Taste of Tenderloin Read Online Free PDF Page B

fuzzy yellow light of the Corner Mart.
There, waiting in the fog, stood the bag lady, peering at him with
her strange eyes. He had hoped that somehow she wouldn’t
show.
    “ Are you ready to write for
me, Lucas Somerville?” she asked, moving closer.
    He nodded.
    “ Come, then.”
    Luke followed her into the
alley, chilled to the bone in the foggy darkness, his heart
thumping and his blood racing.
    At the end of the alley,
the old woman stopped and produced a felt-tipped pen and a very
thin black book from somewhere in her layers of garments. She
handed the pen to Luke.
    “ Now, you copy the old
words from the book.”
    She had opened the tattered
book to a page, its border decorated with symbols akin to those
around the box on the wall. It contained only one short
sentence.
    Luke took the pen and
squinted in the dim light at the unfamiliar words: Te adzari mazzeki O .
Then, with cold, stiff fingers, he slowly transferred the
expression into the blank rectangle.
    The bag lady murmured,
“ Akana mukav tut le
Devlesa ,” as she backed slowly away. “I now
leave you to God,” she repeated in English. At that moment the box
on the wall seemed to flare up as if on fire. Simultaneously, Luke
thought he heard the sound of lightning ripping through dry air
behind him.
    He pitched forward, his
forehead striking the brick wall and his legs sagging as he
collapsed into semi-consciousness.
     
    Minutes later, a tall,
dark young woman dressed in a stylish blue
herringbone jacket paused after emerging onto O’Farrell from the
alley. She blinked in the glare of the streetlight and rubbed her
unmatched eyes—one blue, the other brown—then glanced around and
smiled broadly, feeling very young and alive.
    Meanwhile, back at the end
of the alley, an old man sat on a piece of cardboard, staring with
a stunned expression into a broken mirror he’d dug out of his
nearby shopping cart. He rubbed his arthritic fingers above his
left eye as if trying to erase the thin silver slash cutting
through his dark eyebrow. After a minute or so, the strong reek of
stale urine made his nostrils twitch, partially clearing his head.
He traced the deeply etched wrinkles in his face, looked down at
his scruffy clothes, and finally stared at the liver-spotted back
of his gnarly hand as it gradually dawned on him what the bag woman
had done with her magic words. Then, feeling a brief surge of hope,
the old man murmured, “The book. I must find that black book,” as
he searched frantically in the surrounding debris.
    He never found
it.
     
     

Tombstones in His
Eyes
     
    Junkies are hip,
    sometimes bold,
    often
cool ,
    but never old.
    — graffito in the
Haight
     
    Richie O’Brien was in
a hurry; a big hurry.
    A summer fog had blown in
from San Francisco Bay as evening settled, cooling off the city,
but Richie’s body was covered with a sweaty film that made his
crotch and underarms feel gritty. His stomach was queasy, his
bowels loose, and as he hiked up Powell into Chinatown, the muscles
in his legs and arms began to ache as if they would cramp any
moment.
    Hurry, man,
hurry , his limbs screamed silently, a mute
chorus of pain.
     
    For most of the
morning , he had roamed the Haight in vain,
surreptitiously checking the insides of cars, looking for something
to boost. Finally, about eleven, he spotted a Fujiko camera in the
back seat of a white Topaz, the window cracked down nearly an inch.
He glanced about to make sure no one was watching, then had the
door open in a few seconds with a wire coat hanger. It was closed
again even more quickly. Feeling paranoid about the camera under
his shirt, he watched a couple cross the street and stroll his way.
They passed by and paid him no mind, so Richie joined a group of
punk rockers moving the opposite direction, only partially
restraining a giggle of triumph.
    When at last he reached the
A-1 Pawnshop on Mission Street, it was
almost noon, and the Russian had a long line of people waiting to
see him.