Chapter 2
Death Warmed Over
She heard insects scurrying above her in the darkness, smelled burned flesh, and felt a heavy weight pressing down on her back. Oh my God, he's buried me alive.
Her face was pressed against something hard and cold - stone, she thought until she smelled the oil in the asphalt. Panic seized her and she struggled to get her hands under her. Her left hand lit up with pain as she pushed. There was a rattle and a deafening clang and she was standing. The dumpster that had been on her back lay overturned, spilling trash across the alley. She looked at it in disbelief. It must have weighed a ton. Fear and adrenaline, she thought.
Then she looked at her left hand and screamed. It was horribly burned, the top layer of skin black and cracked. She ran out of the alley looking for help, but the street was empty. I've got to get to a hospital, call the police.
She spotted a pay phone; a red chimney of heat rose from the lamp above it. She looked up and down the empty street. Above each streetlight she could see heat rising in red waves. She could hear the buzzing of the electric bus wires above her, the steady stream of the sewers running under the street. She could smell dead fish and diesel fuel in the fog, the decay of the Oakland mudflats across the bay, old French fries, cigarette butts, bread crusts and fetid pastrami from a nearby trash can, and the residual odor of Aramis wafting under the doors of the brokerage houses and banks. She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings like wet velvet. It was as if her senses, like her strength, had been turned up by adrenaline.
She shook off the spectrum of sounds and smells and ran to the phone, holding her damaged hand by the wrist. As she moved, she felt a roughness inside her blouse against her skin. With her right hand she pulled at the silk, yanking it out of her skirt. Stacks of money fell out of her blouse to the sidewalk. She stopped and stared at the bound blocks of hundred-dollar bills lying at her feet.
She thought, There must be a hundred thousand dollars here. A man attacked me, choked me, bit my neck, burned my hand, then stuffed my shirt full of money and put a dumpster on me and now I can see heat and hear fog. I've won Satan's lottery.
She ran back to the alley, leaving the money on the sidewalk. With her good hand she riffled through the trash spilled from the dumpster until she found a paper bag. Then she returned to the sidewalk and loaded the money into the bag.
At the pay phone she had to do some juggling to get the phone off the hook and dialed without putting down the money and without using her injured hand. She pressed 911 and while she waited for it to ring she looked at the burn. Really, it looked worse than it felt. She tried to flex the hand and black skin cracked. Boy, that should hurt. It should gross me out too, she thought, but it doesn't. In fact, I don't really feel that bad, considering. I've been more sore after a game of racquetball with Kurt. Strange.
The receiver clicked and a woman's voice came on the line. "Hello, you've reached the number for San Francisco emergency services. If you are currently in danger, press one; if the danger has passed and you still need help, press two."
Jody pressed two.
"If you have been robbed, press one. If you've been in an accident, press two. If you've been assaulted, press three. If you are calling to report a fire, press four. If you've - "
Jody ran the choices through her head and pressed three.
"If you've been shot, press one. Stabbed, press two. Raped, press three. All other assaults, press four. If you'd like to hear these choices again, press five."
Jody meant to press four, but hit five instead. There was a series of clicks and the recorded voice came back on.
"Hello, you've reached the number for San Francisco emergency services. If you are currently in danger - "
Jody slammed the receiver down and it shattered in her hand, nearly knocking the phone off the pole. She jumped back and looked at the damage. Adrenaline, she thought.
I'll call Kurt. He can come get me and take me to the hospital. She looked around for another pay phone. There was one by her bus stop. When she reached it she realized that she didn't have any change. Her purse had been in her briefcase and her briefcase was gone. She tried to remember her calling card number, but she and Kurt had only moved in together a month ago and she hadn't memorized it yet. She picked up and dialed the operator. "I'd like to make a collect call from Jody." She gave the operator the number and waited while it rang. The machine picked up.
"It looks like no one is home," the operator said.
"He's screening his calls," Jody insisted. "Just tell him - "
"I'm sorry, we aren't allowed to leave messages."
Hanging up, Jody destroyed the phone; this time, on purpose.
She thought, Pounds of hundred-dollar bills and I can't make a damn phone call. And Kurt's screening his calls - I must be very late; you'd think he could pick up. If I wasn't so pissed off, I'd cry.
Her hand had stopped aching completely now, and when she looked at it again it seemed to have healed a bit. I'm getting loopy, she thought. Post-traumatic loopiness. And I'm hungry. I need medical attention, I need a good meal, I need a sympathetic cop, a glass of wine, a hot bath, a hug, my auto-teller card so I can deposit this cash. I need...
The 42 bus rounded the corner and Jody instinctively felt in her jacket pocket for her bus pass. It was still there. The bus stopped and the door opened. She flashed her pass at the driver as she boarded. He grunted. She sat in the first seat, facing three other passengers.
Jody had been riding the buses for five years, and occasionally, because of work or a late movie, she had to ride them at night. But tonight, with her hair frizzing wild and full of dirt, her nylons ripped, her suit wrinkled and stained - disheveled, disoriented, and desperate - she felt that she fit in for the first time. The psychos lit up at the sight of her.
