Here is an excerpt from
Boomerang:
Outside Cafe Verdi, North Beach San Francisco
“You know,” said Jerry, “for a big, tall, fat guy, you sure are hard to find.”
Ted looked up from the San Francisco Chronicle crossword puzzle on the table in front of him. He had yet to take his first sip from the big blue mug of steaming Guatemalan Antigua Supremo next to the newspaper and that, combined with the fact that some cretin with a rollerball—doubtless the individual who had purchased the paper and then left it hanging half in-half out of the waste receptacle next to the entrance—had scrawled a dozen pathetically incorrect answers across the crossword, meant Ted was predisposed at this point to be grumpy. He liked a nice, clean crossword in his second–hand paper. What he saw when he looked up did not improve his disposition.
“I am not seeing you,” he said.
He returned to the crossword, erasing the man standing next to his table from his consciousness the way he wished he could erase the bold, black ink from the crossword. Seven letter word meaning cylindrical in shape. “ROUNDED”? Some feebleminded clod was wandering the City with a permanent writing instrument, probably a Mont Blanc, confident that he had conquered a line of the crossword with “ROUNDED”. Ted clicked another measure of lead through the point of his mechanical pencil and squeezed “tubular” into the violated squares.
“Ted, man, it's me.”
“No, it’s not you.”
Fourteen across, “A public clown”. Eleven letters. The cretin had tried-doubling up the letters in the last three squares-to fit in R-O-N-A-L-D-M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D. Ted grudgingly admitted the cretin had a point, in a mentally deficient sort of way. He squeezed in the correct answer: M-e-r-r-y-A-n-d-r-e-w.
“Okay, okay, sorry about the big, fat crack. You want to stop acting like a jerk?”
Ted took a sip of his freshly poured coffee. Black, couple packets of the tan sugar crystals. Still too hot. He set it back on the table and checked the “Across” clues.
Jerry shook his head and thought for a couple of seconds. He ran a hand over his carefully slicked back hair, held it for a moment on the back of his neck and frowned. “Look, Ted, just gimme a minute here, ok?”
Ted inserted another word; “Roald”, for “Author Dahl”.
Jerry turned to the two men holding hands across the table to his right, said, “Hey, guys, mind if I borrow this?”, referring to a third, unoccupied chair at their table. Not waiting for a reply, he pulled the plastic, patio style chair in front of himself, its back to Ted's table. He swung a leg high to straddle it.
If Jerry had been more observant he would have noticed that the chair had molded-in armrests. All parts of him above the knee swung down and all parts below the knee pivoted up. His head smacked sharply against the sidewalk just as his foot came up under the table. It lifted on his side a good twelve, fourteen inches into the air. The newspaper slid off the table, fluttered across Ted's lap, and drifted in fragments down the sidewalk. The still steaming coffee followed, but only the cobalt blue stoneware cup made it as far as the sidewalk. The coffee arced directly onto Ted's lap.
“Aiaiaiaiaiai!”
Ted shot up, sending the table in the opposite direction with no little vigor. Jerry, knocked just the wrong side of sensibility by the sudden meeting of the sidewalk and the base of his skull, got a quick wake-up from a corner of the table, which landed sharply about six inches south of his naval.
“Ooooooph! Nrrr.”
The patrons at the half-dozen other outside tables belonging to the Cafe Verdi, as well as passersby in the vicinity, were treated to the sight of Ted dancing vigorously about, hopping from one foot to the other, and pulling his slacks away from his crotch. He looked like a Kodiak bear auditioning for Bring on da Music, Bring on de Funk or one of any of the other testosterone heavy dance spectacles so popular in recent years. Jerry served up an accompanying low ostinato moan as he rocked back and forth on the sidewalk. Not as entertaining as the human robot on Union Square or even the guy who played guitar, after a fashion, and sang, after a different fashion, at the trolley stop by Fisherman's Wharf, but a passing appliance dealer from Iowa thought it merited a quarter. Ted's coffee cup, which had landed, miraculously enough, upright and unscathed, received the coin with equanimity.
A minute later and half-a-block away, Jerry caught up with Ted. Each man's gait was a little out of the norm. Ted swept his right arm up and back as he heard Jerry approach. Jerry ducked under and ran ahead, then turned to backpedal for a mobile face to face. Ted reversed direction, quickening his pace back toward Cafe Verdi.
