Later that night, I sat on the stoop and shared a bottle of gin with Ethel, the homeless lady with the paisley scarf. We passed the bottle back and forth, since my resolve to detox had derailed at Jessica Stark’s house. I needed something to stop my mind from going where I didn’t want it to go. Christopher’s plastic-looking body. Images of my parents’ bodies with bullets in their foreheads. Jessica Stark marking off the days that pass after her “deathday.”
We sat there under the streetlight taking long pulls.
“What’s your story, Ethel?”
She was quiet.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to, I’d like to know.”
“I wasn’t always like this,” she said, looking away, down the street. “I used to have a place to live and all that. I grew up in Berkeley. Was going to go to school and everything, I just got hooked up with the wrong guy. I was only nineteen. He was handsome and charming, worked in San Francisco as a bus driver. On our first date, he brought me a dozen red roses. He told me he’d take care of me. I was so dumb. We got married at city hall one day when we were drunk. I moved in with him into a crappy little apartment I’d thought was heaven. At first. His version of taking care of me was to get drunk and beat me black and blue every night. He told me if I left him, he’d kill me. So, one night I waited until he was asleep and I killed him. I stabbed him with a steak knife. He didn’t die right away. Then I called the police. I spent fifteen years at Susanville. When I got out, I had nowhere to go. I stayed at a little hotel for a while. Then the money ran out.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
A young thug walking funny to keep his pants from falling off eyed us from the other side of the street. “Hey!” I shouted.
He kept walking.
“Hey!” I tried again. “Hey you! Come here!”
He paused looking around until he realized we were talking to him.
“Yeah, you.”
He crossed the street, looking around as if he expected a trap.
“Got any ganga, my friend.” My words were slurred.
“Why you want to know?”
I took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Come on, man. Give us a spliff. I’ll trade you.”
He looked around again, warily.
“How I know you not the cops?”
“Look at us,” I said, gesturing to me and Ethel, who cackled loudly at his words. “We look like the law?”
“Guess not.” He rummaged around and came up with a joint, reaching for my hundred-dollar bill.
“Is it laced?” I said, pulling the money just out of his reach.
“No. It ain’t dusted.”
“You sure?” I asked, giving him the stink eye.
“Yeah, man.” I handed him the bill. He started to walk away. “Wait. Got a light?”
He rolled his eyes and lit the joint before he turned and left, muttering something about crazy white women.
Ethel and I stayed talking and finishing our second bottle of gin until the sky started to lighten with pink streaks.
“Hey, Ethel.”
“Hmmm?” she answered sleepily. It had grown cold as the dawn broke. The fog rolling in turned the air damp and heavy. I pulled my scarf tighter.
“What do you think about running a little errand for me this morning?”
“Mmm hmmm.”
“I need you to deliver a message for me. It’s in Chinatown. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Mmmm kay,” she said.
“Be back in a sec.”
I raced upstairs and wrote a note to Kato. I asked him to meet me in the back office of Darling’s salon around midnight. I told him I’d leave the back door unlocked. I wanted to run my plan by him. Downstairs, I handed Ethel the envelope with Kato’s address written on the outside.
“I’m hitting the sack,” I started for the door, but felt a stab of guilt watching Ethel pull her rags tighter around her body. “Hey, Ethel, you want to crash at my place for a few hours?”
“No. I’m fine,” she mumbled.
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“Hey, you don’t usually sleep out here do you?”
“Nope.”
I wondered where she normally spent her nights and felt even more guilty when I realized I’d kept her up all night drinking.
I woke up that afternoon close to four and quickly pulled on some wadded-up jeans so I could run down the stairs and see if Ethel had delivered my message. I flung open the door and saw her sitting there on a stack of cardboard boxes half asleep.
“Ethel?”
She gave a loud snore. I’d let her sleep. I walked to the bar for a grilled cheese sandwich and soda and read the paper for an hour. Not much new.
Today was Christopher’s funeral. The only person I knew who might attend was the person I suspected wanted me dead — my godfather.
It was scary to feel this alone in the world. Briefly, I thought about calling Dante. I’d written a long, rambling letter to him and left it in his mother’s car. I didn’t give any details but told him someone wanted me dead and for him to stay out of it and trust nobody. I hoped he listened to my advice.
Once this was all over, I was going to take a long weekend and stay with him in Calistoga. I needed to be around someone who loved me. Now that my godfather was dead to me, I only had two people in my life who were as close as family. Kato and Dante. I could see Kato, but would have to wait until I could see Dante again. Sometimes blood wasn’t thicker than water.
When I returned to my place, Ethel was sitting up on the sidewalk. I was anxious to meet with Kato.
“How’d it go?”
“Here,” she said trying to hand the eighty bucks back to me and the envelope. “He wasn’t there.”
“No, keep it,” I said distractedly, pushing the money back at her. “What do you mean he wasn’t there?” Kato had never missed a work day at the dojo for the past two years.
“Big closed sign on the door. Note said something about ‘family emergency.’ “
My heart slowed and a chill ran over my scalp. I reached down and grabbed Ethel’s wrist. “Are you certain? Are you sure it said ‘family emergency?’”
She looked at me wide eyed and nodded.
I turned and ran toward Market Street. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet.
The warrior knows that looking beyond oneself to care for others is the ultimate goal of living Budo for life. That self-improvement is important, but improving one’s self is crucial to help others on their own journeys.
On Market, it took me ten minutes to hail a cab. Several passed me by. I knew with my ratty hair and clothes I didn’t look like a very good fare. It wasn’t until I stepped right in front of a cab that it screeched to a halt. I threw open the door and spit out Kato’s address in the Mission, flashing three twenties. “Go as fast as you can.”
When we pulled onto Kato’s street, I saw a long black car parked in front of his house. I told the cab driver to back up and go around the block to the street behind Kato’s. The street was nearly interchangeable with Kato’s: old houses, some with chipped paint and old cars parked in the yards, but also with kid’s bicycles propped up against porches, and small, neatly tended flower beds. “Stop here.” I opened the door, handed him a twenty and told him he’d get the other two twenties when I returned as long as he waited. I walked until I was at the house that butted up against Kato’s backyard. An older woman in rollers and a flowered housecoat sat out on the front porch petting a cat and sipping a soda pop.
“You know Kato?”
She didn’t answer just nodded slowly.
“Why’s the black car out front?”
“Didn’t I see you at that Fourth of July barbecue Kato had last summer?”
“Yes!” I said a little too excitedly. “Yes, we’re friends. What’s going on?”
“Dunno. Susie dropped the boys off here two hours ago. Told my daughter to take them to her folk’s house in Berkeley. Susie was going to the hospital. Something happened to Kato.”
I didn’t even say thank you, just raced back to the waiting cabbie.
“San Francisco General.”