Dirty in Cashmere by Peter Plate Page A

finished.”
    â€œSo what can I offer you?”
    â€œWe’re facing a problem. All of us in Emergency Management are expecting more airborne contamination from the Fukushima disaster to strike San Francisco. If you predict when it will happen, lives can be saved.”
    It was hot in the room, but I refused to shed my coat. The cashmere was a good luck charm, a talisman. It was a smorgasbord of spoor, smoke, and my filthy skin.
    â€œYou’re gonna give me a job?”
    â€œThat is my intention.”
    â€œTo predict another wave of fallout?”
    â€œYes.”
    I didn’t want to hear any more. The stress of the situation was already getting to me. Yet if I didn’t take the job, life would be hell for other folks. “Tell me the details.”
    â€œMore contamination will disrupt the city. Looting and shootings. Fires. Food shortages. The poorest neighborhoods, the Tenderloin and Hunters Point, will suffer the most. And since this is the most expensive city in the country to live in, with extra contamination, it will be even more expensive. For example, the cost of getting clean water will be prohibitive. A preemptive prediction can help everybody.”
    â€œI predict events, but I can’t quantify things.” I thought of 2-Time and Heller and their robberies. “I can’t predict specific amounts of anything.”
    â€œBut that’s perfect. This is our credo: it’s life after Andy Warhol. Everything is guaranteed fifteen minutes of anonymity and the rest is surveillance for eternity. All we want you to do is track the fallout’s path.”
    I watched the air in the room. The rug under my feet smelled. I wasn’t who I used to be, not even from a week ago. I didn’t know who Andy Warhol was, either. Lackner crossed his legs, repositioned his balls, hiked a pant leg, giving me a candid shot of his hairless white ankle, an old man’s ankle. I looked away before I got upset.
    â€œDo I get a salary?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œFour hundred a month.”
    â€œThat’s all?”
    â€œWe have a limited budget.”
    â€œAny medical benefits?”
    â€œNone.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œYou’re being hired as an independent contractor, not as a permanent employee. You aren’t eligible for benefits.”
    â€œThis job, how long is it going to last?”
    â€œA week.”
    Lackner was another version of Branch, yet with less finesse, demarcated by the quality of his clothing. But his attitude was on the same channel. I summed up the money in my pockets, a grand total of practically nothing. My head, tipsy from hunger, was lighter than a cloud at high altitude. My diarrhea was digging in its heels.
    â€œI’ll take the position. When do I start?”
    â€œHow about this afternoon?”
    â€œI need to go to Oakland first.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo get some anti-radiation tincture. It’s all sold out here.”
    â€œOkay. When you return we’ll start our research.”
    It occurred to me that I’d made a pact with a dybbuk.
    But where was Jerusalem? It wasn’t at Eternal Gratitude. It wasn’t on Market Street. It wasn’t in Pacific Heights. Wherever it lay, loneliness was a thing of the past and 2-Time was in rehab. I longed for Jerusalem.

 
    THIRTY-SEVEN
    I rode the BART train back to San Francisco from Oakland, a Walgreens potassium iodide tincture vial secure in my shirt pocket. In the city I got off at the Montgomery Street station. I walked westerly on Market Street through the hysteria of the noon hour crowds to the Emergency Management Center. Trash minueted at the curb by Piper’s Jewelers, World of Stereo, and the Psychedelic Smoke Shop. Feckless pigeons invaded my space, brushing past my face with an arrogant flick of their wings, letting me know they could take a dump on my head any time they wanted to.
    At the intersection of