"More Danger" by Stephen-Paul Martin in Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana
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“More Danger” by Stephen-Paul Martin is in the first section of the anthology Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana.
Gabe repeats the magic words: “The laws of history are obscured by the accidents of history.” He’s not sure where he first came across this line, and he’s not even sure he understands it. But he likes the way it sounds, and he assumes that others will too, especially if he can deliver it with confidence, with the tone and facial expression of someone who knows what he’s talking about. He imagines himself at work or on a date or at a party or bar, having what seems like a normal conversation, then tossing off the line like it’s the kind of thing he says all the time, like it just popped into his head and hasn’t been carefully prepared. He’s eager to see the expressions on people’s faces, the obvious respect the line will command.
He isn’t quite ready. He hasn’t been able to memorize it yet, so he takes it on a yellow post-it everywhere he goes. Now he’s got it between his legs on the seat of his car as he drives to work. He reads it, looks at the road, reads it again, looks at the road, reads it again, pauses a minute, then says it out loud, “The accidents of history are obscured by the laws of history.” It doesn’t sound right. He looks between his legs and makes the correction, “The laws of history are obscured by the accidents of history.” He knows he can’t afford to make a mistake like that when he finally delivers the line. What would people think? He imagines looks of contempt, blunt ridicule, amused questions. Or maybe no one would notice. Maybe the line would work even if he messed it up. After all, he lives in San Diego, where tanning seems to be more important than thinking.
He comes to an intersection of two-lane roads. He knows that there’s never much traffic here, so he doesn’t come to a full stop. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a car approaching on his right. He decides to keep going, turning left onto the intersecting road, figuring that the other driver has plenty of time to slow down and let him go first. He’s confident that there won’t be a collision. After all, the laws of history aren’t obscured by accidents on the road.
But the other driver hits his horn, roars out into the oncoming lane, passing and cutting back and stopping suddenly, forcing Gabe to slam on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision. The driver jumps out of his red Corvette, gives Gabe the finger, shouting obscenities. Gabe wants to shout back, but he can see that the guy is powerfully built and has a dark tan, as if his muscles were made of San Diego sunlight. Gabe lacks physical confidence. He’s pale and flabby and spends too much time reading books he doesn’t understand. So he stays buckled into his black Honda Civic and takes the verbal abuse, terrified that he might get yanked out and beaten up. He’s so freaked out that he doesn’t think of using his iPhone to call the police, or securing the power windows and doors and driving away. Instead, he stares at the digital clock on the dashboard, worried that he might pee in his pants or start crying. Finally the guy stops yelling, smirks and gets back into his car, revs the engine several times and roars away, leaving rubber.
At first, Gabe is relieved, glad that he didn’t get his teeth knocked out. But then he wants to kill. He feels pathetic, like the wimpy guy who got sand kicked in his face in the Charles Atlas ads that appeared in sports magazines he read in his early teens, back when he used to memorize baseball statistics. The guy in the ads transformed himself, became muscular and self-assured and sexy. But Gabe knows he’ll never become the new Charles Atlas. He’s too lazy, too undisciplined, and eats too much junk food. He feels helpless, so disgusted with himself that he calls in sick and goes home and makes himself a bowl of buttered popcorn.
He’s always done his best thinking on popcorn, and he’s only halfway through the bowl when he gets an idea. He can still remember the driver’s vanity license plate, HOTCAR, and he uses it in an Internet search, finding out that the driver’s name is Duke Archer, a personal trainer who lives only five blocks away. Soon Gabe is taking time each day to follow HOTCAR through the city, learning that early on weekday mornings Duke travels to a gym on a dead-end road near Lindbergh Airport, a neighborhood of abandoned factory buildings. He unlocks the place, turns on the lights, inspects the equipment, then does paper work at the front desk. He opens the doors an hour later, when a few early birds arrive to work out. But in that first hour, when Duke is there alone, Gabe never sees anyone on the road to the gym. The situation is perfect for what he has in mind. His anger is filling him with a determination he’s never felt before. He buys a gun and goes to a firing range five nights a week, imagining Duke Archer’s face in place of the target, the faces of guys who pushed him around in the past. Five weeks later he tells himself he’s ready.
