Just Add Water (1) (7 page)

11

The Jack London Yacht Club,
appropriately located on Jack London Square, was in an old two storey building
overlooking the Oakland Estuary. A sailmaker’s loft at one time, now the
interior was all polished mahogany and funky atmosphere. Jack London would have
considered it a suitable hangout for trashing his liver had it been there when
the great writer was penning and ginning.

Posters depicting Jack London’s
boats, dog, and book jacket covers were scattered around the room, but my
favorite was a snapshot of the man himself. He was wearing what appeared to be
a leather aviator’s jacket. His hair was windblown around his handsome face,
and he sported a roguish grin that personified his roguish reputation. Beneath
the photo was a poem he wrote summing up his take on life:

I would rather be ashes than dust!

than
it should be stifled by dryrot.

every
atom of me in magnificent glow,

than
a sleepy and permanent planet.

The
proper function of a man is to live, not to exist.

I
shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

I
shall use my time.

As
I read the great adventurer’s self-fulfilling words, I couldn’t help but think
I would have liked the bounder. With my penchant for bounders, maybe even loved
him.

Jan
evidently had similar thoughts. “Gee, Hetta, his philosophic attitude on life
reminds me of yours.”

I wasn’t all so sure I cared for
the comparison. After all, old Jack, for all his brilliance and wanderlust was,
like his prophetic ode indicated, a literary flash fire who flamed out before
his excesses extinguished his talent. A victim of his own immoderation, he died
at forty and didn’t even leave a beautiful corpse.

“Not really. I mean, I do admire
his give a damn attitude, but don’t you wonder what he could have accomplished
if he’d lived longer and taken better care of himself?”

Jan gave me a meaningful look and
said, “Food for thought, Hetta, food for thought.”

We shook off our moment of thought
and proceeded to the bar, hoping for food. The jukebox played a Jimmy Buffet
number and a man was performing some kind of jig on top of the long, mostly
empty, bar. Ester didn’t seem to notice him.

Jan and I took barstools as far
away from the skinny sailor’s gyrations as possible while Ester went to the
office for a copy of the rules and sailing schedule for Women on the Estuary.

“What can I get you ladies?” asked
the Filipino bartender. Paul, according to his nametag.

“Draft beer for me, unless you have
something to eat besides peanuts,” I said, warily eyeing the dancer grind his
way towards us.

Paul glanced over his shoulder.
“Don’t mind him. He’s drunk. Kitchen’s closed, but Ester can raid the fridge
for you. Should be something left in there from last night’s buffet. Also, in
case you’re interested, we have splits of champagne on ice. Cheap.”

I liked this club already. “Great.
Champers for me, then. Uh, does he do this bar dance thing often, Paul?”

“Oh, yes.”

Ester returned, waving papers.
“Good news. WOE has a sail next Sunday. If you want some fun in the meantime,
the yacht club is sponsoring a beer can race Wednesday night. Wanna come?”

“What do we have to do?”

“Drink beer.”

“We qualify. Uh, don’t look now,
but Popeye is jigging our way.”

Ester’s eyes followed my head nod
and she yelled, “Hey, Jacky, show ‘em your twin screws!”

Jacky smiled, turned, dropped his
pants and gyrated the twin propellers tattooed on his bony butt.

“I’m thinking we’ll like it here,”
I breathed. “Do you allow dogs?”

“They’re mandatory.”

* * *

RJ
looked mighty nautical in his new red, white, and blue doggy life
jacket and rum-keg collar. I had tried a black patch over one eye, but he kept
shaking it off. When we were introduced to Frank, the owner of the boat I was
to crew on for the evening’s beer can races, he scratched RJ’s ears and fondled
the rum keg. “Welcome aboard, mates. Can this pooch handle a winch? It looks a
might blustery out there, and we’ll need all paws at the ready.”

“I can leave him in the car if you
want me to. If you think he might get in the way.” After the Dilly thing, I was
all too willing to please.

