undisputed lightweight champion of the world.

He didn’t want to be there. It was a bust in every sense. Loose plans to see about a woman had fallen flat and were fading away. Henry barely knew Janice but wanted to like her and she was supposed to be there, somewhere, only reason why he came to this fucking place. But he couldn’t find her anywhere.

Once in awhile someone would talk to him, ask him if he liked the song that played or if he lived in the city. Henry had his story and his interests and liked to wrap himself around the words and emotions of others, enjoying the high time of conversation. But he wasn’t into it tonight. He knew he didn’t want to talk to these assholes. And so, Henry gave kind, concise answers that didn’t invoke responsive follow-up questions. Not from these people. I live in Oakland. I like Megadeth. I’m an out of work factory hand. This guacamole sucks.
He wished in quiet desperation that Janice would emerge out of this mess of aging hipsters but she never did. He knew then that he had to get out of there before he got drunk and sad and ruined somebody’s good time.

Henry had lived in West Oakland for a time, working at a warehouse on the docks. But those days ended as they were ending everywhere. Lay offs and evictions and strange wheels of fate leading him to his place back in the city, San Francisco, it had been a steady six months of trying to readjust to a city he had once left behind.
The Bay itself wasn’t that big, less than two miles across, but it served as a significant barrier nonetheless. Even the skyline of San Francisco, looking Westward from Oakland, would disappear in the fog and he could watch it swallow the city in a few soft moments from the docks as it happened, feeling alive and victorious. Despite the job being shit, it had signified a decent time in his life. Henry had had a good time being anonymous. Drinking, reading, playing chess with an old man across the street.
It had been a fine, necessary break from the previous year of drinking, not reading and arguing with a sociopath. Henry had actually run into his ex, Cristina, on a busy street corner above the BART station earlier in the evening. She pretended like they were friends and no void of time or space had ever existed. She had this grocery bag full of art supplies. She wore a lot of eye make up. She had dyed her hair herself, she said. Auburn, because she’d always wanted to be a red head, which he never remembered her saying before. Anyhow it had been an empty and useless encounter.
He tried to tell himself that seeing Cristina had nothing to do with the feeling he was currently trying to extinguish with another cold swig of Pabst, as he tried to tell himself that the all the blind rage in his heart was on account of all these yuppie assholes that infested this town and surrounded him currently, that it was nothing more than that.

It had nothing to do with Janice, he also concluded. Fuck her for not showing up, sure, but he knew he couldn’t blame anyone but himself. Henry was too bored and alone these days to play it cool and wait anything out. He had met Janice the week before at a bar not far from his place. They talked most of that night and she had seemed so radiant over the smell of stale beer and sweat that dominated the bar. Then a few days later, he ran into her on the street and she had seemed excited about the coincidence and then told him about this party. It was at a friend’s house, off Valencia, no further information beyond that. That she would be there was enough for him.
And Henry had mistakenly thought about her all week. He built a small cathedral around her quick laughter and low-cut Motorhead t-shirt, breasts that probably tasted like fresh strawberries picked from the far corners of Heaven and so forth. Janice had long raven-colored hair with bangs cut short, tattoos on her neck and chest, a crooked front tooth and she said she’d grown up in Pittsburgh but hadn’t been back there in years.

But Janice wasn’t anywhere to be found tonight. And this party was an awful and awkward place to be. It would be all right, he told himself. Henry had friends he could call, redeem the night with beers and blunts among people he actually liked. But his energy for all that kind of shit had seemingly been infiltrated and snuffed out by this crowd and this town once again. He decided he would call it a night.

Without saying anything to anyone, Henry took two cans of Pabst from a 12 pack he had brought, left the rest and walked out the door. People smoked on the stoop and many others passed him by on the street going to the same party somewhere else in the city.
Fuck all this, he thought, feeling fifty years older but as wise as a child.

Once he got West of Mission St., it was calmer and quieter. There were still plenty of tricks and deals going down but the hip couples, the loft dwelling scum, the bridge and tunnel crowd desperately looking for parking, they were all few and far. A light but cold wind brushed his face and went straight through his lungs. Henry breathed easier, didn’t feel the heaviness as much, his hands gripping the cans of beer in each pocket. He thought about cracking one open but he decided to wait until he was home, where VHS and the last of his weed stash lived. He lived alone but on Saturday nights in the Mission District, being lonely felt good. Sometimes it was the best thing in the world.

Henry could see that some women had set up shop on the corner. It was more or less the same corners every night. The Vice assholes only moved it along elsewhere for a week or two. These working girls never bothered him. They were his neighbors, working graveyard shifts only a couple blocks from his place. Henry would pass them and say nothing and life would move on relentlessly for everyone.
But this time, he nodded to one, because he didn’t feel like feeling awkward or ignoring her obvious glare through the dim yellow light on the corner. She was a tall, lean and nearly beautiful thing. She had a short yellow dress, heels, tiniest purse ever seen, nice legs, hair done up somewhat, real dark skin that seemed to glow under the street light. In this part of town the prostitutes looked as such. No bullshit. As soon as he passed her, she muttered something he didn’t hear, to which he ignored until another voice, a notch above a mutter said something to him.

