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Getting political at Grandma’s
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D Train’s pickup is parked on 24th Avenue across from the Police Station. He stuffs Jenny Two Drinks in the cab and tosses a green blanket on her and locks the doors so she can sleep it off and we go around the corner past the tennis courts and the library and Tennessee Grill to Grandma’s Saloon.
Mary O’Reilly is serving drinks. She has a bad face and worse makeup. She’s supposed to go outside to smoke but she’s not keen on doing what she’s told. D Train starts right in with the cheap vodka ($4.00). I’m drinking Jack and Cokes ($4.50). You can smell Chinese food from across the street.
Through the open door I can see that the sun is shining now and the sky is blue.
There’s a pool table, which is a rarity in the Sunset District. D Train likes to play eight ball. He beats a guy from Cork. Then he beats a guy from Dublin. Then he starts talking crazy about the Irish Republican Army—a topic he knows nothing about—so I go to get some fresh air and check on Jenny Two Drinks. She’s not in the truck. I look for her in the playground and the tennis courts and the wooded area behind the library; she tends to sleep in public places. I still can’t find her. She’s probably pissed that D Train left her like that; they got married in Vegas last month and I don’t believe it’s going to stick.
Then I find her at old Fahey’s. She’s chain smoking cigarettes and drinking white wine poured from a cardboard box. A derelict they call the English Teacher is hitting on her. I tell him to get lost.
He starts to leave.
My hero, Jenny Two Drinks says.
I shake my head and laugh. She’s a real pistol.
Beverly Hills laughs too until she starts coughing and then she spits blood into her hand and wipes it on her pants. When she’s not behind the bar she cuts hair at a shop in North Beach. She’s been cutting D Train’s hair since he’s a kid. She gives me a Jack and Coke on the house and tells me to calm down. I don’t drink it until the English Teacher leaves the bar completely. Then I finish it in one pull. I tell Jenny Two Drinks that her husband is at Grandma’s antagonizing the Irish Republican Army. She rolls her eyes and stabs her cigarette into the ashtray that is spilling all over the bar and she swallows her wine.
He’s always been so political, she says.
I almost smile. We join D Train at the saloon after a while. He’s winning more money at billiards. Then the moon is white and a blanket of mist drops hard and chills my bones. In the distance a foghorn is warning ships away from the cliffs; sometimes the biggest dangers are unseen, impossible to see.
For more info:
Grandma’s Saloon
(415) 665-7892
1016 Taraval Street
San Francisco, CA
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