In the thick of it and no way out. A jam. A pickle. A bind. Dire straits.
So many ways into a thing and one way out: through; as in, see it~. Finish.
Eventually the way finds the wayfarer, if the wayfarer cannot find the way.
There are places in the forest where the trees grow into one another and the foliage is so thick that the limitless sky is only implied by the sun, a distant glow trapped behind the cage of branches.
She has no idea she is holding up traffic.
She minces across Market Street, measuring each stride, stepping gingerly across the streetcar rails to keep from catching a heel in the grooves.
She has no idea they are watching her from the hotel. The bar staff is taking bets on whether she is headed there and arguing over whose section she'll sit in if she enters.
She clutches a dainty peau de soie envelope to her chest with one hand. The other holds her skirt, as if to protect the hem from scraping the pavement or being spackled with mud by passing cars. Her skirt is not long, falls just above the knee, and the street is not muddy, not even wet, so her hyper caution exacerbates the farce of her gait.
Stella offers the first ante.
"OK. I've got two says she's coming in." They keep bets low, so that even on a streak no one wins big. It's considered unseemly to open with stakes higher than an hour's wage. "She orders a bourbon, I'm buying it. She drinks from the well, I'm on for two rounds." Drinks are also a common wager, because employees don't pay full price, and if the bartender on duty likes the loser, the person doesn't pay at all. But score is always kept. "Cosmo, lemon drop, or anything blended, someone owes me."
Russ just started, and he wants to get in with his co-workers. From where he stands, Stella is right on, but he'll be a sport. "I'm good for that."
"How much you good for?"
"I'm good for your two. And then two."
Stella raises her eyebrows and the bartender exchanges a look with a kitchen guy who has paused while delivering a tray of cocktail glasses to observe the observations. Russ wonders if his move will be read as he meant it—a definitive offer of camaraderie—or a supercilious gambit.
Miss Shoes has made it to this side of the street.
A man in an overcoat and stocking cap hunches away from the battered blue suitcase he wheels behind him, a piece of luggage that has never been heaved onto a baggage carousel. He shambles past the woman, crosses in front of the audience inside the picture window. Just past the entrance to the bar, he pauses in front of a newspaper box. He extends a bloated hand toward the headlines, gently fingers the edge of a postcard stuck in the frame of the box's display window. He strokes the high-gloss stock, traces the fuchsia graffiti lettering advertising a DJ event a block away. He tips his head to one side, considering the card, considering perhaps whether to take it with him, slip it in the zippered pocket of his valise.
The movement in the window behind him draws his attention and he traipses toward the cluster, cutting the woman off before she reaches the door. The group in the window has caught her glance too and she stumbles into him.
The assembly disperses without comment, without seeing how the encounter is resolved.
I'm in therapy because I have what I think are probably irrational fears: like, when boarding the bus I'm afraid that if my dollar gets jammed in the fare machine everyone will point and stare and little children will taunt me. Also, I'm afraid I'm an alcoholic. Even though I haven't had a drink in four years and have never had more than four drinks in the course of a six-hour evening and that many only at a wedding. I'm in therapy because sometimes I cry for no reason. I've been that way since I was seven years old. I'm in therapy because I finally have health insurance that covers it. I'm in therapy because I have regrets and there are things in my past I want to understand, like why it still bothers me that I had to repeat second grade. I'm in therapy because all my friends do it and they're well-adjusted people, so either it works or it's just another trend that you feel out of it for not at least trying and yes, it's expensive along the line of a minor shoe habit, but I have too many shoes already so I'm in therapy. I'm in therapy because I want to be able to say words like "empower" and "heal" and "validate" in one sentence. And mean it. I'm in therapy because, well, I mean, it's like, well, because people say I have, you know, issues. I'm in therapy to learn how to communicate my desires—once I figure out what they are, in therapy. I'm in therapy because every so often I get the impression that everyone hates me and even though if given enough time I can back it up with substantiating evidence, I'm thinking maybe therapy could prove me wrong and while having my entire understanding of the intricacies of humanity and the workings of the universe dismantled and rearranged scares me shitless and, frankly, threatens whatever tenuous grasp on reality I may already have, I will stick with it because if it turns out to be a scam it will be the most spectacular bit of mental masochism I've ever perpetrated on myself and that's got to be worth something, right? I'm in therapy because I think I might have low self-esteem, and as popular as that is it's much more fashionable to lose it—excuse me, overcome it. I'm in therapy because as of yet there is no liposuction-like procedure for removing polluted thoughts from the mind. I'm in therapy because sometimes I think I'm going crazy, like when I'm sitting alone in my room waiting for someone to call me back, someone I left a message for three days ago and also yesterday and the day before too because I wanted to be sure he didn't miss the first one and then in case he did miss the first one it seemed like it would be OK to leave a second message to reinforce that I truly did want to talk to him, if he felt like calling—it's no big deal if he doesn't. And I have to say it seems like he doesn't because I haven't heard from him. I'm in therapy because I have what one friend of mine calls lack-of-control issues, and while I don't quite understand what she means by that, I think therapy could help me figure it out. I'm in therapy and my therapist says it's good that I am able to talk about these things, because acknowledging a problem is the first step toward correcting it. My therapist is patient and I'm hoping that patience will rub off. I'm in therapy. I think it's working.
