She stared at his legs. Did he actually shave them? What was in his mind when he did that? Like leg hair would slow him down? “Shhhh,” she said. “People sleepin here.”
“Dickhead.” A deep voice Gina recognized rumbled from the depths of a sleeping bag. She saw Lucas’s head appear for a moment before he burrowed back beneath the gold-striped plastic tablecloth which covered the upper half of him. “Go home.”
The jogger’s knees lifted higher, pop pop one-two one-two, as he bounced in front of Gina. He huffed, in the direction of the tablecloth, “This is a public park! Not a hotel!”
A couple more sleeping bags twitched, someone groaned. “Every fuckin mornin.”
Lucas turtled out, muttering, “Dickhead gets up befo the sun jus to spoil our mornin.” He nodded to Gina. “Mornin, Gina.”
“Sun’s not comin up today. Go back to sleep.”
The enraged jogger hissed, “You people are crap.”
Gina put her hands on her hips. “What people? Who people? Just who izzit you callin crap?” Her hands clenched as he ran across the lawn and down the steps to his SUV parked at the curb. She hollered at his retreating butt, “You rich fuckin bastaaaard!” She turned to the park’s no longer sleeping crew. “Oh. Sorry.” She headed toward the little mall at Sixteenth and Bryant.
The people who opened Peet’s in the morning didn’t smile a lot—this was important to Gina: Just pour the damn espresso into the cup and give it to me.
Double espresso. Spoonfulla steam milk. She poured the sugar over the top, circling the cup three times—
“Got you a serious sugar jones, Gina?”
Bleary-eyed, Gina glared at her coffee, “Mornin, Lucas.
Don’t talk about jonesin before coffee.” She lifted her head and motioned at the Safeway parking lot outside the window. “Gonna be a crappy day, Lucas. Another crappy day.” She poured half her coffee into a paper cup, handed it to him.
“Yup. Yup.” Lucas rubbed his stubbly chin, scratched his do-rag back over his graying curls, grinned his seven-tooth grin. “Up before the sun again. Haaaaah.” He waved at the chaotic lot, the oily drizzle. “Yunno, the world is how ya make it.” He shrugged deeper into his baseball jacket. “Got a extra cigarette you can spare?”
Gina smiled at her grubby pal. “Pfft. They don come with extra. Only twenty to a pack.” Cocking her head toward the lot, she said, “Come on back out into the wilderness with me and we’ll bring up the sun, smokin.”
She lit two cigarettes. Not gonna share one with Lucas no matter how little he annoyed her in the morning, that man’s mouth surely been some nasty places. She watched him cough on the exhale. “Sorry I woke yas this mornin.”
Lucas blew the smoke into the sky over the lot. “Nahhh. Weren’t you. That guy got somethin wrong with him. Yunno.” He watched the crows and the cars bark and circle in the morning light. “Goin down Sixteenth this morning, Gina. Anythin you want?”
Gina snorted, an unladylike noise. “I want it all, Lucas. I want it all.”
“All Sixteenth Street?” His laugh was a sustained growl. “C’n you i-magine what it’d be like just to keep it clean?”
“Pffft. What about the DPW?”
Lucas raised a grizzled eyebrow. “Yeah. What about em?”
“Right. Let it rot.”
“No. If it’s yers…” Solemn nod, years of living at the edges. “If you want it, you gotta care for it.”
Grumpy, “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” A creek used to run all the way from where they stood, started over on Seventh, emptied into the bay. Sewer line now. “You’re right. I don’t want it.” Last drag. “What you want, Lucas? What you willin to take care of?”
“Weeeeeee-ell. I cheer you, smokin the sun come up. That about good enough for my day.”
“I’m not cheered up.” Gina smiled up at him. “Not me. Not cheerful. Not in the mornin. Nope.” She turned her head, her smile fading as she saw three cop cars slide into the parking lot, sharks circling closer to a shiny black car with three shiny brownskin teenagers inside it.
The boys were oblivious, windows down, coffee cups raised to each other, their laughter shading from ghetto falsetto to royal belly roars: “Didja see that man looooooook at us? OOoooooooh yeeeeeeah. He be one jealous muthafucka nowwwww.”
Six doors opened, six cops approached the car, three hung back, two at each side, one stepping forward. “Out. Out of the car. Now.”
