Impersonal Attractions Read online

  Trudging up the Fillmore steps, thinking about a shopping trip she was planning to New York, mortality was hardly on her mind. Until a man jumped out of a dark driveway and grabbed her.

  Time stopped. She’d seen plenty of self-defense maneuvers while hanging around with cops and had idly asked herself, what if? This was if.

  In torturous slow motion, Sam learned what stuff she was made of.

  With one long, reflexive move, she had stomped on his instep, smashed his nose with the side of a hand, and screamed at the top of her lungs. He let her go and she ran like hell. She didn’t know if he was behind her or not. She just ran until she found a liquor store, where she’d caught her breath and stopped shaking long enough to call the police. Their response was quick, but they found nothing. Her attacker was long gone.

  He’d been tall. He’d been black. He’d smelled of stale booze. And he ought to have a sore nose and a limp. That was all Sam could tell them.

  Later, when she finally did arrive at Annie’s, too rattled to go home though it was late, she was furious.

  “Joe Kelly was one of the guys who answered the call. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘you know better than to be out on the streets of this city alone.’ How the hell does he think I get around? With an armed guard, a Doberman?”

  “He probably means you should be on the arm of a man.”

  “And he’s right,” Sam snorted, “for more reasons than one, but until that guy shows up, what do we all do? Double bolt our doors and stay inside?”

  It was infuriating to live defensively. To concentrate on carefully locked doors, to be wary of where one walked, when, and with whom. They agreed that it meant that they’d given up, given up the night to the robbers and the rapists. They’d allowed the bad guys to circumscribe their world with fear.

  “Not me,” said Sam, “no way. Let them catch me if they can.”

  But bravado aside, for both of them the memory of that night was a bad taste that never quite went away.

  *

  At home, the red light on Annie’s answering machine flashed four times.

  David: “Hi, let’s get together for a little R & R.” His voice was low and insinuating.

  Her mother in Atlanta: “Hello, darling. Just checking to see if you’re all right. We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  Sam: “I’m at the office. Nothing much happening here. Give me a call and we’ll write that ad.”

  And a fourth from ten-year-old Quynh Nguyen.

  “Hello, Auntie Annie. This is Quynh. I hope you’re fine. Hudson and I are looking forward to seeing you. Give us a call soon.”

  Annie smiled at a photograph of the two of them in a silver frame on the bookcase. Quynh’s beautiful, delicate-featured, Vietnamese face. She was very serious in the photograph—staring somberly into the camera. Hudson, on the other hand, wrapped around Quynh’s neck, was wearing a Cheshire grin.

  Hudson was the Abyssinian cat Annie had given Quynh as a kitten a year ago. If true to his breed, he would have grown cougarlike, but as elegant and delicate as Quynh. Instead, he was more like a linebacker. Annie kept threatening to buy him a baby 49ers jersey.

  Quynh always ignored her jokes about Hudson. He was her blanket, her mantle. He was her family, lost in that once beautiful, napalmed country so far away. He was her heart.

  Together they were the classiest twosome Annie knew. She couldn’t wait to see them.

  SIX

  The narrow street, lined with small, brightly painted Victorians, ran downhill from the heights of Dolores Street to the Mission, the Chicano ghetto. It was a place in transition—gentrified row houses with restored beveled glass, tin ceilings, and lace parlor curtains slugging it out with the fried chicken stand on the corner.

  This was a neighborhood of small, neat front lawns, wrought-iron fences, and pink and yellow rose bushes. It was difficult for the blond man, shivering in the darkness, lighting one cigarette after another, to find a place to hide. A large apartment house up on the corner of Guerrero provided him with a doorway. He could watch from here.

  He shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. It was cold out here. Was she going to show or not?

  He’d followed Cindy Dunbar from her office four days in a row. She’d stopped to run errands, pick up cleaning, and grocery shop, but was home most nights by six. When she went out again it was usually around seven or seven-thirty. Twice he’d seen her with the same man.

  Someone turned the corner and walked toward her house. He had to wait, didn’t want to attract attention, let her see him. That wasn’t the click of her high heels.

