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By Root 707 0

Man became my ticket to soup kitchens. The street people accepted me as his girlfriend. That’s how he introduced me. “Say hi to my girlfriend, she touched down from another planet.” “Must have,” they’d kid, “she hasn’t the sense of an earthperson, that’s for sure.” The street people made room for me in soup lines. They tipped me off on which stores had hidden cameras, what time the Japanese and German tour buses came by (“The famous corner of Haight and Ashbury, the Cradle of Flower Power, ladies and gents”) so that I could do a little camera posing, chant my down-on-my-luck or my what-a-shit-country-we-live-in sob story and squeeze wads of sympathy cash out of fat-cat tourists.

I made other friends, Duvet Man, who lived inside his goose-down quilt and managed to be at the head of every food line, and Tortilla Tim, who saved me from being knifed by a Mill Valley kid weirded out on crack, and a guy who reminded me of Wyatt. A lot of people reminded of people I’d known, like we’d all drifted west till we’d run out of land, and then’d started to mutate a little, like salmon on their way back to spawn, getting a little cruder, a little uglier, on the way to die. The guy who reminded me of Wyatt looked like Wyatt, and kind of talked like Wyatt, too. One time just as I was about to make a small buy, he hummed a warning from a doorway. “Neck size, narc disguised.” I took him to the backseat of the Corolla that September night, and spilled my guts. I told him about Celia Montoya, the counseling Circle, the telemarketing job I’d left so I could find one or both my parents. The rest could wait.

“No parents? Some people have all the luck,” he said. He pulled a roll of breath mints from his pocket. “The name’s Gabe by the way, like the archangel.”

“My name’s Devi.”

“Like the goddess, eh? I had to learn all that Hindu, Jain, Buddhist shit at the U of T.”

“Where’s that? Texas?”

“Toronto, Texas, Tulsa, Topeka, Tempe.”

“Wow,” I murmured. “A goddess!”

“Tampa, Toledo—you shouldn’t need a private eye to track your Aged Ps.” He laughed. “Not if you are a goddess.”

“I was thinking of starting with the Yellow Pages.”

“Eenie meenie minie mo, et cetera?”

“I was thinking I’d pick the very first or the very last name listed.”

“Devi Aardvaark? Try Buzzards, Inc., in the Yellow Pages.”

“Buzzard? Like the bird?”

“If they ask, say Gabriel referred you. As in the archangel.”

We hung together the next couple of days, not doing much, just staking out a square of sidewalk at the corner of Belvedere and Haight, holding up a sign, A BUCK FOR AN ANGEL OR A GODDESS, YOU NEVER KNOW, feeling good about the world, especially good about the dollar bills we collected, and then Gabe took off with the sign and the cash. He stuck a note on my windshield. Hope the Pls can help. Wish we’d met earlier. Just too fucked up.

I looked for Buzzards, Inc., in the Yellow Pages. No Buzzards, but there was a listing for Vulture, Inc. I called and left my name on tape, then realized that I had no phone number for them to call me back at, so I hung up. Next I looked up the Church of Divine Intergalactica in the phone book. The Stoop Man’s church was listed under D, as Divine Intergalactica Worship Facility. I called Vulture, Inc., back, and this time left the DIWF number on the agency’s answering machine.

A whole week went by without any calls for me at the Stoop Man’s. I called the Vulture, Inc., number again, and kept calling until a human voice answered. “It’s Devi Dee again” was all I got in before the voice, a man’s, barked, “No solicitations, no market research surveys, no interest in freebie cruises or other prizes, so goodbye and thanks.”

“And fuck you, too,” I muttered to the dead line.

“All worked up, Goddess?” The Stoop Man snuck up on me on the sidewalk. He had on a beat-up, collapsible top hat and a satin-lined cape.

“Is that what they’re calling me on the street? I’ll kill Gabe!”

“Whoa! Bad nerves! You need something potent.”

“So what’re you selling?”

“Not selling. I’m giving it away today. The abracadabra of happiness.”

“In pill, powder