Gina saw the whole morning slide straight into the shitter, the tender motion of their wild night, their grand friendship—she watched their lives slip off their faces as the cops approached.
One of the cops pawed at his gun, his shoulders twitched with anticipation.
Wind it back. Way back. To the moment of celebration. Never moving forward.
Stolen car, beautiful car pounding through the night, windows down, rockin sound, good friends. Nothing on their minds, nowhere to be. Just cruisin. Maybe drivin across the bridge to Oakland howlin at the moon, back again headin west as the sun came up behind them, racin chasin and pul-lin into Safeway’s big lot, grabbem some wake-up-the-day, no one even know the car be gonnnnne yet. Three coffees, lotsa cream, take the whole sugar jar. Oh lookit that fiiiine girl, just a fine young girl. Fine. Here’s to all the fine young girls! Here’s to a night under the moon at seventy eighty ninety a hunnert miles an hour! Here’s to friends and Here’s to Forever.
Gina’s breath came slow and shallow, her eyes riveted on the three boys standing, leaning on the car, one foot behind the other, casual, doomed. The police talked then the kids talked, waving their hands in the air. Even though she stared and stared directly at them all, she couldn’t stop the forward motion from falling into the gray nothing forever of jail.
She felt Lucas fade away to her left—a soft sound like a sucker punch—right at the edge of awareness. Her lips curled in a snarl, she flung her coffee cup at the closest police car. Failed to get a splash on the tires. Grand gesture. Didn’t save a single soul.
Gina spun away, headed out Bryant Street, following some long buried waterway, work forgotten. The sound of her boots snapped the cement into grains of sand, the glare of her eyes destroyed every condom dropped in her path. She cut up to Seventh and Folsom, creek’s mouth, digging in her pocket for bills to catch a bus ride out. North. Out of the city. Like her granma used to do when things got tight in the kitchen. Far away for a day of friendly trees. There’d be lots of green shit on the hills. Big ol winter river.
When she got to her seat she half-closed her eyes, peeking out from under her heavy lids as the city rolled by. She discovered a fondness for the city buried somewhere deep in her chest, most noticeable when she was leaving. Gina sat upright at the bridge, staring at the early-morning skyline: Dawnlight glowed on fairy tale city.
“What crap.” Gina put her head back, went to sleep.
She had intended to call Karen from Santa Rosa: Get out the bong, the booze, the shrooms. I’m headin fer the high grass. The tall trees. Comin to break the monotony of yer sheltered rural ex-is-tence.
But the River Express bus was at the station when she arrived so she just kept moving, no breaks in the rhythm, not even to call work: Got stuck up the river, road’s washed out, won’t be in today. She kept moving toward the green, away from the city drizzle that hurt her eyes. Burned her heart.
Gina hopped off in Guerneville, fog swirling from the trees at the top of the ridge, Latinos waiting on the corners for day-wage dirt jobs, no traffic on the street, slow dogs pissing on the shrubbery. Nice one-street city. Tattoo shop, couple weird art shops. Coffee shop.
“Double espresso, please.” Gina took a deep breath, felt her ribs expand in the country air. First big rib-stretcher in a long time. “Ahhhh. Please, where’s the nearest phone?”
Karen answered, melodic with country cheer, “Alhambra here.”
“Al Hambra? What? Like some Saudi cousin of Al Qaeda?”
“Giiina! How are you?” She laughed. “It’s a palace in Spain.”
“You moved to Spain? Or named yourself after a building?” Gina scowled: You let em move outta the city, they completely lose their little freakin minds.
“Hah. I just liked the sound of it. So, what’s up, little grouch?”
“I’m in Guerneville. Filled with urban angst.” For the first time Gina wondered if this had been a good idea. She decided not to mention bongs or shrooms—when people changed a perfectly good two-syllable name like Karen to something mouth-filling or edificial, you never knew what other changes might have taken place.
“Gotcha. I’ll be there inna few. Don’t go to the bridge.”
“Okay.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?
“Don’t do anything weird there. The local citizen-watch has the place bugged and videotaped.”
“You shittin me? What’s up with that?” Gina turned around, slow, careful, looking left, looking right. The vigilantes were hunkered down somewhere out of sight.
“The lower river’s tagged with being inna condition of urban blight. Garbage. And crime, Gina. Terrible crime. People smoke dope. Shoot the lights out. Make noise. The world will come to an end if the good citizens don’t document everything.”
