Taste of Tenderloin Read online

  Abruptly, the stage curtain began to silently lower, dropping ever so slowly, gradually blocking out even the tiniest glimmer of light. Total blackness, like a starless night fallen in on itself. Alone in the dark. After a few moments, he felt the sensation of sinking, as if he were being sucked down a black drain.

  Consciousness slipping...

  Nathan awoke, still sitting completely nude on the foot of his bed. In the fifteen or so minutes he'd been unconscious, night had begun to settle heavily over the city, cloaking his room in darkness.

  Taking a quick personal inventory, he felt pretty good---his breath, vision, and pulse rate were all back to normal, and his skin temperature had warmed up considerably. But, like the past two nights, his deathly pale body and limbs had been altered during the seizure, taking on an inky mottling with a peculiar 3-D blurring effect. Staring into the palm of his hand was like looking into a deep black pool of water that absorbed all light, reflecting nothing back; his hand and fingers became indistinct. Even close up, only a foot or so from his face, his hand looked blurry. After stretching his arm out, the hand and wrist disappeared completely, blending in perfectly with the room's increasing darkness. Nervously, Nathan flexed his lower legs and toes and fingered the clear tape just under his right armpit, still tightly binding the two cracked ribs. With a dry chuckle, he concluded, "Guess I'm still in one piece." It never occurred to him to call the doctors about his nightly skin alteration. Over the years he'd learned to accept whatever the Tenderloin dealt him with fatalistic resignation.

  Nathan stood up, but stumbled and had to reach out to steady himself for a few seconds against the wall, his legs drained of energy, unsteady. He took a deep breath, then stepped cautiously across the small room, pausing for a second and glancing with boyish glee into the cracked dresser mirror a yard or two away. He saw an empty, unlit room, and only a slight distortion of the dark atmosphere where he stood, as if a slight breeze had disturbed a wave of heat rising from a floor vent.

  Dismissing any attempted explanations of the remarkable transformation, Nathan chuckled loudly as he left the room, still unclothed.

  At the foot of the stairs leading into the dingy hotel lobby, Nathan paused and glanced left at Ferdie, who did not even look up from the barred window at the front desk. The night clerk was busy laying out keys for the first floor rooms, most of which rented for hourly rates. That night, Friday, would be hectic, a constant stream of women and their customers coming in from the street. Nathan wondered why Ferdie bothered with the keys at all. Half of the door locks in the old, run-down Reo---especially those on the busy first floor---didn't work.

  He shrugged and deftly dodged to the side to avoid being run over by an eager couple hurrying in the opened doors of the hotel. The hooker led a red-faced, fat john to the front desk, where the john dug out and handed Ferdie a five-dollar bill and received a key in return. The numbered keys did benefit the night clerk, in a way; they helped Ferdie keep track of which rooms were in use.

  Satisfied that neither the couple nor Ferdie could see him, Nathan turned from the front desk and stepped outside, shivering in the cool evening air and glancing about.

  Early Friday night and the Tenderloin was already rockin'-n-rollin'. Jones Street traffic was stalled-out bumper-to-bumper waiting for the lights to change over on Geary. Horns blasted, people shouted, Muni buses belched out diesel fumes, and the sidewalk was already littered with trash and crowded with a representative sample of the city's underclass---recent immigrants, furtive sellers of hot goods and special services, and even a pair of young children joyfully playing tag in and out of the adults in addition to the usual desolate and desperate human beings. A kind of nervous energy electrified the atmosphere, giving it the Midwest tingle of a hovering thunderstorm. The 'loin was loud, smelly, dirty, and congested with restless excitement.

  All of this sound and fury bombarded Nathan's senses as he moved along, protecting his injured ribs with his right elbow. It felt almost like something he was experiencing for the first time, which was true in a way. He had not noticed much of anything specific about the Tenderloin for a long time, with the exception of the location of several liquor stores. Not until the strange seizures and changes.

  Unlike the previous two evenings of just wandering around naked like an unseen, laughing idiot, Nathan had something in mind that night, a destination and a goal. Oh, yeah. He grinned deviously to himself.