It was little things: impeccable order, a thoroughness visited on a room to erase; two of everything on the drain board, with oblivion; something about the divot in a pillow that chipped at the heart; his smile, as if the whole world were spinning exactly as he'd planned.
There's a group of us likes to stop by Sal's Place on the way home from work or on the way home from home. She keeps a clean, orderly bar and doesn't let anyone get out of line. Here's what you could call a typical night.
Pete and Earl came in together, talking, which means it was really Earl talkin' at Pete and Pete noddin' his head, his head that's way out-sized by his body, like a pea on a pumpkin, noddin' in time to his nearly constant "Yep. Oh, yeah. Well of course it is."
They headed for their spot, three seats in from the end of the bar nearest the restroom. Before they sat down, Earl turns around, waving his arms to the side, and said, like he was repeatin' something he saw on TV, "Behold my minons, Peter. Behold how they adore me."
Most of us, we don't give Earl a this or a that; we don't take him for serious. He just says stuff he picks up whereabouts. Ever since he had a kid go to college, he thinks some of the smarts are wearin' off on him, too. But Ol' sal, like I said, she don't take it from no one.
"Oh, come off it, Earl. We're all minions here. Ain't one of us isn't serving someone or something, one way or t'other."
It seems Earl got his hands on some kind of word book and he read up on it real good and then thought he'd come in an' play perfessor to the rest of us. Earl's way of being humble was to talk to Sal in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear, which isn't that loud, really, because Sal's Place wasn't no bigger'n a good-sized bedroom.
"Hey, Sal – you know what a dip-thong is?"
She didn't look up at him, just kept wiping down the sink behind the bar. The place fell quiet, with everyone anticipatin what Sal would fire back.
"Isn't that one'r them things your bimbo girlfriends wear?"
Sal's the last person you want to try a new joke on—she can see right through 'em and get to the punch line before you can. I guess that's one of the things you pick up standin' behind a bar for twenty years or so, servin' up drinks and whatnot to the like of our kind. That remark got a good laugh—especially since it's rare to hear Sal go in for dirty or flirty talk. She knows about any guy in the place would like to buy her a beer, and we all know that'll never happen. She'd never compromise her business that way, for one.
Anyway, Pete's pea head was pink from his laughin', but Earl ignored him and Sal. He had a big grin on his dumb ol' face from some other joke he hadn't told yet.
"A dip-thong is a sound. A sound that starts one way and goes another. Like in 'boy': the 'o' starts like an 'o' then it goes to 'eee.'"
Someone behind me, sitting by the door, hollered, "Oh, I get it: like 'dummm-eeee!'"
Well, that really go the whoopin' started again, but still Earl kept on like a dog chasin' a skunk. And Pete kept up a laughin' along.
"No, more like 'scai-erd' – as in, you're scared of knowledge."
"All right, boys, what I know is this night started out in a way I liked—calm and mellow—and it's turnin' in a direction I don't much care to follow: dull and mean. Shape up, now."
It was quiet for a little bit but then someone kicked up the jukebox and Earl and Pete hovered in their corner and the rest of us kept to ours, and that's pretty much a night at Sal's.