"Parking space!" a woman in the back blurted out. Jody looked up.
"Parking space!" The woman wore a flowered housecoat and Mickey Mouse ears. She pointed out the window and shouted, "Parking space!"
Jody looked away, embarrassed. She understood, though. She owned a car, a fast little Honda hatchback, and since she had found a parking space outside her apartment a month ago, she had only moved it on Tuesday nights, when the street sweeper went by - and moved it back as soon as the sweeper had passed. Claim-jumping was a tradition in the City; you had to guard a space with your life. Jody had heard that there were parking spaces in Chinatown that had been in families for generations, watched over like the graves of honored ancestors, and protected by no little palm-greasing to the Chinese street gangs.
"Parking space!" the woman shouted.
Jody glanced across the aisle and committed eye contact with a scruffy bearded man in an overcoat. He grinned shyly, then slowly pulled aside the flap of his overcoat to reveal an impressive erection peeking out the port of his khakis.
Jody returned the grin and pulled her burned, blackened hand out of her jacket and held it up for him. Bested, he closed his overcoat, slouched in his seat and sulked. Jody was amazed that she'd done it.
Next to the bearded man sat a young woman who was furiously unknitting a sweater into a yarn bag, as if she would go until she got to the end of the yarn, then reknit the sweater. An old man in a tweed suit and a wool deerstalker sat next to the knitting woman, holding a walking stick between his knees. Every few seconds he let loose with a rattling coughing fit, then fought to get his breath back while he wiped his eyes with a silk handkerchief. He saw Jody looking at him and smiled apologetically.
"Just a cold," he said.
No, it's much worse than a cold, Jody thought. You're dying. How do I know that? I don't know how I know, but I know. She smiled at the old man, then turned to look out the window.
The bus was passing through North Beach now and the streets were full of sailors, punks, and tourists. Around each she could see a faint red aura and heat trails in the air as they moved. She shook her head to clear her vision, then looked at the people inside the bus. Yes, each of them had the aura, some brighter than others. Around the old man in tweeds there was a dark ring as well as the red heat aura. Jody rubbed her eyes and thought, I must have hit my head. I'm going to need a CAT scan and an EEG. It's going to cost a fortune. The company will hate it. Maybe I can process my own claim and push it through. Well, I'm definitely calling in sick for the rest of the week. And there's serious shopping to be done once I get finished at the hospital and the police station. Serious shopping. Besides, I won't be able to type for a while anyway.
She looked at her burned hand and thought again that it might have healed a bit. I'm still taking the week off, she thought.
The bus stopped at Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square and groups of tourists in Day-Glo nylon shorts and Alcatraz sweatshirts boarded, chattering in French and German while tracing lines on street maps of the City. Jody could smell sweat and soap, the sea, boiled crab, chocolate and liquor, fried fish, onions, sourdough bread, hamburgers and car exhaust coming off the tourists. As hungry as she was, the odor of food nauseated her.
Feel free to shower during your visit to San Francisco, she thought.
The bus headed up Van Ness and Jody got up and pushed through the tourists to the exit door. A few blocks later the bus stopped at Chestnut Street and she looked over her shoulder before getting off. The woman in the Mickey Mouse ears was staring peacefully out the window. "Wow," Jody said. "Look at all those parking spaces."
As she stepped off the bus, Jody could hear the woman shouting, "Parking space! Parking space!"
Jody smiled. Now why did I do that?
Chapter 3
Oh Liquid Love
Snapshots at midnight: an obese woman with a stun gun curbing a poodle, an older gay couple power-walking in designer sweats, a college girl pedaling a mountain bike - trailing tresses of perm-fried hair and a blur of red heat; televisions buzzing inside hotels and homes, sounds of water heaters and washing machines, wind rattling sycamore leaves and whistling through fir trees, a rat leaving his nest in a palm tree - claws skittering down the trunk. Smells: fear sweat from the poodle woman, rose water, ocean, tree sap, ozone, oil, exhaust, and blood-hot and sweet like sugared iron.
It was only a three-block walk from the bus stop to the four-story building where she shared an apartment with Kurt, but to Jody it seemed like miles. It wasn't fatigue but fear that lengthened the distance. She thought she had lost her fear of the City long ago, but here it was again: over-the-shoulder glances between spun determination to look ahead and keep walking and not break into a run.
She crossed the street onto her block and saw Kurt's Jeep parked in front of the building. She looked for her Honda, but it was gone. Maybe Kurt had taken it, but why? She'd left him the key as a courtesy. He wasn't really supposed to use it. She didn't know him that well.
She looked at the building. The lights were on in her apartment. She concentrated on the bay window and could hear the sound of Louis Rukeyser punning his way through a week on Wall Street. Kurt liked to watch tapes of "Wall Street Week" before he went to bed at night. He said they relaxed him, but Jody suspected that he got some latent sexual thrill out of listening to balding money managers talking about moving millions. Oh well, if a rise in the Dow put a pup tent in his jammies, it was okay with her. The last guy she'd lived with had wanted her to pee on him.