Victor and I sat in the Mercedes for a long time with the top down, looking out over that bright beautiful empty peninsula, not named, as you might think, after a saint, but after some poor dumb Indian they had hanged there a hundred years or so before. Trees and clouds and blue water, and still no birds making the scene. Even the cats in the black suits had vanished, but now I understood why they’d been there. In their silent censure, they had been sounding the right gong, man. We were the ones from the Middle Ages.
Victor took a deep shuddering breath as if he could never get enough air. Then he said in a barely audible voice: “How did you dig that action, man?”
I gave a little shrug and, being myself, said the only thing I could say. “It was a gas, dad.”
“I dig, man. I’m hip. A gas.”
Something was wrong with the way he said it, but I broke the seal on the tequila and we killed it in fifteen minutes, without even a lime to suck in between. Then he started the car and we cut out, and I realized what was wrong. Watching that cat in the gas chamber, Victor had realized for the very first time that life is far, far more than just kicks. We were both partially responsible for what had happened in there, and we had been ineluctably diminished by it.
On US 101 he coked the Mercedes up to 104 mph through the traffic, and held it there. It was wild: it was the end: but I didn’t sound. I was alone without my Guide by the boiling river of blood. When the Highway Patrol finally got us stopped, Victor was coming on so strong and I was coming on so mild that they surrounded us with their holsters’ flaps unbuckled, and checked our veins for needle marks.
I didn’t say a word to them, man, not one. Not even my name. Like they had to look in my wallet to see who I was. And while they were doing that, Victor blew his cool entirely. You know, biting, foaming at the mouth, the whole bit – he gave a very good show until they hit him on the back of the head with a gun butt. I just watched.
They lifted his license for a year, nothing else, because his old man spent a lot of bread on a shrinker who testified that Victor had temporarily wigged out, and who had him put away in the zoo for a time. He’s back now, but he still sees that wig picker, three times a week at forty clams a shot.
He needs it. A few days ago I saw him on Upper Grant, stalking lithely through a grey raw February day with the fog in, wearing just a T-shirt and jeans – and no shoes. He seemed agitated, pressed, confined within his own concerns, but I stopped him for a minute.
“Ah . . . how you making it, man? Like, ah, what’s the gig?”
He shook his head cautiously. “They will not let us get away with it, you know. Like to them, man, just living is a crime.”
“Why no strollers, dad?”
“I cannot wear shoes.” He moved closer and glanced up and down the street, and said with tragic earnestness: “I can hear only with the soles of my feet, man.”
Then he nodded and padded away through the crowds on silent naked soles like a puzzled panther, drifting through the fruiters and drunken teenagers and fuzz trying to bust some cat for possession who have inherited North Beach from the true swingers. I guess all Victor wants to listen to now is Mother Earth: all he wants to hear is the comforting sound of the worms, chewing away.
Chewing away, and waiting for Victor; and maybe for the Second Coming.
PALE HANDS I LOATHED
William Campbell Gault
We were doing all right, Norah and I. We’d been married three years, but the honeymoon wasn’t over. With us, the honeymoon should last forever, we figured at the time.
I was a police reporter for the Star, and on that beat you meet a lot of people, none of them likely to bolster your faith in human nature. It was Norah who did that for me. It was Norah I turned to every night for a renewal of the faith, as they say. Besides all that, she could cook. Not many like her, none like her. None I’ve met, at any rate.
We had a small home, out in Shore Hills, and a small nest egg in the First National, and a small heir in the rear bedroom named John Baldwin Shea, Jr. We had about everything we wanted except a new car, and cars just weren’t available.
Maybe we were beginning to get smug. Maybe we had too much.
This June Drexel angle was routine enough, at first. She was a witness in the Peckham divorce mess, and I happened to run across her in the DA’s office. I’d taken her out, quite a few times, in high school. The way she acted, in the DA’s office, it looked to the others, I’ll bet, as though I’d never stopped taking her out.
“Johnny dear,” she asked, “have you come to rescue me?”
I blushed, and stammered, “Hello, June,” and tried to ignore the laugh I was getting from the other reporters.
The DA looked at me sharply. He was trying to get some dope on Peckham from June; the divorce to him was only incidental.
June sighed, and said, “Johnny and I were such good friends.”
The DA said, “I won’t be needing you any more, Miss Drexel.” And to the reporters, “That’s all, boys.”
We started to file out, when he called, “Would you mind waiting a moment, Shea?”
I closed the door and came back. I was probably still blushing. He had a smile on his broad face. “That’s where the Star gets its copy on Peckham, is it?” he asked.
We’d been running a campaign on municipal building graft, and Peckham’s name had been mentioned frequently. “Hell, no,” I said. “I haven’t seen that babe since high school. If I never see her again, it’s OK with me.”
He was smirking now. “Let’s not be modest, Johnny. You’re not a bad-looking guy, you know. You’re right in there, pitching, aren’t you?”
I shook my head. I was beginning to get hot. “I’m happily married. That’s the way I intend to stay. She was just trying to embarrass me, and through me, the Star. She’s no dummy.”
“No,” he said, “she isn’t.” He was looking thoughtful. He tilted his head to one side, studying me, and tried to look chummy. “The Star and I usually get along all right. We’ve worked together before, you know.”
I nodded.
“Mr Cavanaugh would want you to work with me, Johnny.”
Mr Robert Justice Cavanaugh was the owner of the Star. He was a big man, a very big man in this town. I said flatly, “You’d better talk to him, then.”
He nodded, and he wasn’t smirking or trying to be chummy any more. He said quietly, “That’s exactly what I intend to do. That’s all, Johnny.”
He didn’t frighten me. Cavanaugh would back me. He was just desperate and frustrated and annoyed and was taking it out on the first stooge who happened along. He didn’t frighten me – much.
I left the quiet room behind, and went out into the clatter of the outer office. A flash bulb went off in my face.
Bitsy Donworth, photographer for the Courier, said, “Nice shot. Could we have a statement, dear?”
The, Courier was a tabloid, the kind of paper that would play up something like this. Any relation to the truth in the Courier was purely coincidental.
I thought of Norah. “Don’t make the mistake of printing that picture, Bitsy. You’ll be asking for trouble.”
“The Courier,” Bitsy replied, “thrives on trouble.”
“But you don’t,” I said. “You’re too small. This would be personal trouble, Bitsy.” I realized I was making a damned fool of myself, but I was past caring.
Jug Elder, who handles the courts for the Courier, said, “Run along, dear. You don’t want any trouble with us.”