by Jen Larsen
“Really?” he says. He has a beard. “I think she could do better than a land cow.” He smirks and takes a swig of his Hamm’s.
“What?” I say. “What? I don’t even know what that means. That makes no sense.”
He leans forward. His eyes are very black in the light. “A land cow,” he says. “A land cow,” he shouts in my face and I feel cold and flushed and too warm shivering cold and it’s hard to breathe. I’m staring at him wide-eyed, and the smoke stings. Jolene is shouting too. I can’t hear her but the guy is just laughing. “Moo,” he says, and grins a great gaping grin that looks like a hole in his beard.
I can’t breathe. I say, “I have to go,” and push past Jolene. She’s still trying to say something but I still can’t hear her and the guy is laughing. I push my way through the crowd and stumble over the mattress and kick it, but I’m kicking candles over and I don’t care because it is so satisfying, and I’m almost falling on the mattress and then I’ve fallen on it and it smells as awful as I thought it would and I lie there thinking, You have got to be kidding me. This is not even real. None of my life is real. All of the shit that keeps piling on. That I can’t handle. I can’t handle any of it. That can’t be real. That can’t happen.
And then there’s the smell of fire.
Laura bounces on the mattress and her mouth is close to my ear and she says, “Hey, hey, let’s get up, okay? Let’s get out of here, okay?” She’s helping me up, and Jolene is standing there. She gives her beer to a guy in red gym shorts and a sweater vest and takes my other hand. I stand up gracefully, and the guy says, “Hey, you okay?” and I say, “No, not really,” and Laura says, “Shit,” and I say, “There’s a fire,” and we’re moving down the dark corridor and back to the boarded-over door and through it, where it is not much brighter out. The sun is down and the sky is a hazy black and orange. All the lights of the Grand Liquors are bright and streaming onto the street, but the lampposts aren’t illuminating much at all.
“Oh god, it’s worse,” I say. The smell of pee is stronger in the dark.
“How was your night, honey?” a woman croaks, leaning against the bars over the window. She’s got a crack pipe. I am pretty sure that is a crack pipe. Not that I have seen one in person. “It looks like it was pretty rough.”
“I set that place on fire,” I whisper, pointing at the door behind us.
“Be quiet, Ashley,” Jolene says. She doesn’t look happy or relaxed anymore and it’s all my fault.
I try to be dignified. No one can know that I am probably high. “I don’t even know what happened,” I say very carefully. “This is very unusual.”
Laura is patting my pockets and Jolene is saying, “I don’t think I’m okay to drive and I don’t think you are and she is a mess and we have got to go.” And Laura says, “Well fuck,” and she’s dialing 911 and reporting a fire and the woman says, “You need a hit, honey?” and she’s so sympathetic I want to cry. And then Omar is out here with us.
“Hey, baby,” the woman says.
His eyes are huge and he says, “Laura. Laura, practically everything is on fire. Where are you going?” He is teetering on the edge of a whine. People are pouring out of the door, and there’s smoke unfurling behind them. We all back up together.
Laura swings around, still on the phone. “It’s not really on fire,” she says. “There’s just some fire.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense!” He’s shouting.
“I’m on the phone with the police,” Laura says.
“What the fuck, Laura? My show is on fire! My art!” he says, and looks back at the building like he’s a helpless kitten.
“They’re prints,” Laura says, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Aren’t they just prints?”
“Just prints?” he says. “You don’t even know how this works! Just prints.” The smoke is silhouetting his wan, sallow face and his huge sad eyes. And he says, “Sure, yeah,” he says. “Sure. Okay.” He runs his hands through his hair.
“Look, just give me a second here,” she says, looking at the screen of her phone.
“Whatever,” he says, and pushes back through the crowd of people coughing in front of the gate.
Laura looks at both of us, gestures back at the door. “Is he serious? I’m trying to fix this for him!” She starts after him, but stops after a second. “Omar!” she shouts.