“Naw. I have a nice bunk that’ll
fit this salt just fine if he gets bored with the race. Although it should be
exciting with a breeze like the one we’ve got tonight. I’m surprised they
haven’t canceled. Now, what position do you feel comfortable handling?”

Remembering attack winches,
flailing booms, billowing sails that threatened to put one over the side, and
heaving decks, I said, “Bartender?”

* * *

“Wasn’t that a blast? My boat won!”
a breathless, pink-cheeked Jan asked when we met at the yacht club bar after
the race.

“Jan,
my
boat T-boned another one and we were disqualified.” My cheeks
were red, too. With mortification.

“Oh, dear me. How did it happen?”

“Don't ask.”

“Cheer up, sailor, there’s men
about,” she whispered, nodding down the bar. “Oh, look, there’s Lars and Bob.
The ones we met in Berkeley? Remember? You gave Lars my card and he called me.
We never did get together for lunch.”

“Who? Oh, them. What? No girl
children with them?”

“Be nice. And no, they seem to be
alone. They see us. Smile.”

Lars beckoned us to the other
end of the bar where the slap of leather cups on mahogany announced a round of
Liar’s Dice. More interested in Jan than dice, Lars bowed out, leaving his
brother, Bob, and eight others to the game.

“So, did you two enjoy the
race?” Lars asked. Tall and portly, dressed in a white anorak and white pants,
he resembled a friendly, handsome, polar bear.

“I did,” Jan breathed. “Hetta’s
boat porterhoused another.”

“T-Boned,” Bob interjected, taking
his eyes from his dice long enough to glare at me. “And it was my boat. Wasn’t
that you driving? You and the hairy guy with the red, white and blue jacket?”

“Uh, yes. We’ve got to quit meeting
this way.”

Bob continued to look at me for a
few seconds while my cheeks flamed redder. A hint of a grin passed his lips
before he turned back to his game.

Lars shrugged. “My brother hates
getting hit. Let’s go get a table.”

I glared at the back of Bob’s
graying, blonde head and his leather bomber jacket. I had noticed, when he’d
turned to glower at me, a patch over his heart that read, Robert “Jenks”
Jenkins, USN Ret.

“You two go
ahead,” I said, signaling Paul for a split of courage. I sipped stars while
studying my prey.

Now, don't get
me wrong, I know I’m no great beauty, but I have been known to attract a man or
two in my day. And I certainly wasn’t used to being snubbed by them. The
challenge was set.

Painting a
sincere look onto my face I sidled up to Robert “Jenks” Jenkins, United States
Navy, Ret. “I’m really sorry about hitting your boat. I couldn’t see because of
all those sails.”

Bob nodded,
looking straight ahead, not at me. “Ten fives,” he said. He was called up by
his neighbor and threw out a die with a snort of disgust.

I tried again.
“Jan and I recently joined the club. Don’t you find it ironic we should meet
again so soon?”

“I guess.” Bob
pounded the bar with his leather cup and peeked under it at his dice. “Eight
sixes.”

“Well, it was
real nice seeing you again,” I said sweetly. “Oh, by the way, does the ‘Ret’ on
your jacket stand for ‘ree-tard’?”

“Fifteen fives.”

* * *

Due to the late hour, we decided it
was better for Jan to spend the night on my side of the Bay rather than drive
home in RJ’s VW, or brave BART and then a city bus. Like many city dwellers,
Jan did not own a car.

“What do you think of Lars?” she
asked as we drove into the hills.

“I think his brother’s a prick.”

“Lars says Bob’s not all that bad.
Maybe a little...distant.”

“Distant? Mount Kilimanjaro’s
distant. This guy’s on Mars. Son of a bitch
invented
aloof. So what’s his story? Married? Gay? Child molester?”

“None of the above. No serious
significant other, either. And Lars just broke up with someone. They invited us
to go sailing one day.”

