The Octopus on My Head by Jim Nisbet Page A

rockin’ robins, those two. Regular loveboids. Very close. Although I don’t see what she—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and pointed the tin. “When you get to 112 De Haro Street, tell Stefan anything you damn well please. But when you see Angelica, tell her that old Ari Torvald misses her.”
    I brightened considerably. “112 De Haro,” I said. “Yessir. I certainly will tell her, sir.”
    â€œThat’s Ari Torvald, now. From Anza Street.”
    â€œAri Torvald,” I repeated, retreating towards the taxi. “112 De Haro Street. Thank you so much, Sir! I’ll send you an invite to our first gig!”
    The old man shook his head. “Jimmy Rodgers and an octopus.” He lowered the sash.
    â€œOh, boy.” The cabbie rubbed his hands as I got into the back seat. “Potrero Hill, here we come.” He slid a hand flatwise over the dashboard. “Alllll the way across the city.”
    I closed the door. “Forget it.” The fare on the meter had reached thirteen dollars. “Drop me where you found me on Balboa.”
    â€œSonofabitch …. ”
    â€œDo it.”
    He turned south on 36th Avenue and muttered imprecations the whole six blocks.

Chapter Five
    D E H ARO S TREET EXTENDS NORTH, FROM ONE OF THE WORST housing projects in the city, up and over Potrero Hill and down to 17th Street, past the softball diamonds at Lazzeri Playground to the intersection of King and Division Streets, through what used to be a warehouse district. In the dotcom times—roughly the last ten years of the 20th century—you couldn’t rent unimproved space in that neighborhood for less than $80 per square foot per annum, even if you could find it. After the dotcom crash, however, the vacancy rate climbed to 30% in less than a year, and suddenly you could take your pick from any number of nicely turned-out commercial spaces at about $20 per foot. Owners and landlords began to offer incentives. They even sank to renting rehearsal space to bands again. I’m sure some of them cried.
    In the dotcom times a pedestrian could get run over crossing any street in these flatlands, day or night. Lucre-crazed SUV drivers ignored stop signs, pedestrians, other SUVs, even cops, certain that the gold rush would wait for no one. A worker flagging a lane of traffic while his crew backed a cement truck toward a pour was run over and killed by a man driving an SUV, steering wheel in one hand, a phone in the other. Whatever he was talking about proved to be more important than another man’s life. Despite the presence of an entire construction crew, any number of other drivers, and the SUV’s female passenger, all of whom bore witness, the hit-and-run driver was never caught. The dead flagman left a wife and three kids.
    Not two years later the flatlands at the foot of Potrero Hill had become nearly as deserted by day as they were by night, as exposed as an intertidal reef by the recession of the tsunami of avarice. Gold rush over, the locals started to poke their heads out again in order to enjoy their restored tranquility—to wit, we saw a man in a pink tutu and tights and yellow dance slippers accompanied by a mincing, perfectly coiffed pink Pomeranian, the only citizens in sight, as Lavinia made a preliminary pass down the one hundred block of De Haro, and I counted down a series of roll-up doors along a waist-high loading dock: 116, 114, 112, 110 ….
    We circled the block for another look. The citizen and his dog had disappeared. A city is funny like that. You see something notable, turn a corner, never see it again. Across the street from the warehouse stood another, still with its loading dock; but its roll-up doors had been replaced by glassed-in office bays, its freight spur so hastily paved over that the street retained a phantom trace of rails. A vinyl sign dangled limply from the remodeled building’s stucco parapet, advertising the