“What should I do?” Gina asked.
“Oh hell, go to the bridge anyway. It’s the easiest landmark. Besides, the river’s huge, makes everything hum. Make ya feel alive. Meet you there.”
“Eat my shorts.”
The rain started pissing down again, it would never stop, the world was going to wash away or disappear in a poof of mold. Dozens of vultures lurked in the dripping trees by the bridge, shitting down their legs, watching Gina with lazy hungry eyes.
She walked out to the middle of the span and stared down at the wide coffee river rumbling along only a foot or two below her, the bridge itself thrumming with the crazy power of so much muddy water bombing past. Gina goggled down into deep river space then pulled her sweater off over her head, spread her arms wide open to the sprizz of the water. “Yeeeeah!”
“Hey! Get outta the way!”
Gina turned to see a skinny guy walking a purple and green painted wheelchair.
“Din’t yo mommy teach you ta watch yer back?” He stopped next to her, crowding her against the metal screen railing. He peered at the delicate vines tattooed around her left arm, at the datura blossoms inked by the same Mission district master artist on her right. “Wow.” Up and down, moving closer. “Nice ink, babe!”
Gina glared at the gimp, she slid away from him. His T-shirt exposed beef-jerky muscles covered with blackwork tattoos. Thick lines where the ink had bled through the skin made the ugly skeletal forms worse. Both lower legs were similarly covered. Badly executed fake-tribal. The whites of his eyes were dead yellow, no pupil, his face didn’t move when he spoke. Not good. “Get the fuck away from me.”
He grabbed her arm, turning it to examine it closely. “Looks like my work, here.” He leaned forward. “This here jus like my design.” He ran his tongue up her inner arm.
Relax arm, bend knees, step to the side, and twist sharp. “You simple-minded fuckhead—”
There was more she was going to say, but his fist slammed into her face, she felt her right eye crack like an egg, sudden yolk ran red down her neck. She took a deep breath, a low crooning subsonic kind of sound began in her belly, spun out of her mouth. Her toes curled back, she popped his dick with the ball of her foot, and while he crouched in the traditional male oof position, she jumped straight up in the air, clasped her hands together, and whacked his head into a steel girder. He made a satisfying clang sound.
She grabbed the wheelchair and heaved it over the railing into the river. A classic finishing move. Hoo hoo hoo.
Gina took fragile steps along the bridge, back the way she had come, muttering to herself. She snapped her fingers at the spot where she figured the camera would be: Kiss my ass.
As she stepped off the bridge she saw Karen’s lanky figure running toward her. Gina took her hand off her eye and waved, spattering drops of blood which disappeared in the drizzle before they hit the ground. Gina’s one-eye vision wobbled. Karen? Long sweater, long skirt, cowboy hat? Two long black braids swung out behind the woman as she ran.
“What happened?”
“Uhhh,” Gina said, waving at the staggering figure on the bridge. “Uhh. Tattoo pride. What can I say?”
“Put your hand over your eye, press down. Wait. No. Don’t press on it, you might make it worse. Tilt your head back. Wait, no, don’t tilt it back, you won’t see where you’re going—here, lean on me.”
Gina grinned up at her friend. “Calm down, Allllhambrah. Just point me to your car. This ain’t my first head wound, surely won’t be the last. C’mon. Let’s blow Guerneville.”
Gina wrapped her sweater around her head before she got in the car so she wouldn’t bloody-up the upholstery. Tires squealed, there was no traffic so Karen took it from zero to sixty in, well, it was an old wreck of a car so it made it to sixty in a couple, three, maybe four blocks. Held steady around the curves.
“Ahhh. That felt good. I mean, now it feels really bad—you do have dope at home, don’t you? But outside of this ex-cruciatin pain here, I been needin to do that for months.” Gina tipped her head into her hand. “I can see why they hava camera on that bridge. The Mission’s a snooze in comparison. Izzit this excitin generally?”
Alhambra spoke through her teeth, “I have some Percocet, and no, it’s not usually like that. Generally people just hang out. Yunno. But that guy—well.” A dozen turns, over a couple more bridges, onto a gravel and dirt road, some more curves, the old car still hanging tough around the corners, then bounce bounce bounce, Alhambra avoided the trees growing smack in the middle of the throughway, sharp right. “Home.”
