Snitch Factory: A Novel by Peter Plate

What about that woman you were seeing?”
    “The chiropractor?”
    “Yeah, her. Weren’t you talking about getting hitched?”
    “Uh, I don’t know.”
    “Liar. You chickened out.”
    In the dim, Vaselined light of Clooney’s, Hendrix’s skin made me think of yesterday’s macaroni. Simmons was playing pinball. Rubio had gone over to another table to flirt with a couple of thirty-or-something ladies. Clooney’s was a nice place. It had a horseshoe-shaped bar, a football scoreboard on the wall, and a kitchen that served meatloaf and salisbury steak. A furry mutt was sleeping under a
video machine. I was on my third beer, and we’d been in there for only fifteen minutes.
    In the back near the toilets, Vukovich was smooching with this babe that I’d never seen before. He picked her up from the floor, as he was at least a foot taller than her, and she was french kissing him like a doe at a salt lick.
    “That’s the pre-op he’s been seeing,” Harry said, blinking at Vukovich. “She’s from Vietnam, but no one knows that. It’s a secret.”
    “What’s the secret?”
    “She’s got no papers. She stays on Lexington Street near you. Matt says the ethnic Chinese on the block hate her. He’s worried they’ll turn her in to the INS.”
    Simmons put a dozen quarters into the jukebox and singles by the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, the Isley Brothers, the Flamingos and Johnnie Taylor started ripping through the bar’s speaker system, one after another. This inspired Bart to strip off his shirt and to pirouette in a circle, shouting that he wanted to dance. I knew Harry was mad at me because of what I’d said, about him being afraid. That’s why he started yelling at Rubio.
    “Hey, Bart! Put your shirt back on, you dweeb!”
    Rubio heard him and without ceasing to shake his hips from side to side, hoping to impress the ladies with his dancing expertise, he flipped Harry the bird.
    Hendrix chugged away at his beer, then smacked his lips with a certain kind of prescience like he was going to say something important.
    “Charlene.”
    “What?”
    “I want to get away from the city. Take it easy. Go some place where I can have a break.”
    “You want to leave San Francisco?”

    “Yeah, what’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t I want to move somewhere else?”
    “Where would you go? San Jose?”
    “Nah, not that far. Maybe Oakland.”
    “Gertrude Stein used to live there.”
    “Who’s that? A broad you know? Why don’t you introduce me to her?”
    “For one, she’s not your type, and anyway, you’re not leaving town, Hendrix.”
    “The fuck I’m not. The rent is too high over here.”
    I finished my beer and thought about having sexual intercourse in a field of flowers. What kind of flowers, I didn’t care. Getting loaded pushed me outside the circle of life, pushed me nearer to the other world and closer to eternity. “Harry,” I said. “I’ll make a bet with you.”
    My co-worker’s face lighted up like a Christmas tree in a suburban living room window during the holidays. “Yeah? What for?”
    “To see who stays in San Francisco longer, you or me.”
    “For how much?”
    “Ten bucks.”
    “Don’t be a cheapskate.”
    “Okay, twenty-five bucks.”
    “Consider it done, Mrs. Hassler.”
    Having successfully removed his slacks, Bart Rubio was doing a striptease to the catcalls of the other patrons. He was about to pull off his jockey shorts when the bartender scolded him.
    The women Rubio had been flirting with departed, re-affirming my belief that unless social workers are married, they never have sex, which makes them drink more than ever. I asked Harry if he wanted to go get something to eat, maybe a taco. It felt like someone had made a Cesarean
incision across my stomach, and with the three beers in me, I was getting dizzy. Before Hendrix could respond to my suggestion, Rubio turned yellow and threw up, splattering the black and green floor tiling with a deluge of watery