Soon the Rest Will Fall by Peter Plate Page A

in.”
    â€œListen to me, asshole. I want some fucking weed.”
    â€œToo bad, home slice. I don’t give a shit.”
    â€œFuck you, man. It’s goddamn Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”
    Slatts lost his cool in a delicious surge of adrenaline. It was time to introduce the revolver into the conversation. It would help move the dialogue along. He crammed the gun’s three-inch barrel through the gate’s latticework and hooked the dealer in the nose with it. Reaching in, he joggled the lad forward. Then he groped the kid’s shorts for the keys, found them, and unlocked the door.

    Santa Claus was in the house.
    Flaunting the heater, Slatts lurched into the retail room. His mouth was dry with excitement. This was better than winning the lottery. Cheap reefer was hard to find in the street. Not only that, it was usually low-grade crap. Another worker, a lithe tanned blonde girl in patched denim overalls and Birkenstock sandals, advanced on him. Her oval face was a flower, open and questioning. “May I assist you?”
    Slatts manufactured a smile tempered by several missing teeth. “No, thanks, honey. Santa can help himself.”
    The store’s damp stucco walls were layered with sepia-tinted Bill Graham concert posters. Two customers, an aged queen and a black man with one leg, were getting wasted on a divan. Ambient techno pulsed from a stereo. Slatts heard someone move and turned to confront a beefy longhair in tai chi clothes. It was the security guard.
    â€œHey, what are you doing with that gun?” The longhair had the attitude of a public bathroom. “We’re peaceful here.”
    â€œShut the fuck up. Nobody talks to Santa Claus like that.”
    â€œKiss my ass, motherfucker. I’m calling the police.”
    The cops loathed the pot clubs and didn’t give a hoot if they were robbed. Slatts ignored the threat and studied the merchandise. The weed was in pastel ceramic bowls on a countertop. The menu was listed on a chalkboard. Medium quality green, mostly Oakland hydroponic, ran $45 an eighth, same as in the streets. Stronger grades, like Canadian indica, were $60 for three and a half grams. Mexican syndicate pot was cheaper but wasn’t worth smoking. The stuff was first cousin to napalm. Mendocino
boutique bud was $450 an ounce. Turdlike pot cookies were $5 apiece. Slatts didn’t see what was so medicinal about the prices.
    Leaning over the counter, he probed the cash register. To his delight, a wad of twenties and fifties danced into view. He pocketed the cash and some weed and backpedaled out of the store into the ebb and flow of Market Street.
    Â 
    Pillars of gold-colored sunlight coruscated at Seventh and Market. Pickpockets, panhandlers, and speed freaks moiled at Carl’s Jr. Bicycle messengers were dodging cars and delivery vans. A Muni bus seething with passengers lumbered toward Van Ness Avenue. Two homeless winos were in a liquor store’s doorway begging for money. Whirlwinds of leaves and empty nickel bags flirted in the roadbed. Doves and sea gulls orbited overhead.
    A brace of cops had trashed a soup kitchen in the Civic Center. A priest from a church in the Excelsior district was cited and ticketed for serving food to the homeless without a permit. The officers sequestered buckets of brown rice and pinto beans, bags of whole wheat bread, sacks of apples and oranges, and loaded them into a police van.
    The heat in the street was nauseating. The pavement burned like a match head. Slatts was dizzy and ready to puke, which was how he liked things. The revolver was in his fist, muzzle pointed at the sidewalk. The beard and costume were soaked with his sweat. A wino in a garbage-bag poncho yelled at him from an insurance office doorway. “Yo, yo, Santa, yo. Can you help me, brother man?”
    Slatts flicked a wary glance at the bum and smelled trouble. His voice was colder than his mother’s pussy. “What