One Foot Off the Gutter Read Free

Box didn’t feel relieved. He wasn’t excited by their departure; he didn’t feel much of anything. He turned around to look at the girl. Sooner or later, the police would return. They always did.
    She laid her hand on his neck.
    Cops were predictable in their travels. They moved in circles on a map that always drew them back to where they began. Once the police were on to something, they never let go. When they came back, he’d be there waiting for them. This building was where he belonged. He wasn’t going anywhere.

three
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    t he skyline on Twenty-first Street didn’t amount to much; soft, eroded clumps of rooftops that fit neatly against each other. The cables and wires that crisscrossed the street hung as low as a full grown man’s head.
    Unemployed men were lining up against the walls of a burned out store front around the corner on Treat Street. The sidewalk in front of the store was a sea of bobbing heads. There were so many nickel bag dealers trawling the strip near Bill’s Whirl-o-mat, the citizens walking by had to beat them off with a stick. Smoke was rising from the small fires burning in Van Ness Avenue homeless bivouacs. Heat waves were spiraling into the smoggy air from the five story dead eyed Bernal housing projects on Folsom Street.
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    Patsy looked at the roof of the abandoned building next door and frowned. She shook her head, flouncing her
blonde hair and resumed spraying the bougainvilleas with the hose.
    She quieted down while watering the plants. She liked watching things grow; the bushes had to be moistened, not too much and not too little. She wanted the garden to be in tiptop shape for her parents’ visit. They were coming up from La Jolla next week, and she was already feeling the strain of it. What could she do? Her mother had insisted the first week in October was the best time for her and Daf to come up to San Francisco.
    â€œMalcolm! Celeste! Where are you?” she called.
    A pair of dirty faced kids popped out from the other side of the garden. Before she could admonish them for wandering out of sight, the children ran up to her and threw their tiny arms around her legs, staining her immaculate white tennis shorts with their muddy hands. Malcolm buried his face into her crotch. Celeste circled around to Patsy’s rear, sinking her nose into the cleft of Patsy’s buttocks while grabbing her mother’s thighs with her stubby fingers. Patsy held the garden hose waist high and closed her eyes. A vague sexual tension rose from her navel. She enjoyed the sensation, but in the back of her mind, in the place where her identity was overshadowed by the visage of her aging mother, she knew her pleasure was incorrect.
    â€œWhere have you been?” she asked.
    Malcolm stepped back and peered at her with a guileless expression in his brown eyes. Celeste stood off to one side, imitating her brother. Patsy kneeled down to talk with them at eye level.
    â€œWe was playing,” Malcolm said carefully.

    â€œAnd where were you playing?” Patsy asked, looking to him, then at his sister.
    â€œOver there,” he said haltingly.
    His sister stole a glance at the abandoned building and didn’t say anything.
    â€œYou know it’s a bad house. I want you to stay away from it.”
    Malcolm raised his head and asked, “Why?”
    â€œI don’t have a reason. It smells funky, I don’t know. Because I said so,” she replied. “I want you two to run into the bathroom and get washed up. We’re going to have a cold pasta dish with sun dried tomatoes. And if you’re good, and you eat everything on your plates, I’ll serve French sorbet for dessert. Won’t that be good?”
    â€œOkay, Mom.”
    The kids turned around and scooted through the opened back door into the kitchen. Their shrill bird-like laughter trailed after them, lingering in the Indian summer air before