“You guys, I think he sucks,” I say. “And I hate his stupid art party. His art wasn’t even there. It wasn’t even the point. It was an afterthought almost like it didn’t exist and it was just an excuse. And I hate that guy I really hate him.”
Laura rubs her eyes with her fingertips. “I can’t handle this right now.”
“No, not Omar,” I say. “That other guy. ‘Moo.’” I sway a bit and catch myself on Jolene’s shoulder. “Oh no I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Were you drinking? Were you smoking?” Laura asks me. “Are you okay?”
“We have really got to just get away from here until someone can drive, okay?” Jolene says. “Can we go?” They both propel me forward down the street away from the confused hipsters.
“What happened?” Laura says to Jolene. I’m between the two of them. I’m taller than both of them. They’re smaller than both of me. Both of them are one of me. One of me is—it is too much.
“Where’s the car?” Laura asks.
Jolene says, “I don’t know!”
“It’s behind us,” I say. “It is back there.” I wave my hand.
“This is not safe,” Laura shouts. I can’t tell if she’s talking about the neighborhood or about me.
“Let’s find a coffee shop,” Jolene says. “Or a restaurant or something. It’s still early. It’s not even nine.”
“Let’s just keep walking into the sea,” I say. “Just walk in and keep going until we are eaten by sharks.” I stop and try to spin around, but Jolene hauls me forward. “No, wait. Is this the way to the sea? One way is the sea and one way is the bay so you’re fucked in both directions.” Everything is blurry and there are so many people on the street, traveling in packs and all interested in one another and they’re shouting and there are a lot of car horns and bass goes booming by, rumbling hard in all my joints. “Oh what is wrong with people,” I mutter.
“I think if you go up you get out of the Tenderloin,” Jolene says.
“You guys,” I say. “I forgot about the map Grandmother gave me, the first time we came here. When I got my license.” I am giggling again. That was a quieter trip, with the Japanese tea garden and the new natural history museum with the stingray in the shallow pool. Dragging my fingers across the surface of the water and then she was there, unexpectedly yielding and soft under my fingertips, brushing quick and fleeting and then gone. “Grandmother gave me one of her big folding maps of the city and she circled the museum and she circled the tea garden and she drew an arrow to Golden Gate Park like we wouldn’t have noticed it and she drew a box around the Tenderloin.”
“She wanted you to visit the Tenderloin?” Jolene says.
“No,” I say, and I start to laugh. “No, she drew a big box around it and then she scribbled it all out. She scribbled out the whole Tenderloin and she said, ‘Don’t go there, it’s Murdertown.’”
“She didn’t call it—”
“No, I guess she didn’t call it Murdertown.” I sigh. “Maybe she called it Dieville.”
“Crack Village,” Laura mutters, hurrying us past a group of guys turning to watch as we pass.
“Urine Nation,” Jolene says, and we all pause for a moment and then I am helplessly laughing, collapsed between them, tears streaming down my cheeks as I giggle.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasp. Laura is urging us forward. “Oh god,” I say.
“You never laugh at my jokes!” Jolene says.
“We have to go before we are murdered in Murdertown,” Laura says under her breath.
“I don’t want to be a citizen of Urine Nation,” I say, an
d I have set myself off again. They’re both prodding me down the street and I link arms with them, drag them forward. We’re passing ripped up awnings and neon signs and more people with beards, spilling out from behind swinging wooden doors that bat the smell of booze and cigarettes directly into our faces. We sprint across streets in front of cars and leap back onto the curb and we’re running flat out to the end of each street, then stop short where Market and Turk meet. The mall across Market is a mass of bright lights. Cars stream down the street and a little green trolley screeches by.
Right across from us it’s like the end of the earth, a big drop into a concrete courtyard at the foot of a giant marble building, four floors of Forever 21 and I think that’s the cable car across from us. I’ve always wanted to ride the cable car, but it’s so far away, across this cavern. Steps lead down into it and across from us the escalators are filled with people hopping down the stairs or trying to balance shopping carts and giant backpacks and a little guy in a suit has a busy-looking sign on a stick and someone is playing bongo drums.
