ONE

In late October, three days before the month’s end, black rain bombarded the streets of San Francisco, overrunning curbs, spilling onto the sidewalk next to Eternal Gratitude, a squat, flat-roofed club at the intersection of Church and Market.

2-Time Wright straddled a stool by Eternal Gratitude’s sandbagged plywood front door. He sported a yellow T-shirt, chinos that exaggerated the cleft of his high buttocks, a vintage Giants baseball hat with the bill pulled low over his pasty face.

He heard the doorbell, a high-pitched squeal that rattled the aluminum mesh security gate, glanced up, saw me standing outside in the downpour. I had on no-label jeans. My kicks were blinding white Nike knockoffs, ten bucks at the Oakland flea market. A vermilion scar glowered on my forehead.

He jeered at me. “What the hell do you want?”

Sorely troubled by how the rain was messing with my hair, I weighed 2-Time’s question. I toyed with the notion of imagining his future. But with certain dudes, you didn’t want to bother. 2-Time was one of those cats.

“I’m here to buy some Life.”

“Okay, man, go in and make your purchase. But if you cause any trouble in my establishment, I will kick your ass.”

The sound system was delivering Howlin’ Wolf’s “Going Down Slow” when I stepped into the narrow and low-ceilinged club. Wall lamps emitted a dim light. My shoes sank into ersatz Turkish carpets piled three deep on the oak plank floor. I was the only customer in the place.

2-Time’s spouse Rita, a slender woman with shoulder-length peroxided hair, demurely attired in a floral-patterned muumuu, was working the cash register. Enormous glass jars brimming with double-barreled white tabs of Life dominated a laminated counter.

Life was the street name of the new experimental radiation vaccine invented after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011, when contamination spread across the Pacific Ocean to California. A delay in patenting the drug had boomeranged into an underground market. Life was manufactured in neighborhood laboratories and distributed in local storefront clubs sanctioned by the mayor’s office. Eternal Gratitude was a small operation, run by 2-Time and Rita. Unlike most clubs that retailed Life, it wasn’t making money. Competition was stiff. The overhead was high.

Rita eyed me as I sauntered to the counter. This was the second consecutive day I’d come by. She was delighted to see me again. Business had been slow for a Monday afternoon. She switched on her sales face.

“Can I help you?”

I pointed at a jar. “Give me three tabs, please.”

“Is there anything else I can get you?”

“Nope. Just three tabs.”

“That’s seventy bucks.”

I had my money out and was counting scruffy one dollar bills, moving my lips as I added up the numbers. Seventy bones was a lot to pay for Life. I laid the paper by the cash register. Rita noticed the scarring on my forehead.

“Where did you get that scar? It’s so damn big.”

Ten months ago I was shot in the head at the corner of Geneva and Mission by a vigilante from the Citizens’ Council, a civilian organization that patrolled crime-ridden neighborhoods. My heart stopped four times during the ambulance ride to General Hospital. The surgeons in the trauma unit concluded I was brain dead. I was hooked up to a life support system in a sterile room. Thirty-six weeks passed while I was in a coma and then, without any fanfare, I emerged from it. The doctors told me they couldn’t remove the bullet. It would kill me if they tried. That’s when I began having visions. Perceiving things. The bullet had become a third eye.

“I was shot in the head.”

“That’s fucking sick! Do you know who did it?”

“A vigilante.”

I could see it in her eyes. She thought I was a bullshit artist. Her standard for credibility was 2-Time, a man who probably lied all the time.

“Was he arrested?”

“Nah. And he won’t be. Not in this lifetime.”

“Why not?”

“The police said he shot me in self-defense.”

“What were you doing to him?”

“Nothing. I was just walking by.”

“When did this happen?”

“January.”

“Are you okay?”

“Better than I used to be. I can see all kinds of things now, stuff I never saw before.”

“You got a crystal ball or something?”

I pictured the bullet in my brain, gray and pitted, always giving me advice about the future and everything else. “More than that.”

“What is it you see?”

“Everything people do. Like with this club.” I looked around Eternal Gratitude. “You’re going to go bankrupt.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ricky Bellamy.”

Still at the door, 2-Time overheard every word I said. I knew what he was thinking: if I could see Eternal Gratitude’s economic future, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t see. I was the ultimate lottery ticket. Movies. Radio. Television. Advertising deals. Lecture circuit. Anyone associating with me would make paper.

But if 2-Time wanted a piece of the action, he knew he’d have to move fast. Like pronto. And so he backpedaled out of Eternal Gratitude, cell phone in hand.

I pocketed the three tabs of Life. I told Rita I’d come back tomorrow. I followed 2-Time out the door.

Something about how 2-Time walked, his prison-style swagger, grabbed my attention.

I called out to him, “2-Time, did you get punked in jail?”

He threw a shocked glance at me, his face deadly white.

I’d pinpointed his darkest secret.