Cantina Psalms (eBook)

Thomas Shess (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
384 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-4403-9 (ISBN)

Infos

'Cantina Psalms' is a rapid-paced collection of urban noir. These tightly woven short stories are deep with crime, erotic love, and ironic social satire. It is a crowded saloon of intertwined characters-all from San Francisco's gritty North Beach neighborhood. Each story is a table set with silver spoons, forks in the road, and sharp knives.

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"e;Cantina Psalms"e; main characters include penthouse politicos, icy homegrown drug czars, and a mysterious redhead who creates havoc for everyone. Caught in the middle, is the Mayor's bodyguard, who has to protect himself from good trouble and bad, including broken cops, jealous peers, and even His Honor's daughters. "e;Cantina Psalms"e; cleverly manipulates a San Francisco cast in the near future. Can this world-famous city of power brokers, innovators, dreamers, and misfits save itself from chaos?

Textauszug

2.
APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY

Sketches and Short Stories

Cantina Psalm:

Shhh, it’s probably a secret

THE MARTINS

A few days before St. Valentine’s, North Beach basked in a false spring morning, typical for a Bay Area winter.

Sunshine streaked through the clouds for the first time in two weeks, accompanied by a bone-chilling wind from off the ocean.

The young couple still in bed ignored the sunrise until a loud ear-jarring metal-against-metal grinding woke them.

Both recognized the noise. It came from a city bus that came uncoupled from its overhead electric lines and stalled in the intersection below Tom Gresham’s bedroom window.

After compact energy pods made overhead electric lines obsolete, the city kept the number 30 bus line from downtown to North Beach in operation, along with the Market Street trolleys, as a historic throwback. They remained the only lines with human drivers.

But when you are trying to sleep late to nurse away a hangover, he cared less that the most complex public entities take the longest to change. That is why they look and operate the same way for decades or even centuries. San Francisco is no different. It took forever to convert the electric bus and trolley system to run on forever batteries.

Thanks to Anthony Guereca, a University of California, San Diego-trained power grid engineer, who came up with the fusion pod that captured the power of safe nuclear energy in a bread box-sized unit, world transportation systems on Earth, the Moon and fledgling efforts on Mars changed forever.

Think of how the world changed after Edison, Tesla, Ford, and the Wright Bros. Guereca’s pod allowed cars, trucks, buses, and planes to be powered only once from the factory. No more overhead electric lines, batteries or fossil fuels were needed to move the masses.

Guereca’s team told all the fossil fuel kingdoms and corporations to go fuck themselves. And, what endeared him with so many was that he dispersed his knowledge to anyone that asked. He became as wealthy as Wally McGrath, whose McGrath International built the pods for Guereca and the world.

Tom tried to fall back to sleep, but a blaring horn from an impatient driver aimed at the unhinged orange and white Muni bus ruined his chance to sleep late.

Carly Martin’s vibrant green eyes fixed on him. “Nothing’s changed,” she said. “All you did was get me drunk and talk me back into bed with you.”

He yawned.

A curly bedhead of blonde and gray hair sat up. “You’re right, nothing has changed. How many times have we done this dance?” He gently put his hand on her black hair, cut pixie style.

The evening before, they had bandied over the act of separation. Back and forth she insisted it was time to break it off, again. End a clandestine romance that was now in its fifth year. And every time she brought it up, again, he would say, “fine.” She would reinforce, “I mean it this time.”

He knew Carly was raging at her inability to halt advancing old age.

Carly, now an assistant DA aping her father’s career path, had been complaining for the past week that she was about to turn thirty.

Distasteful as it was, she was not about to let the milestone day pass without a celebration.

She dropped her head back down on her pillow. “Garrett has booked me for a birthday lunch day after tomorrow.”

“Ah, the ever-opportunistic Mr. Ellis, your Black God.”

“He doesn’t know we’re seeing each other. Give him a break. Maybe he’s being polite. I hope.”

“You’d think he’d get the hint.”

“I like him. He’s attractive and has a great sense of humor. And he loves going out on the town.”

“Well, if you and I were allowed to show our faces as a loving couple, I too could be a gadabout.”

She continued. “Leave him alone. At least, he asked me. And, no, he’s not sleeping with me.”

“Yet,” Tom added.

“Look, the sun’s out,” she said.

“When is your birthday exactly.”

“Monday. That gives you all weekend to buy me a lavish present.”

