Snitch World (19 page)

“It’s loud and nerve-racking,” Klinger added.

Marci nodded. “If it weren’t annoying, you wouldn’t pay any attention to it,” she commented absently. She took a sip of her coffee with one hand and fingered the screen of Phillip’s phone with the other.

“Hey.”

She set down her cup, but didn’t divert her attention from the phone.

“Hey,” Klinger repeated.

She looked up midswipe. “Oh.” Her attention reverted to the phone. “Hand me my purse.”

Klinger retrieved the briefcase/purse from beneath the raincoat and handed it to her.

Still with one hand on the phone, Marci unzipped the
mouth of her purse, removed the chamois wallet, plucked a thickness of hundred-dollar bills from it, and slipped it into the side pocket of Klinger’s jacket. “Pretend it’s a banana-flavored condom,” she whispered, and patted the pocket.

“What,” Klinger said, frowning, “am I getting wood?”

“If I were a man,” Marci cooed at the phone, “money would give me wood.”

“You’re not a man,” Klinger watched her, “and money still gives you wood.”

“True,” she nodded. And, “Aha.”

“Aha?”

She nodded happily.

“His e-mail password is entered automatically by his browser,” she declared with a lilt.

“So a girl could effortlessly access a boy’s e-mail,” Klinger concluded, “if a girl were so minded to do.”

“True enough. Not to mention a boy’s cloud.” Marci frowned. “Of course, he’s got a lot of e-mail, and his cloud is big.”

“Any from the girlfriend?”
Cloud
meant nothing to Klinger and, despite the compelling nature of the conversation, his mind had begun to tilt along toward its conception of his future. A slightly better hotel room, a tub full of scalding hot water, with epsom salts and scented bath oil, a fifth of whiskey, a bucket of ice, a rocks glass instead of a plastic cup … The thought of epsom salts reminded him of Mary Fiducione. He could take the bath at her place and buy her dinner for once.

“Girlfriend?” Marci said, not really paying attention.

“Yeah,” Klinger said, not really paying attention either.

“Oh,” Marci said, abruptly recollecting herself. “She’s probably in here somewhere …” But her attention was elsewhere.

“Uh huh,” Klinger agreed without conviction.

“Let’s query ‘me,’” Marci suggested half aloud.

“Let’s do that,” Klinger said, evincing no interest whatsoever. The bartender floated by long enough to deposit a receipt in a tray in front of Klinger, with one quarter, two dimes, and three pennies atop it, and another check, face down, in front of Marci’s cappuccino.

“And there it is,” Marci said happily to the phone. “Zipped under its proper name, yet.”

“Which would be?”

“Object_10,” she told the phone, “dot zip.”

Dot zip, Klinger repeated to himself. Banana-flavored object ten dot zip equals one thousand bucks. He sipped his drink and set down the glass. He carefully centered the glass on its coaster with both hands. He fell to wondering if and when he had ever had a thousand dollars in his pocket.

“I think the FTP site would be a good place to park it,” Marci said to the phone. “Give it its own folder … Maybe a subfolder? Change the name while we’re about it. We need a mnemonic so we can remember what the hell we’re doing …”

There had been that caper involving a forty-foot trailer full of stainless steel motorcycle footpegs, Klinger was thinking, in San Luis Obispo. But that had been a thousand dollars total, which he’d had to split with two other guys. Both of whom went to prison, as he had to remind himself. In order to spare the county the expense of a trial, there had been a deal. One guy took the grand larceny rap, the other stood still for a parole violation, convicted felon in possession of narcotics, though he had to go back to school and do at least another nickel for it. Better than another strike, though. And Klinger’s name got left out of it. He moved into a cabin with a kitchenette behind a truck stop in King City, where the three hundred and thirty-three dollars lasted him a month. That had been … He exercised
his mind as regards the subject, but to little avail. Quite a long time ago, he decided. For that matter, he realized, and if so, both of those guys should have gotten out by now. One of them, at least. What was his name, anyway? Alfredo, the parole violator, Alfredo Potrero, had been pretty advanced in age. Could he have outlived his sentence?

“Done,” Marci said. She offered the phone to Klinger. “Want to make a call?”

Klinger looked at the phone, then looked at Marci. “No, thanks.” He shook his head. “I don’t know anybody with a phone.”

