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Vigilantism

William Masters

    Antonia had paid $85 (on sale, marked down from $125) for a beige linen skirt she found on the sale rack while browsing in LYDIA SHAW, a tony woman’s boutique at the Embarcadero Center. She had found the skirt on Friday evening after work and intended to wear it (with her long-sleeved, navy blue raw silk blouse and beige Evan Picone pumps) the next afternoon for a late lunch with her visiting sister. She did not especially like her older sister, so she aimed to outscore her on the sartorial scale.
    When she got home (she took a 41Union bus) and tried on the skirt with the blouse and the shoes, she noticed that a good four inch piece of hem was loose. If Antonia’s sister had bought the skirt, she would have simply repaired the hem herself. If Antonia had still lived at home, she would have given the skirt to her mother for repair. But Antonia’s fingers had never touched a needle and thread. Looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror, she felt the absurd pleasure she derived from her purchase leaking away, replaced with an easy annoyance soon preempted by that petulance so commonly shared by younger, prettier, smarter sisters. She made up her mind to arrive at the store when it opened Saturday morning and demand that the weekend tailor repair the loose hem that morning.
    By 9:30 the next morning Antonia was on the No. 45 bus (the No. 41 Union ran only during peak hours on weekdays), rather surprised to see so many people so early on a Saturday morning and so thankful to find a seat she didn’t have to share. Antonia sat near the rear of the bus on one of two plastic seats facing each other (like the end seats on the Southern Pacific commuter train). Across from her sat a young man with a whimpering little girl of about six who Antonia assumed was his daughter due to the strong physical resemblance also shared by the slightly older boy seated on the other side of the father. The trio sat uncomfortably at attention. Tears streamed down the little girl’s cheeks and sobs erupted from her clenched face.
    “Stop crying. Stop it,” her father repeated while administering a series of tiny punches to her shoulder.
    Seated in the back was a group of noisy teenagers located just beneath the NO FOOD - RADIOS SILENT sign, playing a boom box. An obviously annoyed elderly woman, sitting nearby, turned around and sternly pointed to the sign and asked them to turn off the radio.
    “Hey, old lady, show me your MUNI badge,” responded the anonymous speaker. The closely shaved sides of his head accentuated the hunk of long black hair covering his scalp, projecting a scariness to rival the current level of make-up and special effects seen in movies.
    The little girl continued crying, now louder than ever. “Stop it,” her father continued. “Close your mouth. Now.”
    When the little girl didn’t respond to the order, the father pressed the inside of his hand upward against her chin to stifle the cries.
    “Stop it!”
    The little girl stopped just long enough to adjust to this new, painful situation then pulled her father’s hand away.
    “Bobby, help me!” she implored.
    The older brother neither moved nor acknowledged his sister’s plea, although Antonia sensed his discomfort. Tears flowed and sobs continued. The father took hold of his daughter’s wrist and squeezed it tightly between his fingers.
    “Stop it! Stop crying,” he insisted.
    As he released his hand from his daughter’s wrist, Antonia saw the white finger marks left by the father’s grip suddenly refill with blood.
    “Stop it!”
    He shook her violently. As the son began to lean forward, his father’s outstretched hand pushed him back into his seat. Antonia sensed the father’s rage with his son for this gesture of disobedience and felt terrified as she observed his waning patience with the daughter run out.
    At just this moment a tall, shaven headed, skinny young man rose from his seat located between the boom box kids and the benched family. The skinny young man’s trouser cuffs were tied with shoe laces. A baseball cap was tucked underneath the necktie that served as his belt. Hermes was neatly stitched on the left cuff of his long-sleeved shirt. The bike messenger grabbed the bus bar (for steadiness) with his left hand and the collar of the father with his free hand. This single-handed grip lifted the father several inches from his seat, and then abruptly released him to his former position. With a gesture of unsurpassing swiftness and grace, Hermes picked up a surprised little girl and gently placed her in his former seat. Now seated next to the father, the messenger turned his face to the father’s head, and sotto vocce said,
    “Don’t get up.”
    The messenger gripped the father’s wrist.
    “Don’t move.”
    With a movement, as sure as any chiropractic adjustment, the messenger abruptly rotated the father’s wrist. Antonia heard a loud snap. The father winced, but remained silent while for an instant, the son’s eyes met the messenger’s stare witnessed by the elderly woman.
    The woman turned around in her seat to look the teen-aged speaker in the eye, delivering a cautionary glance which she lowered, like a spotlight, to his wrist. His hand involuntarily twitched as he reduced the volume.
    The little girl, seated in her new position, had stopped crying.
    The bus had just turned from Union onto Stockton Street, stopping to allow a crowd of anxious shoppers to board as they headed for Union Square carrying empty plastic bags. Antonia, impatient to leave and transfer to the 1 California bus line, rose simultaneously with the messenger to disembark at the next stop. As she headed for the back door, the messenger turned to the back seat, ripped the boom box from the lap of its owner and threw the radio out the open bus window. A tiny explosion registered the crash. In three long strides the messenger reached the back door of the stopped bus and jumped off, disappearing into the dense Saturday morning Stockton street crowd. Only the top of his shaven head remained visible as it moved down the sidewalk, rising above the shorter Asian statures.