Sharon Baker is a bad mother, she knows this. She knows this as sure as she knows her daughter had her tongue pierced because, as Lily said to a friend, over the phone, at 1:30 in the morning, on a school night, while smoking marijuana [she thought her parents were sleeping (one of them was)] "It makes such a difference when you're giving head."
Sharon didn't immediately know what that meant, but she knew it was something she had never done, and in the back of her mind she associated it with the image of herself and Phil clinging to opposite sides of their queen-size bed, a situation she ever more increasingly believes is her own fault.
Nor did her mothering skills prevent Justin from becoming a young thug who treats girls like servants -- much like his father treats her, but without the courtesy of a paycheck or so much as a dinner, a kind word, or heaven forbid, flowers. The world is a convenience store stocked with pretty things he wants and can have on his own terms and time. As of yet, he doesn't appear to have been drawn to any with pierced tongues.
What Sharon knows is that Fisherman's Wharf is right in front of them, just like it said on the map, and the Wax Museum is just a block down the way there, and her family is headed toward it. They will walk in together, Phil will pay, and Lily will say the one in London is better, and Justin will look around for real girls, and Phil will ask the guide ridiculous questions, too loudly, but this is her vacation, and she will enjoy it, she will, it will go exactly as she has planned.
The pale, bony fingers wrap around the long cotton tendrils of the mop, wring it with a swift twist that expunges the water in a gray-brown stream. The woman who belongs to these hands watches the fluid trickle into the bucket. She is not wearing gloves, so the bleach gives her hands a deceptively supple, almost oily texture. When her hands dry they will burn and crack. The tips will feel tight and the flesh around her left thumb will bleed. But she's nearly finished; it's too late for protection, pointless to put on gloves now. Her hands have soaked so long that she could not dry them fully with a towel. They would remain damp enough to stick to the inside of the gloves, and they would chafe. With the back of her right wrist she brushes a wisp of shiny black hair from before her eyes, directs a puff of breath out the side of her mouth as she does it. Mindful of her hands all the while, she takes care not to splash herself as she dips the mop into the faded blue bucket.
She needn't worry about splashing bleach on herself. She isn't wearing anything that could be stained. She isn't wearing anything. Once she was cleaning the kitchen in the buff when he came home. When she heard the car, she went to meet him at the door and was surprised to see he had brought a colleague with him. She giggled and walked down the hall to their room. He followed, after ushering the guest into the living room and hurriedly pouring him a tall drink.
The house is a long rectangle, its perimeter, plate glass. A narrow hall runs along the eastern length, ending in the square kitchen at one end. A breakfast bar separates the kitchen from a small sitting area, which opens to the living room, which occupies the center of the house. An adobe wall divides the deep living room and the long corridor. A white tile floor stretches from the kitchen to just past the bathroom, where the passage ends in a square cul-de-sac: to the left, the master bedroom, to the right, the guest room, with the study in between.
They had fought over this floor. He insisted on white. She begged for terra cotta. She told him white was ridiculous in the middle of the desert prairie. It would never be clean after being laid. Nothing ever is, honey. He had laughed as he took a drag on his cigarette, cast his glance away. Nothing ever is. Deep in his eyes he wasn't laughing. He was impatient. Disgusted. Wrong.
The house was his design at her expense.
She kneels as she backs into the bathroom, positions herself so that her waist straddles the threshold. Her knees are in the bathroom, her hands are in the hallway. If she lifted her head, she could gaze out the window wall at the line where the prairie meets the sky. The gentle rolls of earth crest a mile from the house, just enough to hide the road a hundred yards beyond, at the bottom of the opposite slope. Occasionally the top of a truck will show above the mound as a long moving shadow.
But she does not look across the browning sage and pinion into the remains of a scorching sun. She does not notice how the mountains appear purple in this light. She looks left and sees that the kitchen floor is dry, as is the short stretch of hall that extends beyond the small wet circle that she has knelt to scrub.
A sudden sneeze screeches from within her chest, and once the reverberations die she notices how quiet the house is. Now she glances outside to see the sky, a cloudless white-washed blue. The grasses are motionless, and nothing flutters in the distance to indicate traffic on the road. She is her only evidence of life.
