© 2011 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
2
WHEN DARKNESS smothers the heat and haze in San Pedro, the thick smog turns into fog and smoke. It looks prettier at night. Photographers like to shoot there, expensive magazine fashion layouts contrasting the sleek perfection of supermodel skin against the dingy, rusting metal and stone of a city terminally ill.
In the red light of stoplights and No Exit signs, thick steam pours out of the sewer grates. Beyond the steam of one grate, some light fell across the bottom of a brick wall. Drawn on the bricks was a round design in black lines; it looked like a beetle.
A woman’s feet in sharp high heels stopped by the grate.
The woman was tall and slim in her late 20’s. She had wheat-colored hair, sea-green eyes, and wore small antique glasses. She wore a sleeveless, sexy dress. At her throat was a choker, a black leather band holding a silver crescent moon and three stars. She didn’t really fit into the scene. She was too well-dressed, too intelligent looking, and too fashionable to actually live in San Pedro. But she didn’t look half rich enough to be one of the playmates or the nocturnal devotees. She looked around. She showed no sign of fear.
She opened her purse and sprayed perfume on the inside of one wrist and rubbed her wrists together as though the faint hint of a good scent could stave off the stench of the waterfront. Her arms were long and pale and bare. They bore no sign of marks.
The street was empty of people. On one side of the street was the discreet sign of a private club, Elysium. Across and down the street stood the tattoo parlor with the cards in the window on the clean white linen. The curbside was lined with vehicles, long black limousines standing waiting, as though the President had come for a visit or a movie premiere were being held.
The woman turned into an alley. It, too, was lined with the black limousines. The woman walked past them. She moved as slowly in a dream.
Next to the sewer grate two pairs of men’s shoes stepped up. Heavy, worn, brutal work-shoes.
The two men were strong and coarse. They looked like they belonged there day or night. There’s a type of San Pedran who lives there during the day, and never ventures out of doors after dark. There’s a type who only comes to visit, and only comes at night. And there’s the last type, the type that lives there in the day, sleeping off most of the it, and comes out after dark to service the playmates and the rich. These two belonged to the last type.
One looked like a dockworker. The sleeves of his T-shirt were torn off and showed a tattoo on his broad shoulder. The other had a punk haircut, several earrings, pinched eyes; he sucked insistently on a cigarette. The dockworker looked at the punk: they moved off. A third man came after them, tagging along. The third man wore a dark seaman’s coat, the collar turned up about the face.
The three men followed the woman into the alley.
The alley was littered with stacked crates, plastic bags full of rotting garbage, broken whiskey bottles. The woman’s shoes cracked on the concrete pavement. A large rat scuttled out of the way under one of the limousines.
From a distant barred window came the sound of a little girl singing:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
The woman moved down the alley. She looked straight ahead.
Far ahead, the alley opened onto another street. There were lights there. The lights of cars prowled back and forth.
The woman moved slowly on. She didn’t seem to be aware of the men following her. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. It was as though she were high, stoned on something stronger than wonder, or sleepwalking, or plain dazed. She seemed to be drifting.
The three men came down the alley after her. Their shoes crunched on the concrete, dull sounds swallowed in the snap-crack of the woman’s heels.
The woman drifted to a stop. Crunch, crunch. She heard the sounds and looked back.
She saw two dark shapes moving up the alley.
The woman started forward. She moved faster. She stared ahead.
At the far end of the alley the lights of cars prowled back and forth. They seemed farther away now.
The woman moved faster but it felt as though she went more slowly.
The punk and the man in the seaman’s coat came after her, deliberately.
The woman bumped into and knocked over a crate and cardboard box, moved on.
The punk kicked the box out of the way.
The woman knocked on the windows of one of the parked limousines as she passed it. She pounded her fists on the windshield of the next limousine. There was no response. Maybe nobody was inside the limousines, or maybe the chauffeurs sat behind the wheel and stonily watched the woman being tracked and hunted down, but there was no way to tell: the windows of the limousines were all smoked and nothing could be seen of what went on within them.
The woman gripped and threw down a crate, another, a third, spun around and bumped into—
—the dockworker, broad as a wall in front of her. He grinned and took hold. She struggled. He pushed her against the wall behind a pile of crates.
The punk and the man in the seaman’s coat arrived. The punk smiled.
The woman’s feet slipped out on the concrete from behind the crates. The strap on one of her shoes was broken and the shoe dangled half off her foot. Something bumped against the crates in a horrible, regular rhythm.
None of the limousine drivers came out to help the woman. Maybe they were all too scared. Maybe the cars were empty. Maybe the drivers were enjoying the show.
The punk puffed on his cigarette. He pinched it and flipped it aside. He moved forward.
The dockworker came back beside the man in the seaman’s coat. The dockworker had a stupid smile on his face. His T-shirt was torn across his chest; he held it up and put his finger through the tear.
‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Will you look at that.’
The man in the seaman’s coat stared resolutely at the crates.