    Antonia had barely escaped the bus before it continued sparking its way on wires through the Stockton Street tunnel. Relieved, but teary eyed, she crossed the street, waiting within a large group for a 1 California. When it arrived in just a couple of minutes, a group of old Asian women impolitely pushed her aside to board. She waited for the next 1 California that arrived in record time, but when the bus doors opened Antonia could not make her feet climb the bus steps.
    “On or off, lady?” the MUNI driver shouted, out of patience but not out of breath.
    Antonia stepped aside, gripped by a feeling of helplessness and fear, followed by a general sensation of physical weakness.
    “Don’t pass out,” she told herself.
    As the bus pulled away she regained her aplomb and decided to walk the remaining distance, all downhill, from the bus stop to the Embarcadero Center. A ten minute walk brought her to the front doors of LYDIA SHAW through which she passed as tightly wound as a spool of thread.
    She approached the counter and recognized the sales associate as the person who had actually rung up the sale only last night.
    “Good morning.”
    “Hello.”
    “I bought this skirt last night.” She pulled out the skirt and the receipt from the bag. Her right hand had formed itself into a fist and rested on the counter. “I don’t want to return or exchange it,” she assured the young sales associate,” I just want the tailor to sew up this hem,” she said holding the loose material between two fingers of her left hand, and leaning slightly forward added, “by noon today.”
    The young sales associate noticed beads of perspiration on the customer’s forehead. “Oh, yes. I remember you. Just a moment. I’ll see what I can do. Please have a seat.” She walked from behind the counter and led Antonia toward a sofa covered in an old fashioned style of elaborate embroidery. In a few minutes a striking looking woman in her mid-sixties walked up to Antonia, extending her hand.
    “Hello. I’m Lydia Shaw. Millie advised me about your problem. Although we don’t maintain a tailor on the premises during weekends anymore, I think I can help you.” She walked to the counter and picked up the skirt and examined the Visa slip, “Won’t you come with me, Ms. Foerster?”
    Antonia followed her into an elegant office and sat down in a high-backed, wood-framed chair upholstered in some complicated pattern. Ms. Shaw poured two cups of tea then sat down behind an enormous wooden desk inlaid with a hand-decorated leather blotter.
    “Have some caffeine-free chamomile tea, my dear.”
    Antonia accepted the tea. Ms. Shaw pulled out a rolling drawer loaded with spools of thread.
    “I’m using some really wonderful Chinese silk thread,” she said putting on a pair of glasses and expertly threading a needle. She sipped her tea. “You know, I started in this business forty-one years ago by sewing costumes for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.”
    She had begun stitching the hem with surprising speed.
    I used to sew, mostly repairing costumes worn by singers who kept changing sizes, usually in the wrong direction. After only a few years I developed arthritis peculiar to the repetitive movements associated with hand sewing. Lucky for me, I was still young, but not as pretty as you, Ms. Foerster. My lover during that period, a three pack-a-day smoker, was a rich, fabric importer who was, as they said in those days, besotted with me. Of course, he was married. After his early death at forty-three from a heart attack, I learned that he had left me a considerable sum of money. His wife, a famous beauty who had been painted in her youth by Paxton, was livid. Not because her husband had a mistress, but because I was a young, not very pretty seamstress. She felt not diminished, but embarrassed by the comparison. Although she couldn’t prevent me from obtaining the money, eventually, she convinced me that years of litigation would pass before I saw a penny. I had to promise to leave New York City and never return. The weather and environs around San Francisco have been much better for my arthritis and I have, as they say, prospered.”
    She had completed sewing the hem and admired her own handiwork.
    “There,” she said folding the skirt and rising from her chair. “What are you going to wear with it?”
    “A long-sleeved, blue raw silk blouse.”
    “Such good taste. I hope I shall see you again, Ms. Foerster. Good bye.”
    As Antonia left the store, she felt somewhat relaxed. Instead of catching a bus immediately, she walked a few blocks to stretch her legs. Approaching the 1 California bus stop, she felt her pulse begin to race. Hearing the sound of the bus, she actually felt a sensation of pins and needles spreading throughout her body. When the bus stopped, quite near to her, she changed her mind and decided to take a No. 42 or a Marina Express instead. Those buses would drop her in walking distance to her apartment. She backtracked to the appropriate bus stop. Again, after practically no wait, a 42 pulled up. Antonia allowed everyone else to board the bus before she began to step up.
    She couldn’t budge. As her body temperature dropped, the bus driver shot her a merciless look. “Are you coming girl?”
    “No. No thank you.”
    The sudden closing of bus doors sounded to Antonia like a slap. Reflexively she laid her hand on her cheek. She walked three blocks to the line of cabs in front of Hyatt Regency Hotel. Seated inside a cab, she instantly relaxed.
    “Larkin and Greenwich,” she snapped at the driver.
    As she rode home she knew at once what lay before her and coolly began to calculate how much a daily, round-trip cab ride to work would cost her each week, each month and so on and so forth.

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