Free Fogtown by Peter Plate

Celeste, “My homeboy here is mute and he’s saying you’re making him nervous. What do you want from us?”
    Mama made her move. Reaching in the shoebox, she plucked out a roll of hundreds. Hefting the cash in her palm, she said, “You all see this?”
    The mute made the sign of the cross over himself and then put his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth. His partner, being inquisitive, tossed the cards on the tarp, adjusted the bill on his hat, and said to Mama, “Yeah, so? What’s it got to do with me?”
    Mama Celeste was holding twenty thousand dollars in legal tender. It was funny how the cash made everything prettier. The sunlight was brighter. The wind had an extra zing. Cars looked newer. The sky was a deeper shade of blue. Birds sang with greater zeal. The pavement was cleaner. Monarch butterflies zigzagged in and out of the palm trees. Even the garbage on the ground was nicer.
    The stud in the baseball hat focused on the money and then on Mama Celeste. It took him a minute, but he figured it out. The lady with the dreadlocks was from the police. She was plainclothes, an undercover cop on a sting. Trying to lure him into a trap with the cash. Flapping a hand, he said to the mute, “Put the dog and the shit in the shopping cart and let’s get the hell out of here.”
    Mama Celeste watched the two homeless men totter down Valencia Street. She replaced the money in the shoebox and moved off in the opposite direction. Fifty feet away from the crosswalk at McCoppin and Market she encountered a large sassy tomcat, a tangerine-colored tabby, sprawled out on a curbstone. The feline’s whiskers were mangled. One of its ears was gone. Its eyes were green and sharp and took in Mama.
    Only yesterday Mama had been a young woman. Married with a husband. Working for some friendly white folks in a rest home on Sutter Street. Went out dancing at the jazz clubs in the Fillmore on the weekend. Was saving a nest egg to buy a house in the suburbs out near Pinole in the East Bay. Everything in life had been ahead of her. Now all that was behind her.
    On their honeymoon her husband had rented a car and driven them up the coast past Jenner-by-the-Sea in Sonoma County and then over through the redwoods into Mendocino. On the banks of the Eel River miles away from any paved roads, they had made love in the hot sun. She could still taste his sweat as if it had been yesterday.
    “May the Lord have mercy,” Mama Celeste sighed, “on my tired ass.”
    Striding along Market Street, Richard Rood was impatient to get to the Allen Hotel. Getting away from the cops had robbed him of energy; lassitude was doing a number on him. Recalling how the squad car had chased him through Stevenson Alley was enough to make him jittery all over again. The heat was on. Being in the streets wasn’t safe anymore. That was how the police wanted it: let the outlaws rot indoors from inactivity.
    Appraising the condition of his wardrobe, he was peeved. There was a rip in the shoulder seam of his patent leather jacket and a hole in the seat of his pants. The wind had shifted direction, affording Richard a whiff of himself. His suit was getting funky, simply because patent leather didn’t breathe like other fabrics.
    Rood didn’t notice Mama Celeste until he practically trolled into her. He recognized her as the old lady he’d seen an hour ago. Shrinking back a step, he burred, “What the hell are you doing in my goddamn way? Can’t you see I’m in a hurry?”
    Mama Celeste stopped on a dime. She drank in Richard’s appearance and saw a handsome man. His mouth was generous and intelligent. His eyes had red embers in them. His hands were aristocratic and feminine. His shoulders were wide and his hips svelte. Even the scar on his forehead was attractive.
    “Where are you going?” she asked. “You’re in a big rush, no?”
    Agitated, Richard jiggled out a wide-toothed steel comb from his pants and worked his jheri curls with it. Grooming