by Jane Rawson
OK, but say you give up on imagining something, but the thing you’re imagining doesn’t give up. There’s an idea. You’re getting on with watching a rerun of Water Rats and meanwhile the imagined version of you keeps right on giving it to the Shadow Storage chick. Here. In Suspended Ims, where one doesn’t have to be crazy to work, but where insanity is a definite advantage.
Ray liked it.
He wondered if any of his abandoned ideas were living here. From what he knew of The Gap, he thought it was a safe assumption that they were. Was there any way of navigating this place? Some kind of index? GPS coordinates? Would his ideas – sorry, imaginums – be filed under his name? Did they give them all a title? Oh, he bet they gave them all file numbers. File numbers totally unrelated to anything other than some arcane system they had of allocating file numbers. That’d be it. There was no point trying to find anything he’d imagined. He took a step to the left and stepped forward. Stepped back.
That was gross. He made a mental note not to step in that door again.
Ew. People really imagined that?
He took three steps to the left this time, just to be sure he wouldn’t step back in by accident.
Hang on! This time he was going to look at his watch. One twenty-five in the afternoon. Alright. Consider it remembered. That bloke in the hammock was a good bloke. He could kind of imagine imagining someone like that, on one of those days when all your actual mates suck arse. He stepped forward.
Foggy. A city. A foggy city. He was on a hill at the top of a park, and the fog was coming in over the hills behind it. Here, where Ray was, the sky was still blue. Two men, both in artfully loose-fitting jeans and tight white T shirts, were walking a pair of pugs, one caramel coloured, one black. A woman wearing a straw cowboy hat was lying on her stomach on the grass, propped up on elbows, reading a magazine while one hand fiddled with a mobile phone, picked it up every couple of minutes, perhaps to check if she had a message. Six – no, seven – university aged guys, a couple with goatees, a couple with trucker caps, all of them wearing T-shirts in different shades of brown, yellow and orange, were throwing a frisbee. One of them stepped out of the game for a minute to pull a tall – boy it looked like beer – from an Esky. Ray could hear him call out, ‘Anyone for a Bud?’ Everyone stopped playing and they all gathered around the Esky. Further down the hill a man with dreadlocks and a woman whose hair was tied back in a brightly coloured scarf were playing bongos. One of the Esky havers yelled over at them, ‘Hey hippie, get back to Golden Gate!’
Golden Gate? Ray cast his eyes over the horizon, but there was nothing he saw that he recognized. Was this San Francisco?
San Francisco wasn’t imaginary. Ray was pretty sure of that, even though he’d never been there himself, never seen it with his own two eyes. That said, the MCG wasn’t imaginary either. It had existed once, he knew that. Ray had always wanted to go to San Francisco. Maybe this was his chance. Though maybe this thing had been imagined by the same person as that last room he’d been in. What if imaginums were arranged in order of imaginer? That could be bad.
Shut up, sensible brain, Ray said, and took a few more steps forward, then turned it into a stride. Sensible brain, he said, we’re checking this city out.
He walked to one of the streets bordering the park and wrote down its name: Dolores. Then he looked at the nearest cross street: 20th. ‘See, sensible brain!’ he said. ‘Now I’ll be able to find my way back here. Everything is going to be fine.’ After a quick game of eeni-meeni-minie-mo, Ray set out along Dolores, heading what seemed to be north. Fog began trickling over the hills, pouring into the streets Ray was walking along, and by around three the weather had turned grey and blustery. He ducked into a bookshop on Church Street to get out of the weather and to browse some second-hand guides to San Francisco, but found himself glued to the window, watching the cool damp settle over the uncrowded streets. Maybe he could stay here. Not the bookshop so much, but the city. He wondered how far this imaginary place stretched – was there a whole imaginary United States around it, or did it just fade off into black where the imaginer had lost interest? There were so many cafés, restaurants, bars, shops, the people in them young and not in any way rich looking. Sure, there were people begging, sleeping in doorways, selling second-hand crap on the side of the street, but there were so few of them and none of them were children. And he’d seen pretty much no one dead in the gutter.