“Ted! Ah, man, c'mon!”
Jerry sprinted after. Ted's right arm flashed up again and, as Jerry tried once again to duck under, Ted spun around, caught him under the arms with both hands, and lifted him a foot off the ground. He held the little man there a full thirty seconds, nose to nose, chin to chin, eyeball to eyeball and fixed him with a stare that had caused many an opposing forward in both college and the NBA to honor his personal space.
“Go,” he said. “Away.”
He lowered Jerry back to ground level, enveloped the little man’s shoulders in his massive hands and turned him around.
“That way.”
“But—”
A shove at the small of the back sent Jerry involuntarily lurching in the direction indicated. Ted looked mournfully down at the large, dark stain spread across his crotch and slowly walked away.
Jerry, after the shove inspired stumble and couple of steps, took three or four more steps on his own, stopped, turned back, and called after Ted.
“We've got a job!”
The big man kept walking.
“It's money, Ted! Good, real good money!”
Ted did not stop. Jerry chanced a small advancing step.
“Piece of cake!”
Ted kept going. Jerry had to raise his voice to carry over the traffic sounds.
“I know you lost your job! You need the bucks!”
Ted raised a single-digit response high over his head and kept going.
Jerry returned the salute. He had a little argument with himself, decided the issue without looking like he was entirely happy about the outcome, raised his eyes skyward, closed them and yelled.
“Ted! She pawned your guitar! I been to your apartment and your landlady PAWNED YOUR GIBSON!”
Ted froze in his tracks, rather as if a street lamp had sprouted from the sidewalk and introduced itself to his chin. Jerry made a face and tried to make himself smaller. Not there at all would have been nice right about then. Ted turned slowly and said in a low tone that had no problem carrying over the city sounds.
“What?”
He leaned slightly forward, head cocked to one side, presenting an “I-don't-believe-I-caught-that-the-first-time-would-you-care-to-repeat-it-and-it-damn-well-better-not-be-what-I-thought-I-heard-you-say” expression.
There was no turning back. Jerry had not wanted to be the one to break the news, had not wanted to be forced to play that card. But now it had to be played. His throat felt so dry and his chin was so quivery, the words came out as reluctantly as a gay mayoral candidate in Alabama.
“Your landlady, man. She pawned your guitar.”
A cry rose from the big man. A great cry of mythic volume and pathos that echoed through the farthest reaches of the City by the Bay. A cry that made Jerry want to be any place but where he was. A cry that gave everyone within eyeshot an excuse to stop and stare at the big man with the large dark stain over his crotch.
As the echoes of Ted's wail faded off toward Marin County, Candlestick Park, the Sierra Nevadas and Hong Kong, he retraced his steps, holding Jerry in a paralyzing glare. As the big man approached, Jerry set the world record for intensity and duration of a wince.
“You have money?” Ted said, calmly, when he was within a foot of Jerry.
“Uh…,” said Jerry. He was thrown for a loop by the quiet tone of the question and the fact it hadn't been accompanied by an act of violence against himself. “Money?”
“Yes. Money. I need a cab.”
“You kidding?”
“No, I am not kidding. It's a forty-minute walk to my apartment,” Ted said. “If Sarah is in some pawn shop, I can't waste any time.”
“Our wheels are just around the corner.” Jerry took off past Ted and crossed the street at a fast jog. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back!”
“Oh great,” Ted muttered. Jerry disappeared around a corner a quarter of a block away.
A minute later, a sunflower-yellow AMC Javelin came leaning around the corner, more a result of a weary suspension than Jerry’s driving, and pulled up next to Ted. The passenger door popped open and Jerry said. “Hop in and tell me where to go.”
“Would that I could. Oh, would that I could.” Ted folded himself into the car. His knees pressed painfully against the dashboard. The Javelin, which had been leaning off to port, now took a distinct tilt to starboard. “Straight ahead until you get to Market. I'll let you know when we're getting close. GO!”
Ted's apartment on Evans Street, South of Market, was the first floor of a four story converted rowhouse cheek to jowl with other converted houses on either side. Actually it was half of the first floor, the other half being the garage. Jerry double parked next to an vintage Civic hatchback and in an instant Ted was down the four steps to his front door. He put a key in the deadbolt. It went in, but wouldn't turn.
“Damn!”
