The Mission
Anyway, the pharmacy marked the end of my errands and yet, I wanted more. I thought again of Celestine, and for the first time it occurred to me that Porky didn’t know about Celestine, about her emotional duress. Did I have an obligation to inform him? Or an obligation to Celestine not to divulge privileged information? I don’t know what kind of trouble I had in mind, but I found myself on a bus headed for the Mission, calling Tip to tell him where I’d be.
“Hey, Tip, It’s me.”
“Where are you?” he asks.
“I have one more errand to run in the Mission. I’ll be home in about an hour and a half.”
“Why are you being so mysterious?” he demands.
“What? Mysterious? What are you talking about?”
“Errands, errands, that’s so generic. Where are the specifics, the details? What are you doing? Why the Mission?” I wasn’t sure if he meant my ‘mission’, for I certainly felt I was on one, or that neighborhood itself.
“Tip, you are getting way too scrupulous.”“Ok, I hope this little adventure doesn’t prevent you from being on time for your guests and making your mortgage payment this month,” he stated.
“Whatever,” I replied as disinterestedly as I could. I heard him in turn say, “whatev-…..” before I hung up the phone. Tipton beggars everyone, including me, when it comes to all things bitter and pissy.
The bus ride was a haphazard journey to the general vicinity of Mission Dolores, which was my unacknowledged destination. I was just hitching a ride, but some people take public transportation in order to have the opportunity to publicly address their failure; it’s their road show. I look for a seat in the back because I don’t want to mingle with those people on the bus breathing down the back of the bus driver or sitting crossways on a seat talking loudly about which of the twelve steps they're currently stumbling on. They usually sit way up front in the old folks section, whether or not they're old and it's always a heartbreaking tale, especially when they force a laugh, which often transforms my annoyance at their chattiness into painful sympathy with their condition. They do it because they've got a story to tell and no one else will listen.
Who am I to criticize? The oral tradition goes back thousands of years and these people are just compulsively continuing the tradition in the face of overwhelming cultural odds against them: animal husbandry, the invention of the printing press, radio, movies, TV, the internet and the like. What they're so loudly soliloquizing is the same story begun by John Q. Caveman; it's a continuum in the one true genre: tragi-comedy.
There was no place to hang out within view of the mission, no cafes, everything was either spiritual – a synagogue in a converted funeral home and a German congregation kitty corner to it – or residential. I chose the imposing former nunnery across from the mission as my perch.
The early 20th century building is thoroughly French in inspiration, but has an awkward little domed construction in the middle that looks like a garden gazebo that had climbed up onto the mansard roof to get a better view. I’d been in the building before as it was being renovated for housing because I was sort of dating an architect working on it. She took me down to the basement, a maze of catacombs, the remains of the previous building’s old hallways and rooms after it had been dynamited as a fire block immediately after the 1906 earthquake. It was pitch black and spooky and just right for some vertical dirty sex, during which I parlayed my nun fantasies into a good orgasm, goading us to climax and release.
The nunnery had been rebuilt and now renovated as a home for seniors, with landscaping I could hide behind and benches to make my concealment comfortable. I sat myself upon one of the benches behind a giant bird of paradise, took out my book and pretended to read, but all my attention went to my peripheral vision, in which the entrance to the mission was prominent. I waited like this for a while, enjoying the warmth of the day, a little sun peeking out of the clouds. And then suddenly, the sight of Celestine no more than ten feet from where I sat almost took my breath away. She was studying the building as I myself have done, admiring its handsome form and well-turned details. She was getting ready to take a closer look, which would have included the discovery of me, when her name was shouted from across the street. She turned and waved. She looked left down Dolores Street and waited for two cars to pass and then walked to the median strip with its ten-block row of royal palms, then looked right and let another car pass before she joined Porky.
Chapter V: Pettiness
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