“They? Us?”

“Lars figures he could drag Bob
along.”

“Oh, he does, does he? What am I, a
charity case? I think not. I’d rather go out with Dilly.”

“I’ve already arranged it. Dilly’s
delighted.”

12

My doggy desperado’s hearing, for
which many neighbors, including a few Oakland Raiders, Warriors, and A’s,
turned out in case he needed character references from some of our city's
finest athletes, went in our favor. We played the paw card.

Craigosaurus, veterinary witness
extraordinaire
, testified that RJ, now
on Prozac and painkillers due to his debilitating and terminal illness, was
neither a future threat to the United States Government nor society in general.
In fact, he said, were the alleged pup, er,
perp
, to again escape house
arrest, his medical condition and medication would render him incapable of
terrorist activities. Like Jeepjacking.

The accused fixed the judge with a
dewy-eyed look, raised his paw and licked the large knot on his foreleg. The
only dry eyes in the joint belonged to the alleged victim. His were mean and
beady.

Mr. Fujitsu, my neighbor and other
star witness, said his hedge was undamaged, and at any rate, he liked my dog
better than he did the postman, a Korean whom he suspected had a prejudice
against those of Japanese heritage.
 
Not
that anyone except me and his wife, Mariko, could understand a word Mr. F.
said. Despite years in California and an extensive English vocabulary, his
accent was atrocious. He was getting up a fair head of steam when the judge got
a word in edgewise and politely, but firmly, cut Fujitsu-san’s tirade short.

We were let off with a severe warning
and fined two hundred dollars, the cost of fixing a cracked headlight on the
Jeep. I was to regain mail service the next day even though as we left the
room, Mr. Kim—obviously a sore loser—shook his fist and shouted some very nasty
things at us. I think.

As it happened, RJ’s triumphant romp
through the halls of justice coincided with our Fifth Annual Raymond Johnson
Coffey Adoption Bash and Weenie Roast. Friends, neighbors, and their pets
attended the yearly fete. Cats were excluded due to RJ’s propensity to eat
them.

The do, as most “dos” do, had its
origins as a small gathering of friends to celebrate RJ’s good sense in
adopting me. He must have known I needed a friend.

Not long before RJ made this wise
decision, Japan Airlines had dumped me onto the tarmac at SFO in a
psychological body bag. Two years in Tokyo as a resident project engineer had
taken their toll. The disastrous Hudson affair, coupled with an unusually heavy
work and party load—seven days a week, twelve hours a day at work, and drinking
four of the other twelve—sent me to the brink of a breakdown. The final blow
was delivered by a back stabbing, corporate climbing, home office desk jockey
who managed to become my boss. The work problem devolved into an ego murdering
coup de grâce
that sapped any remaining
vitality I had left. I was plumb burnt out. And had developed an unreasonable
hatred of soy sauce.

 
Already at an all time low-water mark, I returned to the United
States to find my house trashed. The renters had fried every appliance,
including the hot tub pump and heater. They’d left the place so filthy I had to
live with Jan for three weeks while I cleaned two years of scum, grease and, in
the master bathroom, some very strange gunk better left unidentified. I ripped
out the carpets. Painted inside and out. Fumigated. Mr. Clean and I became
intimate. Then, and only then, did I call the movers to deliver my furniture.

I knew I’d feel better when I was
back in my home, surrounded by my own stuff. What I didn’t know was the renters
had also failed to notify my rental
mis
management
firm of a nasty roof leak. All of this led to what I call—organ fugue here,
please—The Day of the Rat!

It was raining buckets as the movers
carted in a vanload of both stored and shipped-from-Tokyo belongings. Water
poured through my kitchen roof into hastily purchased galvanized tubs. Although
the moving guys had covered my new carpet with butcher paper, I suspected
tracked-in mud was leaking through. My spirits were soggier than the weather.