Her breasts hang from her chest, point to the floor, so that she resembles the ancient bronze sculpture of the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus. But her teats are not rock hard, they swing lightly with each swipe of the scrub brush, into which she throws the force of her entire upper body. She heaves her hips backward while shoving her hands out, pressing the brush into the floor with each forward thrust.
The tile is cool beneath her knees. Invisible waves of heat begin to rise off the back of her neck and perspiration condenses under her arms. She leans her weight on her left hand and makes circles with the brush using only her right. The heel of her left hand tires of holding her weight as she works on the intersection of four squares that are marked, as is the grout between them, with a dark stain. Her rhythmic scrubbing erases the mark before she can determine what it is. She hoists herself to her feet, stands with the brush in hand, her hips thrust far to the right, and scrutinizes the floor from the higher angle. She exchanges the brush for the mop that has been soaking in the bleach water, wrings it out again and slathers it over the place that was stained and across the rest of the bathroom floor.
When she reaches the toilet, she lifts the lid and seat at once and pours the dingy water into the bowl. Then she sets the bucket on the floor, drops the toilet seat, and sits.
The bathroom is predominantly white: the walls, the porcelain sink, tub, toilet, and bidet, the tile floor that continues into the sunken shower stall and up its walls. The shower is large, has a small bench built into the wall. The space was designed not to need a door or curtain. Even the fixtures cast the white shine of silver. The room is saved from being a modern monochromatic nightmare by bright towels stacked on stainless steel shelves beside the sink and between the shower and tub. Three ceramic torsos, each life-sized and glazed dark blue, inhabit a shelf beside the sink. They depict the stages of woman: a thin boxy shape with dangling arms is girlhood, the same limbs become long and lanky and are crossed defiantly in front of adolescent nubs, burgeoning into the bosom of the third sculpture, breasts that droop from having nourished those first incarnations and weigh on knobby but slightly slumped shoulders that imply both strength and resignation.
Her mind slowly returns to her body and registers that her legs are numb. She is disoriented for a moment; her eyes dart about to find a clue to her position. She sees the toilet paper roll, absent-mindedly tears off a strip, passes it between her legs, stands cautiously and plods to the shower, back hunched, arms hardly swaying.
The first touch of water is cool. She stands away from the flow. The water becomes warm and quickly turns hot. The needle streams are so strong that when they make contact with her chest the water bounces off in a mist that covers the fine down on her face with dew-like beads. She begins the ritual of washing her face. She squirts pearly white soap from a white plastic pump dispenser into her hand. It feels cool. She wipes her hands together to spread the soap around, then pushes her hands up and down her face. Her head does not move. Her hands do the work: they slide down to her neck, wipe underneath her chin, glide around to the back of her neck, still tired from the weight of her head as she knelt on the floor. Her fingertips slip into each fold in and around her ears and massage her lobes. After facing directly into the spray she turns around and lets the water douse her hair. She sways slowly to let the water cover her head; the rushing sound increases in volume as she moves in and out of the flow. Pink shampoo oozes from the bottle. She rubs the blob between both hands and lathers her head. The floral aroma arouses a vision of him in this shower, washing her hair. She shakes her head and ducks under the pelting stream.
Another liquid cleanser is squeezed into one hand, which slaps the other, making contact sooner than expected, sending a sharp clap reverberating through the open stall, drowning, for a second, the sound of the water. Another meeting of hands, they cross and slide up opposite arms to her shoulders. Left hand drops, right continues to work the foam, slowly glides across her torso, the uppermost part of her chest. The left hand reaches for another dot of soap and meets the right over her heart. Her hands make circles around her breasts. She cups their tender roundness, lifts them, holds them, pushes her hands up through them, up to her neck. She bows her head and massages her shoulders with her fingertips, flattens her left hand and covers what part of her back she can reach, repeats the motion with the right. She smoothes both hands over her buttocks and around to the front of her waist. The left fingers slip under the delta of fur and part folds of flesh, while the right hand directs water over sensitive pink skin.
Her legs are smooth and feel good on her raw hands, which cover the length of them, one at a time. When she reaches the foot she traces the profile of each red-tipped toe with her index finger, then carefully massages the heel, the arch, the ball, the toes.
