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collapsed, eyes fading of life, just enough to see my face and the wicked blade too close to his heart.
    A man I didn’t know, who’d tried to kill me and now lay dying on my floor.
    Everything going bad for me, in less than a minute. My life was supposed to be calm now. So I could be a father to my son. I wasn’t supposed to be a weapon anymore.
    “Stop her!” I yelled, but nearly everyone was gone, flooding the entrance out onto the sidewalks of the Haight.

5
    Thursday, November 4, early evening
    T HE DEAD MAN —not dead yet, dying—glanced at me. Surprise in his eyes at the turn of fate, the embrace of the unforeseen. He pulled out the knife from his chest and stared at his own blood on the blade, turned over on his side, legs curling, emptying life on the stone floor, red seeping along the broken glasses and bottles.
    I saw the woman under the dim light of The Select’s soft Asian lamps, running into the hallway that led to the back exit.
    The suburban dad ran after the woman, scooping up the gun from the mountain’s back holster. If he needed the mountain’s gun, then he hadn’t gotten the gun inside her purse away from the woman.
    Her I could still help.
    I ran after the suburban dad as he hit the back door where the woman had fled. He turned, gun raised, and fired at me. He did it running; there was no bracing his stance or aiming.
    He missed and I didn’t know if it was by a foot or by an inch. I kept on him and the man made his choice.
    Go after the woman.
    The Select’s back door exited into a small courtyard, a narrow parking area for a business behind us and an apartment above it. Pallets of wood and junk lay stacked along the edge. She stumbled out into the night and the man hit the door ten seconds after her.
    He said, “Give it to me and we’ll leave you alone”—I could hear the woman’s hard sobbing of freaked-out terror—and I hit him. I knocked him hard into the side of a recycling bin that was fragrant with the sweet-sour smell of discarded liquor bottles. The front of his shirt tore in my grip and in the streetlight I saw a silver gleam: an odd symbol of lines and spaces hanging on a small necklace.
    I couldn’t see the woman but I could hear her screaming, “Don’t, please, don’t.”
    The suburban dad levered his elbow back hard into my jaw. It hurt and I was surprised; I didn’t think he was much of a threat. The man whirled back, launched another punch at my head. It caught me hard, and I fell back heavily against the metal.
    He put me down with another kick to the throat. Unlike the mountain he moved fast and didn’t try to psych me out of fighting. Then he steadied the gun at my head as I fought to breathe. Bracing himself to shoot another human being point-blank in the face. I could see the hesitation in his eyes as I tried to scramble back.
    She’d pried the board loose from a pallet next to the bin, and she swung it with a crushing force. She connected. He dropped. The suburban dad made a gagging noise, as though his stomach was wrenched instead of his head, and she dropped the plank to the ground. A twisted nail lay bent in the wood, and a fresh flower of dark hair and blood bloomed on it.
    On his knees the suburban dad grabbed at his head with his hand. Making a low humming noise of surprised agony. Stunned.
    The woman picked up his gun.
    Aimed it at the man.
    Her hand shook. I could see her purse with the hole in it, dangling now from her shoulder.
    “Don’t shoot him! The police will be here,” I said. “They’ll help you—”
    And the woman looked at me again, her eyes meeting mine for the first time since she’d leaned across my bar and whispered, Help me . “No police, no!”
    “What’s your name? I can help you.” I raised a hand toward her, trying to calm her.
    “You can’t. They’ll kill you, too.”
    “Who are you?”
    The gun wavered and the man said, “Don’t, please…” his voice unsteady as he stared down the gun.
    “You’re just like