Mr. Fix-It. You need tall ladder. One in back. I show you.”

That old saw about necessity being the mother of invention — I proved the fuck out of it. Before midnight Laurie was cradling Cricket in her arms, and Phi was shining a flashlight on the shingles I’d replaced after cutting out an escape hatch for the cat. There were seams — I wasn’t a professional yet — but Phi had to squat down and stare intently through her wire-rims to see the cuts. I’d even vacuumed the sawdust from the rain gutter.

“Everyone happy,” she said, standing up and patting my chest a few times. “You handy.” She scratched Cricket’s head and smiled up at Laurie: “He very handy.”

The following day was a Saturday and Laurie came down from the upstairs office about two p.m. I’d fixed some leftovers for lunch and we both doted goofily on Cricket, taking ridiculous pleasure in watching her sleeping in a patch of sunlight, her furry belly rising and falling peacefully. Her ears suddenly perked at a clanking noise outside, and I went to the window to check it out. A white van was out front, its side doors open and a lift-gate extended. A guy in a wheelchair was being rolled onto the platform by a uniformed orderly. Phi scurried up the driveway to meet them. I couldn’t see much of the handicapped guy; he was wrapped in a blanket, wore a lopsided baseball cap, and seemed comatose.

“What’s this about?” Laurie asked, coming up beside me.

“No idea.”

Phi clasped the orderly’s hand and slipped something into it before waving goodbye. She pushed the wheelchair and its unmoving occupant up to her house.

“Huh — so that wooden ramp is practical,” Laurie said. “I thought it was just another cool part of the landscaping.”

When the van’s doors closed, we saw the writing on the side: Veterans Administration Hospital.

Two nights later, just after two a.m., the screaming started.

Laurie and I bolted upright in bed. “Holy fuck,” she gasped. “What the hell is that?” Cricket was at the foot of the bed, her back up, wide eyes staring at us.

The sound was coming up from the floor directly below. A tortured wail, worse than anything in a horror movie. This was anguish — real, primal, and terrifying. Laurie clutched Cricket, trying to keep her calm. I paced around, muttering, “What the fuck?” under my breath each time the howling started.

“Maybe you should go down and see what’s happening,” Laurie whispered.

“No, listen,” I said, “it’s not an accident or something. It doesn’t change. He’s just... screaming.”

“It’s so painful.” Laurie began to cry.

Those forty minutes were an eternity.

It didn’t happen every night. But from then on our sleep was fitful at best. The expectation of the screaming was almost as excruciating as actually hearing it. We took to having sex in places other than the bedroom, fearful that the sudden howling might contaminate our lovemaking forever. After enduring a dozens or so fits, Laurie began working later and later in the attic office, sometimes until three a.m. I’d come up and find her crashed out, head on the desk, and she’d be irritable all the next day. Over dinner one night, peering out into the darkness, she said morosely, “It was all so perfect before.”

I can’t explain it, but I felt her disappointment was somehow my fault.

Coming home from work one day I found Phi hunkered in the garden beside the koi pond. She was rigging a cage on the rocks bordering the small pool.

“What’s that for?”

“Raccoon got fish, goddamnit!” I almost laughed at her cursing like a redneck. “Now I get raccoon.”

“Why not just put a wire cover over it?”

“Not look nice. And raccoon too smart, too strong. Lift cover.”

“But he’ll just waltz into a cage? That wouldn’t be smart.”

“I use bait. Fig Newton and fish sauce. He not able resist.”

“Really? Where’d you learn that?”

“I know many things,” she said, flashing that younger woman’s smile. “Not born yesterday.”

That got us talking, which, of course, no one ever does with a landlord. I was just looking for some clues about the screaming, and whether there was any hope it would end. But after a few minutes, I’d forgotten about the nocturnal horror shows and was listening intently — parsing through her pidgin English — as she gave me her life story, telling me things that Laurie and I would never have thought to ask.

Her father worked for the Vichy government in Vietnam during World War II. Her mother was Japanese, part of the occupation of French Indochina. They had to keep their love a secret. Her father pulled strings to get her into the best schools. She eventually trained at a university to be an architect. She loved art history, made it her minor, with a special focus on painting. Her father was killed by communist insurgents who wanted to run the French off the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Then America decided to wage war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the centerpiece of its global campaign against communism. Her mother was killed in the early sixties; collateral damage. War, she feared, was all she’d ever know. There had to be beauty in the world, she figured, because she’d seen it in art, in paintings. She grew up in hell, but survived. It was a skill, she explained, like sailing or carpentry. As the war was ending she volunteered at a military hospital, where she met a shell-shocked GI, Corporal Paul Gennaro. He’d lost an arm, part of a leg, and maybe more. He had no family, no home to be shipped back to. As Saigon fell, she proposed to him, promising she’d always take care of him. It got them both shipped stateside.