She stands under the spray, wraps her arms around herself. Each hand clutches the opposite shoulder, then touches every part of her again, searching for hidden dirt and unrinsed soap, re-establishing sentience.
With one swift crank she turns off the water. The stream patters to a halt. Rivulets run down her face and off her body. She squeezes her hair with much the same motion she used to wring out the mop. Water continues to drip off her, from the faucet, and down the walls of the shower, piddles into the drain.
The large cotton loops of the bath mat tickle her tired feet. She wraps herself in a sapphire-blue towel, swaths her head in a Kelly green one. She shuffles to the vanity, brushes her teeth, staring at herself, expressionless in the mirror. She bends to spit out foam. When she straightens, she feels a drip escape between her legs. The red dot looks almost black on the tile. She crouches down to look at it, removing the blue towel from her body and swiping it between her legs before she swabs the floor and tosses it into the bathtub.
The bedroom is cool, as is the beige bedding. The sun has just fallen behind the mountains and the sky is smeared with scarlet, orange, violet, and gold. The green towel drops to the floor, she falls into the king-size bed. In the morning only one of the now-crisp pillowcases will be wrinkled.
Jason is hungry. Not for a scone or a croissant or a madeleine. He wants lunch: a big sandwich at least, if not something hot, with a salad on the side. Paychecks won't come in until 3 p.m. at the earliest—more likely it will be 5—and his shift mates know better than to float him lunch money in the meantime. Someone looted the tip jar during the morning rush—not him, this once—so he'll have to wait, who knows how long, until there's enough to buy him a sandwich and then until he can pocket it without being caught.
In the last twenty-four hours he has opened his refrigerator thirty times. Last night, after having a fried egg on toast with a jar of pickles on the side, he sneaked his roommate's leftover mac and cheese one forkful at a time until so little was left he had to finish it off and wash the casserole so Jimi would forget it had been in there. Jason continued to gravitate to the fridge, hopeful each time he opened the door that he would find some forgotten morsel he had missed. But after he made a ketchup sandwich with the last heel of bread, there was nothing but a jar of tomato sauce overtaken by a mold culture, a jar of horseradish mustard, a loaf of tofu, two unexposed rolls of film, and Penelope's macrobiotic wheat germ concoction, which made him gag even when it was just sprinkled on beans tossed in olive oil. His six-three frame is starving.
As Jason is wondering if he might be able to scrounge up some protein powder, make some kind of smoothie with the wheat germ and tofu and some honey, a woman a head shorter than himself walks in. Her shiny black hair is caught in a loose braid that hangs a little below the middle of her back. She seems to be a little nervous, or perhaps just energetic. Her hands rest on a fat brown wallet. Her thin, pale fingers taper to pointy oval nails painted a glossy beige. Her fingers look incredibly soft, are wrinkled only at the knuckles. She can't keep them still. They drum the counter, flip and spin the wallet around. She doesn't remove her sunglasses. The wallet bulges with more receipts and business cards and bills and credit cards than there are slots and compartments allotted for. Jason nods a hello, juts his chin in her direction to invite her to place her order.
"Hi. I'd like a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha, please. No whipped cream, but a dash of cinnamon on that, if you would." Jason bobs his head twice, slowly, to let her know he's registered all that. Her phone rings.
This woman is perhaps the only person in the world capable of speaking on a mobile phone so discreetly that her words are unintelligible. Jason can't even tell whether the call is business or personal. She could be ordering a hit on him, or describing him to a girlfriend, he thinks, staring at her face while he steams the low-fat milk, then he realizes she could also be watching him watch her, for all he knows, as her eyes are obscured behind her shades. She abruptly turns away from him, leaving her wallet on the counter beside her. She continues to spin it with her free hand. Business is slow enough that Jason can take his time concocting her drink. So he does, all the while watching the wallet and willing the bulging mass to spring open, for that stack of credit cards to spill onto the counter, so he can slip one under the register as he helps the distracted woman reassemble her affairs. Then he realizes this won't work if she has an Asian last name. His gothness couldn't pass for being her husband without showing ID. The best he can hope for is a big tip.