  Damn! It was that loony nigger he’d seen the night before, her nappy hair full of lint and grass from laying out in Dolores Park, reeking of booze and piss, layers of rags, pink house slippers. Hard to tell how old she was, but her hair wasn’t gray. Sucking up air, sucking up space. Shuffling around and around the city. Going nowhere. Talking to herself.

  Across the street, a tall black man in his mid-thirties walked briskly to the gate of Cindy Dunbar’s small house. He was dressed in a navy blazer, gray slacks, and a tan raincoat. A big man, he moved with the awkward roll of an ex-football player, proud but past his prime. In his hand he carried a cornucopia of green tissue paper.

  The blond man started. Ah—there he was. He stepped on his cigarette and rubbed his hands together. Miss Dunbar’s boyfriend. Carrying flowers. How sweet, he laughed. It wouldn’t be long now.

  He was right. Within moments Cindy and the man in the raincoat appeared, locking the front door, leaving.

  He couldn’t hear what they were saying. Their laughter floated in the air. Her voice was low for a woman, the man’s even lower, rumbling like the low tones on an organ.

  She was a tall, broad-shouldered, light-complexioned black woman. Her short, reddish, natural hair was carefully dressed. She had changed for the evening into an ivory flannel shirt with a narrow gray stripe, soft gray wool slacks, and darker gray flat-heeled shoes. A bright gold, short wool coat was tossed across her shoulders. In the streetlight, the coat echoed her tawny complexion and the flecks of gold in her green eyes.

  Following half a block behind, the blond man watched Cindy Dunbar’s back. Even through her coat, he could see her body move. Who did she think she was trying to fool? She couldn’t hide that high Hottentot butt. Like they used to laugh about back home. Old fat nigger women walking. From behind they looked like two children fighting under a sheet. No matter about that fancy job in that fancy office in that fancy big building downtown. Strip all that and peel those pretty clothes off, underneath was a nigger. Putting on airs.

  He realized that while he’d been daydreaming, they’d turned a corner and were gone. He raced to the intersection and frantically looked up and down the street. There were too many people here on Mission Street. They’d disappeared.

  Shit! Why did they want to come over here anyway? Goddamned Mission. Nothing but spies. Spies made him nervous. Gangs of kids walking around with switchblades in their pockets.

  Then he spotted Dunbar and her boyfriend entering a restaurant across the street. A red, yellow, and turquoise crepe paper donkey dangled in the window. As the door opened, he could hear the sound of mariachi music.

  Made him want to puke, the thought of Mexican food. He’d forced down so many beans in Texas jails, years of beans and yellow rice, chiles, tomato sauce. It was eat it or go hungry. He’d sworn he’d never touch any of that slop again.

  But what did spades know about food? It didn’t matter. Let them eat crap. At least he knew where they’d be for the next hour. He could relax and wait.

  He lit another Picayune cigarette, inhaling deeply the peculiar-smelling fumes. Picayunes were made in New Orleans and were hard to find elsewhere. Their funky smell was organic, like marsh mud, the Mississippi, the French Market, overripe fruit on a steamy afternoon.

  Sometimes when he lit up, people thought he was smoking dope. That was stupid. But it was nice to be noticed. To be different and
have people pay attention.

  Like Missy Cartwright. He could see her, like it was yesterday, in that sweater, that short white skirt. Missy coming toward him in the moonlight. He could almost reach out and touch her.

  But not tonight. That was years ago. That sweetness of Missy. And that pain.

  He blinked rapidly, shook his head.

  Why was he thinking of her tonight?

  The memory edged back a bit. It was like a drug. So easy to give in to. He could feel himself drifting.

  He stamped his feet. It was cold. It had been cold that night, too, so long ago, so far away, when he had brought Missy the roses.

  “Hey, man, you got a light?”

  His eyes made the leap back across miles and years from Missy to focus on the young Chicano smiling in front of him.

  His body tightened. The muscles flexed involuntarily.

  “No!” he barked. “No light.”