For more than eighteen years she’d been married to the screaming.

To be honest, the history lesson was hard to follow, since Americans don’t know jack-shit about the world, or the wars we get into. I pieced most of this together later, from library books. At the moment, all I could say was, “Wow, you’ve sure had an amazing life.”

“America save me,” she replied. “But you know what I do now? Only one thing. Woman like me, here I only able do one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Own property. America not see me, people here never see me. They see money. See my money good. Eight property in Alameda. Vietnam, I design building. Here, I just own them.”

My only response was, “Huh.”

Then she said: “You hear him, my husband. You hear him in night.”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“I sorry. Very bad. They keep him hospital but now only for short time, each time. Drugs they give make worse, not better. I so sorry. Not want to bother you. No, no, no. You and your wife work hard. I see — she hard worker. Like me once.”

There was a big commotion out front a few days later. Cricket was freaking out, bouncing all over the living room. I realized what was happening and ran outside.

The raccoon was huge, practically filling the cage. It shook the trap viciously, its eyes burning red. Phi was standing casually nearby, staring at it. She had a baseball bat in her hands.

“Fig Newtons and fish sauce,” I said. “I’ll never doubt you.”

She handed me the bat. “Here. You do it.”

“Do what?”

“Kill it.”

“Kill it? I’m not going to kill it.” I was stunned. “There are people you can call, they’ll take it into the hills and turn it loose. Let’s just do that.”

“That cost money,” she scoffed. “You want to pay? It eat fish, eat my plants.” She shoved the bat into my hands. I took it, just to keep her from doing anything drastic. “I open cage,” she said, gesturing. “You smash quick.”

By now Laurie had appeared, rushing out in a robe and bare feet. She took one look, made an awful crying sound, and rushed back inside.

“I’ll pay to have it taken away,” I said. “I won’t kill it.”

She studied me. It felt like I was being examined under a microscope. “Maybe you not so handy.”

Later, when Raccoon Removal Service came to take the poor thing away — alive — Phi came out and stood next to me, watching them load it into the back of a van, where several other traps were already stacked, a half-dozen caged raccoons glowering warily. A guy in coveralls and heavy gloves did all the work. His partner sat in the passenger seat, wearing mirrored sunglasses. He only watched, a small grin never leaving his face.

Phi read my mind: “That one do killing.”

“Don’t say that,” I moaned.

“Your cat get hit by car, cannot walk. What you do?”

“Take care of it the best we can, of course.”

“It in pain, all the time. You think you help. But it in pain all the time. All it know — pain.” She stared up at me, her usually squinted eyes sharp as glass. “All it feel, ever — pain. Maybe then you do it. Maybe then you do what need be done.”

The screaming went on. And despite the misery — which had us seeking refuge at night in the living room, on separate couches, wearing earplugs — Laurie persevered. She started selling to stores in the area and steadily grew the account list and her territory. At all hours the fax machine in her office chugged away — a welcome sound in the night — spitting out orders from new buyers.

We’d succeeded. We’d achieved what all bright, young, hardworking American couples were supposed to achieve — but frustration was always there. We weren’t happy here anymore. Our heaven-sent sanctuary had been snatched away. We were living above a psych ward, its night terrors erupting just when we thought they might be over. The VA, I found out, had cut off any further in-hospital care for Corporal Paul Gennaro.

Laurie met her twin at a local craft show, a jewelry maker named Remy. She was soon spending more and more time at Remy’s studio loft in Jack London Square. They talked about teaming up to create a more expansive and profitable product line. Whenever they were together I was the outsider — even though I was the financial backbone of the operation. And though the business was growing, it was a long way from being in the black.

Then a terse e-mail notice arrived in my inbox at work: the company was moving to North Carolina. It was a shock, completely out of the blue. This was a gigantic firm, a cornerstone of Oakland’s economy. The idea that it could just abandon the city, dumping thousands of employees, was unthinkable, at least to a human being. But then, human beings don’t think like CEOs. Or their masters, the shareholders.

There was no way Laurie would move — she couldn’t uproot a business she’d worked so hard to build. If I relocated, regularly sending back paychecks until her business was self-sufficient... well, that wouldn’t work, either. I didn’t trust she’d need me when I came back. I convinced myself that losing my salary, losing my benefits, losing the monthly rent — it meant losing her. I had to find another job fast, or somehow replace the income I was about to lose.

Actually, that’s probably all bullshit. Just a way to rationalize what happened next. Something else entirely was at work, some gnawing part of me I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. Something I’m only now starting to comprehend, all these years later.

