Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (35 page)

Jim Addison, the man I'd been
seeing up until a month ago, stood on the steps—and he was drunk. At a
little after seven in the morning, he was obviously drunk.

I opened the door and stared. Jim
listed against the porch railing, a foxy little gleam in his blue eyes.
His sandy hair was tousled, his clothing was rumpled, and he reeked of
cigarette smoke.

He said, "All-night jam session."
Jim was a jazz pianist who played on weekends with a group at a small
club near the beach. "Can I come in?"

I hesitated, wondering how
quickly and easily I could get rid of him, then decided humoring him
was the best approach. (Get rid of him . . . humor him . . . What had
once been a pleasant relationship had come down to that.)

"For a few minutes." I let him in
and led him down the hall to the kitchen, where I went directly to the
coffee-maker and filled it with water. He went directly to the
refrigerator and looked inside.

"Got any wine?"

"There's half a bottle of
Riesling on the shelf in the door." While I whirled beans in the coffee
grinder with one hand, I reached into the cupboard with the other and
passed him a glass. I'd become used to Jim winding down his day while I
was just beginning mine, although he didn't often unwind to such excess.

When I got the coffee going and
turned, I saw he was just standing there, holding the empty wineglass
and frowning. "You hate me, don't you?" he said.

I sighed. "Of course not." It was
the same question he'd asked when I'd told him I didn't want to see him
anymore— and in each of his numerous and persistent phone calls since
then. My answer was true, although I'd long ago wearied of reassuring
him. Jim was a nice man with a good sense of humor, a talented and
dedicated musician, and I liked him a great deal. In fact, it was
liking him so much that had made me decide to end the relationship.
It's unkind to use someone you care for to get over someone else whom
you think you love.

He regarded me for a moment and
then his lips twisted disgustedly. "Sensible and rational as ever,
aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to—"

"You're always right, you always
know what's best for me, for you, for the whole fucking world!"

"That's not true." If I were so
sensible and rational, would I allow myself to go on missing a man whom
I hadn't heard from for over six months? Would I
have allowed myself to fall in love with that particular man in the
first place?

Jim slammed the wineglass down on
the counter so hard that it shattered. My gaze jumped to the gleaming
shards and then to his face, mottled with rage. It was the first time
I'd ever seen him angry.

"What do I have to say to get
through to you?" he demanded.

"We've said it all before."

"No, I don't think so. Not yet,
we haven't!" Abruptly he turned and went down the hall; the front door
opened and slammed behind him.

"Great," I said. "Just great.
What else can go wrong today?"

I expelled a long breath and
leaned back against the counter; behind me the coffeemaker wheezed and
burbled. For a moment I considered whether Jim—this new angry Jim whom
I didn't know—had a potential for violence. Well, I decided, we all
did, didn't we? I'd have to wait and see what he did next. And on that
less than encouraging note, I went to turn on the shower.

While I was washing my hair, the
dream I'd had came back to me. I'd been driving to meet Hank at his
client's flat in the Inner Richmond district, but after I crested Buena
Vista Heights and descended into the Haight-Ashbury, I found that
Stanyan, the northbound street on the edge of Golden Gate Park, had
disappeared. In my confusion I made a series of turns that led me deep
into unfamiliar territory, then suddenly I arrived at the top of the
hill again. Over and over I'd driven down into the Haight. Over and
over I'd found no trace of Stanyan Street.

Such frustration
dreams—repeatedly dialing a phone and hitting the wrong buttons,
missing a plane because I couldn't get packed in time—were nothing new
to me. I'd recently read a paperback on the subject and learned that
they're an indication that the dreamer is of two minds about reaching
the destination,
completing the call, or making the plane trip. But in this case,
despite the depressing nature of the task ahead, I couldn't understand
why I should feel such strong ambivalence—or why the dream had left
such an unpleasant, lingering aura.

Superstitiously I crossed my
shampoo-slick fingers against the possibility of the dream being a bad
omen.