He waits at an intersection about a mile from the gym, watching the sun come up behind the dark industrial buildings. When Duke’s Corvette approaches, Gabe pulls out in front of him. Duke does exactly what Gabe expects, passing and cutting him off and braking suddenly, jumping out and firing off the same insults he used before. Gabe watches him for a minute, amused by the performance. Then he steps calmly out of his car and returns exactly the same offensive language. Duke throws off his sweat shirt, showing off his big muscles, advancing firmly. He looks like Charles Atlas.
Gabe pulls out his gun. Duke freezes, then flashes a tough guy smile and keeps moving forward. Gabe puts a bullet in Duke’s right foot, knocking him down onto the blacktop. Gabe pauses to enjoy his work, fully taking in the shock in Duke’s contorted face, then orders him to get up and take off his clothes. Duke is writhing in pain, unable to respond at first, but when Gabe puts the gun to his head, Duke staggers up and takes everything off. Gabe has memorized a string of clever insults he found on the Internet. He presents them in the clinical tone of a scientist giving a paper at a conference, informing Duke that his birth certificate is a letter of apology from the condom factory, that he’s so ugly it looks like his face was on fire and someone tried to put it out with a fork. Then he tells Duke to get down and beg. When he hesitates, Gabe puts a bullet in his left foot, and Duke is quickly on his knees, pleading through tears and clenched teeth.
Gabe thoroughly enjoys Duke’s pain and desperation. If he weren’t so busy holding his gun with both hands like they do in the movies, he’d be filming the scene with his phone. He looks quickly back down the road to make sure no cars are approaching. The coast is clear. But the San Diego skyline in the background, the sunlight flashing off the cluster of tall glass buildings, briefly leads him to question what he’s doing: Shouldn’t someone who enjoys the privilege of living in America’s finest city behave in a more dignified way? Shouldn’t the sunny skies have made him mellow enough to come up with kinder gentler ways of resolving his problems? Gabe knows the obvious answers, but he’s never liked the predictably cheerful weather, the oppressively polite people smiling and telling him to have a nice day. He turns back to Duke and says: Repeat after me—The laws of history are obscured by the accidents of history. Duke gives him a strange look, so Gabe slams the gun across his face, drawing blood from his nose and mouth. Gabe smiles and snaps: Look me in the eye, motherfucker! Repeat after me--the accidents of history are obscured by the laws of history.
Duke looks Gabe in the eye and timidly asks: Which way do you want it, the first way or the second?
Gabe snarls: Both ways at the same fucking time, dumbass!
Gabe wants to prolong his enjoyment of Duke’s panic and pain. But he thinks that the last thing he said sounded lame, that he failed to pronounce the words fucking and dumbass with the necessary sting. He thinks he can see contempt beneath the terror in Duke’s eyes, and he almost loses control. He grabs Duke’s curly black hair and yanks his head back, jams the gun into his mouth and prepares to pull the trigger.
For a second or two, the only sound is the music booming from the open door of Duke’s idling car. A song ends, another one starts. It’s one of Gabe’s all-time favorites. He pulls the gun out of Duke’s mouth and says: Is that your music, or just something on the radio?
Duke says: It’s from a CD I made of my favorite songs. It’s Steely Dan’s “Don’t Take Me Alive,” though at this point I’m kind of hoping you’ll ignore the lyrics and take me alive.
Duke sounds smarter than Gabe expected him to. His enjoyment of a clever band like Steely Dan tells Gabe that Duke might deserve to live, even with his offensively stupid license plate. Gabe can’t keep himself from smiling. Duke sees the change in Gabe’s attitude and quickly says: Look, I’m really sorry I jumped out of the car and started cursing you out. It’s a bad habit I’m trying to break. I’ve even signed up for an anger management class. It starts next week. If you want, I can text you the information, and—
Gabe says: Text me the information? Why would I want the information?
Duke tries to smile: I mean, you know, just in case you wanted to take the class too?
Gabe snaps: Take the class? Why would I want to do something like that? You’re the one with the problem, douchebag! You flipped out on me once before, a few weeks ago. But you probably do it so often that you don’t even remember me—or any of your other victims, for that matter.
Duke says: Listen, if you put away your gun, I promise I won’t press charges about the bullets in my feet. I’ll even let you sleep with my girlfriend Susan. She’s tanned and blond and utterly gorgeous, the perfect San Diego girl. She’s damn good in bed and—
Gabe says: I can’t stand beach bimbos. I hate how aggressively dense they always are. There’s no way—
Duke says: No! Listen! Susan hates the beach! She’s really smart. She’s got advanced degrees in history from Stanford. She’s even got published articles. You can look her up on the Internet.