“I’m on duty later this morning. Your father is playing golf at the Olympic Country Club. Maybe we can do something this afternoon.”

“Why don’t you call him and tell him LOBE news has been reporting a gale is on its way. Save you a trip. Save you a day out of your life.”

“No, it doesn’t work that way. He might want to go somewhere else.”

You’re such a good slave, Tommy Gresham,” she said.

He walked out of the bedroom to shower.

She realized her remark probably offended him.

Carly dropped her head back on her pillow in frustration reminding herself of his most agonizing personality trait—his passive acceptance of their relationship no matter which direction it took.

She listened to him in the shower until she let her thoughts drift away. She inventoried his bachelor’s bedroom. It hadn’t changed since the first time they made love on his lumpy double bed. Has he ever made his bed? Changed the sheets? Seldom. Or has he put on the new pillowcases or the sheer curtains that she bought for him?

She put her hands over her eyes. It didn’t really bother her the bed wasn’t made but the thought nauseated her if he brought other women to his flat.

Carly sat up in bed. She realized she was trying to find reasons to leave him, again.

In the shower, Tom sensed she was about to make another exit. It had been the third or so time she mentioned Garrett in passing. He felt it and he wasn’t happy, but he was going to argue with her. How do you argue with a woman that makes a living debating life and death situations for a living? And, if there was anything true about himself, he was never going to win an argument. He could hear her say: Yes, the sky is blue but there is evidence that it can be gray or orange. We have a lot of variables here, your honor.

But trusted her to return. So far, she always has. He asked no questions when she returned because he understood she was in charge, and he had few choices. He felt blessed to be with such a dynamic woman, who left little to chance. She pushed hard in life as she did in the courtroom. Hers was a Terrier personality while his was a St. Bernard. He knew he was a lucky man. He melted in the presence of her beauty and smarts. Not because he was gutless but because he had little money. His hands were tied. And it made him bitter that she paid for almost everything. One day, he knew she might not come back. How could he keep her on a cop’s salary? End of story.

Carly sat up. She looked in his dresser for a clean t-shirt to pull over her nakedness. She shook her head at how such a physically strong, fearless, and good-looking man could be so passive when it came to their relationship. She yearned for him to be fed up with her. Save her from her ending the romance.

She walked in on him because she had to pee before she burst.

He was shaving. The room was a sauna.

They didn’t speak.

The carousel kept spinning. Ad nauseam.

That was yesterday, on and on and on and on.

***

Tom went directly to the kitchen from the shower. He pulled on a pair of gray sweats. As he brewed a pot of coffee, he walked over and opened his kitchen window. He pushed Carly from his thoughts by asking himself if he should buy his flat by using the money, he made on Garcia’s Madrid assignment.

It would be the smart thing to do. Time to invest in the future. He figured he could live until eighty unless someone put bullets into him: one in his upper torso and another in his ribs. For now, he could use a tax shelter. Call it a mid-life crisis or a nod to the bourgeois.

But he stopped himself. He sipped on the hot coffee. Did he want the burden of owning his own place? He dreaded the bureaucracy of it all. He always returned to the thought of buying the vintage Ford Mustang that his friend John Wald offered to sell him countless times. John threatened to junk the 2x2 fastback. It was a dinosaur with a banned gasoline engine forever housed behind his friend’s saloon, a block west of Tom’s flat. Wald wanted the garage space for needed storage to run his Powell’s Saloon.

That would be great for John, but Tom would have to find a parking space on the street. And that would be an added parking hassle considering he drives the 40-year-old Chrysler sedan, Joe Martin uses as his Mayoral limousine. The gray ghost averages five parking citations in North Beach alone per month, a dilemma he charges off to the city.

But if he owned the Mustang, he wouldn’t have the fiscal protection of being head of Mayor Martin’s security detail, a team of one.

San Francisco did not suffer auto withdrawals like other fossil fuel guzzling cities up and down the West Coast. Reason is because its narrow seven miles by seven miles city limits that meant it had always been a walking and biking city. And the expense of finding black market gasoline at $20 new dollars a gallon was not worth the squeezed juice from an old lemon. Gasoline-fed cars were too costly and too much trouble.

He dismissed the idea of buying John’s Mustang. Everything was too much trouble. That and including Carly Martin.

Bureaucratic red tape aside, Tom never thought he’d be able to own his own apartment. San Francisco lacks housing. It is on record...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.11.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-4403-2 / 1667844032
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-4403-9 / 9781667844039