  Heading north toward Geary Street, Nathan spotted Sweet Jane just ahead on the fringe of the crowd with her back against a building front---a hooker from the Reo who occasionally slipped him a buck or two at the end of the month. She was playing her violin, something she sometimes did on the street before work. Mostly classical stuff. At the moment it was "When a Gypsy Makes His Violin Cry." The majority of the mob ignored her, but a few people stopped to listen, as did Nathan, making a little island in the moving river. Sweet Jane, whom he'd probably passed by hundreds of times during the past few years without really paying close attention, played exceptionally well. Her eyes were closed and a peaceful smile rested on her pretty but lined and aging face. Nathan nodded. Another depressing story among the Tenderloin's many? Maybe, but he didn't see it that way. Listening to her play was like glimpsing a fallen angel flexing her damaged wings, trying to fly and transcend her grim circumstances.

  "Gotta go to work now," Sweet Jane announced, taking the instrument from under her chin and shrugging her shoulders reluctantly at the disappointed faces of the few who had paused to listen. She bent down and put the violin in the battered case after scooping up the handful of coins inside. Obviously the woman wasn't playing for the pitiful change. Nathan shook his head.

  Continuing up the street, he worked his way through the swelling crowd, enjoying his clear-headed alertness. People paid no attention to his undressed state. No one really saw Nathan at all as he shouldered his way through the delay at the stoplight.

  Finally, he reached his goal: the open entry to All-Star Donuts on Post Street. He closed his eyes and savored the rich smells that assailed his nostrils. He had drunk no alcohol for seven days, his heavily medicated state in SF Gen helping him avoid any of the usual withdrawal symptoms and booze calls, but since hitting the street again he had experienced an intense craving for sugar.

  Nathan opened his eyes, waited for a few moments, then strolled into the doughnut shop that he'd picked so carefully. The half of the shop to the right was completely dark; the stools, lunch counter, and tables were closed for the night. Only the pastry display counter and cash register to the left were well-lit.

  The two clerks behind the cash register gossiped in their nasal, sing-song native language. Neither girl noticed the naked old man who slid to the right around the dark side of the counter, and after a moment of pondering choices, helped himself to a pair of raspberry jelly-filled doughnuts from the aluminum trays. Then Nathan backed into the dimness near the rear wall and ate both pilfered doughnuts on the spot with impunity. Each of the white-iced pastries hovered magically in the air in the long wall mirror before rapidly disappearing from sight in three or four huge bites.

  Nathan licked his sticky fingers, unable to restrain a burp after eating the sweets too fast.

  The nearest girl must have heard him; she turned suddenly, the frown on her face quickly dissolving into a look of puzzlement. So much for the inscrutable countenance of the stereotypical Chinese, Nathan thought, chuckling to himself as he left, his jones satisfied for the moment.

  He wandered the rest of the evening.

  Finally driven inside by the chilling fog that rolled in from the bay around midnight, Nathan waited patiently on the foot of his bed. The seizure soon hit again, the events in the other place exactly the same as earlier at dusk, only reversed in sequential order.

  Unconsciousness...

  Complete darkness, chilling cold, alone.

  A line of light appeared at foot level, expanding as the stage curtain rose, the full glare of the floodlights blin
ding, everything almost dreamlike.

  Sickening disorientation, dizziness...

  Nathan once again sat on the foot of his bed, completely drained of energy. He glanced at the reflection in the cracked dresser mirror and nodded a sarcastic greeting.

  "Glad to see you back, you pale old fart."

  Then he slipped on his raggedy grey underwear and climbed under the frayed brown Army blanket, drifting off almost instantly into a deep sleep.

  Incident at Homeboy's Liquor Store

  The next morning, Nathan remained stretched out on his narrow bed at the Hotel Reo after he awoke. He tried to apply his once world-class analytical mind to the peculiar situation at hand. What was going on?

  He seemed to be subject to a special kind of seizure he could trigger at will after dark by relaxing in the nude, and the seizure led to a remarkable skin alteration. With his transformed skin, he could walk around after dark with no one able to see him, or even aware of his presence. Truly an amazing situation.