Gabe laughs: If she’s really so smart, what’s she doing with a dumb fuck like you?
Duke says: I met her at the gym. I was her personal trainer for a while, and I got her a free membership. We’re good between the sheets.
Gabe hates it when people claim that they’ve got a good sex life. He imagines them with deep tans, tight abs and perfect teeth, covered with designer sweat, making all the right moves and all the good sounds. He can’t picture himself being anywhere near as telegenic in bed. But he has to admit that Susan sounds amazing: a San Diego blond with brains! Someone who might be impressed by the line he’s trying to learn! He says: She’d really sleep with me to save your life?
Duke says: I’ll call her right now and explain the situation, and you can listen to the whole conversation on speakerphone.
Gabe takes a step back but keeps the gun pointed at Duke’s head. He says: Okay, dial. But don’t try anything funny. Make sure to tell her you’ll be dead meat if she calls the police. I’d hate to shoot a fellow Steely Dan fan, but I don’t like it when people make me feel like shit.
Duke quickly nods, pulls out his phone and speed dials Susan’s number, switching to speakerphone.
Susan isn’t really his girlfriend. She’s just been using him for sex. Duke Archer isn’t the type of guy she usually dates. She plans to drop him as soon as she can find a more sensitive man, someone who’s not so desperate to seem tough and decisive. Right now she’s five miles away, in Pacific Beach, rushing out of a small glass office building. She’s excited because she’s finally worked up the nerve to quit her job, pleased that she took her boss by surprise, interrupting his early morning coffee, making a fierce and well-rehearsed speech and then storming out of his office, slamming the door behind her.
She feels her smart phone vibrating in her pocket. She pulls it out to check the number, but she’s not watching where she’s going and bumps into someone. Her phone gets knocked onto the sidewalk, where a man accidentally steps on it with the sound of a snail getting squashed. He quickly apologizes, bending to gather up the shattered pieces, handing them back, a short young man wearing an old three-piece suit and a black fedora. She starts to tell him there’s no need to apologize, but something about him prevents her from getting the words out. It’s not just that he looks like he’s been clipped out of an old black and white magazine and pasted onto a postcard version of a clear San Diego morning. It’s also that he’s looking at her like he doesn’t know how to look at a human face, as if she had no face and he was just pretending to see her.
She finally says: It’s no problem. I hate smart phones anyway.
He says: Smart phones?
She shrugs: I don’t know why I’ve even got one. I almost never use it. All the special features make me crazy.
He says: A smart phone? How is it different from a stupid phone?
She laughs: I’m starting to think all phones are stupid. But everyone here in San Diego is totally in love with them.
He says: The thing I just broke is called a smart phone?
She laughs again, more tensely this time: You don’t know what a smart phone is? An iPhone?
He shrugs: It looks like a mechanical device. How can it be smart—or stupid, for that matter? Isn’t it just a thing you can use to get something done?
She looks at him like he’s got to be joking, but there’s no humor in his eye, just quiet confusion. She tells him to have a nice day and turns to leave, but he says: Excuse me, I know you’re probably busy, but can you take me to the beach? I’ve heard it’s a nice place to go.
She’s been brought up to be a nice girl, so she turns back to him and says: The beach is just a few blocks away. She points toward the ocean, which is visible at the end of Grand Avenue.
He says: But it would be nice if you came with me, in case there are things that need to be explained.
She says: Things that need to be explained? There’s nothing at the beach to explain. It’s just a bunch of idiots lying on the sand.
He says: But surely they’re enjoying the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.
She says: They’re not even listening to it. They’ve all got pods in their ears. The only reason they’re there is to work on their tans.
He looks puzzled: Work on their tans? Is a tan something you can work on?
She laughs: The idiots in this town seem to think so.
He says: But you have a tan, and you don’t seem to be an idiot.
Susan smiles: I go to a tanning salon. That way I don’t have to bother with the sun.
He still looks puzzled: But you’re always bothering with the sun here, aren’t you? I’ve only been here a short time, but I keep hearing people praising the weather, how wonderful it is that it’s sunny all the time. It sounds like they’re boasting about it, like it’s something they’ve accomplished. But I don’t think I would want to live in a place where the weather is so predictable. I think it would get boring.