Ray turned away from the window and started reading one of the guides. It was only five dollars. ‘What the hell,’ he thought. ‘It’s a souvenir.’ It listed the bar next door, the Pilsner, as ‘gay friendly’; Ray was feeling pretty friendly, so he took his bag and his guide in and asked for a can of VB. The bar man thought that was pretty cute and asked if he’d like a pint of Red Hook instead, which he said he would. Ray’s brain nearly exploded from the flavour of the stuff, but it kept him company – along with its mates, a pint of Sierra Nevada and then a pint of Sam Adams – for the rest of the afternoon as he read his guide book and watched the traffic in and outside the bar.
Around five thirty, Ray decided he wasn’t going home. Not today, at any rate. He wanted to see how this place lit up at night. He’d barely scratched the surface of the city – he’d sat for a little while in the quiet cemetery of the Mission Dolores, and eaten a taco at a little Mexican restaurant, all good stuff but not enough to make a ‘When I was in San Francisco (imaginary version)’ story out of. So he asked the bartender, a little slurrily, if he knew of anywhere good to stay the night, and the bartender kind of hinted that he’d be welcome back at his place, but Ray demurred as politely as he knew how, and the bartender – having established Ray’s budget – recommended a little boarding house around the corner on 18th street. So Ray went.
A COMPETITION FOR DOORWAY SPACE
Because I couldn’t decide between carnitas and vegetarian for my burrito, I’d gone for three tacos instead: one vegetarian, two carnitas. I had some salsa verde and a plastic cup of horchata, a basket of the corn chips they made right there in the taquería and, let me tell you, I couldn’t have been happier. That carnitas was awesome, so fried and spicy and fatty, salty-sweet. Simon had gone for the vegetarian burrito. You might think that was the dumb choice, that he should have had the carne asada or something, but these guys made a seriously good vegetarian burrito, totally loaded with ripe, creamy avocado. Did I mention how happy we were? We were happy.
‘This place is good, huh?’ Simon said.
I just gave him a huge grin.
‘Did you see the painting?’ he asked me. On the wall by the door to the toilets there was a painting of what looked like a spit of sliced lamb, roasting in front of an upright grill. You know, one of those ones they use to make shawarma? Which, also, is one of our favorite foods. There was so totally no reason for a bright yellow painting of shawarma in a taquería, and it made us love the place even more.
I guess that was another one of the good things about our totally stupid lives. We really saw some stuff. Some of the towns we went through, the kind of middle-sized towns, I’d watch the kids going to or leaving school, or hanging in the parking lot outside the Walmart or whatever, and you just knew they did the same thing every single day, and that maybe three per cent of them would leave town at some point, but most of them would graduate and get a job and get someone pregnant or get pregnant and get married and just keep doing the same thing every day for the rest of their lives. And they might never see a bright yellow painting of a shawarma grill in a Mission District taquería. They probably didn’t care at all, but I kind of felt sorry for them. Still, it’d be nice to put our stuff down some time and know that when we came back, it would still be there. Was it worth swapping that for seeing all kinds of things? I don’t really know. One thing I was pretty sure of, though, was that if we kept this up we were going to be the kind of adults who really didn’t fit in anywhere.
Like Simon, for example. I mean, I’m fourteen right, which is pretty grown up already
, but that guy is seventeen. Does he not want to have some sex? Maybe even have a girlfriend? Oh my god! Thank god our parents told us where babies come from before they abandoned us to this stupid life! Imagine how hopeless we’d be if we didn’t even know that? Anyway, I digress. Simon. Sex. (Gross!) How is he managing without?
‘Hey Simon?’
He was wiping sour cream off his cheek with a napkin – they’d given us a pile of like 32 napkins each with our food, and Simon had stashed most of them in his pack, but he was sure using the last couple now.
‘Yeah, what?’
‘Don’t you wish you had a girlfriend? Like sometimes do you not even just think for a minute, “Damn, maybe I’ll toss this square standing thing in, and go to some prom and see if I can’t get laid”?’
‘Shut up, Sarah. Don’t ruin stuff. I’m having a good time. We’re having a nice time, aren’t we?’
