No need to use language like that. I don’t believe in calling police. I don’t think our tax dollars should be going to a gang of government thugs. I don’t believe in a police state. You’ll have to handle your differences with Norma yourself, she seemed like a nice person to me. We had a nice little talk about the government out here this morning, all about the unconstitutionality of the present tax system. He swallowed and nodded. That’s right. You girls just settle your grievances without bringing the government into it, why don’t you. Can’t go crying to the government every time life throws a problem your way.
All Right, I agreed. All Right Then. Thanks A Lot.
Down the street the lesbians who bought the house on the corner paused at their SUV, watching us.
Then there’s all that, the guy said, gesturing toward them.
Yeah, I said.
You okay over there? the butchier one yelled over in an uncharacteristic display of neighborliness. Where were all these concerned citizens when my house was being robbed? I ask you. Well, we know where the guy was. He was chatting up and befriending Jenny, perhaps even helping her out with a weighty hip-chuck to my front door.
Fine, Thanks! I gave a wave. They paused a moment and turned to look at one another, perhaps communicating via a special telepathy lesbian couples acquire when they manage to stay together past three months. Then they climbed into their mammoth automobile, lumbered over the crest of our street, and were gone.
SUVs, the man said. He flung a meaty hand at the wake of dust and trash their car had stirred. Don’t get me started.
This Has Been Nice, I said. It’s Nice To Be Neighborly. But I’ve Got To Run.
Maybe you girls want to leave a spare set of keys with me, he suggested. If you’re always locking yourself out.
I Don’t Think It’ll Happen Again, I told him.
Better safe ’n sorry, he said.
I turned my back on him and descended into my subterranean apartment. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched the crack of light in my busted door, expecting him to follow. I waited there for a few minutes and when he didn’t come, ran through my house and out the back door, climbing the shabby back stairs to Larry’s. The stairs shook with the slam of my feet, a snowfall of dried paint sifted down onto the weeds.
Larry! I banged on his back door. My voice carried out into the quiet.
Larry was an unconscious heap at his front door. I don’t know why I was attracting all this attention to myself when I knew I was going to have to break into his place. I pulled and pushed and otherwise strained at his back door. I wasn’t good at this. I’d never broken into a place before; my particular illegal inclinations hadn’t ever brought me to such a situation. I’ve picked a pocket, shoplifted, and been guilty of an occasional drunken assault on equally drunken men behaving rudely in bars or on street corners. But I’d never broken into a home. I rattled the dully gleaming doorknob. It figures that Larry’s doors have adequate locks. Doesn’t that just sum up the whole thing?
Larry had a few ceramic pots on his back stairs. The plants inside them were long dead, all dried up. Cigarette butts were stubbed out in the dirt. I grabbed one and hurled it against his kitchen window, where it shattered in a rain of terra cotta and dirt that plunged to the yard below. I threw a second pot at the window and experienced a similar explosion. Jesus, I whined. The dirt was in my hair, smudged over my blouse. I grabbed a shard of pottery and used it to gouge a hole in the screen, tore it away. Now it was just the glass and me. The third pot bust through, sending a whole mess onto Larry’s linoleum floor. Huh. Linoleum. Must be nice.
As I climbed in through the shattered window, ruining my fishnet stockings on a jutting piece of glass, I realized I had never been inside Larry’s apartment. I stepped gingerly onto a recycling box piled high with beer cans.
Larry? I called.
I walked into a small pile of dirt and plant roots. Broken glass glittered. I skipped quickly to the fridge and leaned onto it for balance.
Larry? I cried out again, my voice little more than a croak.
Oh fuck. I pulled open the fridge and spied a lone Budweiser, its plastic loop of rings still noosed around its aluminum neck. I yanked it out, set it free, cracked it.
I moved through Larry’s place. It was nice, much nicer than my watery grave below. Good stove in the kitchen, ample cabinets. The floor was linoleum, and where it wasn’t, carpet provided a soft relief on my feet. The living room was in disarray. The rest of the six-pack rolled empty on the floor alongside a glass bottle of something stronger. The television was set to ESPN. Some electronic device whirred in the corner. I studied it and discovered it was a dehumidifier. Fucking genius. I made a note to buy one when I had money again. Then I remembered that Larry was almost certainly dead and I could probably just take it.
I crept to the edge of the hall stairs, took a deep breath, a gulp from the can, and then switched on the light. There was Larry. His head was smooshed against the front door at an awful angle. His neck looked incorrect. His eyes were disturbingly open, as was his mouth. He was not alive.
Larry? I asked, just in case.
Nothing. Outside, the dog barked and barked. In the living room a sports team won something and the crowds in the stands cheered in unison. I finished my beer.
That was all about a month ago, perhaps a little longer. San Francisco’s autumn summertime is all but gone, and the winds have brought their cold damp; they lash the house with it like a locker room of jocks snapping soggy towels. The wind is so forceful that it actually shakes the house. Before I became used to it, I would wake in the night thinking an earthquake had struck. I would stare at the ceiling in terror and wait for the upstairs apartment to cave in onto my bed in the basement. Then I would remember that I was upstairs, and it was only the wind. I would turn up the heat that hummed gently out from the vent in Larry’s bedroom and fall back asleep.
I haven’t seen Larry since I drug him into the bathroom and heaved him into his claw-footed bathtub. I shut the door with a click and I do not open it. I pee in an empty pickle jar and, when I must, slip out into the backyard and shit in the weeds like that tiny black-and-orange cat who lives out there, too. I shower in the hotels and private homes of the men that I trick with. One shower before and a longer one after. I can’t bring myself to return to my basement, not even to use the toilet. I poked my head in only once, and it was as if the mold had accelerated in my absence. The moisture seemed heavier, wetter; the decay, palpable. It scented the very air of the place. There was an animal turd in plain view on the wooden kitchen floor, and a scurrying sound in the corner I did not investigate.
Upstairs, in Larry’s place, I can hear my broken doors squeak like a strange wind chime in the gusting air. Upstairs, in Larry’s place, I watch cable TV and eat the last of his food; bring home six-packs for the fridge. I drive his car to my calls. I’ve taken up smoking. When I cannot sleep, which is more and more frequent, I stand out on the back porch amidst the dirt and smashed pottery, and I smoke. The kitchen window is secured with cardboard and shiny gray duct tape; the light from inside does not shine on me there.
I stand in the dark night and the powerful wind steals the smoke as it streams from my mouth. I know that this will all end soon, and the understanding makes me jumpy. Last night, as I stood smoking, I saw beams of light in the wild hill below; the wide swath of land between my home and the housing projects at the bottom. It was a cop or two, prowling with flashlights, searching in the unruly grass. It seemed an omen. I’m not sure what I’ve done or what sort of punishment I need to outrun.