Elsie Street

Elsie Street

By

Gabriella West

Elsie Street is a creative work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are created from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Gabriella West

All rights reserved.

Dedicated to the memory of Frank Cox,

and to Sharon, who lived on Elsie Street back in the day

Lastly, my gratitude goes to Christina Pilz and Ann Sisk for their invaluable beta reading and feedback, and to Elise Stengle for her last-minute research help!

Prologue

June 2010

San Francisco

That summer started off with a bang. Not the kind of bang you want. I’d just gotten myself fired from the place I’d tended bar at for five years.

It wasn’t the type of dive where I’d choose to hang out myself. Flannery’s, on Clement Street in the Outer Richmond. A weeknight. It was usually dead during the afternoon, then filled with a few noisy drunks later on. It had the typical long bar, dingy floors, and thick windows that looked out onto the filthy street. Pigeons nested on the awning out front and soiled it copiously.

Seamus Flannery, the white-haired, ruddy-faced owner, was someone I’d come to dislike more and more as I dragged myself in every afternoon. It felt like a bad marriage, him and me, filled with poor communication and suspicious grunts.

Then one night we’d come to blows.

It was over a couple of lads who were clearly in the wrong place, out on what looked like a first date on queer-unfriendly Clement Street. They were young (only just 21, I found out when I carded them). They sat by the window and they held hands. It was the dead time before the serious drinkers settled in for the evening. I brought them over a plate of onion rings with their draft beers, and they smiled up at me.

I smiled back because they seemed so harmless. I made a little joke, asking them if they’d gotten off the bus in the wrong neighborhood and they assured me that they both lived in the area and loved it. I did too, so I wasn’t sure why they loved it, but I nodded along.

Anyway, I’d made them feel comfortable so they held hands. I was back at my station behind the bar, cleaning glasses, giving them space. There was some kind of folksy Americana tune on the juke. It felt as good as it ever got in that place. And then Seamus Flannery came rolling down from the upstairs apartment and snapped at them to behave themselves. They might have kissed discreetly while I was looking away. I wasn’t sure.

They stared at him like he was something out of the middle of the last century, which he was. Seamus was always a cranky boss—I’d never liked him—but over the last year he’d got more volatile.

And so, I suppose, had I.

He whipped around and asked me if I’d looked at their IDs.

Of course, I responded coolly. They’re fine.

They’re not fine! he shouted. This is not a gay bar!

The boys looked incredulous and giggled to themselves. I couldn’t blame them.

Tell them to leave! Seamus spluttered.

I will not ask them to leave, I replied levelly. I was still at the bar and he was suddenly standing up against me, too close, eyeball to eyeball.

Are they your little queer buddies, then, Dave? Seamus muttered in a way that made my skin crawl.

I heard the chairs scrape as the youngsters got up to leave. They were doing the right thing. He wasn’t going to back down, I knew. But it still made me furious.

The door slammed.

"We need all the customers we can get," I said in low, icy voice.

Not like those little fags! Seamus waved his hand in the air, his bloodshot blue eyes bulging.

I hadn’t even heard the word fag for a long time, not since Boston and my childhood and adolescence there. I just stared at him with a look of pity and contempt.

You fucking bastard, I heard myself say suddenly.

He lunged at me and I put up my hands to stop him. I felt like throttling him, but threw a ragged punch that collided with his nose and cheek.

He was too heavy to fall over, but spun around and knocked into a table. He stood there for a moment, panting.

Then he turned around. Get out, he spat. I was already taking off my apron. Go work in the Castro, that’s all you’re good for.

My face burned as I gathered my things. But I wasn’t sorry. I’d put up with the guy for five years and he’d become increasingly nastier during that time. They always did, in my experience. I was a good bartender, but it was time to let it drop. Though for what, I had no clue. I wasn’t going to go work in the Castro—that wasn’t my scene.

I silently wiped my hands on a rag for the last time.

He wasn’t looking at me when he said the last thing in his arsenal. I feel sorry for that girlfriend of yours.

That rankled. It hit me harder than the blow I’d given him.

1.

Your official title will be museum security officer, Mike Malone said. "Not guard. Don’t you love how these titles change with the times? Amazing, isn’t it?"

Right, I said. If my words sounded a touch hollow, it was because I had a splitting headache. We were standing in the empty courtyard of the Legion of Honor museum under the shadow of the massive, hunched Rodin statue, The Thinker, and I was shivering in my shirtsleeves in the summer chill. Mike, a chubby, middle-aged guy whose face perpetually looked like it was either glowing or glowering, seemed amused.

You’re used to the fog by now, surely? Mike enquired. Janine mentioned you guys have been in the city, what, three, five years?

Something like that, I mumbled.

He shot me a weird look. Do you have a problem with time, Dave?

Time? I repeated, trying to focus. Nope, not at all. I’m just trying to remember when I left Boston. I suppose it was 2005, that’s right. Five years.