By nine o'clock I'd had three
cups of coffee and done the
Chronicle
crossword, and my
spirits had risen somewhat. By nine-thirty, when I arrived in the Inner
Richmond (Stanyan Street still being there after all), I felt
reasonably cheerful.

The Richmond is a solidly
middle-class district on the northwest side of Golden Gate Park,
consisting mainly of single-family homes and multi-flat buildings set
close together on small lots. Once it was heavily populated by members
of the city's Russian and Irish communities, but in the past couple of
decades it has become the neighborhood of choice for upwardly mobile
Asians. While the Catholic churches and Irish pubs and the Russian
Orthodox cathedral on Geary Boulevard remain, everywhere there are
signs of the new residents.

As I drove along Clement Street,
the district's busy shopping area, I noted eight Asian restaurants
within two blocks: one Thai, one Japanese, one Burmese, two Vietnamese,
and three different types of Chinese. Produce stands with outdoor bins
full of bok choy and daikon radish, groceries with smoked ducks and
barbecued pork ribs hanging in their windows, banks and insurance
agencies with signs in both English and various Asian characters— all
these stood side by side with such longtime institutions as Green Apple
Books, Churchill's Pub, Woolworth's, and Busvan Bargain Furniture.
Eight out of ten faces that I spotted were Asian—reflecting the same
ethnic mix as the restaurants, and ranging from stooped old people
pulling shopping carts to young couples emerging from Japanese-
model sports cars. Clement
Street, I thought, was the perfect embodiment of the changing cultural
patterns of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, it is also one of
the worst examples of the city's congested parking and traffic. The
area was built up at a time when no one envisioned today's large
population of both people and cars, and consequently there are too few
parking lots and garages. Even at that relatively early hour, all the
metered spaces were taken and trucks double-parked while making
deliveries. Cars moved slowly, their drivers looking for vacancies at
the curbs; other irate drivers made U-turns, slid through stop signs,
and endangered pedestrians in the crosswalks. I waited behind an
exhaust-belching Muni bus as it unloaded passengers, tapping my fingers
on the steering wheel of my MG and giving mental thanks to Hank for
remembering to tell me it was okay to park in the driveway of the house
on Third Avenue— should I ever reach it.

After five more minutes of
creeping along Clement, I rounded the corner onto Third and found the
address Hank had given me: one of those two-flat buildings with a
garage and illegal in-law apartment on the ground floor. Its facade was
bastardized Victorian, mint green with mauve and tangerine trim—a
combination that would cause even a person of minimal taste to cringe.
Hank's Honda stood in the driveway, blocking the sidewalk. I looked
around, saw that most of the residents had left their cars in a similar
fashion, except for one enterprising soul who had pulled up parallel to
the curb on the sidewalk itself. So much for parking regulations, I
thought as I pulled in beside the Honda.

As soon as Hank came to the door
of the downstairs flat, I was glad I'd agreed to help him. There were
lines of strain around his mouth, and when he took his horn-rimmed
glasses off to polish their thick lenses on the tail of his maroon
corduroy work shirt, I saw that his eyes were clouded. Hank is a man
who cares deeply for his clients—too deeply, perhaps, to maintain
the distance needed when dealing with their problems. It's not that it
renders him ineffectual; it just causes him more pain than he deserves.

I smiled reassuringly at him and
stepped inside. The flat was chilly; Hank probably didn't want to waste
the estate's money by turning up the heat. A narrow hallway ran the
length of the building; at its end was a door through which I could see
a kitchen table and refrigerator. To my left was a small living room
with a bay window overlooking the street. I went in there and started
to take off my suede jacket. Then I stopped; I might soil it while
hefting cartons and furniture, but I'd be too cold without it.

Hank sensed my predicament. "I've
got coffee on," he said, "and you can wear one of Perry's sweaters."

