"What street is this?" I said.
"Divisadero," Vida said.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "It's Divisadero all right."
Vida looked over at me very sympathetically. We were stopped at a red light, next to a place that sold flying chickens and spaghetti. I had forgotten that there were places like that.
Vida took one hand off the wheel and gave me a little pat on the knee. "My poor dear hermit," she said.
We drove down Divisadero and saw a man washing the windows of a funeral parlor with a garden hose. He was spraying the hose against the second-floor windows. It was not a normal thing to see, so early in the morning.
Then Vida made a turn off Divisadero and went around the block. "Oak Street," she said. "You remember Oak Street? It'll take us to the freeway and down to the airport. You remember the airport, don't you?"
"Yes," I said. "But I've never been on an airplane. I've gone out there with friends who were going on airplanes, but that was years ago. Have the airplanes changed any?"
"Oh, honey," she said. "When we're through with all this, I've got to get you out of that library. I think you've been there long enough. They'll have to get somebody else."
"I don't know," I said, trying to drop the subject. I saw a Negro woman pushing an empty Safeway grocery cart on Oak Street. The traffic was very good all around us. It frightened me and excited me at the same time. We were headed for the freeway.
"By the way," Vida said. "Who do you work for?"
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I mean, who pays the bills for your library?" she said. "The money that it takes to run the place? The tab."
"We don't know," I said, pretending that was the answer to the question.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" Vida said. It hadn't worked.
"They send Foster a check from time to time. He never knows when it's coming or how much it will be. Sometimes they don't send us enough."
"They?" she said, keeping right on it.
We stopped for a red light. I tried to find something to look at. I didn't like talking about the financial structure of the library. I didn't like to think in terms of the library and money together. All I saw was a Negro man delivering papers from still another cart.
"Who are you talking about?" Vida said. "Who picks up the tab?"
"It's a foundation. We don't know who's behind it."
"What's the name of the foundation?" Vida said.
I guess that wasn't enough.
"The American Forever, Etc."
"The American Forever, Etc.," Vida said. "Wow! That sounds like a tax dodge. I think your library is a tax write-off."
Vida was now smiling.
"I don't know," I said. "All I know is that I have to be there. It's my job. I have to be there."
"Honey, I think you've got to get some new work. There must be something else that you can do."
"There are a lot of things I can do," I said, a little defensively.
Just then we slammed onto the freeway and my stomach flew into birds with snakes curling at their wings and we joined the mainstream of American motor thought.
It was frightening after so many years. I felt like a dinosaur plucked from my grave and thrust into competition with the freeway and its metallic fruit.
"If you don't want to work, honey," Vida said. "I think I can take care of us until you feel like it, but you've got to get out of that library as soon as possible. It's not the right place for you any more."
I looked out the window and saw a sign with a chicken holding a gigantic egg.
"I've got other things on my mind right now," I said, trying to get away. "Let's talk about it in a few days."
"You're not worried about the abortion are you, honey?" Vida said. "Please don't be. I have perfect faith in Foster and his doctor. Besides, my sister had an abortion last year in Sacramento and she went to work the next day. She felt a little tired but that was all, so don't worry. An abortion is a rather simple thing."
I turned and looked at Vida. She was staring straight ahead after saying that, watching the traffic in front of us as we roared out of San Francisco down the freeway past Potrero Hill and toward the airplane that waited to fly us at 8:15 down California to land in San Diego at 9:45.
"Maybe when we get back we can go live at the caves for a while," Vida said. "It'll be spring soon. They should be pretty."
"Seepage," I said.
"What?" Vida said. "I didn't hear you. I was watching that Chevrolet up there to see what it was going to do. What did you say now, honey?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Anyway," she said. "We've got to get you out of that library. Maybe the best thing would be just to give the whole thing up, forget the caves and start someplace new together. Maybe we can go to New York or we'll move to Mill Valley or get an apartment on Bernal Heights or I'll go back to UC and get my degree and we'll get a little place in Berkeley. It's nice over there. You'd be a hero."
Vida seemed to be more interested in getting me out of the library than worrying about the abortion.
"The library is my life," I said. "I don't know what I'd do without it."
"We're going to fix you up with a new life," Vida said.
I looked down the freeway to where the San Francisco International Airport waited, looking almost medieval in the early morning like a castle of speed on the entrails of space.
The San Francisco International Airport
VIDA parked the van near the Benny Bufano statue of Peace that waited for us towering above the cars like a giant bullet. The statue looked at rest in that sea of metal. It is a steel thing with gentle mosaic and marble people on it. They were trying to tell us something. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to listen.
"Well, here we are," Vida said.
"Yeah."
I got our bag and we left the van there quite early in the morning, planning, if everything went well, to pick it up that evening. The van looked kind of lonesome like a buffalo next to the other cars.
