Lucky Bastard (11 page)

From this distance she looks like she could be attractive. Young. Slender. Short brown hair poking out of her helmet. I’m thinking maybe she’s one of the baristas I’ve slept with and I’m trying to remember her name and whether she works at Starbucks or Peet’s. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Eventually, they all end up hating me, so this one could just be a stalker out for vengeance. Or an admirer. I’ve had both.

Then she glances at the kid on the skateboard, who has finished his slalom course and is high-fiving his skate-rat friends across the street, and she looks back up at me.

That’s when she smiles.

I don’t know who she is or where she came from, but I realize she was watching me not because of
who
I am, but because of
what
I am. I’m also pretty sure from her triumphant smile that she plans on taking what I thought was mine.

Another luck poacher. In my city.

And I’m wondering if this has anything to do with Tommy Wong.

How she knows I’m a poacher, I don’t know. Maybe it’s my obvious intent. Or the Hispanic couple chasing me down the stairs. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s here, in San Francisco, and she shouldn’t be.

I race down the stairs, taking two at a time as the woman rides her scooter over to the teenage kid and immediately starts up a conversation with him. Whatever she says does the trick. Even from my vantage point, I can see from the look on his face that he’s flattered by her words. And I know I don’t have much time.

I’m one flight from the bottom, hoping I can get to them in time, to intrude, to maybe work my own charms on the kid before it’s too late. But then I see her extend her soft, feminine hand out to him, an invitation of intimacy, the possibility of sexual delights, and I know I never stood a chance.

The kid takes her hand with a smile just as I hit the sidewalk.

“Hey!” I shout out.

I don’t know what I expect to accomplish by yelling at her. The damage is already done. She’s stolen his luck and it’s not like she’s going to share. But I’m pissed off. This is my city. These are my people. No one else is entitled to steal from them except me.

The cute brunette glances back over her shoulder, still holding on to the kid’s hand, then she says something to
him before she lets go and takes off on her scooter down Leavenworth, turns the corner, and disappears from view.

I chase after her for half a block, shouting at her to stop, then I give up because I realize it’s pointless. When I turn around, the teenage Evel Knievel is blocking my way, his skate-rat friends spread out on either side of him.

“What’s your problem, dude?” says the kid, a high school punk with long hair and his baseball hat turned around backward.

“Take your pick,” I say, moving to walk around them. I don’t have the time to deal with them, whatever it is they want.

They counter to keep me in check, spreading out to block my way.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I feel like I’m in a bad 1980s movie starring Corey Haim. Or maybe Corey Feldman. I never could keep those two straight.

Their leader steps up to me, a shadow of a mustache on his upper lip. “Why don’t you leave that chick alone?”

Now I understand. Nothing engenders male bravado like coming to the rescue of a cute damsel in distress.

It’s bad enough that I lost my potential score to a woman poacher who encroached on my territory, but now I’m being challenged by a bunch of teenagers with baggy pants and peach fuzz who have delusions of grandeur.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” I say.

I never was good at diplomacy.

“How about if we mind it for you?” says one of the
other kids. I don’t know which one. They all look the same to me.

On the Lombard Street stairs, the Hispanic husband whose camera I sort of accidentally stole hurries down the steps and points me out to some big steroid monkey who has apparently decided to play the role of the helpful ass kicker.

Great. This just keeps getting better.

“Look,” I say, “I don’t know what she told you . . .”

Before I can finish my sentence, a fist pops me in the face. I don’t know who threw the punch. I never even saw it coming. But the next thing I know, I’m stumbling backward and reaching up to stop the blood from pouring out of my nose.

In front of me, Corey and the Skater Boys are moving in for the kill, either dropping their boards to free up their teenage fists or tightening their grips to use their boards as weapons. Behind them, the Hispanic husband and his bodyguard have reached the bottom of the stairs and are coming over to join the party.

Ever have one of those moments when you know you’re completely fucked?

Like when your second parachute doesn’t open?

Or when you get pulled over for speeding, holding ten kilos of cocaine?

Or when you wake up naked in bed with your mother-in-law?

I’m wondering if I can talk my way out of this or just
start grabbing hands and poaching, hoping to strike a vein of good luck, when the cute little bitch on the scooter pulls up next to me and says, “Get on!”

I’m not exactly in a position to play the indignant card or to enter into a discourse on the etiquette of luck poaching, so I climb on the back, wrap my arms around her waist, and hold on as she floors the scooter.

She turns right on Chestnut, and for a moment we’re in the clear. Then I look behind me and see the pack of skate rats bearing down on us, taking the next right onto Jones faster than we can. We scoot across Lombard and Greenwich without stopping, our pursuers less than half a block behind us, when Scooter Girl makes use of San Francisco’s legendary topography to prove that age-old wisdom:

You can’t skateboard uphill.

She blows through the stop sign at Filbert, then starts climbing. Granted, we’re not exactly flying up Jones, which is a good thirty-degree slope, but we’ve definitely put some distance between us and our pursuers. When I glance back, most of the Skater Boys have picked up their boards and have given up the chase. Only Corey is still trying, but eventually even he succumbs to the laws of physics.

I breathe a sigh of relief and hold on tight to Scooter Girl’s waist to keep from sliding backward off the seat.

“That’s not my waist,” she says.

“What?”

“Where you’re grabbing on to me. Try lower.”

“Oh.” I readjust my grip. “Sorry.”