After seeing the indoor waterfall,
the moving company boys mumbled something about their minimum wage salaries not
covering electrocution. They hastily dumped crates and boxes all over the place
and skedaddled. Even if they had been willing to risk death by roof leak, my
now ex-employer, a multigazillion dollar corporation, was too cheap to pay for
unpacking. Especially since, shortly after reentering the United States, I
found myself exiting their badly decorated offices under a cloud of suspicion.

In between bailing out my kitchen and
mopping mud, I had managed to find a set of dry sheets and a pillow, but my bed
was still chunks of brass scattered hither and thither. Way too tired to
contemplate its reassembly, I planned to crash on the couch.

“Tomorrow will be brighter. This too
shall pass. Every cloud and all that crap.” I chanted. The clichés and mantras
were to prevent me from standing under the cascade in the kitchen and sticking
my finger in a socket.

Right before dark I found candles, a
wine glass, and a bottle of Pouilley Fumé, the perfect complement for my box of
poulet
frit à la Colonel Sanders
. Extra Crispy only hours ago, but no
longer so. I finished off the last doughy drumstick and called Jan.

“Man the pumps,” I wailed, “I’m
sinking.”

“Everyone’s sinking. The worst
Pacific Storm in decades, they say. It quit raining here. How’re things over
there?”

“I’m looking for my snorkel and
fins.” I told her about the roof leak. “My TV’s not hooked up yet. What’s the
forecast?”

“No more rain tonight. Probably no
more, period, until the next—" My scream cut her off.

“What is it, Hetta? What happened?”

“Rat!”

“Mouse?”

“No, Jan, R-A-T! And he’s looking at
me. He’s fuckin’ huge.”

“Calm down, Hetta. Where is he?”

“Between me and the front door.”

“Throw something at him.”

I looked around for something to
launch, then thought better of it. “Jan, if I scare him and he hides there’s no
way in hell I can sleep here tonight. I want to know exactly where he is. I
want him . . . hang on.”

Behind the couch was a storage box
labeled, “Family stuff.”
 
I reached over
and ripped off the tape, making a noise which sounded to me like an oncoming
freight train. But the rodent did not budge. I removed several handfuls of
plastic peanuts, rummaged through more,, and pulled an antique wooden box into
my lap. Slipping the latch on the case, I removed my .38 caliber Smith and
Wesson revolver from her—in my family, guns are “her”—padded felt bed.

The police special’s cartridge belt
and holster were also coiled in the box, smelling, even after two years in
storage, of saddle soap and gun oil. I opened the loading gate on the .38, slid
six bullets into the cartridge holder, and eased the cylinder shut. Pushing off
the safety, I whispered a little prayer that two years in storage didn’t cause
the gun to detonate in my hand. Shakily, I stood up, took a straight-armed,
two-handed aim, and slowly pulled the trigger.

The rat’s head disappeared in a halo
of red, as did a large chunk of plaster in the wall behind him. And my new
paint job. My ears rang, but I could hear Jan screaming into the phone. I
picked up the receiver.

“I got the dirty rat bastard,” I
said, pleased I hadn’t lost my touch. All those years of murdering beer bottles
on fence posts had finally paid off.

“You shot him? Hetta, you shot a rat
inside your house? Are you insane? Haven’t you ever heard of rat poison? You
can’t shoot things anymore. There are laws. I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, fooey. For crying out loud, I
have a right to...oops, I do believe sirens approacheth.”

* * *

The police were less than pleased,
even though I had registered the gun several years before and my carry permit
was still up to date. They gave me a warning about discharging a weapon within
the city limits, to which I said, “You have
got
to be kidding me. We’re talking
Oakland
here.” They didn’t find me at all humorous and called Animal Control to pick up
the rat carcass. Had to be checked out for rabies, they said.

“Biggest friggin’ wharf rat I’ve ever
seen,” said the Animal Control officer as he bagged the rodent’s remains. “Must
‘a hitched a ride in one of them Jap cargo crates.”