  Of course it was quite possible, Nathan admitted to himself, his elation flattening out, that he had finally gone around the corner, that the booze had gotten to him, and that he was suffering from some kind of alcohol-induced psychosis. He wasn't too different from so many others wandering the Tenderloin, talking to their invisible buddies. Just nutty old bums, except that he was a nutty old naked bum. But he didn't think that was really the case. People in the 'loin were pretty tolerant, but at the very least some indignant immigrant mother would have drawn the line at his full nudity in front of her kids and called the cops. Perhaps more importantly, his mind seemed different since leaving the hospital, much sharper, his thinking clear, his recall of recent events perfectly intact.

  Nathan didn't think he was crazy. This alteration was real, not imaginary. Maybe an important question to consider was why he had this special ability.

  "Okay," he said to himself, frowning and sitting upright. "Let's back up a week and take it from the beginning."

  On Friday night, the thirtieth of June, he'd been cadging coins up on the five hundred block of O'Farrell---still part of the 'loin, but a better class of apartment residents up there, most of them employed. He'd almost managed enough panhandled money to swing a half pint of Wild Irish Rose. It would get him by until the next day, and maybe his SSI check, usually not delivered until the third, would be on time.

  That was when he spotted the young white dude in a suit up at the corner near Homeboy's, glancing around nervously. A mark, if he ever saw one. Nathan hustled right up, sticking out his hand. "Say, man, can you spare some change. I ain't ate all day." A damn lie, of course. He'd eaten well over at St. Anthony's earlier that afternoon.

  The guy looked startled, spooked. Then, with a frightened shake of his head, he bolted, darting around a parked Cougar that was idling in Homeboy's white zone, jumping in behind the wheel, and speeding away.

  "Jesus, what hap---?" Nathan began to mumble aloud.

  He was cut off, almost jerked off his feet backward.

  "Fuck ya'll doin', wethead?" a voice growled menacingly from behind him.

  Choked by the tightened collars of both his shirt and topcoat, Nathan managed to painfully twist his head enough to get a view of his attacker.

  His heart stopped.

  It was Black Angus.

  The huge man loomed behind him in the mouth of an alley, his face contorted with anger.

  "Yeah, you smelly ole fool," Baby Junior said as he stepped out of the shadowed alley, moving close. Spittle splattered Nathan's chest as the thinly-built young man with a nasty fish hook scar on his cheek got right up in his face. "See what you done?" said Baby Junior in an accusatory tone. He stabbed his finger in the direction of the Cougar's departing tail lights.

  Oh, man, Nathan thought, staring at the speeding car, his heart sinking. These two were crack dealers. The white guy must have been a potential customer.

  As Nathan turned back to face them, his situation got drastically worse. Eug, another dealer---and one of the craziest---was standing a step or two back in the alley darkness. He casually flipped open a straight razor; the blade glinted brightly in the dim light.

  Big trouble.

  "Ya'll done scared off bidness, fuckhead," Black Angus said slowly, each word pronounced distinctly. His face was deadpan, his eyes colder than black ice, as he easily dragged Nathan into the alley, nearer his razor-wielding partner.

  "Ole fool need his ass whupped!" Baby Junior declared, like a judge proclaiming sentence. He turned his face toward the third dealer, who was grinning back humorlessly, exposing two gold-capped front teeth and nodding in agreement.

  "I hear ya, bro," Eug replied, swinging the razor at arm's length across his body as if it were a scythe. The blade was a quick, lethal blur, the dealer's eyes hooded but bright with excitement. "Lemme give him a shave afterwards."

  Nathan tensed up, but caught like he was in Angus's firm grip, he couldn't possibly escape. Mesmerized, he stared first at Eug's weapon, then the man's equally evil smile.

  At that moment something smashed unexpectedly into Nathan's face, knocking him backward into the alley's brick wall. He slumped down with a thud onto his butt, pain making him see pinwheels of swirling red. The hurt centered in the middle of his face; his nose was probably broken. Blinking away the flow of tears, Nathan reached up, intending to wipe away the blood that dripped from his upper lip.