“Surely there’s somebody,” Marci cajoled. “How about your mother?”

Klinger failed to see the humor.

“Oh,” Marci said. “Sorry.” She powered down the cellphone.

“We’re done, too,” Klinger said. “Right?”

She stared at him for a moment. Then her lips parted slightly, as if she were about to say something, then she appeared to reconsider, and they closed again. “Right,” she said softly. She nodded and added, “Right …” She reached for her wallet.

Klinger, who had turned back to his drink, lifted his glass to his lips and paused to say, “I’ll get that.”

She hesitated.

“Girlfriend, my ass,” Klinger said over the rim of his glass. The mirror behind a row of single-malt Scotches, ranged above the back bar countertop, reflected her profile.

Without another word, Marci stood off her stool. When she’d gathered her things she said softly, “I’m very grateful for your help.”

A certain rigidity had entered Klinger’s physique, a stiffening due to the damp, the cold—and the resentment, it seemed, or some kind of residual unrecognized feedback
that pissed him off. But hey, he admonished himself, what business is it of mine? So what if I have no idea what this seemingly straight, innocent, scheming, ambitious, and ostensibly shallow chick is really up to, with that phone and her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend or fiancé and nonexistent other woman and, for that matter, with you, Klinger, yourself? Think of the contrast. Pretty ballsy, when you come to consider it. This little girl from another world drops in on Klinger, gets what she needs and ornithopters out again. He could practically hear the carbon fiber blades as they beat the moisture-saturated air. Though it would be more realistic, he considered, to be hearing the hiss of tires on an otherwise silent hybrid taxicab, as it chauffeured her out of his life forever.

Yes … She dropped in on his world, got what she needed, and moved on, up, out. Up, the key vector. Klinger, left to his own devices, and despite a thousand bucks cash in his pocket, would likely move down, and that sooner than later. Likely? Hah: certainly. Down was Klinger’s totemic if dimensionless vector. Down was his destiny. Down was his color. Down was his town.

By the time Klinger returned his drink to its coaster, only ice remained in the glass and the woman Marci was gone.

Good riddance. He turned over her check. The cappuccino in this joint cost nine dollars, too.

Klinger stood off the barstool and reached into the front pocket of his trousers to retrieve what was left of his modest roll. He stopped. What am I doing, he said to himself. Just a little bit upstairs and a pace aft, I got a grand in C-notes. He retrieved his hand empty and rerouted it to the side pocket of his jacket. Where Klinger was going it would be good to have at least one of them broken. Where Klinger was going, while change for a hundred might be
hard to come by, even regarded with suspicion, a hundred broken down to its constituent twenties would do for several evenings’ entertainment.

And it wasn’t until just about that very moment, as he peeled a bill away from its nine crisply folded brothers, that Klinger realized that, though he hadn’t had a bank account in many, many years, there was one thing that he was pretty sure of, which was, automatic teller machines did not dispense hundred-dollar bills. Not yet, anyway. If they did, people would rob them more often.

Was that what had been bothering him?

He attracted the attention of the bartender, who took Marci’s check and the hundred without so much as a wince. While he was away Klinger leaned on the bar, mulling things over. When the bartender returned, he counted ninety-one dollars into a tray and topped it off with the receipt for the nine-dollar cappuccino. The receipt now exhibited a single tear—paid. Conspicuously, the change included four twenties, a five, and six dollars in singles. No chump, our bartender. There’s always the possibility of a tip, even from a sullen party in damp tweed.

Klinger retrieved every bill except one, a single, which he left on the tray, along with the receipt. Now you got a buck forty-eight to squander on the ponies, sport.

Always room for another one, though, he reminded himself thoughtfully, as he took up the damp if commodious thrift-shop shopping bag that contained his new-tohim pea coat and watch cap and trousers, now lofting the musk peculiar to damp wool.

He pushed out through the revolving door of the Gavel, where the storm raged unabated.

Hope your horse runs good in the rain, sport, he muttered to himself as he turned up the collar of his tweed jacket.

Always room for another sport, he reflected somewhat wryly, altogether damply, as he plunged into the downpour.

Always room for another sport. Especially in the great outdoors.

