I was doing my Budo the next morning when a knock at my door sent me scrambling for my gun. I raced to the side of the reinforced steel door, heart pounding, gun in hand, and yelled in what I hoped was a tough voice, “Who’s there?”
Nothing. I stepped over to the peephole.
It was the little old lady from the second floor with a plate of steaming egg rolls. When I opened the door, she thrust the food at me, patting my arm and smiling. Before I could say a word, she had turned and skittered down the stairs. I wolfed all eight of the egg rolls down within minutes. I couldn’t remember when anything had tasted so good.
After I’d been living in the T.L. for nearly three weeks, I woke up one morning and realized that I’d nearly run out of the massive amounts of food that had been stocked in the cupboards.
I pulled my hair back in a baseball cap, dressed in baggy clothes and sneakers and headed out. It was my lazy man’s disguise. Like I said, nobody in his or her right mind would ever think the Italian Princess would go slumming in the Tenderloin. Not the girl who’d drop thousands of dollars at Saks Fifth Avenue during the day and spend her nights guzzling top-shelf booze at the finest bars in town.
Despite this, I felt right at home with the kind of people who lived in the T.L. The funny part is that only the tourists think the Tenderloin is the most dangerous part of the city. Any San Francisco cop will tell you it’s Hunter’s Point. I heard that in the 90s, city bus drivers had police escorts when they ventured into that neighborhood. I don’t know if it’s true or not. If you had any street smarts whatsoever, the T.L. wasn’t all that bad.
On this day, strolling through the Tenderloin square with a canvas tote bag full of food, groups of winos huddled, eyeing me as they took long pulls off bottles peeking out of paper bags. The homeless men blended into one gray-brown mass of dingy, ill-fitting clothes. But one guy stood out. He was a skinny crankster with pockmarked pale skin and crazed eyes wearing an oversized Army jacket. He was trying to get an emaciated dog to stop eating out of a fast food bag.
“I tole you to knock that shit off,” he said and grabbed the dog’s muzzle and shook it. The dog whimpered in pain. When the man let go, the dog tried to run away, the whites of its eyes looking back frightened at the man. The man jerked violently on the rope tied to the dog’s collar, dragging the dog on its side back to him.
I kept walking.
The warrior does not walk around life looking for battle or an excuse to demonstrate strength or superiority. The warrior knows that there is a fine line between being a warrior and being a bully.
Then the man kicked the dog in the side, making the animal howl in pain.
The warrior stands up for those who are weak, for the innocent, for the vulnerable.
I stopped a few feet away. Without turning around, I closed my eyes and said, “Leave the dog alone.”
“What did you say, bitch?”
I turned around and met the man’s eyes. “Leave the dog alone.”
“What? Like this?” He aimed his boot at the dog’s head. Before the kick connected, I had the man on the ground, my forearm against his neck, pushing down until he was sputtering for breath. I stared at him and he glared back. There was not a glimmer of humanity in those eyes.
Before I got up, I unwrapped the rope from around his arm and gathered the dog up against my chest. It must have weighed forty pounds, but I stood above the man, holding the dog, my tote bag, and watching as he clutched at his throat, gasping for air.
“You don’t deserve this dog. You barely deserve to be alive.”
Back in my apartment, I wadded up a blanket on the floor near my bed and gently laid the dog on it. It was some type of mutt that looked like it was part lab and maybe pit bull. I got out my first aid kit and dabbed some antiseptic ointment on some of the more obvious cuts. The dog shivered and licked at its wounds, the whites of its eyes looking up at me gratefully.
I opened up a can of chili and poured it in a bowl. The dog greedily gulped it up and looked at me for more. By ransacking my new groceries, I managed to add some tuna fish to the bounty. The dog also gulped that down. Later, I’d tackle giving it a bath.
The dog was awfully cute, but a small feeling of regret crept into me. I didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of something else. I’d proven how irresponsible I was even keeping a plant alive at my old place. That’s one reason I’d never had a dog or other pet before. I didn’t want some other living thing to be dependent on me. I had a hard-enough time taking care of myself and I definitely didn’t like having anything around that needed something from me. And pets had needs. And schedules. They needed to eat and poop and be exercised. I didn’t like having to be home at a certain time to feed or walk a pet. But now I guess I’d have to get used to it.
I made vegetable stir fry with my stash of fresh food and flipped through the paper. There it was. An obituary for Christopher. Three weeks after his death. I suppose my godfather had arranged it, which surprised me.
The obit said very little, mainly talking about my parents, but it did say Christopher’s funeral was scheduled for later this week. It would be too dangerous to attend. My godfather would have all his henchmen on the lookout for me, I was sure. Maybe that’s why he’d submitted the obit — maybe as a trap to lure me to Monterey. Well, it wasn’t going to work.
But something in me wanted to say my own goodbye to my brother. Maybe for my mother’s sake. I’d figure out a way to do so. I’d do it for her.
Two days before Christopher’s funeral, I made my plans, getting the dog set up for my absence.
I’d decided to name him Django after he thumped his tail approvingly when I repeatedly played a Django Reinhardt song on my phone one night. I kept the door to the roof propped open and trained him to head up there to do his business. But I knew he needed to be walked. I’d start doing that as soon as I got back from Monterey.
I piled a large dish with food and set about eight giant bowls full of water in case he knocked a few over and left the lid to the toilet open just in case that didn’t work. I’d only be in Monterey for the day. I knew he’d be fine. He was like me—a survivor.