"Thanks." I followed him down the
hall and into a bedroom that was even smaller than the living room. He
rummaged through a pile of clothing that lay on the double bed, then
tossed me a heavy green cardigan with a hole in one elbow and a raveled
right cuff. When I put it on, it came down to my knees; I rolled up the
sleeves to wrist length. Perry Hilderly, the deceased client, had been
a big man.

Hank was already on his way to
the kitchen. By the time I got there he'd poured coffee and was holding
out a mug. I took it, then peered through a door to the left. It led to
a dining room with a fireplace and built-in leaded-glass
cabinets—standard for this type and vintage of flat. The room contained
no furniture, nothing but cardboard boxes with the name BEKINS
stenciled on them.

I looked at Hank, eyebrows raised
inquiringly.

"It's the stuff Perry moved here
years ago, after his divorce," he said. "He wasn't much of a homebody.
Accountants never are, I guess."

It was one of those blanket
statements Hank sometimes makes—bald assumptions with little or no
basis in fact. They always startle me, considering the variety of
individuals with full complements of quirks that he's seen wander
through the door of All Souls
year after year. Such typecasting of his fellow man is a product of his
early environment— his mother is quite adamant in her pronouncements
about others—and since he never allows it to cloud his judgment, I can
put up with it without comment.

I went over to the refrigerator
to look at a color snapshot that was held up there by a magnet. It
showed a tall, lanky man with curly blond hair and granny glasses; he
wore a Giants sweatshirt and was flanked by two similarly attired blond
boys who were only tall enough to reach to his waist. "This is
Hilderly, right?"

"Uh-huh. It's an old photo; his
boys are in their teens now."

I examined it more closely. "He
doesn't look all that different from the way he did in the nineteen
sixty-five picture that they ran in the
Chron
the morning
after he was shot. Of course, his hair was long and wild back then."

Perry Hilderly had been one of
the founders of the Free Speech Movement at U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s.
Although I'd still been in high school then, I'd taken a great interest
in the changing mood on the campuses—probably because I was the white
sheep in a family of rebels and envied both my siblings' and the
students' ability to blatantly challenge authority. My impressions of
Hilderly were somewhat vague, but I recalled television coverage of the
protests in which he could be seen clowning around on the periphery.

Hank said, "Do you remember him?"

"Some."

"I'm surprised."

I sat down at the kitchen table
with him. "Why?"

"Well, you were just a baby then."

I smiled. Hank is only six years
older than I, but he has always taken a paternalistic stance toward me.
Partly this is because when we met at Berkeley—years after Hilderly had
passed from that scene—he was a world-weary law student with the
horrors of Vietnam behind him, while I was an undergrad whose toughest
battles
had been fought in the trenches of the department store where I'd
worked in security before deciding to go to college. Over the years the
balance of world-weariness has shifted more to my side, but Hank
persists in the notion that he must watch out for and guide me. I know,
although we've never discussed it, that this persistence is fueled by
the fact that our friendship has never been endangered by romantic
entanglement. Hank's paternalism is designed to preserve the status quo.

"Still, I remember him," I said,
"even if he never received as much media attention as Mario Savio."

"Well, few people had Mario's
charisma. Perry's comedic style was a bit like Abbie Hoffman's, but not
nearly as outrageous. And there were a lot of lesser luminaries hogging
the limelight." Hank's smile was reminiscently wry.

I knew what he was thinking; as a
friend of mine once put it, not many of the sixties people have "held
up." Few went on to achieve the heights that those on the sidelines
expected of them. But for a time such visionaries as Mario Savio had
captured the imagination of a generation. Mario, who one fall day in
1964 respectfully removed his shoes before climbing atop a police car
that had been entrapped by some three thousand students protesting the
arrest of a civil-rights worker on the Cal campus. Mario, who seized a
microphone and involved others in the crowd in a thirty-hour
spontaneous public dialog that forever changed the university, the
youth of America, the nation itself. No, Perry Hilderly hadn't held a
safety match to Mario Savio's incandescence, but he had brought humor
to a basically humorless movement, had defused potentially dangerous
situations with his wit.