I know where I am. “The BART train,” I say, looking down into the pit.
“Actually it would be the BART,” Laura says. “The T stands for train.”
“No, it stands for transit,” I say. I nudge Jolene. “Do you have any cash?” She always has cash. I am starting down the stairs, dragging my hand down the metal railings, my footsteps clattering hard and loud. “Let’s go to Oakland,” I say.
“Who the hell wants to go to Oakland?” Laura says but she’s right behind me and Jolene is ahead of me. I stop in front of the ticket machine.
“This is a bad idea,” Jolene says.
“Come on, Ashley,” Laura says, grabbing my elbow but I shake her off.
“Adventure, okay? I can do this. I can have an adventure. I don’t want to sit in a coffee shop. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Laura sighs and Jolene is frowning.
“Please,” I say.
Jolene digs in her pockets and hands dollar bills to Laura. Laura looks at them, and then sighs again and feeds them into the ticket machine. She punches numbers while the white guy in dreads strums loudly and badly on his guitar.
“I have no idea how much money I paid,” Laura says when she hands over our tickets.
“Which way is Oakland?” Jolene says as the narrow escalator carries us down to the train platform.
“Let’s just take the first one,” I say. “Random chance. No planning.” No cords are attached to me, pulling me back. They’ve all snapped, or they’re stretched so thin they could break and we could all go hurtling forward, all of us together. I skip down the last three steps. A train is waiting for us with its doors open and I’m on it without waiting to see if they’re behind me. I know they are.
“It’s carpeted,” Jolene says. She’s a little out of breath. “Who would carpet a train?”
“Don’t touch anything,” Laura says, balancing in the middle of the car, but I am already crawling onto a seat and putting my head on my knees. They slide in across from me. I know they’re talking but I can’t hear any of it. I concentrate on the noise of the train and the announcements of every stop and the doors chiming open and chiming closed and everything is swimming, spinning, then gone.
I think I sleep for a while. When I lift my head, it feels lighter. Everything is more focused. Laura and Jolene are asleep curled up on the seat across from me, Laura’s head tucked into Jolene’s shoulder, Jolene’s arm draped around her back. Jolene frowns and the blond wings of her eyebrows draw together and she shifts. She isn’t even still in her sleep.
I wake her when I laugh. Her eyelids flutter and she looks at me sleepily. I say quietly, “Land cow.”
She furrows her brow.
“That guy at the show. He called me a land cow. Did he moo at me? I think he mooed at me.” I start laughing again, covering my mouth, realizing exactly how stupid that was. “At least I’m not a sea whale,” I say. “Or a sky blimp.”
She snorts, and then she looks sad. “I don’t even know why you were talking to him,” I go on before she can say anything. “I mean, land cow? Seriously. I saved you from that.”
She says, “Don’t do that.”
“Save you?”
“Save me,” she says.
“I didn’t mean—” I say, but she’s still talking.
“Do you remember what you said?”
I did. Next steps, I had said. Transitioning, I had implied.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t do it. Don’t tell me what I need to do.” Every word is deliberate and careful.
“Jolene,” I say, but I stop before I can say any of the other words in my head, all of which are wrong and unhelpful. She sighs and puts her head down and we’re quiet again. Soon she falls back asleep and I lean my head against the black window and look through my reflection. My head aches. I watch the pitted tunnel walls fly by, the stations speed into view, pause, and then recede, listen to the hum of the tracks and let my eyes close and let us be carried forward to wherever it is we’re going, just for tonight.
CHAPTER 14
My head hits the window hard and I snap up.
“Hey!” the cop says. “Hey, there’s no camping out on the train. All of you get up.” He is a giant white guy, just big all over. His hands are balled on his hips primly.
“We’re not camping out,” Laura says as Jolene pushes herself up. “We fell asleep and that’s not a crime.”
“It sure as hell is,” he says. “How old are you kids? This is the end of the line. You have to get off here.”
“Where are we?” I say, and I’m peering out the window but I only see trees, and then the yellow lights of a parking lot below. We’re way above ground and I think we’re not in San Francisco any more.