“Hardly a spot on your brocade.” Gina’s sweater was soaked through with great splotches of blood—head wounds always bled like some animal had been gutted—she dropped it on the porch.
Alhambra picked it up. “No need to advertise to the neighbors that you’re a thug. I’ll wash this.” She looked at Gina’s bloody clothes. “Gah. Take them all off. They’ll get stiff and sticky if you don’t.”
Gina stripped on the porch, head tilted back, palm cupped over her eye. “This could be so romantic. But instead, how about you gimme some dope, like right now? Like even before I enter your Spanish palace?”
Alhambra wrapped Gina in a huge blanket, pushed her inside and onto the couch. “Here.”
“Yum.” Bright light, hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, scissors, tape, gauze—“Thread and needle? Get away!”
“Shhh. That’s just part of the kit, darlin, you aren’t gettin the full treatment this time. Just gonna clean here and here.”
“Ow. I would be stoic, but then you won’t give me any more drugs. Ooooh owwww.”
“Shit. Stop howlin. I need ta see if your eyeball is squished.”
Gina tried to sit up, “My eyeball ain’t just squished, I heard it crack like it was a egg!” She wondered how it would be to live one-eyed.
“It looks like his ring cut your eyelid. But your eyeball isn’t scratched or cracked or anythin.” Alhambra stepped back, smiling. “Gonna hava shinerrr.”
“Crap. Come to the country. Be bucolic. Frolic. Man, this sucks.”
Alhambra fixed a gauze patch over Gina’s eye, handed her a package of frozen peas to put on her cheekbone, and set the kettle on the stove.
Gina lay back with her eyes closed. Half-dreaming, she heard the sound of chopping, then wood hitting the slate floor with a clonk, crunkle of paper, skritch of match, whomp of a fire starting—the smell of pitch pine and oak, the flicker on her eyelids of orange dancers, the whistle of the kettle. Peppermint ginger tea. Something gritty slid through her mind about rural livin bullshit and how it just ain’t true, but she let it drift away. “I miss you sometimes in the city, yunno? I got a friend, he been on the streets now for I dunno how many years, but even with him, I don’t see that reflection of who I am
—like I see in your eyes.” She muttered, “Lonely.”
“You needa learn to be gentle with yourself.”
“Gentle? No.” Gina shifted, grunting. “Oh. Right. You can say that now cause you’re the medicine woman of the woods. Livin clean. Chop wood, carry water.” She took a gulp of tea. Gina thought she heard monsters roaring in the distance. “What the hell is that big noise?”
Alhambra laughed. “It’s the river! Cool, huh?”
“Not cool. Wheelchair perverts anda howlin river. And you. I mean, you gotta cowboy hat now. A full medical kit. A rifle?”
“No rifle. Just an old Ruger with the numbers filed off. It was a gift, because it’s a classic, like me.”
“What?”
“That’s what the guy said. I wasn’t all that pleased with the man, but the gun is sweet.”
Gina growled, “Convicts like us can’t have guns, Karen. Can’t have dope. Can’t do medical stuff. We aren’t allowed to protect ourselves. Not even if there’s wolves at the door. Monsters in the woods. Once a convict, always a criminal.”
Alhambra laughed, “There’s no monsters in these woods.”
“Ha. What you gotta gun for? What the hell you doin up here?”
“Safe haven, Gina. That’s all. Sanctuary.”
“Dayam. Sanctuary?”
Alhambra put her hand on Gina’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, that guy you clobbered isn’t a gimp. He uses the wheelchair as a prop so people give him money. Dude’s not even poor. His daddy’s in grapes and development. Gonna shut the river down—says there isn’t enough water to go around for the fish and all the people.”
Gina listened to the growling of the river. “Seem to me there’s plenty of water.”
“Not for these greedy bastards. They’re gonna make the river dry all up in the summer. Pretend it’s good for the fish, then sell the water for development.” Alhambra chewed on one of her braids. “Can’t stand to let people just live, gotta always make money.”
Gina looked up, her one eye huge and sad. “Used to be rivers in the city. In the Mission. All kindsa fish, too. My granma told me. She told me how she’d watch her uncles go off for a day of fishin insteada goin to school. They come home drunk. But sometimes they’d catch little trouts, then everybody would come over and…Well, it’d be great. All gone now.”
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