She says: It’s worse than boring. It’s deadening. It makes people dumber and dumber the longer they stay here. I’m a good example. Ten years ago, I would have laughed at people who went to tanning salons.
Susan can hardly believe that she’s having a negative conversation about the San Diego weather. It’s the first one she’s ever had or even heard. She feels like she’s violating a sacred understanding, saying subversive things that she might get punished for, especially if this weird little man turns out to be more dangerous than he seems, and his awkward behavior is just a cover-up, a way of concealing sinister connections. Normally, she wouldn’t talk to a stranger, but he seems so misplaced, so out of context, that she can’t just walk away. She’s fascinated by his slightly mechanical way of talking, as if the words were being projected through his mouth from a remote location, or perhaps from a place that doesn’t exist anymore. She says: Why don’t we get out of the sun? There’s a nice café right around the corner. What did you say your name was?
He says: I didn’t say my name. Do you want me to say it?
She nods and smiles: Sure, why not? By the way, I’m Susan.
He nods and comes close to smiling, but happiness doesn’t seem to be part of his facial routine. It’s like he’s afraid to show his teeth, afraid to reveal the darkness in his mouth. He finally says: Hello, Susan. My name is Gavrilo.
Susan starts to smile with all her teeth, but stops herself and says: Gavrilo? Like Gavrilo Princip? The guy who shot the Archduke in Sarajevo a hundred years ago? The guy who set off the chain reaction that ended in World War I, the war to end all wars?
He looks disturbed: That’s my full name—Gavrilo Princip.
She smiles: In a more intelligent city, having a name like Gavrilo Princip might be a problem. But here in San Diego, no one knows anything about the past. It’s like the people here assume that only what’s happening right now makes any difference, like history is something that happened long ago and far away. Especially here in Pacific Beach, you’d have trouble finding ten people who would know that you’ve got the same name as a famous assassin.
He looks even more disturbed, then says: If my full name makes you feel strange, you can call me Gavro.
She says: Is that what your friends call you?
He says: I don’t have any friends. They all died a long time ago.
She says: Oh, sorry.
He says: There’s no need to apologize. They did what they had to do, and after that there was no need to continue.
Susan isn’t sure what to say. Though she knows it would be weird to say cool or awesome, the words so many San Diegans use when they don’t know what to say, she also feels that it’s her turn to talk, that saying nothing would impolite. But when she hears herself say wow she feels like an idiot. It’s another sign that she’s been in San Diego far too long.
Gavro tilts his head and says: Wow?
She says: I mean, that’s really impressive—that your friends had what it takes to do what had to be done.
He shrugs: I suppose it was better than the cowardly alternatives.
She starts to say wow again, then starts to say cool, then catches herself and takes a deep breath and says: Okay, so I mentioned a nice café right around corner. Let’s get ourselves out of the sun and drink something cool.
Gavro nods, and they walk in silence to a small café surrounded by palm trees. On the flagstone patio, sleeveless men and women sit at plastic tables, typing and reading text messages and nursing caffeine drinks with Italian names. Inside it’s dark, with three round wooden tables beneath slowly turning fans. There’s a small wooden bar on one side, a unisex bathroom on the other, and a back door opening onto a street, where a celebration of some kind is in progress, or perhaps a reenactment, since everyone is wearing outfits that went out of date a long time ago, in some other part of the world. Susan is surprised that the door is open. She’s never seen it open before, and she’s always assumed that it faced an alley with garbage cans, not a tree-lined boulevard lined with old buildings.
They sit by the back door. The waiter comes and she orders two Bloody Marys. She winks at Gavro and says: It’s my treat. It’s not every day that you get to have drinks with a famous assassin.
Gavro says: That’s very nice of you, Susan. But can you buy me a sandwich instead? I’m terribly hungry, and I don’t have any money.
She nods and tells the waiter to bring only one Bloody Mary, and a glass of water for Gavro. The waiter gives Gavro a puzzled look, like he’s looking at a celebrity whose name he can’t remember. Gavro returns the same look, and for less than a second Susan thinks they’ve traded faces, or that they’re twins, even though the waiter is tall and tanned with long blond hair and a tropical shirt, the typical San Diego surfer look. She thinks of Gavro riding the waves in his old black suit and fedora. She wants to laugh, but she knows that it would look like she’s laughing at nothing, and people have always told her that she looks weird laughing at nothing. She’s learned to keep it under control, though the impulse is hard to avoid in San Diego, where she often finds things ridiculous without knowing why. For now she decides to act like things are normal. She looks at her watch and covers her mouth and starts coughing. The waiter finally manages the smile his job requires, says that he’ll be right back and goes to get their drinks. Susan asks Gavro what he wants, pointing to the list of sandwiches on the blackboard behind the bar.