I could see him thinking, not the sharpest stick in the toolshed, after all. I had never met him before that morning, though my girlfriend, Janine, worked at Mike’s brother’s bar on Geary, The Shamrock, and had begged the guy to find me a job after my own employment at Flannery’s was suddenly terminated. Janine had clearly been persuasive, because although I had come prepared for an interrogation, Mike’s idea of screening was more like a friendly chat.

I’m actually not really used to the summer fog, I confessed.

He shot me another odd look. Something a little off about the guy, I could see him thinking. Looks clean-cut, though. Keeps in shape. Men often looked at me like that, and I didn’t like it, didn’t like having to live up to what they thought I was. Back in Boston, when I was a teenager, a family friend had actually once suggested that I try modeling, an idea I’d rejected immediately. My chestnut hair and gray-blue eyes were striking back then; years of bartending out here had worn me down to a nice-enough-looking guy and I was OK with that.

Well, you look the part! Mike said encouragingly. Let’s face it, Dave, you’re overqualified for this. I have to admit, it’s not very stimulating. You need to be okay with long periods of boredom. Keep watchful, even though your feet are killing you. Don’t make the visitors uncomfortable, but keep an eye out for nuts. We occasionally get them. Do you think you can do it?

It seemed like a rhetorical question and I didn’t answer him right away. There was something in his eye as he looked at me, all bluff Irish charm, that made me swallow, made me feel a quiver of unease in the pit of my stomach. He knew something about me that he wasn’t supposed to know. I’d seen men like him on the bar stools for years. All charm when they came in. Once they got talking, they were the nastiest, most homophobic bigots imaginable. I would listen and say nothing, just offer them a vague smile and ask them if they wanted another drink.

Of course, ask me why I, the son of an alcoholic, had drifted into bartending as a career? Other than that it paid the rent, I really couldn’t say. But I’d had enough, and after talking back to Seamus and getting thrown out on my ear the previous Thursday night, I vowed I was never going back to that world. I’d had the weekend to cool off, which in my case meant going on a bender and smoking lots of cigarettes, neither of which I usually did. By Sunday night, my head was fuzzy and Janine was giving me a stony look, like get a job soon, buster, or you’re out of here. I knew she would wait a while to throw me out. She was good-hearted, mostly, and I’d seen her through some tough times. Still, I was on thin ice and I knew it.

Then she’d come home early Monday morning and, before crashing, told me that she’d been chatting to Mike Malone at the bar and that he could probably get me a museum guard job at the Legion of Honor, which happened to be only about half a mile away from our apartment, out in the Avenues of the Richmond District. I just had to go and see Mike later that day. The museum was closed on Mondays so it was a good time for an interview. Turned out they’d needed someone. I listened, not very closely, and said yes. What else could I say? I had no backup plan and Janine knew it.

So there I was, contemplating the empty courtyard, the classical museum (a 1924 Beaux Arts–style building, Mike had said proudly). It had been built by a wealthy San Franciscan sugar magnate to commemorate the service of Californian soldiers in the First World War. Something like that. It didn’t make much sense to me, honestly. He’d also added that it had been seismically retrofitted in the ’90s, as if I was worried.

The only thing, Mike said casually, is that this isn’t a party kind of place. The security staff here is all guys at the moment, though we do hire women. No woman ever wants to do it, which I can completely understand. He paused. I try not to play favorites with the staff. But I also want it to be a comfortable environment for all the staff.

He was beating around the bush for some reason. I listened foggily, dying for a cigarette. Maybe he was dying for one too, for all I knew. It was a horrible habit, but most in our profession did smoke. Just like actors. It was the stress, the insecurity. Hopefully, in this cozy, ultra-safe environment, I could forget all that, all the exhausting, high-adrenaline shifts I’d pulled. And for what? I was 28 and felt washed up, though it wasn’t even as if I’d been trying to do anything with my life. I’d just been surviving. The city did that to you, put you in survival mode the minute you got here.

So, no hitting on the other staff, is all I mean, Mike finished.

I shot him a frosty glance. Hitting on the staff? He’d just told me it was all men. A flush came to my face that I couldn’t control, half anger, half fear. Shit.

I’m not sure what you mean there, Mike, I parried. My default deadpan look was useful in these situations. You never look angry, Janine said once. Just detached. Like you’re out of it, somehow.

Oh! Mike said, shrugging. It happens. It’s San Francisco, after all. His slight, knowing smile was a dead giveaway, though. He clearly didn’t say this to all the guys, just the ones who he thought might be...

I’m not gay, I said quickly. It would help to say it upfront, rather than not say it and have him always look at me funny. And as I said it, I believed it.

Yeah, fine, Mike muttered. We don’t discriminate on sexual orientation here at the Fine Arts Museums.

I believe you met my girlfriend? I snapped.

He shot me a cool look.