‘Yes Simon, we’re having a nice time.’ I finished the last of my last taco. ‘But don’t you?’
‘Seriously, shut up. Do you have any salsa left?’
I slid my little plastic tub of salsa across the table to him. He scraped it in with his, put the lid on tight and stashed it in the bag, wrapped in a napkin. ‘That’s good salsa,’ he said, ‘we should finish it off on some sausages or something, some time soon.’
‘Good idea.’
‘OK, you ready to go?’
‘Yup.’
‘Need to go to the toilet? We should both go to the toilet, it might be a while.’
I slid out of the booth. ‘I’ll go first.’
Out the front of the taquería, we argued a bit about whether to head up 24th to Noe Valley or keep going up Mission to Bernal Heights, but of course Simon had a plan, so I ended up doing what he wanted. Doing cities is pretty cool compared to doing the countryside, of course. You can hop on a bus up Mission Street, for example, and tick off square after square in under an hour. It’s not really that arduous. I mean, at first Simon was pretty rigorous about us making sure we looked at stuff, but even he mostly reads on the bus nowadays. As long as we’ve at least crossed a corner of each square, he’s happy. Still, Jesus. I mean, can you imagine having to see all of America? Places like San Francisco aren’t too bad. I’m kind of looking forward to New Orleans, Chicago, New York City, Yosemite (like I said) and Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon was cool, and I guess we’ll get to see Zion and stuff fairly soon. But God, most of this country just flat-out sucks. Bakersfield? That place blows. Phoenix: crap. Amarillo: crap. Winslow: God, don’t get me started on Winslow. But we don’t get to pick and choose. Oh no, we’re seeing all of America. Or at least all of the South-West, California and a little of the Plains States. There’s no way Simon can keep this up longer than that, surely. Surely.
‘Hey Simon?’ It must have been around six o’clock. It was the middle of summer, so the sun was still high, but the fog had already poured in over the hills from the City and it was getting chilly.
We were sitting on a sidewalk somewhere in the Castro. He was ticking off a bunch of boxes, making sure we hadn’t missed anything. He grunted at me, chewing the end of a pen.
‘Can we stay somewhere inside tonight?’
He seemed like he was kind of half listening.
‘The competition for doorway space is too tough in this town. Go on! Let’s get a dorm bed somewhere. We can share one. Then we could have a shower.’
He was still counting, but he was groping around in his pack at the same time and eventually he chucked me the Lonely Planet. ‘See if you can find a bed for under thirty bucks. If you can, we’ll stay inside.’
‘Do you care where it is?’
‘Around here would be best,’ he said, and actually looked up for a while, taking in some of the Castro scenery. ‘Yeah, look for somewhere around here.’
I checked the prices and locations, found a place down towards the Mission but still pretty much in the Castro, that had dorm beds for thirty-two dollars.
‘Is thirty-two OK?’
‘I tell you what, Sare, you go make us another ten bucks and we’ll not only stay there, we’ll have some burgers for dinner too. I’ll stay here and do the wrap-up, K?’
‘Deal.’
A nice fourteen year old girl, shiny brown hair in pigtails, a clean UCSF sweater (one of Simon’s dumpster finds. Say what you will about Simon, he had a talent for dumpster diving); ‘Sorry mister, someone picked my pocket, could I just have one dollar to get the J-car home? Please sir?’ I had twelve dollars in under thirty minutes.
When I got back, Simon was all packed up, talking to some guy on the street corner. As he saw me coming, he waved the guy goodbye and walked over.
‘It’s OK, Si, I got twelve bucks, you don’t have to get any more.’
He nodded. ‘OK. Is it this way?’ And we headed down along 18th.
I waited round the corner while he checked in. Even dodgy boarding house owners tended to have questions about a fourteen-year-old girl looking for a room for a night or two, but a guy with a backpack, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old: no problem. He took both our bags so I wouldn’t look suspicious when I came in later. You’ve got no luggage, you look like a genuine visitor. That or a hooker, but even dodgy boarding house owners didn’t usually accuse me of being a hooker. We may not know much about American history, grammar or the passage of a bill through Congress, but we know plenty of other stuff. If you had to do exams in the kind of stuff we know, you’d fail without a doubt.
