Fogtown Read Online Free Page A

rain, Stiv had other issues on his mind that were even worse than Richard Rood. The rent on the room at the Allen was overdue and the bookworm Jeeter Roche never took no for an answer. He was the type of building manager who never cut you any slack. If you didn’t have the money, you were out on your ear.
    Stiv had also gotten involved with Jeeter’s wife. That had been another one of his quick-witted moves. The affair with her had been going up and down for weeks, and he was dying to end it. To cap it off he’d been seeing a ghost in the Allen Hotel.
    The spook wore a pair of leather chaps studded with silver bells and a coarse white linen shirt. His feet were shod in rough cowhide boots. His youthful handsome face was haggard from exhaustion; his long black hair was matted in clumps. On the brocaded sash binding his waist were a holstered single-shot pistol and a sheathed butcher’s knife. A braided quirt hung from his left wrist. His clothes were covered with the reddish-brown dust indigenous to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. His name was José Reyna. From Sonora in Mexico, he’d been an outlaw in the 1830s. San Francisco had been a sleepy bayside village populated with Mexicans, Ohlone and Miwok Indians, and gringo gold miners.
    Stiv thought he was going bonkers and went to the mental health clinic on Shotwell Street. He was processed by a zealous twenty-seven-year-old psychiatric social worker out of UC Berkeley, a cat bythe name of Norbert Deflass. Uniformed in a buttoned-down oxford shirt, pressed khakis, and topsiders with a cowlick in his hairdo, Deflass was courteous and enthusiastic, more like a shoe salesman than a social worker.
    He ran Stiv through a battery of tests and then interviewed him, just the two of them in a whitewashed cubicle at the rear of the clinic. The room had two chairs and a desk. Norbert parked himself behind the desk, put his shoes on it, and said, “Look, Stiv, you’re under a lot of pressure with having a kid and everything. How’s your wife doing? How is she handling it?”
    Stiv hunkered in a folding chair. He didn’t like the look in Norbert’s eyes. It was too friendly. “A lot better than me. She’s a tough cookie.”
    “How old is she?”
    “Nineteen.”
    “Wow, a baby mama. That’s young. She must be a together kind of woman.”
    “Yeah, you could say that.”
    “Is your relationship stable?”
    Stiv bristled. He didn’t appreciate the question. His sex life wasn’t the social worker’s business. “What do you mean?”
    “You’re not planning on leaving her, are you, because of the kid?”
    Stiv mulled it over. He decided not to say anything about the affair he was having. That was a separate issue. “No. I’m sticking it out. Like, family is important, you know?”
    Deflass seemed to buy it. “Good, but here’s the deal. I’m going to advise medication. You need something to smooth out the edges.”
    Stiv was nonplussed. “What’s wrong with me?”
    “I’m not a shrink, but I think you’re borderline.”
    The diagnosis didn’t mean a thing to Stiv. It was a jumble of words that he’d need a thesaurus to sort out. He was more curious about the drugs. They were more his style. He said, “What can you do for me?”
    “I’m writing up a report for your doctor. I want him to give you a prescription to suppress the delusions. And Stiv?”
    “What?”
    “When you see things, when you have these episodes, do you hear voices?”
    “Voices?”
    “Yeah, people talking.”
    Stiv mused, “No, I see pictures. In technicolor.”
    “That’s a hallucination.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yes. It’s not a ghost. It’s something internal that you’re creating. Do you even know who José Reyna was?”
    Stiv bobbed his chin in negation. “Nah, not before this.”
    “Allow me to explain it. You want to know?”
    “Okay.”
    “Ever hear of these psychiatrists from England, R. D. Laing and Peter Cooper?”
    “Nope.”
    “How about Gilles Deleuze and Felix