We walked over to the terminal. It was filled with hundreds of people coming and going on airplanes. The air was hung with nets of travelling excitement and people were entangled within them and we became a part of the catch.
The San Francisco International Airport Terminal is gigantic, escalator-like, marble-like, cybernetic-like and wants to perform a thing for us that we don't know if we're quite ready for yet. It is also very Playboy.
We went over—over being very large—and got our tickets from the Pacific Southwest Airlines booth. There was a young man and woman there. They were beautiful and efficient. The girl looked as if she would look good without any clothes on. She did not like Vida. They both had pins with half-wings on their chests like amputated hawks. I put our tickets in my pocket.
Then I had to go to the toilet.
"Wait here for me, honey," I said.
The toilet was so elegant that I felt as if I should have been wearing a tuxedo to take a leak.
Three men made passes at Vida while I was gone. One of them wanted to marry her.
We had forty-five minutes or so before our airplane left for San Diego, so we went and got a cup of coffee. It was so strange to be among people again. I had forgotten how complex they were in large units.
Everybody was of course looking at Vida. I had never seen a girl attract so much attention before. It was just as she said it would be: plus so.
A young handsome man in a yellow coat like a God-damn maître d' showed us to a table that was next to a plant with large green leaves. He was extremely interested in Vida, though he tried not to be obvious about it.
The basic theme of the restaurant was red and yellow with a surprising number of young people and the loud clatter of dishes. I had forgotten that dishes could be that noisy.
I looked at the menu, even though I wasn't hungry. It had been years since I had looked at a menu. The menu said good morning to me and I said good morning back to the menu. We could actually end our lives talkin
g to menus.
Every man in the restaurant had been instantly alerted to Vida's beauty and the women, too, in a jealous sort of way. There was a green aura about the women.
A waitress wearing a yellow dress with a cute white apron took our order for a couple cups of coffee and then went off to get them. She was pretty but Vida made her pale.
We looked out the window to see airplanes coming and going, joining San Francisco to the world and then taking it away again at 600 miles an hour.
There were Negro men in white uniforms doing the cooking while wearing tall white hats, but there were no Negroes in the restaurant eating. I guess Negroes don't take airplanes early in the morning.
The waitress came back with our coffee. She put the coffee on the table and left. She had lovely blond hair but it was to no avail. She took the menu with her: good-bye, good morning.
Vida knew what I was thinking because she said, "You're seeing it for the first time. It really used to bother me until I met you. Well, you know all about that."
"Have you ever thought about going into the movies or working here at the airport?" I said.
That made Vida laugh which caused a boy about twenty-one years old to spill his coffee all over himself and the pretty waitress to rush a towel over to him. He was cooking in his own coffee.
It was time now to catch our airplane, so we left the restaurant. I paid a very pretty cashier at the front of the cafe. She smiled at me as she took the money. Then she looked at Vida and she stopped smiling.
There was much beauty among the women working in the terminal, but Vida was chopping it down almost as if it weren't even there. Her beauty, like a creature unto itself, was quite ruthless in its own way.
We walked to catch our plane causing people in pairs to jab each other with their elbows to bring the other's attention to Vida. Vida's beauty had probably caused a million black and blue marks: Ah, de Sade, thy honeycomb of such delights.
Two four-year-old boys walking with their mother suddenly became paralyzed from the neck up as they passed us. They did not take their eyes off Vida. They couldn't.
We walked down to the PSA pre-flight lounge stimulating pandemonium among the males our path chanced to cross. I had my arm around Vida, but it wasn't necessary. She had almost totally overcome the dread of her own body.
I had never seen anything like it. A middle-aged man, perhaps a salesman, was smoking a cigarette as we came upon him. He took one look at Vida and missed his mouth with the cigarette.
He stood there staring on like a fool, not taking his eyes off Vida, even though her beauty had caused him to lose control of the world.
PSA
THE jet was squat and leering and shark-like with its tail. It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. It was a strange experience climbing into that thing.
Vida caused her usual panic among the male passengers as we got into our scats. We immediately fastened our seat belts. Everybody who got on the airplane joined the same brotherhood of nervousness.
I looked out the window and we were sitting over the wing. Then I was surprised to find a rug on the floor of the airplane.
The walls of the airplane had little California scenes on them: cable cars, Hollywood, Coit Tower, the Mount Palomar telescope, a California mission, the Golden Gate Bridge, a zoo, a sailboat, etc. and a building that I couldn't recognize. I looked very hard at the building. Perhaps it was built while I was in the library.
The men continued to stare at Vida, though the air- plane was filled with attractive stewardesses. Vida made the stewardesses invisible, which was probably a rare thing for them.
"I really can't believe it," I said.
"They can have it all if they want it. I'm not trying to do anything," Vida said.
"You're really a prize," I said.
"Only because I'm with you," she said.