Physically speaking, it’s not all that far from the Gavel to the Hawse Hole; sociologically speaking, it’s like jumping off a cliff. Weatherwise, on that particular Friday afternoon, it was like jumping off a cliff into the ocean.

Down through the streets he plummeted, shedding institutions, mores, raindrops, and dry cleaning fluid as he splashed puddle to puddle, waded over backed-up storm drains and flooded crosswalks, retaining only a sack of clothes, his memories, and a thousand bucks.

By the time he arrived at The Hawse Hole, Klinger was ready for a drink, he was ready to forget the last few days, he was ready for a change of clothing—Klinger was ready for anything but the future. Or the past. Or, as it turned out, the present.

By now it was six forty-five in the evening and, the sky being entirely packed with rain-bearing clouds, darkness was closing in. The blue neon chain that lowered itself, link by link, from the blue neon hawse hole high above the front door of the bar made a little splash of blue neon ploods, as it hit and lit the red neon anchor, just above the sidewalk, when all went blank until the chain lowered itself, link by link, again. As neon signs go, it was sufficiently boring to entice and encourage patrons to enter the bar simply to get away from it. Yes, though encased entirely in lexan long since, that the sign had outlasted the various milieus of the neighborhood, including its seafaring one, its lingering reputation as a good place to get shanghaied was
something of a marvel. For that matter, the place was full of people who’d like nothing better than to get shanghaied. They’d perhaps come from all over the world hoping for the experience, only to find that the only ships docking in San Francisco these days needed skilled crew, crew who could teach scuba diving, for example, by day, while essaying bodacious karaoke by night, or lecture convincingly on currency markets as investment opportunities …

But still, as goes the no-frills
deus ex machina
romantic experience, the shanghai is hard to top.

Bruce was behind the plank, wearing denim instead of chaps, so perhaps St. Patrick’s Day was over. Or, as Klinger shuddered to speculate, perhaps Bruce was sufficiently embarrassed at the damage done to cover it up.

The old man was there, too, and he was editorializing without an audience.

“The thing about life is this,” he was saying, with barely a nod to Klinger, who, after dropping his nearly dissolved shopping bag under the bar sat four stools away from him. The old man held his hands aloft, palms some eighteen inches apart and cupped, each toward the other. “Life is a tunnel, see.” He vibrated the two hands.

Klinger, staring at the empty bar top in front of him while marveling at how much water was dripping off him onto the floor, waited.

“You might have something there,” Bruce said to a sheaf of twenties. But his tone was asking the old man whether he was done yet.

“Almost,” the old man tossed off in Bruce’s direction, as if telepathic. He continued to hold his hands in front of his face, some eighteen inches apart, with their palms cupped toward one another. “A continuum, like a tunnel,” he repeated. “As a man moves through this tunnel of life, like it or not, he gives off vibrations.” He wiggled his fingers.
“And the walls of the tunnel, which are composed of other people, absorb these vibrations.”

Now Bruce forgot about his sheaf of twenties, and the ledger into which he was tabulating them, and turned to look at the old man.

Fingers still waggling, the old man moved his hands back and forth in the air in front of him, as if pumping a bellows. “The people impinged by your vibrations are your friends, your neighbors, family, acquaintances and business associates, even the people next to you on the bus who notice that you haven’t bathed lately.”

Klinger, who couldn’t move on his stool without making squishing sounds, considered the irony of this.

“The sumtotal of the feedback from these entities constitutes the only reason to be reassured of your own existence. And, insofar as this continuum or tunnel that we call life may be sentient, it only stands to reason to think that it thinks that you exist, too.” The old man clapped his hands once. “Astrology in a nutshell.”

The street door opened. Two guys in flannel shirts entered, accompanied by the hiss of passing tires on the wet street. The door closed and the two new customers headed for the dogleg in the bar, six or eight stools into the gloom beyond the old man.

“When you die—,” the old man cast his fingertips away from his face, “—your vibrations cease. The walls of the tunnel, however,” he resumed wiggling his fingers, “continue as the media for your vibrations, which they propagate into the future despite your demise.”

The two guys down the bar signaled Bruce. Bruce nodded his head, lifted a finger, and indicated the old man, conveying that he’d be along when the old man had finished. The two men looked from Bruce to the old man as if puzzled.