“Pittsburgh Bay Point,” the police officer says. “Where are you from?”
“Santa Ansia,” Jolene says.
He looks at all of us. “What the hell are you doing here? Someone needs to call your parents.”
Laura looks superior and Jolene looks terrified and the look on my face must be similar because he smirks at us. “I’m going to radio you in,” he says. “Get off the train. Follow me.”
“No,” I say. “We’re just going to go home, okay?” The ache in my head has turned into a pounding. I pull out my phone but he snatches it. “Hey! You—hey! Give that back.”
He’s swiped it on and he’s expertly flipping through my contacts until he finds my recent calls. “Grandmother,” he says. “She’s called a few times. Should I call her back right now? I think I’ll call her back right now.”
“Hey!” Laura says. “I do not consent to this!”
“This is Officer Richard Bryan Smith of the Pittsburg City Police,” the cop says. “I’m calling about your granddaughter, who is embroiled in immoral, delinquent behavior and will be taken into detention at the Pittsburg City Po—”
I fling myself at him, trying to snatch the phone out of his hand, and he turns abruptly, his elbow catching me in my breastbone. I stumble against the side of the train, which is still standing there hissing with the doors open. My chest hurts. The lights are blinking inside. Jolene and Laura are crowding the officer but he’s at least six-five and his shoulders make him twice as wide as me and he is telling my grandmother how he found us drunk and passed out on the train, hundreds of miles from home, did she know that? He pulls the phone away from his face and looks at the screen.
“Too bad. Your phone is dead,” he says. “You’re in pretty big trouble at home.” He reaches out for my wrist but Jolene snatches my phone away from him and Laura is shoving me from behind and we’re sprinting down the train platform toward the exit and down the stairs so fast I lose a shoe like I’m Cinderella but the cop’s footsteps are heavy and he’s shouting something and I keep running, my bare foot slapping against the tile and metal of the stairs. Laura is chanting “bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.” She launches herself over the turnstile and Jolene scramb
les under it and I hop up and swing my legs and we’re sprinting for the parking lot, dodging the cars that are pulling out of spots as people head out back to their homes, tired and satisfied after a good night or maybe a bad one. I’m limping, my right foot bruised and smarting from the gravel and I’m going too slow and I cannot believe this is happening. I can’t remember if he has a gun. A cab with its brights on pulls around the corner and shrieks to a stop in front of us.
“What the fuck?” the guy yells out the driver’s window, but Laura is already pulling open the door and pushing Jolene and me into the ripped vinyl of the backseat. The car smells like cigarette butts and take-out Chinese food. Laura slams the door with one hand as she’s opening the front door with the other and diving into the front seat.
“Go,” she says. “Go, go.”
“The fuck I will,” the driver says to her. He twists around in his seat to glare at us. “What the fuck are you kids playing here?”
“Just go and we’ll explain,” Laura snaps.
“Please,” Jolene says, and he sighs and I’m looking back through the rear window to see if the cop saw us dodge into a cab. My heart is thrumming so hard I don’t even feel the individual beats anymore, and Jolene is wild-eyed, her hair tangled. There’s an itch between my shoulder blades where I imagine a bullet going. Just another brown girl shot.
Laura says, “Look.” She’s fishing around in her giant purse and she sounds so calm and unhurried. “How about a hundred bucks cash to take us back to San Francisco?” She snaps her wallet and waves it at him.
He reaches for it but she snatches it back. “Hang on to this for me,” she says and passes it over the seat to me. My fingers feel weak and I almost drop it. I stuff it into my bra. He grunts and puts the cab into gear, whipping around the rows of cars and bouncing back out on to the street.
“How about I get to see your tits too,” the guys says casually as he veers around another corner and guns it down a residential street.
My throat catches, but I find myself saying, “How about you just drive us and we won’t report you for child molestation,” meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror and tensing because I think I am larger than him and I think I could stop him if I had to. Jolene is frozen next to me and Laura has her hand on the door latch.