Before taking off a man talked to us over the plane's PA system. He welcomed us aboard and told us too much about the weather, the temperature, clouds, the sun and the wind and what weather waited for us down California. We didn't want to hear that much about the weather. I hoped he was the pilot.
It was gray and cold outside without any hope for the sun. We were now taking off. We started moving down the runway, slow at first, then faster, faster, faster: my God!
I looked at the wing below me. The rivets in the wing looked awfully gentle as if they were not able to hold anything up. The wing trembled from time to time ever so gently, but just enough to put the subtle point across.
"How does it feel?" Vida said. "You look a little green around the edges."
"It's different," I said.
A medieval flap was hanging down from the wing as we took off. It was the metal intestine of some kind of bird, retractable and visionary.
We flew above the fog clouds and right into the sun. It was fantastic. The clouds were white and beautiful and grew like flowers to the hills and mountains below, hiding with blossoms the valleys from our sight.
I looked down on my wing and saw what looked like a coffee stain as if somebody had put a cup of coffee down on the wing. You could see the ring stain of the cup and then a big splashy sound stain to show that the cup had fallen over.
I was holding Vida's hand.
From time to time we hit invisible things in the air that made the plane buck like a phantom horse.
I looked down at the coffee stain again and I liked it with the world far below. We were going to land at Burbank in Los Angeles in less than an hour to let off and pick up more passengers, then on to San Diego.
We were travelling so fast that it only took a few moments before we were gone.
The Coffee Stain
I WAS beginning to love the coffee stain on my wing. Somehow it was perfect for the day: like a talisman. I started to think about Tijuana, but then I changed my mind and went back to the coffee stain.
Things were going on in the airplane with the stewardesses. They were taking tickets and offering coffee inside the plane, and making themselves generally liked.
The stewardesses were like beautiful Playboy nuns coming and going through the corridors of the airplane as if the airplane were a nunnery. They wore short skirts to show off lovely knees, beautiful legs, but their knees and legs became invisible in front of Vida, who sat quietly in her seat next to me, holding my hand, thinking about her body's Tijuana destination.
There was a perfect green pocket in the mountains. It was perhaps a ranch or a field or a pasture. I could have loved chat pocket of green forever.
The speed of the airplane made me feel affectionate.
After a while the clouds reluctantly gave up the valleys, but it was a very desolate land we were travelling over, not even the clouds wanted it. There was nothing human kind below, except a few roads that ran like long dry angleworms in the mountains.
Vida remained quiet, beautiful.
The sun kept swinging back and forth on my wing. I looked down beyond my coffee stain to see that we were flying now above a half-desolate valley that showed the agricultural designs of man in yellow and in green. But the mountains had no trees in them and were barren and sloped like ancient surgical instruments.
I looked at the medieval intestinal flap of the wing, rising to digest hundreds of miles an hour, beside my coffee stain talisman.
Vida was perfect, though her eyes were dreaming south.
The people on the other side of the airplane were looking down below at something. I wondered what it was and looked down my side to see a small town and land that looked gentler and there were more towns. The towns began magnifying one another. The gende-ness of the land became more and more towns and grew sprawling into Los Angeles and I was looking for a freeway.
The man I hoped was the pilot or involved in some official capacity with the airplane told us that we were going to land in two minutes. We suddenly flew into a cloudy haze that became the Burbank airport. The sun was not shining and everything was murky. It was a yellow murk w
hereas back in San Francisco it was a gray murk.
The airplane grew empty and then became full again. Vida got a lot of visual action while this was going on. One of the stewardesses lingered for a minute a few seats away and stared at Vida as if to make sure she were really there.
"How do you feel?" I said
"Fine," Vida said.
A small airliner about the size of a P-38 with rusty-looking propellers taxied by to take off. Its windows were filled with terrified passengers.
Some businessmen were now sitting in front of us. They were talking about a girl. They all wanted to go to bed with her. She was a secretary in a branch office in Phoenix. They were talking about her, using business language. "I'd like to get her account! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
The "pilot" welcomed the new people aboard and told us too much about the weather again. Nobody wanted to hear what he had to say.
"We'll be landing in San Diego in twenty-one minutes," he said, finishing his weather report.
As we took off from Burbank, a train was running parallel with us across from the airport. We left it behind as if it weren't there and the same with Los Angeles.
We climbed through the heavy yellow haze and then suddenly the sun was shining calmly away on the wing and my coffee stain looked happy like a surfer: but it was only a passing thing.
Bing-Bonging to San Diego
BING-BONG!
The trip to San Diego was done mostly in the clouds. From time to time a bell tone was heard in the airplane. I didn't know what it was about.
Bing-bong!
The stewardesses wanted more tickets and people to like them. The smiles never left their faces. They were smiling even when they weren't smiling.
Bing-bong!
I thought about Foster and the library, then I very rapidly changed the subject in my mind. I didn't want to think about Foster and the library: grimace.
Revenge of the Lawn, the Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away Page 18