Ten minutes later he was back outside. It was after seven by then, and I was hungry. ‘Burger?’
‘You bet.’ We walked around for fifteen minutes or so, watched the hipsters heading home from a hard day’s shopping, plenty of them stopping into dive bars for a beer, looking forward to running a few dollar bills through the jukebox and showing off the vintage ski jackets and giant sunglasses they’d picked up for a steal. We found a burger place that did a sandwich with blue cheese, my favourite, and stuffed our faces with curly fries. I even had a vanilla Coke.
Heading back into the boarding house we didn’t even have to do our usual line about Simon’s half sister, just coming up to pick up a couple of books from him before heading back down the Peninsula for the night … no, he couldn’t go with her, he and his stepdad just didn’t get along, you know how it is? Because there was no one at reception. Simon had gotten us a bed in a four-bed dorm, and only one of the other beds seemed to have someone in it.
‘You want to risk using two beds?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, I reckon we’re in the clear. Looks like the guy on reception has gone to get drunk anyway, which means no one else will be checking in tonight. You want the top bunk?’
‘Yes please.’
‘First shower or second?’
‘I’ll go second.’
While Simon was taking a shower I sat on the edge of the bottom bunk and flicked through the pages of the guide book, wondering if we’d see anything interesting while we were here. I guess we’d see everything, interesting or not. It’s just sometimes I forgot to look out for the good stuff. And there was no way I was coming back: once we finished this thing I was staying put for good, even if it was in Bakersfield.
Simon came back and I had my turn, took my time washing and conditioning my hair and even flossed my teeth. It might have been a twenty minute shower. I thought he’d be in bed reading Moby-Dick (another dumpster find) when I got back, but instead he was sitting with his butt propped on the window sill, wearing his favourite jeans.
‘Whatcha doing Si? Going somewhere?’
‘Um, hey. Would you mind if I went out for a bit?’
‘Went out?’
‘Yeah, I just thought I might walk around a bit.’
‘Walk around? Aren’t you sick of that? What’re you going to do?’
‘I just, I dont know. I kind of like the look of this place. And we’ll be out of here tomorrow and that’ll be it. And I don’t know.’ He looked pretty awkward. ‘I guess I’d just kind
of like to look around. Maybe I can get a beer somewhere or something, you know? Just for a while. I won’t be gone long.’
‘Sure, no problem. I think you’re weird, but whatever.’
‘Yeah, you’re used to that, right?’
Whoa, Simon making a joke about himself! He must be in a strange mood.
‘It’s cool. I’ll be OK here, right?’ I looked over at the other bed. There was nothing piled there that screamed ‘child rapist’ or anything. It couldn’t be worse than some of the parks we’d slept in, that was for sure.
‘Will you be fine? You’re not worried, are you? I won’t go if you’re worried.’
‘Simon, I’m fine. I’ll just hang out and read my Golden Compass book. It’s easier to read without you hanging around talking crap at me, anyway.’
‘Well, I’ll be back by eleven, OK?’
‘Take your time, weirdo.’
‘Thanks, Sare.’ He gave me a little hug and went out.
I’d probably been reading for about an hour when our roommate came in. He was a brown guy, but not African-American. Maybe Indian. He nodded at me, but didn’t say anything.
‘Hi,’ I said.
He just nodded again.
‘What’s up?’
‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘’Sup? Y’know? What’s happening?’
‘Oh. Not much.’
He really didn’t want to talk. I settled back on my pillow and opened my book again.
‘Good book,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I reckon. You read it?’
‘Yeah, years ago though.’
‘Um, it’s like almost brand new,’ I checked inside the front cover. ‘Yep, published 1995.’
‘Oh, maybe I have it confused with something else.’ He went back to packing stuff from his bed into his bag.
‘It’s the one where there’s the girl, Lyra, who lives in Oxford and she travels to like the North Pole with gypsies, only they’re called gyptians, and meets an armoured polar bear, and her mom is kind of evil but kind of fantastic as well and her dad is like a huge, powerful guy, but she never knew they were her mom and dad till just now. Is that the one you read?’