Just as Jason is running out of ways to draw out the drink-making process, she claps her phone shut and turns to him. He slides the coffee across the counter to her, along with a plate on which he has placed a biscotti, and points her to the condiment station, where she can garnish her beverage. She retrieves a five-dollar bill without compromising the rest of her stash and hands it to him, then sees the biscotti.
"Is that mine? I didn't order it."
"It's on me. Special today." He places a napkin on top of the plate, gives her a knowing look, though what knowledge it conveys she doesn't absorb. She just smiles at him, and dumps whatever change he returns to her in the tip jar—as he knew she would. Her phone rings again, so she puts it on top of the biscuit, grabs the plate and the coffee and hurries over to a table to take the call.
A buck-fifty-seven in the jar—not a bad start. Two more of those, and he can get an egg salad from the sandwich truck; three more, and he can add a cup of soup. As long as he makes the dough in the next forty-five minutes, before Angelina comes in. Anyone else he can scam, but not her. The first thing she does is count the jar. She may not need the money like Jason does, but she wants it just as badly. She's a stickler for dividing it fairly.
The next two customers are an elderly white couple; the woman, short, round, and rosy; the man, tall, drawn, and peaked. She does all the talking, orders them both hot chocolates, one croissant to share. When he pushes their drinks to them, Jason makes sure to accidentally jostle the tip jar. The woman doesn't appear to notice, but does drop her coinage into it—all of thirty-five cents. The next two customers have exact change for their orders. Rarely do people bother to fish in their pockets to tip. Jason sees he has fifteen minutes on the clock and the hunger in his stomach gnaws a bigger hole.
A man wearing what appear to be brand-new athletic shoes and a woman carrying a large Gumps bag and a Lonely Planet guide enter, arguing in a foreign language. Two types of people who never tip are arguing couples and foreigners. What Jason does not realize is that they are not arguing, merely animated, and they had read in the book that it is considered rude not to tip wait staff in American restaurants. They leave him a dollar for each drink and all their coinage, eighty-seven cents. As they turn to go, the woman shoves something toward him and says, "Someone forget." Jason looks down at the bulging wallet, slides it behind the register, and nods a solemn thanks.
He feels just one crisp note in the billfold. On second thought, it's two twenties stuck together, born together from the ATM. He removes them and folds them in one deft flick, pushes the wallet deep under the espresso machine with one hand as he slides the other to his pocket, seemingly to remove his lip balm, which he nonchalantly applies just as Angelina comes in the door. She doesn't pause to ask her question or even look at him as she saunters behind the counter.
"You skim your tips yet?"
"Oh, that's right." Jason leans around the register, plunges his hand into the jar and retrieves four singles and four quarters, leaves one single and a mound of pennies, nickels, and dimes. "I almost forgot," he says to the cloud of perfume Angelina has left behind her. "It's been pretty slow."
Jennie Jennings does not need to glance in a mirror to know that her hair, her lipstick, her powder is perfect. She has already checked it seven times and the young woman who is her production assistant knows she will lose her job if she lets Jennie go on air with so much as a fleck of lint on the back of her jacket. The last PA got booted on a breath charge: at a city hall spot she didn't have any gum or mints, and the mayor correctly named—during a live interview—what Jennie had eaten for lunch. The girl was gone before the crew returned to the station.
The other passengers are long gone, and the big weeping man has been done to death. Inside herself Jennie slumps her shoulders, lets her arms hang lifeless at her sides, drops the microphone to the ground, then ravages her wavy, shoulder-length blond hair (accented with chestnut low-lights) with her fists, and screams, "Why can't I get any decent fucking help?" But she is wearing linen and can't afford any extra movements that might wrinkle her look. She stares at the rod in her hand, touches the big ball of foam on the tip and twists the microphone to read each side of the box, the station's call letters, alternating with its winking icon. KWNK. Wink. KWNK. Wink. K-Wink. Kwink. Field reporter.
Two months into this, and she is still reporting from the scene of accidents and street fairs. Her father is an executive at the station, and she was promised an anchor job—on condition that she go through the motions of paying her dues. They said as soon as the old guy retired, they'd put her behind the desk. Raymond Carlisle had supposedly been on the verge of leaving since the day she was offered the job. Now the would-be retiree is eking out a little more time until the market recovers and his funds are secure, so Jennie is stuck standing around while some inept intern screws up another story for her.
