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3 5 The one time I found a lover who understood my work was when I met Veronica, the San Francisco police sergeant. Never mind she wasdrop-deadItaliangorgeousinthatcopsuit.Sheknewwhatwork is. No whining about schedules or lack thereof, no drama-filled moments just before I caught my train. It helped, though, that I had a regular run. IdeadheadedupfromSantaCruzto work the midnight train back from the city Friday, then the morning train Saturday arriving at noon and the midnight train back, which left us twelve wonderful hours in the city to play. Sundays I worked a double on duty at 10 am, pretty much working all day. Then I had five days free in Santa Cruz, until Friday. Since the turnaround time in San Jose was eight hours exactly, and it took forty-five minutes to drive over the mountain to Santa Cruz, while I was working I could get only five hours of sleep if I came home. So I either slept between runs on my conductor’s couch, in the back of my truck, or in a switchman’s shanty in San Jose. Add in my Saturday date in the city and, on Sundays, I was sleepwalking through my double, very aware of the humiliation of a physical job when you are just bone tired. Dating Veronica was like meeting a true counterpart, someone from an alternate universe that occupied the same territory as mine. “Cops go everywhere,” she told me, “from roach-infested crack houses to mansions on Nob Hill.” They could certainly park everywhere , which in San Francisco was an amazing perk. Knowledge is a problem, though, because once you have it, you can’t get rid of it. Veronica knew too much about the place, what crimes had happenedthere ,rightwhereyouwerehavinglunch.Offduty,shealways packed a gun. “Just in case some guy sees a woman and thinks he can get away with it,” she said. I wasn’t sure if it made me feel safer or not. The railroad, I realized, lent itself to daydreaming out of time in a way police work did not. The railroad, after all, was just a corridor for moving freight or passengers. Freight work especially took you to back-door places, but you were in and out of them quickly. You didn’t have to get up close and personal, the way cops did. One time Veronica and her partner, Harry, also gay, were working as decoys on the 22 Filmore bus, a particularly rowdy route. A street guy sat down next to her. “You look like you might like the women,” he said. “Is that what you like? Getting nasty with the women?” Harry was standing up in the row behind them now. “So what are you going to do about it, you fat faggot?” the guy said. Throwing him on the floor and dragging him off the bus was a particularly sweet arrest that day. The one time we went out and she couldn’t wear her gun was a formal event we were in gowns and heels for. In the elevator on the way up to the party, a scruffy-looking guy got on pushing a buddy in T H E B I G F O U R B A R 6 RailroadNoir.indb 35 12/17/09 2:01 PM R A I L R O A D N O I R 3 6 a wheelchair. Hairy, Viet Nam–era old, tattoos, the jail kind. I could see Veronica turning apoplectic. He was closest to me, in my great aunt’s black crocheted gown, and eyeball to eyeball he said, “What if I was to throw you off the roof?” I held his gaze and said, “Oh, I don’t think so.” I feared for his life, I really did. The door opened and he and his buddy went through it. I turned to Veronica. “Well, what was your plan?” “My high heels,” she said. “I was going to put one through his eyeball.” Sinceweessentiallyhadatwelve-hours-a-weekrelationship,Veronicainventedvariousparlorgamesforustoplay ,usingthecityasa backdrop. One Saturday I received instructions to dress up and take a cab to a specified address. I was instructed not to wear underwear. NotaproblemsinceIwasfromsouthernCaliforniaandtheonlyreason I did wear underwear was to survive in my commute passenger suit. But no matter. Let the revels begin. In a rather femme outfit, I gave the cabdriver the address. He let me out on top of Nob Hill at the Hotel Huntington. A doorman quickly ushered me inside. The destination had to be...

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