I headed toward the Bay. Fourth and Fifth Streets doglegged inland here and came together to form Broadway, a fast four-lane drag sprinting south between the Mall and the cemetery past a small patch of nondescript light industrials encroaching the wetlands of the Bay, past both our car dealerships and out the bottom edge of town toward SF, which was a day’s drive away on winding mountain roads. Up ahead was the place I used to work: a soda distributor supplying the entire county.
This was the first and only straight job I’d ever worked, and I’d been surprised to find I loved it. I’d sweated those loading docks when I was a family man, spent most of my waking hours there: unloading stacks of soda cases from 48-foot big rig trailers out of the Bay Area, doing the basic split for all the delivery trucks, ensuring every little string town in a county the size of Connecticut got their daily allotment of name-brand carbonated sugar water.
Sixteen hours a day in exchange for my own house, food on my family’s table, and no life at all. Still, it looked mighty damn good from where I stood now.
I walked into the office and saw only two faces I knew from the old days: Bonnie, who was still a secretary after all these years; and Takeshi, a Japanese kid who’d been a route driver when I got busted.
Bonnie gasped when she saw me and busied herself with the paperwork on her desk. She’d put on some weight.
As for Takeshi? He hustled me out the office as soon as he recognized me. He offered a cigarette but I shook my head. He shrugged, sparked his own coffin nail, and looked across the parking lot at the shimmering tidal mudflats of the Harbor.
I was the one who’d gotten Takeshi his job here; Angela and Tak’s girlfriend Tiffany had been coffee buddies. Tak and Tiff had come over to our house more than once for potlucks or drinks, or for card games. We’d considered them friends.
Takeshi had put on a little weight his own self, but he still had that thick mop of black hair combed straight back Eddie Munster style. He’d grown himself a thin, scraggly little mustache and soul patch that were probably more trouble to shave around than they were worth. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a clip-on tie; he'd graduated to managing the distribution center.
Today Tak appeared old. But then, I was no spring chicken anymore myself. “How are you, Markus?” he asked, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke out the side of his mouth.
“Well enough,” I said. “I’m just looking around the old place, seeing what’s what. How’s Tiffany?”
He smiled, looked at the coal on his cigarette. “She’s great. You know we got a bambino now? His name is Kobi; he just turned two last week.”
“Well hell, I’ll be sure to send something when I get on my feet.”
“I got you a job here, Markus – if you want it.”
That actually felt pretty damn good; I’d always had this dorky pride in how well I humped the docks when I worked here. “Well, that truck platform probably ain’t been run right for the last seven years. You know I was the best they had. I’ll bet it took three guys to do my job after I left.”
Tak’s face put on a pained expression. “It couldn’t be the loading dock, Markus – I’d have to keep you out of sight. Janitorial or something, I’ll figure it out.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You know I was cleared, right Tak? I didn’t do it, I’m innocent.”
He took another drag off his cigarette, and I realized he hadn’t looked at me once since we’d come outside. He dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel, then gave me a flat look. “It’s the best I can do for you, Markus. There’s people around here I got to listen to, to keep my job. I got my own family to think of.”
I turned away and headed toward Broadway. I heard the office door open and close behind me, probably Takeshi going back inside – but I didn’t bother looking.