Laurie was at a trade show in Los Angeles — with Remy, of course — when the screaming, incredibly, got even worse. Instead of jamming in the earplugs, or finding an after-hours bar, or getting a hotel room for the night, I stretched out on the bedroom floor, closer to it than ever, and absorbed the brunt of its horror.

If she could stand it, down there in hell’s black belly, so could I.

In the morning, before dawn, I rang Phi’s doorbell. She answered, looking drawn, haggard, and devoid of hope.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. “But it has to be tonight or tomorrow. Laurie will be back Monday morning.”

She stepped onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her. I laid out my conditions and she nodded sadly.

It happened that night, just as I figured. She’d been waiting a long time and wasn’t about to let the chance go by. She let me in a little after ten p.m. No one was on the streets and the televisions would still be on in nearby houses. The place was dark but what I could see, just as I expected, was tidy and immaculate. The floor plan was almost identical to ours, so it wasn’t difficult to navigate the shadows. She led me down the central corridor to the rear of the house. The place smelled strange, like incense mixed with disinfectant. We stopped at a closed door, directly beneath the bedroom Laurie and I shared.

She clutched the front of the black nylon jacket I was wearing and pressed her head against my chest. She made no sound, but I felt her sobbing. “No one even notice,” she said softly. “I promise. No one notice.”

She quietly opened the door, not looking inside. She didn’t go in with me.

A small desk lamp cast a meager light. I didn’t see him at first, just a shape in the corner, then I made out the wheelchair beside a small, unmade cot. His back was to me. That would make it easier, I figured. I approached, careful not to make any sound. But he moved his head, as if he knew. I saw that his left arm was gone. Then he jerked suddenly, like an animal sensing a predator, and in the half-light I glimpsed his wet eyes staring out madly from the scarred and discolored flesh that had been his face.

I took the cord from my pocket and clenched it in both hands. He looked right at me, right into me, the entire time I killed him.

In the years since, I’ve spent a lot of time in libraries — when they don’t chase me out — reading everything I can about what happened to soldiers in Vietnam, trying to understand what I saw in his eyes. Trying to find some kind of explanation. There isn’t one. He’s still looking at me. Right now.

Days later, Laurie answered the downstairs bell to find Phi on our doorstep.

“Let me show you,” she said, taking hold of Laurie’s hand. “Get your husband. Want show him too.”

She walked us around the bright, sunny grounds, proudly showing off the yard work she’d had done after the recent rains. The place had never looked better. Everything all cleaned up. She pointed to several big black bags of yard waste piled in the driveway.

“You take to dump?” she asked. “Please.” She stuck a couple of twenties in my hand.

As I got my coat, Laurie asked, “Why would she ask you to do it?”

“I’m guess I’m handy.”

Three months later, Laurie went looking for a bigger office and never came back. Well, only to get her stuff. And the cat. I don’t blame her. I was now the one screaming my head off in the middle of the night.

My company moved, but I stayed — even though there was nothing holding me here. I had no job, but Phi let me stay on upstairs — that was the deal, of course. No more rent, ever. The screaming stopped — my magical solution to saving our happy home.

With Laurie gone, I hated the place. Phi told me I could live out back above the carport, in the garret she used for storage. I’d need to fix it up — no problem for a handyman. A few weeks later I was watching a new young couple giddily take over the home in which Laurie and I had wanted to spend the rest of our lives.

Phi’s properties always needed maintenance of some kind or another. She dutifully gave me fix-it jobs, even though I was pretty shitty at it. But I figured things out and got better at manual tasks. Odd jobs got me through a few rough years. At least until the morning an ambulance came and took Phi away on a gurney. She died in Alameda Hospital the next day. I kept a vigil in the waiting room until they made me leave. I wasn’t next of kin. “There is no next of kin,” I told them. Her next of kin was long gone, somewhere six feet deep in Indochina.

The state, of course, took her house.

Learning to be handy has served me well the past few years. It’s helped me survive on the streets. I know how to jury-rig shit like I never imagined. I spend a lot of time at public libraries, reading mostly, and eventually I stopped typing Laurie’s name into the computers. But I don’t get jobs anymore. The roadside Mexicans have the day-labor market locked up. At least I’ve learned to sleep so lightly I never wake up screaming. I’m like a soldier in his tent, always on alert, living by his wits, hunkered down in the middle of a fucking war zone. Who knew it would ever get this bad — whole villages of us camped under freeway overpasses living hand-to-mouth. And wouldn’t you know: from where I am tonight, out of the rain but freezing my ass off, I can see the top floors of the empty office building on Harrison Street, where once I had a view of the lake.