The crates jostled, bump-bump-bump.
The face of the man in the seaman’s coat’s looked tired.
The punk emerged from behind the crates, hitching up his pants. He was shaking a can of black spray paint and he chucked it aside and lit another cigarette and sucked on it. His eyes were slits. He giggled.
‘She’s ready for you now, slugger. Next!’
The man in the seaman’s coat brushed past the punk; the punk laughed. The man in the seaman’s coat stood next to the crates looking down.
The woman was lying on the concrete. One knee was propped up and her head and shoulders leaned against the brick wall. Her hands were raised beside her head, the fingernails clutching the brick. Her dress was torn and her mouth bloody. Her throat was bare now. On the wall above the woman’s head a round design was painted in wet spray paint in black lines. It looked like a beetle.
The man in the seaman’s coat knelt over her.
‘Hello, Miss Wertham,’ he said.
The woman’s eyes filled with fear. Her head moved from side to side. Her lips opened and in a strangled voice she said, ‘Don’t … please…’
Her terror ran beyond anything you might expect in the circumstances. The truth is, she knew what was coming, and it was worse than any rape.
The man in the seaman’s coat shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders, as if there were nothing he could do about it.
She tried to push him away but he took hold of her pale bare wrist and bent it back flat against the wall and he leaned in over her, and the dark coat covered her body, and his face was very close to hers, and he kissed her on the mouth, pressing their lips together, and something moved under his hand gripping her wrist, from his wrist to hers. Then he moved back and let go of her wrist.
The woman slumped down the wall.
The man in the seaman’s coat turned his collar up against his face. The dockworker and the punk stood at his side. The dockworker looked down stupidly; the punk chewed and puffed the cigarette.
The dockworker said, ‘You mean, that’s it?’
The punk shrugged. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
The punk was tossing something in his hand; he giggled and flipped it up and the man in the seaman’s coat caught it. The punk tagged the dockworker’s shoulder and danced off. The other two followed.
The woman curled up against the crates and covered her face and sobbed quietly.
At the far end of the alley three dark shapes moved out of the opening. The car lights prowled back and forth like always.
From the barred window came the little girl’s voice:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
The spray-paint beetle shone black on the bricks. The woman turned. She uncovered her face and something caught her eye and she stared at her wrist and her mouth worked and opened and her eyes gaped with a fear greater than the one the rape inspired.
Her wrist wasn’t pale or bare anymore. There was a small mark there.
It was a tattoo. It was round in black lines. It looked like a beetle.
The woman shook her head. She scratched her wrist and rubbed at it but the tattooed beetle was there for good. She clawed at it as if it itched.
She got up and stumbled down the alley. She scratched and rubbed her wrist. She moved faster. She staggered out of the mouth of the alley—
—and she didn’t stop but she kept going straight ahead, right out into the street, into the traffic, and a huge truck bore down at her, the truck’s horn blared, and in the blaze of the lights the woman looked up from her wrist and saw the truck and she didn’t move out of the way, she moved toward the truck—
—the truck swept by, brakes squealing, and swung to a stop.
The driver jumped out of the cab. People from the sidewalk were gathering already around the front of the truck.
One pale arm was flung out under the tires. On the inner wrist there was a mark, a small tattoo, round in black lines. It looked like a beetle.
Throughout the incident, the woman hadn’t cried out or screamed. It was like in a nightmare where you want to yell your lungs out only your throat can’t make the right sounds anymore.
More people moved off the sidewalk to gather at the truck. One hung back. He stood in the shadows, watching.
The man leaned forward until his face caught the light. It was a man in a seaman’s coat.
From down the street a tug’s foghorn sounded.
§
THE FOGHORN echoed over the water. A wave slopped up against a piling with a spray of foam. The wave fell back and another wave came. At the top of the piling, a yellow light hung over the pier. A man leaned on the railing of the pier under the light. He wore a seaman’s coat. He was dangling something in his hand.
It was the choker the woman had worn. The black leather band held a silver crescent moon and three stars. On the back side of the silver was engraved:
For Amber
The man in the seaman’s coat stared at the choker. His eyes were bitter and narrow.
He pulled back his arm and flung the necklace as far away from him as he could. He turned away.
His face was lost in the shadow of his collar.
His heavy shoes knocked on the wooden planks of the pier.
He halted once and lifted his head. He seemed to be listening.
From far away, by the robot yards stacked with shipping containers, came the call of a train in the night.
Railway ties led across the gravel bed into the station house. The heavy shoes of the man in the seaman’s coat’s walked alongside the ties, following them.
His face jerked up at the blare of the train horn. A train was pulling out of the station. Lights moved across the man’s face. It was the face of a lost soul.
The man in the seaman’s coat started forward. He ran after the train. He reached the last car and swung himself up. The train gathered speed and left the station, heading into the darkness beneath the gleams in the sky.
The lights of the train flashed across the railway ties, faster and faster.