I was cleaning up rodent blood when
one of Oakland’s finest said, “Nice head shot, ma’am. You know, though, what
with you living alone and all, you might consider getting a dog.”

So I did. Or rather, he got me.

And today marked the Fifth Annual
Raymond Johnson Coffey Adoption Bash and Weenie Roast. Most likely our last.

Mr. Fujitsu’s hairless Chihuahua,
Pancho-san, took the “Homely Hound” award, as always. His prize, a scoop of
liver and cheese ice cream from Doggie Delights in the People’s Republic of
Berkeley, almost cost Bunnie Adams’s sweet, but dumb as dirt golden retriever
her “Best Behaved” trophy when she tried to nose in on Pancho-san’s treat. At
the last minute Miss Goldie Manners remembered hers and backed off, but RJ
streaked in for the steal. Pandemonium was narrowly avoided when Dr. Craig
launched a scattershot of minty biscuits.

Mr. Fujitsu and Dr. Craig’s sig
other, Raoul, discovered a common interest when they spotted my ancient
Japanese
tansu
chests. Raoul, an
antiques dealer who in a former life was a farm boy from Marfa, Texas,
speculated perhaps my underwear resided in Mr. F’s Samurai ancestors’
furniture. It wasn’t an interest in my underwear they had in common, though,
but rather a passion for things Japanese.

They inspected the
shoji
blinds in the dining room, checked
the quality of the rice paper, and made some suggestions for repairing those
doggy nose holes with paper butterflies. Then Mr. Fujitsu zeroed in, you should
excuse the expression, on my Pachinko machine, a cross between pinball and
slots.

Lights flashed, bells rang, and
curses and whoops filled my office as the elderly man showed off skills
indicating a misspent youth in Tokyo’s Pachinko parlors. He emptied the machine
of tokens in record time. As I was reloading, the key hanging from my neck
swung forward and clinked against Mr. F.’s glasses. He was squatting on his
haunches, giving me instructions at the time, and almost tumbled onto his butt.
Pushing himself up, he grabbed the key, taking little consideration that it was
still attached by a chain around my neck.

Inspecting the only physical evidence
I had left to prove Hudson Williams, the jilting scoundrel, ever existed, Mr.
Fujitsu sucked his teeth. “You big drink,” he said with a grin.

“Pardon?”

“Whiz key?”

I was at a total loss. After living
in Tokyo and working with an all Japanese staff for two years, I thought I
could figure anything out, but Mr. Fujitsu could still throw me on occasion.
This was one of them. We looked to his wife, Mariko, for help. She fingered the
key, trying to read the inscription.

“Ah. Loyal Clown,” she explained. Her
husband nodded and smiled in agreement.

“Loyal Clown?” I asked.

“
Hai
.
Clown whiz key.”

Call me stupid, but I didn’t get it.
It must have been obvious, for Mariko took me by the hand and led me to the
bar. She rummaged among the bottles and came up with a purple bag. “Whiz key.”

“Crown Royal, Hetta,” Jan said
impatiently. “And I thought you were a linguist.”

“Mariko, are you saying this key is a
bar key?”

“
Hai
,
Hetta-san,” she said. I took off the key, and she squinted closely at the tiny
Kanji lettering. “Key Noturu Crub, Loppongi.”

The Key Note Club in Tokyo’s Roppongi
section. One of the few jazz bars I’d missed. But Hudson, it seemed, had kept a
bottle of Crown Royal there. In most key clubs in Tokyo you bought a bottle of
overpriced liquor, they gave it a number, and you received a card identifying
you as the owner. When you returned, they’d give you a bucket of ice, your
mixer and the bottle. As long as there was liquor in the bottle, you only paid
for set ups. Evidently, the Key Note Club gave out an actual, engraved, key. At
last, I knew what the key was for.