  “Come on, man. You smoking, you got a light.”

  The punk’s voice was whiny, singsong Spanish. Look at him. What kind of man would dress like that? Shiny, pointed-toe black shoes, baggy black pants, white starched shirt outside his belt, red bandanna around his forehead. And, over his greasy black hair, a hairnet. They all looked like that—whiny beaner punks.

  “What’s the matter, man? You too good to give me a light?”

  “Nawh, sorry, here you go.” He reached toward his back pocket as the young Chicano leaned forward with his cigarette in his mouth to receive the light.

  The blond man wanted to grab the knife his pocket held. It burned there in his hand, as if it longed to be used. His hand twitched as he ran it across the smooth handle. It would only take a second.

  But that was stupid. He had to be more careful than that. Don’t blow it for yourself again, man. He pulled out his nickel-plated Zippo instead.

  “Thanks, man.” The young Chicano looked more closely into the Anglo’s eyes and quickly walked away. He knew locos when he saw them, and he didn’t need to be messing with that kind of trouble tonight.

  *

  Across the street, Cindy Dunbar and her boyfriend left the restaurant arm in arm. He held her tight. Goosed her. She yelped, both pleased and embarrassed. They stopped for a kiss. By the time they reached the next corner the blond man was twenty feet behind them.

  It was close to nine o’clock as the threesome strolled up Mission, one tagging carefully behind.

  The barrio, the Mission, its main drag a wide avenue bordered by towering old palms, was filled with music and mothers with bands of crying small children at all hours. South of downtown, separated from the business center of the city by lines of railroad tracks, it had its own businesses, sometimes tended secretly, but tended well. Here, behind curtained doors and beneath cellar entrances, were sweatshops, where needlework was stitched, clothes were assembled—and drugs were broken down into smaller and smaller packages late into the night.

  There were also hardworking families in the three- and four-story buildings that housed thousands in warrenlike apartments. Churchgoing, respectable, they had too many children in too few rooms to ever really be comfortable.

  But it was better here than where they had come from. Many of the residents of the Mission were illegal aliens working without green cards for whatever they could earn to support their families here and to send back home to Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua. Here there was always work, if a person was willing to do it, with shelter and plenty to eat. Here there was a chance.

  And there was life and laughter in the streets, the young mustachioed Spanish men in their uniform black and white showing off their cars to one another and to the scores of young girls who gathered on street corners, the girls taking great care with their dead-white eye shadow, purple lipstick, and layer upon layer of thick black mascara.

  A fleet of gaudy, chrome-covered cars popped and revved at the corner of Twenty-fourth and Mission as Cindy Dunbar and her boyfriend waited for the light.

  The man following them let them cross ahead. He didn’t want to crowd them.

  He thought they were going back home, but a few doors up Twenty-fourth they turned into a coffeehouse.

  He walked past, stopped, debated. It had been almost a week now that he’d been on her tail. Had she spotted him?

  Screw it. He was cold. He’d been standing on the street a long time. A cup of coffee would taste good.

  Once inside, he saw why they would pick the place. Full of their own kind. Blacks with long braids huddling over steaming mugs. A weird white girl with a star on her cheek snuggling up to a spic. Hippies, dykes, freaks.

  He didn’t see the oak tables, the French movie posters, the espresso machine, a marvel of chrome and copper tubing imported from Italy. He didn’t appreciate the homemade brownies and blondies, the twenty-two kinds of coffees on the menu, the herbal teas. The overstuffed faded chintz sofa and chairs grouped as if in a living room didn’t appeal to him. Nor did the camaraderie of the painters, sculptors, and dancers who lived in lofts on the fringes of the neighborhood in former industrial buildings and had designated this as their meeting place.

  As he looked for a spot to sit, as far away from Dunbar and her boyfriend as he could find, someone brushed his arm. Coffee slopped onto his jeans.

  “Hey, man, I’m sorry. Here.” A tall, young Chinese man with hair cropped half an inch long was offering him a couple of paper napkins. A spiral of red dye crawled around his short hair. Purple sunglasses shaded his eyes. In his left earlobe was a parade of ten rhinestone studs.