Gavro stares, creasing his brow, as if the menu were a list of coded instructions. He finally shrugs and says: I’m not sure what I want.
Susan looks at him carefully, wondering why she’s spending time with such a strange man. In the past, she never had trouble walking away from people who made her uneasy, but with Gavro she feels like she’s under a spell, an impression that’s more embarrassing than disturbing, since the concept of being under a spell would have seemed silly to her five minutes ago. With most of the men she sleeps with, like Duke Archer from her gym, she’s firm and assertive, but with Gavro she feels like she’s been taken from the place where she’s lived for the past ten years and dropped into a place she doesn’t know, a substitute San Diego that exists for the sole purpose of replacing the real San Diego, though Susan knows she would never use the word real to describe San Diego.
The waiter puts their drinks on the table, and Susan tells him to bring a grilled cheese sandwich. Then she looks at Gavro expecting him to speak, to at least say thank you. But he’s looking intently out the back door, like he’s expecting something or someone. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an old gold watch, studies it for a second or two, then slams it facedown on the table, breaking the crystal. He looks surprised at what he’s done. He picks up the watch with his thumb and index finger, treating it like a squashed insect that might still be alive and try to bite him, carefully placing it face up on his napkin. The numbers peel themselves off the face of the watch and stagger out onto the table, looking around as if trying to get their bearings. Then they collapse and dissolve into the dark stained wood beside Susan’s Bloody Mary. She blinks and grabs her purse and starts to get up, but again something stops her, the strong sense that something important is waiting to happen outside, carefully assembling itself in the carnival atmosphere, something that won’t properly take place unless she’s observing it. The sunlight from the back door plays on the broken bits of crystal on the table, taking her back to her freshman year at Stanford, an angry social science professor from somewhere in Eastern Europe—no one seemed to know exactly where, though there were rumors that long ago he’d written a manifesto calling for ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and Susan often wondered why such a sinister person was teaching at a great American university. But what comes back most forcefully now is a phrase he kept repeating like a mantra throughout the semester: The laws of history are obscured by the accidents of history—a line from Tolstoy, or maybe Trotsky, he kept getting them confused, as if the famous names of the past were nothing more than a deck of cards to shuffle.
The waiter brings the sandwich and asks if he can get them anything else, but before Susan can shake her head and smile and say no thanks, Gavro is biting fiercely into the toasted bread, quickly chewing and swallowing, then taking another big bite. In less than a minute the sandwich is gone. He leans back in his chair, resting his back against the exposed brick wall, and something close to a smile settles into his face, like he’s just had really good sex. He closes his eyes and says: Thank you, Susan. That was truly wonderful.
Suddenly there’s a loud noise from the back door. He looks up and squints into the light. Susan can see a grand and beautifully kept old car with its top down trying to back up, a man and a woman in the back seat wearing elaborate old costumes looking confused, someone dressed in what might be a Halloween general’s uniform shouting at the driver, who keeps shaking his head and grinding the gears. Gavro gets up from his chair, pulls a revolver out of his inside jacket pocket, steps quickly out the back door without even a glance in Susan’s direction.
She sits with her Bloody Mary, not sure what to do next. There’s a pause that feels like a hundred flashbulbs punching the sunlight out of the room, turning the moment into a black and white photograph framed in a dusty museum, a place that will soon be closed because no one goes there anymore. Then she hears two gunshots, screams and shouts bursting in through the door. History feels more dangerous than it ever did before.
Stephen-Paul Martin has published over twenty fiction, poetry, and non-fiction books. One of his short story collections, The Gothic Twilight, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1993. His most recent book is TwentyTwenty (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). His other fiction collections include The Ace of Lightning (FC2, 2017) and Changing the Subject (Ellipsis, 2010).
From 1980-1996 he co-edited Central Park, an internationally acclaimed journal of the arts & social commentary. His writings have appeared in over 200 periodicals over the past 30 years, in several different languages.