The San Francisco State student pumps her arms to propel her up the incline to the Bank of America Plaza, where Jennie stands, so poised that the young woman panics, thinks she's on air. The cocktail formed when the adrenaline shooting from her brain collides in her blood with the espresso's caffeine propels the young woman to run the last half block in just three seconds. She slows herself so her footsteps cannot be caught on the sound track and strides noiselessly around to behind the camera operator.
"What are you hiding for? Did you get me an interview or not? I'm not going to stand around here all day." Jennie manages to deliver the rebuke without moving her body or even but scarcely her face. The one thing over which she maintains absolute control is her voice. It does exactly what she wants it to.
The intern is unruffled. She has already outlasted two others as Jennie's assistant, and she is determined to go the distance. She needs the credit and the line on her resume. "I got you the barista at the coffee shop where she had a cappuccino before she stepped onto the cable car."
One would not have thought it possible for Jennie's posture to be any straighter, but she straightens. "Well it's about time. Let's go." The intern starts back down the hill. "In the van, missie. I'm not walking in these shoes."
"But you're wearing linen."
Jennie considers the remark. "How far is it?"
"Just at Sansome. And it's all downhill."
Jennie heaves the sigh of someone reluctantly granting a favor, shoves the microphone at the assistant, follows.
"I think this is going to be a good one." The assistant is determined to make this work. "It's a chance to show her before the accident, give people a glimpse into the real person, not dwell on her as a victim."
"Yes." Jennie says the word slowly, almost adds, "Good work," but holds back. No need to give the girl too much to go on. Keep her hungry. She'll need to stay in touch with that feeling. It's part of the business. "So, who was she, before the accident?"
The girl takes a deep breath, not just for the three extra seconds it affords her to clear her head and organize her thoughts, but also because her body is trembling from nerves, adrenaline, and caffeine, and she needs to calm down.
"She's a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha; no whipped cream, dash of cinnamon."
Jennie slows her pace. The PA thinks she's going to stop walking to yell at her, so she quickly adds, "The table where she sat hasn't even been bussed yet. We've got the cup. And—" she pauses for effect, then spills her revelation. "I think the barista kind of dug her. Sounds like she kind of flirted with him. Very human."
What gave Jennie pause was the coffee order. She is herself a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha, though on occasion she will take a spot of whipped cream on top, and she prefers nutmeg to cinnamon. In spite of herself, she does see this young woman as a real person, sees herself on that streetcar, grappling for a firm purchase, watching the ground she had trusted to stay beneath her slip away.
"What's her name? Do we know her name?"
The PA winces. "I didn't think to ask him that."
"That's all right," Jennie says, as much to herself as to the crew. "I will." She nods slowly as she stares straight ahead. This is it. She feels it. This is the story that will put her behind the desk. She has paid her dues, and now it's time for the payoff. "All right, then. Take me to the barista."
He is standing outside the café, his long rubber-band body draped over a mailbox, smoking. His brittle, dull-black hair falls into his face, frames his dark eyes, which don't blink when he sees the blond stick walk toward him. Jennie tends to be attracted to her likes, but her empathic episode continues and she finds herself drawn to this slouchy, mis-shaven young man. After she introduces herself and offers the young man a cordial handshake, the PA ushers the pair inside to a table on which a crumpled napkin sits beside a tall glass mug with dried bubbles around its rim. "I thought we could do the spot here," she says.
Jennie does not take her eyes off the barista. She cocks her head over her right shoulder. "OK, let's set it up." The crew flurries around them, moving tables, adjusting lights and verifying sound levels. Jennie looks past the straggly locks of hair into the young man's eyes, rests a hand on a forearm that is crossed before his chest, and says, "I know this all seems terribly banal, but we do need to give people the details. Especially in a situation like this one, which could have happened to any of us, people want to know exactly what happened, retrace the person's steps, you know, to understand. We want to show them the real person who suffered this unusual ordeal." He indicates his agreement with a nod. "Did you happen to catch her name?"
The barista drops his eyes to the floor. Shakes his head. "She paid cash."