  “Fuck you!” the blond man growled.

  “Well, pardon me,” the punker minced. “Creep,” he added under his breath, and then he turned and ran to the back of the café.

  The blond man rose to follow him, then sat back down.

  This wasn’t the time. He didn’t want to attract attention now.

  But he hated to let the freak get in his face like that. Nobody got away with that shit.

  He gulped down what was left of his coffee. He had to get out of this place. It was getting on his nerves. Niggers, spies, Jews, gimps. Scum. The world was lousy with them.

  But some of them weren’t going to live too long.

  He pushed up the sleeve of his black leather jacket and stared at the characters tattooed in blue on his forearm. They always calmed him down.

  Then he stood, without even looking at Dunbar and her friend.

  He didn’t need to wait around any longer. He didn’t need to walk them home.

  He knew where she lived.

  SEVEN

  Annie returned Sam’s call. It was now or never. The Bay Guardian’s deadline was tomorrow. She’d written the first ad, the query for volunteers to talk about their experiences with the personals. But now it was time for the second, her own looking-for-Mr.-Right personal.

  “Okay,” she could almost hear Samantha’s pencil poised over the phone. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m telling you, I’m not really looking for anyone.”

  “God!” Sam was exasperated. They’d been over this before. “We know it’s just an exercise, okay? We know it’s just research. But you’ve got to pretend that it’s real in order to write an ad that will get some kind of reasonable response. And you might as well. It’s your fifty bucks.”

  “Okay, okay.” Annie sighed. It was so much easier answering ads. She’d done that lots of times. It was like window shopping. This had the potential of being real life. She pursed her lips.

  “Well, you know I’m a sucker for a pretty face, but that’s not number one. Tall. Healthy. Athletic, or at least not fat. Some hair, maybe curly. Reasonably good-looking. I’d settle for interesting-looking, if he’s sexy, if the magic’s there.”

  “You’re too good-looking to settle, babe. There must be something else you want.”

  Annie smiled at Sam’s compliment and thought about her ex-husband Bert’s warning when she had walked out the door six years before.

  “It’s goi
ng to be tough out there,” he’d said. “You’re no spring chicken anymore.”

  He was wrong. Her looks had more than held—she’d gotten better with age. Now, at thirty-seven, Annie was tall, lean, and small-breasted, with what lovers and men friends always called a great ass. She had her Grandmother Rose’s wonderful green eyes and slender, almost perfect hands. Her long, thick, dark blonde hair glinted here and there with a touch of silver. Smile lines at the corners of her eyes and the crook of her mouth had just begun. But Annie felt secure that regardless of age, despite the fact that she was not, had never been, a classically pretty woman, she was a very handsome one.

  “So he doesn’t have to be Robert Redford,” Sam was saying. “What else?”

  Annie took a deep breath. “Well educated, intelligent, traveled, urbane, mad about me, and funny. Mostly funny.”

  “You don’t want much, do you, lady?” Sam laughed.

  “Why should I be looking for somebody whose idea of a good wine is Budweiser and lusts after football and Big Macs?”

  “Come on, lighten up. I’m teasing.” Sam cleared her throat. “More. I’m beginning to like this. What about,” she paused, “values?” Her voice grew mock serious on the last word.

  They laughed together. Annie knew that Sam was thinking of Mario.

  Morose Mario, they’d nicknamed him, one of Annie’s ex-lovers. He was a short, intense Marxist, who took all the fun out of everything except sex by worrying about the masses. Annie used to complain to Sam. “Every time we go out to dinner we have to feel guilty. I can always sense the hot breath of three imaginary starving Indians in the backseat.”

  “No, I don’t want another Mario,” she said, laughing. “Not that I could ever sleep with anyone who voted for Nixon. But you know, even if old Moroseness’s politics were a pain, he was great in bed. Though I’d like a lot more affection there if I could get it. A hell of a lot more. Some continuing romance would be real nice.”