FOUR

I was in a daze that Tuesday afternoon as I tramped up Market Street to Eternal Gratitude. On one side of the street construction cranes towered over half-finished apartment buildings. Bevies of sparrows cavorted above the power lines. A billboard by a Whole Foods store asked:

DEPRESSED? LESIONS?

CONTAMINATION GOT YOU DOWN?

CALL THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 415-863-3486.

In front of me was a strangely familiar man, a heavy shouldered blond fellow in matching black Carhartt coat and jeans. I swore it was Frank Blake, the vigilante who’d shot me. I quickened my pace to catch up with his fat ass. But when I drew abreast of him, it wasn’t anyone I’d ever seen before. My father’s ghost jabbered inside my head, warning me to be careful. All around me the traffic in the street was a rising crescendo that threatened to overwhelm everything with its self-important cacophony.

“Ricky Bellamy! Just the man I want to see!”

2-Time jackknifed from his doorway stool, thrilled that I’d returned to the club because Tuesday was turning out as slow as Monday.

I was dragging my left leg. It bothered me today. The bullet was hurting, too. I chalked it up to the weather. The fog lay low, hepatic yellow rain clouds were on the horizon.

2-Time hustled me into the club, nudged me over to the counter. The air was dusty and I sneezed. “It’s good that you’re here,” he warbled. “We have serious shit to talk about.”

From her nook behind the cash register, Rita smiled at me, but not at her husband. Her head was angled, so that only I received the benediction of her upturned lips. “Hello, Ricky. How are you?”

I was matter of fact. “I’m hurting like a motherfucker.”

“Do you want something to help with that?”

“Shit, yeah. I need some medicine.”

“You heard him,” 2-Time mewled at Rita. “Show him the good stuff.”

Rita went to the basement to locate the high-grade Life, the kind that made your thyroid levels stay normal. While I waited for her, I surveyed the other products for sale in the club. There were handcrafted tabs from Mendocino. Tablets manufactured in San Mateo. There were some from Mexico.

“Listen, homey.” 2-Time propped himself against the counter, chewing on a toothpick. “I want to see how you tell the future.”

I focused on his face. 2-Time didn’t cotton to how I stared at him without blinking. It unnerved him. He talked around the toothpick. “You’ve got a special talent. You need to use it.”

I stifled the compulsion to tell 2-Time to shut his mouth. I decided to flow with the flow, to see what happened next.

2-Time made his pitch. “I can do things for you to advance your career. I know people.”

I wasn’t impressed. I knew people, too. Too many people. All I wanted to do was go back to Guadalupe Terrace and take Life until the snakes of pain in my head stopped slithering around.

“The future is money,” piped 2-Time. “But you have to have proper guidance to get it. Folks that can market your ass.” 2-Time laid the bait and set the trap. “I know a cat who can do it. His name is Rance Heller.” 2-Time’s falsetto ping-ponged off the club’s walls. “He’s an entrepreneur. Top shelf.”

I was receptive to 2-Time’s hype. If he thought I was an oracle, that was okay by me. “He wants to see me?”

“Hell, yeah. You’re the kid who can tell the future. You should be on television. In Las Vegas. Even at the White House.” 2-Time worked his juju on me. “Rance is dying for you to meet with us.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“How about this afternoon?”

“Sure. That’s cool.”

2-Time was pleased, but concealed his happiness behind a mask of indifference. I think he felt good to wear indifference on his face. Like a beautiful woman wearing exquisite makeup.

Rita came back to the counter. In her arms was a glass jar filled with sparkling white double-barreled tablets. “Here’s the good shit. Only eighty for three.”

I frowned. “Eighty bucks for three tabs?”

“That’s with the discount. Because today is customer appreciation day.”

“Fuck it.” I scratched my chin. “I’ll take them.”

Rita shortchanged me half a tab, which was the club’s normal policy. I gave her four twenties. I knew she found me compelling. She loved my terrible scar and my quiet manner, so unlike her husband. I palmed the tabs, turned around without saying good-bye and pulled my troubled leg toward the exit. 2-Time brayed at me from the counter: “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, dude.”

I was at the bus stop, just standing there, when I saw Vivian Raleigh, the girl who’d taken my virginity. I hadn’t seen her since I got shot. She saw me too and turned her moist brown eyes in my direction. How I remembered those eyes. When she was warm and loving, they were dark brown. Eyes that soaked in all the light surrounding them. But when she was alienated, they were pale brown. At this moment they were almost yellow.

Vivian had on platform shoes that gave her a six-inch advantage in height over me, sharply creased bell bottoms, and a belted coat. Her kinky black hair swelled in the rain. A symphony of expressions rippled across her sculpted, high-cheeked face. Fondness. Bemusement. Alarm. Indifference. Each emotion was buried under its successor. She spoke, out of politeness. “Hey, Ricky. Long time, no see.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You look different. Smaller.”

By talking with Vivian Raleigh I’m exercising a personal tradition: seeking tenderness in the wrong people. Vivian slept with tons of guys after we broke up. It was an effective technique to get rid of every trace of me, not only on her body but inside her heart. I wasn’t even a historical point of reference in her life. But me? I hadn’t been with anyone since her. I’d been in the hospital.

“How’d you get that scar on your face? It’s hideous.”

If Vivian hadn’t heard about my misfortune, I wasn’t going to broadcast it. “I had an accident. I’m better now.”

She gave me a toothsome smile that said she didn’t believe me. I’d heard she was dating a big dope dealer and going to the Marinello Schools of Beauty. Serendipitously, my bus pulled up at the stop. I was grateful. It was nasty seeing her.

“I’ll talk to you later, Vivian.”