He turned around to see another prostitute emerge, also tall in heels and a skirt, but white and red headed and a little heavier set, more breasts than legs unlike the other. But it wasn’t her voice that had called out to him. It was a man’s voice, a cackle of laughter out of the shadows. Then the man appeared.
Bad news right away. A skinny white dude, looked like a squirrel under a red Kangol, began pitching ideas, asking where he was going, what he wanted, sales pitching the goods.
Henry wanted to keep walking but the pimp obstructed his path.
“Come on now, man,” he said, “what you want? You can’t look and not touch, and you know it, ‘lil man.”
Henry wasn’t a big man, an inch or two under average and medium built. The squirrelly pimp wasn’t any bigger, in fact just as short and a hell of a lot skinnier. And the way his streetwise demeanor and vocabulary seemed forced coupled with his matching red jump suit made him seem even less intimidating. But Henry knew that this was a man of the street, a street that was dark and empty. The prostitutes, alongside their pimp, were closing in. So, this is how it works, Henry thought to himself. You were forced into fucking two hookers or else robbed by a weasel in a velvet jumpsuit. What a bullshit night.

The pimp kept on, “Listen, man, you ain’t hearin’ what I’m playin’’…You look hella inter-ested in these ladies so I suggest you hurry up and buy…you never had no pussy like this and that ain’t no joke…”
He was ridiculous. Henry still said nothing, wondering if this guy was for real. His heart pounded and the street was still silent around them. He stood back and thought about running. His hands were still in his pockets and the beers weren’t as cold as they had been. The weasel moved in closer, continuing to hock pussy like they were the last used cars on earth.
The black one Henry had initially seen looked indifferent as she stood there and watched this strange scene unfold. The white one looked a little more menacing and seemed to be actually interested in the aggravation that her pimp was currently engaged in. Closer in the yellow light, Henry could see she was gnarled and far less attractive than the other. Her teeth, her clothes, her breasts, everything.
Henry again tried to walk away. Then the incessant little pimp finally stopped Henry with a hand and said, “You gonna put yo’ money where yo’ mouth is or you a straight faggot?”
“Ok,” Henry said. “You know something? You’re not a real good salesman, you know that? I don’t know how the fuck you sell anything. Even if I had been interested in what you sellin’ you killed it with that stupid fucking get-up and that gnarly ass grill. Fuck you, get the fuck outta the way.” The weasel was paralyzed. The white hooker looked even more disgusted. The black one laughed and it killed the silence, her pimp giving her a swift, stale look of hatred. Henry’s heart was pounding hard, trying vigorously to escape from out of his chest. Before anything could be said, the pimp brought out a blade.
It was a straight razor, the kind used for a shave in 1923. It looked old fashioned but it also looked sharp. And his beady, weasel eyes looked murderous. Henry knew this asshole was going to put that blade to use and nobody else was around save for two giant, angry hookers.

In a strange, swift flash and sliver of time, Henry took his right hand out of his jacket pocket. He held the hard, lukewarm can of Pabst, and threw it as hard as he could. It made a thud as it hit the pimp square in the abdomen, possibly in the balls or the bread basket, Henry was unsure as he stood there bewildered by his own accuracy.
The pimp gasped and dropped the blade and the beer rolled along the sidewalk lightly fizzing, slowly spilling beer onto the street. The prostitutes were equally stunned. Each stood staring at Henry. He didn’t know what to do. One beer left. He took it out with his left hand, grabbed it with his right and held it like a quarterback posing for a portrait.
Then, he let it go again, this time throwing it harder than the first, downward, smacking the moaning hustler right in the head. The can bounced off his skull and fizzed and sprayed all over the place. The pimp had already been down on the ground, grunting and gasping, his Kangol in the gutter. The kill-shot, which also served as a warning to his back-up, left the pimp lying on the street. A small geyser of Pabst Blue Ribbon covered his face as a bloody knot would certainly develop quickly there in the dark. Henry wondered if his employees would retaliate.

The white prostitute rushed to her pimp’s aid, not looking at Henry, generally concerned about the injury, taking off her shirt to dress the wound. The bloodied squirrel was out cold, the busty topless prostitute was in tears and the tall black one stared at Henry, looking more beautiful than ever. She lit another cigarette, rolled her eyes at the scene going down before her on the street. No cars passed and no wind blew. Henry was lost and frozen and decided he should continue walking home.
Then, the beautiful black woman smiled and stopped him. “Say, baby, you got any more of them beers?”