‘…’ I said.
‘I promise I won’t take down that swishy little bell of yours with the silver pants and put up a tin can with a spoon, which would be the best bell for this asylum. Have you ever heard one?’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘I’m sorry about that. It’s an awfully pretty sound. So beautiful to the spirit and so soothing to the nerves.’
‘…’ I said.
‘That’s a real shame,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘I didn’t know you felt that way about it,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t harm a brick on this library’s head. I’ll treat your library like a child’s birthday cake in a little yellow box that I’m carrying home in my arms from the bakery because carrying it by the string would be too risky.
‘I’ve got to be careful of that dog up ahead. He might bite me and I’d drop the cake. There, I’m past him. Good dog.
‘Oh, oh, there’s a little lady coming towards me. Got to be careful. She might have a heart attack and collapse in front of me and I might trip over her body. I won’t take my eyes off her. There, she’s passing me. Everything’s going to be all right. Your library is safe,’ Foster said.
‘…’ Vida said, laughing.
‘Thank you, honey,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘I love this place,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘I’ll treat your patrons like saintly eggshells. I won’t break one of them,’ Foster said.
‘…’ Vida said, laughing.
‘Oh, honey, you’re too nice,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘Stop worrying, kid. I know what I’m supposed to do and I’ll do it the best I can and that’s all I can say,’ Foster said.
‘…’ Vida said.
‘Isn’t it the truth and he’s not old either. He’s just a kid,’ Foster said.
‘…’ I said.
‘I don’t think I ever really appreciated the peace and quiet, the downhomeness of the caves until now. You’ve opened up a whole new world for me, kid. I should get down on my hands and knees and thank you with all my heart for what you’ve done.’
‘…’ I said.
‘Ah, California!’ Foster said.
Foster’s Heart
Foster insisted on carrying our bag out to the van. It was light and halfway through the dawn. Foster was busy sweating away in his T-shirt, even though we found the morning to be a little chilly.
During the years that I had known Foster, I’d never seen him when he wasn’t sweating. It was probably brought about by the size of his heart. I was always certain that his heart was as big as a cantaloup and sometimes I went to sleep thinking about the size of Foster’s heart.
Once Foster’s heart appeared to me in a dream. It was on the back of a horse and the horse was going into a bank and the bank was being pushed off a cloud. I couldn’t see what was pushing the bank off, but it’s strange to think what would push a bank off a cloud with Foster’s heart in it, falling past the sky.
‘What do you have in this bag?’ Foster said. ‘It’s so light I don’t think there’s anything in it.’
He was following after Vida who led the way with a delightful awkwardness, looking so perfect and beautiful as not to be with us, as to be alone in some different contemplation of the spirit or an animal stepladder to religion.
‘Never you mind our secrets,’ Vida said, not turning back.
‘How would you like to visit my rabbit trap someday? Foster said.
‘And be your Bunny girl?’ Vida said.
‘I guess you’ve heard that one,’ Foster said.
‘I’ve heard them all.’
‘I’ll bet you have,’ Foster said, falling cleanly past the sky.
Vida Meets the Van
There were leftover pieces of blank white paper on the sidewalk from the woman last night. They looked terribly alone. Foster put our little bag in the van.
‘There’s your bag in the van. Now you’re sure you know how to drive this thing?’ Foster said. ‘It’s a van.’
‘Yes, I know how to drive a van. I know how to drive anything that has wheels. I’ve even flown an aeroplane,’ Vida said.
‘An aeroplane?’ Foster said.
‘I flew one up in Montana a few summers ago. It was fun,’ Vida said.
‘You don’t look like the aeroplane-flying type,’ Foster said. ‘Hell, a few summers ago you were in the cradle. Are you sure you weren’t flying a stuffed toy?’
‘Don’t worry about your van,’ Vida said, returning the conversation from the sky to the ground.
‘You’ve got to drive carefully,’ Foster said. ‘This van has its own personality.’
‘It’s in good hands,’ Vida said. ‘My God, you’re almost as bad with your van as he is with his library.’
‘Damn! all right,’ Foster said. ‘Well, I’ve told you what to do and now I guess you’d better go and do it. I’ll stay here and take care of the asylum while you’re gone. I imagine it won’t be dull if that lady I met last night is any example of what’s going on here.’
There were pieces of white paper on the ground.
Foster put his arms around both of us and gave us a very friendly, consoling hug as if to say with his arms that everything was going to be all right and he would see us in the evening.
‘Well, kids, good luck.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Vida said, turning and giving Foster a kiss on the cheek. They looked heroically like father and daughter around each other’s arms and cheek to cheek in the classic style that has brought us to these years.
‘In you go,’ Foster said.
We got into the van. It suddenly felt awfully strange for me to be in a vehicle again. The metallic egg-like quality of the van was very surprising and in some ways I had to discover the Twentieth Century all over again.
Foster stood there on the curb carefully watching Vida at the controls of the van.
‘Ready?’ she said, turning towards me with a little smile on her face.
‘Yeah, it’s been a long time,’ I said. ‘I feel as if I’m in a time machine.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Just relax. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Al1 right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
Vida started the van as if she had been born to the instrument panel, to the wheel and to the pedals.
‘Sounds good,’ Vida said.
Foster was pleased with her performance, nodding at her as if she were an equal. Then he gave her the go signal and she took it and we were off to visit Dr Garcia who was waiting for us that very day in Tijuana, Mexico.
Book Four: Tijuana
The Freewayers
I had forgotten how the streets in San Francisco go to get to the freeway. Actually, I had forgotten how San Francisco went.
It was really a surprise to be outside again, travelling in a vehicle again. It had been almost three years. My God, I was twenty-eight when I went into the library and now I was thirty-one years old.
‘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 parlour 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 aeroplane. I’ve gone out there with friends who were going on aeroplanes, but that was years ago. Have the aeroplanes 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 cheque 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 on to 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 towards the aeroplane 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 d0n’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 aeroplanes. 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 aeroplane 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 maitre 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 talking 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 aeroplanes 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 aeroplanes early in the morning.
The waitress came back with our coffee. She put the coffee on the table and left. She had lovely blonde 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 aeroplane, 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 paralysed 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.
The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 Page 7