  A kick crashed into his exposed right armpit, expelling all the air from his lungs and causing a sharp, painful sensation between his ribs. The back of his head slammed against the bricks.

  Dazed, his head and body wracked with pain, Nathan groaned loudly.

  "Here's somepin else for ya nasty ole raggedy ass."

  Again, Nathan's head was driven back into the brick wall by a glancing blow from a fist to his left cheek.

  "Lemme cut the stinky bum, Angus---"

  "Hey, you dudes, cops coming!" a voice warned from the street. "Let's do a Mo Green, 'foh The Man be bustin' our sorry asses."

  Footsteps ran off.

  Nathan groaned again.

  Nausea and blackness.

  Nathan blinked at two fuzzy faces. "Uh---"

  His gasp was cut short by assorted hurting: the throbbing of his nose, a duller ache from the back of his head, and the much sharper pain of his side, like a sliver of steel lodged between the ribs under his right arm.

  He threw up.

  Even after catching his breath, Nathan couldn't speak. His throat and mouth burned from his own vile juices. All he could manage was a slight groan.

  "Okay, okay, take it easy," one of the blurred faces said gruffly.

  The other face leaned in closer, speaking in a soothing whisper, "You'll be okay, Nate, an ambulance is on its way. You aren't hurt too bad."

  Not too bad? He felt like he'd been run over by a truck.

  Nathan blinked, squinting through the veil of pain, trying to see clearly the woman behind the gentle voice. The fuzzy face slowly took shape: bright, dark eyes, big smile, and the whitest teeth. It was the young woman who worked over at St. Anthony's, who always spoke to him in her friendly, hoarse voice. He'd seen her that afternoon when he had eaten over there. Her nametag read...?

  LuLu, that was it.

  Nathan tried unsuccessfully to smile. Instead, he grimaced and groaned, his nose still dripping blood, his head still aching, and his right side, when he breathed deeply, feeling like someone was stabbing him with an ice pick.

  The woman leaned closer, gently wiping his bloody face with a wet cloth of some kind. "Could've been a lot worse. That nutty Eug had a razor and would've cut your throat. This will help."

  She lifted his head, putting something under to support it, and pushed the palm of her other hand squarely against his forehead.

  Whoa!

  Nathan flinched back from the unexpected sensation. It felt like he'd been hit with an icy lighting bolt right between the eyes the exact moment LuLu's bare palm had touched his skin. He groaned
again, his vision tunneling as the electricity traveled from his head down his spine, cramping every muscle in his body. His back arched up violently---

  Blackness.

  Nathan awakened four hours later in the trauma center at San Francisco General Hospital, the nurses confirming LuLu's initial diagnosis that he wasn't hurt too badly and was in little danger from his assorted injuries, except for the possibility of a bad concussion. Black Angus and his buddies had broken Nathan's nose and cracked two ribs, but that was the extent of any serious damage. The back of his head and his chest were badly bruised, but internally he was only shaken up. Nathan made it through the night okay, until the announcement the next morning when the doctor came in with some preliminary test results. They'd done a CAT scan and an EEG as precautionary measures because of the concussion. Through a heavy drug haze, Nathan learned that he appeared to be okay physically, but his brain wave pattern was not quite normal. Instead, it resembled that of an epileptic. The doctor was not sure if this was caused by the recent beating or perhaps just his normal base. They wanted to keep him in the hospital, under medication, for a few days of more observation and testing.

  The medical staff learned little from the additional tests, including a MRI, other than that the abnormal brain wave pattern was probably "normal" for Nathan. They would have preferred to study him more, but the city's main hospital for street people was understaffed and overworked, so the doctors reluctantly released him Wednesday afternoon with a prescription for Tylenol-codeine that Nathan never filled.

  Oddly, from day one back on the street he experienced no withdrawal symptoms, no booze or dope calls. None. But on Wednesday night, back at Hotel Reo, Nathan experienced the first of his seizure-alterations after taking off his clothes for a warm sponge bath at the rust-stained sink in his room. The same thing recurred Thursday night. He wandered around, making faces and gestures at people who couldn't see him, laughing like a simple-minded fool.