When we reach the corner of Jones and Union, we pull to a stop and glance back down the hill, just to make sure we’re safe. Two blocks down, the skate rats are skateboarding away in the other direction.

“Sorry about that,” she says.

“Which part?” I say, climbing off the scooter, wiping the blood from my nose. “The part where you stole my mark or the part where you incited him and his friends to want to kick my ass?”

“The second one,” she says. “I just wanted to slow you down. I didn’t think they’d get physical.”

From halfway up Lombard, she looked potentially cute. Up close, there’s no question now about her potential. Clear skin. Slightly upturned nose. Delicate jaw. Nice smile. Plus she has real breasts. Not that I felt them or anything.

“And I didn’t steal anything. We both saw him at the same time. I just made it to the bottom of the hill faster than you did.”

“That’s not the point,” I say, trying to remember what the point was. I think it had something to do with the rules of poaching, with her encroaching on my territory, but I’m suddenly wondering what she’s doing for lunch. And if she has a boyfriend.

It’s not just that she’s cute. There’s something else. An intangible essence I can’t put my finger on. Then I realize it’s because this is the first time I’ve ever met another
woman, other than my mother and my sister, who could understand why I do what I do.

I wonder if she’s ever met another poacher. And if she thinks I’m attractive. And what she’s doing in San Francisco.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Are you talking about my raison d’être? Or are you digging for something more banal?”

“What are you doing in San Francisco?”

My guess is she’s working for Tommy Wong. I just want to hear her admit it.

“It’s top secret,” she says, with a smile and a wink. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to fuck you.”

“What?”

She just smiles at me and tilts her head. “But I don’t have sex with men who poach bad luck.”

Before I have a chance to respond, she pulls out onto Union Street and drops down the hill toward North Beach, disappearing from view. I wonder how she could tell I’d poached bad luck. I’m guessing she just made that up as a lame excuse to bail out before she had to explain herself, but I’m not going to let her get away that easily.

Maybe I’m just kidding myself, but I felt a spark. Something passed between us. And I intend to find out what that something is. And what she’s doing in my town.

I walk to the Searchlight Market on Hyde Street and buy some Advil and a bottle of water, along with some Mentos and a pack of fragrance-free baby wipes that I use
to clean off my face. There’s nothing I can do about the blood on my T-shirt, which makes me look kind of intimidating. Either that or like I just got my ass kicked. So I leave it and head out of the market to plan my next move.

Who am I kidding? Like I have a plan. Or any moves. All I have is a headache and a bloody T-shirt. And a tiny little crush on a female poacher.

True, she’s to blame for my failed poaching
and
my headache
and
my bloody T-shirt. But I’m willing to let all of that slide because she’s attractive and because she threatened to have sex with me. There’s also this little fact that in the few minutes I’ve known her, she’s unlike any other woman I’ve ever met. At least any woman I could have sex with and not end up on
Jerry Springer
. My sister’s animosity aside, poachers understand one another in a way that other people can’t.

And I’m wondering if Scooter Girl might be able to help me with my Tommy Wong dilemma.

Despite that she’s most likely working for Tommy, she’s still a poacher, so I’m hoping I can use our common genetic mutation to get her to see my side of things. I just need to figure out how to find her. And how many other poachers Tommy’s hired. So I grab the 45 bus downtown to see someone who might be able to help me find the answers to those questions.

O
n July 28, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr. got lost in the fog over Manhattan on his way to LaGuardia Airport and crashed his B-25 Mitchell bomber into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. The fuel tanks exploded, sending flames racing across the floor in all directions. Betty Lou Oliver, the elevator attendant on duty at the time on the eightieth floor, was thrown from her post and badly burned, though she survived the incident while more than a dozen others died.

When help arrived, rescue workers decided to use one of the elevators to transport casualties, unaware that the accident had weakened the cables. Once the elevator doors closed, the cables snapped, and the elevator, with Betty Lou Oliver inside, plummeted seventy-five stories to the basement. Oliver survived the fall but was taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. She still holds the record for the longest elevator fall ever survived.

At the moment I’m feeling a bit like Betty Lou Oliver. Bloodied and battered, moving from one catastrophe to the next.

I get off the 45 bus at Union Square, then I walk east along Geary past Macy’s and the Westin St. Francis before winding my way toward Market Street, walking back and forth in a serpentine route that takes me past a homeless person tiptoeing over cracks, a woman standing in a doorway wishing another woman good luck, and several restaurants and shops with ceramic lucky cats in their windows, beckoning in good fortune.

Human beings are such a superstitious bunch. Lighting Reiki candles to attract wealth and abundance. Knocking on wood in the hopes that good fortune will continue. Carrying around charms, amulets, and talismans for protection ever since the first caveman was trampled by a woolly mammoth.

Most people have no idea why they do the things they do in their attempts to either attract good fortune or avoid bad luck. They’re completely unaware of the historical context behind their irrational beliefs.

Knocking on wood comes from pagans who were summoning tree gods. Throwing spilled salt over your left shoulder blinded the devil who was sneaking up on you. And the number thirteen is allegedly unlucky because thirteen people were at the infamous Last Supper.

But even if people understood the origins of their superstitions, it wouldn’t make a difference. Contrary to
what a lot of people think and what these New Age quacks try to sell you, you can’t create luck or draw it to you. You’re either born with it or you’re not. Everything else is just random circumstance. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. Lighting candles and knocking on wood and rubbing good-luck charms isn’t going to improve your fortunes any more than wishing to have sex with a porn star is going to get you laid.