Taste of Tenderloin Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward
the entry to a nearby darkened alley.
    Oh, no. Not back in there.
Not this kid.
    Luke’s pulse was racing,
alarms going off in his head. He could move on his own again, and
knew he should turn away. Run. Escape. But he was enthralled by her
voice and the cryptic sentence about the future; instead of paying
attention to instinct, he felt compelled to follow the woman into
the shadowy alley, expecting to be hit over the head at any moment.
Or stabbed. Or shot. Or something else terrible. On shaky legs, he
closely accompanied the old woman to the very back of the smelly,
dead-end alley, to a brick wall.
    A streetlight from back on
O’Farrell flickered to life as if on cue and cut across the
darkness of the alley, dimly lighting up the wall. It was an
amazing collage of colorful graffiti: cartoon characters, tagger
names, polemic political expressions, crude pornographic art,
several catchy sexual expressions—JOSE SUCKS THE BIG JUAN and
DERON’S MOMMA STOOP FOR THE GROUP—and a blank spot. Right in the
middle of the kaleidoscope of graffiti was an empty rectangular
box, its perimeter denoted by a thin indigo border and gold symbols
marked in a pattern similar to the woman’s scarf. For a moment,
peering into the box, Luke had the sensation of falling, of being
sucked into deep space. He almost expected to see stars, galaxies,
and nebulae rushing by.
    He blinked. Whoa, get a grip, man!
    “ Here, I will write,” the
bag lady announced, moving up to the mysterious box. She took out a
common fine-tipped indigo felt pen, popped off the top, then turned
back to him before she began to inscribe anything. “I write
something for you. But you must return when I call and write something for
me in this same box. It may not be for a month or two, even years.
But you must immediately come when I summon you and write. Do you
understand, Lucas Somerville?”
    Jesus, she even knew his
name. He nodded and cleared his throat. “Yes, I understand,” Luke
said, unable to suppress the anxious curiosity in his
tone.
    The woman turned and very
carefully printed out two lines:
    RAZ L DAZ L
    For the discriminating
gentleman.
    Luke stared raptly at the
block for several moments.
    Of course this was it. He
grinned inwardly. Just what he needed for the Friday meeting at
Double B & A. Incorporating Daz L’s name into the brand name of
the scent; the name’s memorable, the over-the-top-garishness
seeming to clash with the line suggesting refined good taste, but
actually fitting together perfectly. It resembled so much of his
best work, based on the contrasting of images and words. Luke loved
what the bag lady had written. Magic words. He looked into her
mismatched, strange eyes again and nodded his approval.
    “ Okay, Lucas Somerville, I
will see you again here at this same hour sometime in the future.”
She made the pronouncement like a judge, her voice colder than the
bay fog that had slipped into the alley around them. “Do not make
me track you down.”
    “ I will be here at this
same time whenever you call,” Luke said, glancing at his
wristwatch: 11:35 p.m., March seventeenth.
    The woman slipped past him,
heading back out toward O’Farrell.
    Luke remained in place for
a few seconds, wondering what had just happened. The rectangle with
the funny symbols around it was blank, deep space again. He didn’t
believe in crazy-ass stuff like magic. Still, he couldn’t hold back
a shudder as he followed the strange old woman’s footsteps back out
to O’Farrell Street.
     
    After the enthusiastic
Friday meeting at Double B & A,
significant events unfolded quickly. During the national tour, Daz
L became an overnight super-star, and almost immediately thereafter
the cologne brand name and expression appeared on billboards across
the country, right after debuting in every national magazine
from Oprah to Sports
Illustrated . Within six months, Raz L Daz L
was the most popular men’s fragrance in the U.S. The expression
“Raz L Daz L for