Jennie nods. When the stage is set and the PA has brushed her shoulders, smoothed her lapels, and primped her hair, Jennie Jennings, field reporter, slowly seeps back into her skin beside her compassionate counterpart. Together they guide the barista through recounting the last drink the woman had before her fall: her decisive order (she knew exactly what she wanted), her friendly manner (she wasn't chatty but had a kind smile), and her generosity (she left a hefty tip). In her earpiece Jennie hears the director tell her to wrap it up; the studio needs to cut to a crash on the Bay Bridge, where a vanload of teenagers nearly plunged to their deaths.
Jennie Jennings holds the microphone in her left hand, the empty coffee cup in her right. She stares into the spent drink, the remains of what could have been her beverage, her destiny. She swirls the cold, murky fluid, smells the cinnamon, feels the grit of the last gulp on her tongue. She tilts her head up, looks directly into the camera lens, where she can see but not quite make out her own inverted, mottled reflection.
"If only she had taken this last sip," Jennie touches the napkin on the table. "She would be here with us right now."
Jennie does not realize the inanity of this remark. First off, the woman is not dead, as Jennie's dramatics imply. Second, if she hadn't fallen off the cable car, the woman most certainly would not have been in the cafe, she'd be on the other side of Nob Hill. Her producer, a documentary filmmaker by night who is producing news for the money and because he believes she can lift it from the morass of sensationalism it's slipped into in the last 30 years, will call her trite and hammy. And although the production assistant will do her best to cajole her, may even keep her job, Jennie Jennings is done with paying dues. Finished.
She was riding the California St. line. The driver recalled the svelte, pale woman wearing stylish shades with black lacquer frames, in her twenties or so, her shiny black hair caught at the nape of her neck in a thick braid that reached half way down her back. She had crossed California from the south side and hopped on to a running board at Sansome, a couple of blocks before California begins to slope up Nob Hill. Just after the car crossed Kearney St., she appeared to lose her balance, according to a woman from Baltimore who had watched her rummage through her shoulder bag with her free hand. Perhaps she was searching for a Kleenex, the bewildered, pink-faced, gray-haired lady surmised aloud to no one in particular as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, the arm of a passerby slung across her ample, rounded shoulders.
The car lurched, the woman gave a little squeak, tipped back, and let go of her purse, the strap of which slipped from her shoulder to her forearm. The bag must have been heavy: the weight of it appeared to loosen her handhold. The woman from Baltimore said she would never forget the look on the falling woman's face: she appeared to be puzzled, more than frightened, when she tottered back, her left hand sliding as if the pole were greased. She flapped and flailed both arms, grappled for the pole, a hand, a bit of someone's coat, but by the time observers realized what was happening and reached out to her, she had already landed on the hood of a green Honda Accord that was speeding in the opposite direction to make the light at Kearney.
The driver slammed on the brakes when he saw the body flomp onto his car, heard the dull thud, felt the shock resonate through the vehicle into the seat of his pants, and the woman was thrown into the intersection, into the path of an SUV that rolled over her right leg without stopping. Witnesses said the driver was talking on a mobile phone and would have plowed over the woman's torso, had he not swerved to pass a red Beetle that was waiting to make a left turn onto California. No one noted the license number, though all agreed the driver was young and sported a goatee. As the Beetle driver passed behind the cable car the catastrophe unfolded in her peripheral vision: she saw the woman's flimsy frame fall from the cable car onto the automobile, in the rearview mirror followed her trajectory into the path of the SUV. Other cable car passengers corroborated the two motorists' accounts, even one who was sitting on the north side of the vehicle, facing away from the action.
The woman's purse strap had stayed hooked in the crook of her arm throughout the flight and the bag's contents spilled onto the street when she hit the pavement, catching the attention of a tall, burly man who was buying flowers at the edge of the Bank of America plaza on the southeast corner of Kearny and California. His left hand, cragged with dirt, fisted a bouquet of pink Gerbera daisies, and a glistening track lined his dusty right cheek from his eye to his bushy red beard as he recounted for reporters how he had heard screeching tires and screaming voices in the intersection behind him, how he had turned toward the commotion only to see a bullet-shaped tube of lipstick and a crumpled white tissue roll and tumble past him, ushered along by cold, gray swaths of fog.
