27th & Fulton

What were you thinking?

I was making up for something I should’ve done.

That was your thinking?

No, that’s just what I did.

So you just picked her up?

She stopped me as I was getting out of the car. I had just pulled up to my building with a belly full of Filipino delicacies and a head full of nostalgia. She asked me where the 2000 block of 44th was. I pointed toward the ocean and said across the park she said that she was scared to cross the park. It was 11 already.

So it was dark and she didn’t want to walk a few blocks?

Could you blame her?

Was she pretty?

You don’t have to be attractive to fear for your skin. She asked me if I’d give her a ride. I’d just popped the trunk to fetch my bag and some goodies I bought earlier. I paused and choked down a mouth full of um’s and uh’s. Without really thinking the whole thing through a yeah came rolling off my lips. So I walked to the otherside of the car, cleared my stuff from the passenger seat, she saddled up with her three bags, all small handbag things that looked like canvas even though they were some hybrid leather thing. I didn’t bother closing the door for her.

She wasn’t pretty.

That’s not the point. I just climbed into the driver seat half expecting her to be holding a derringer to my head. She held her bags close and I fired up the car and started down Fulton. She asked me if I was from New York, I told her people get that impression, it must be the jewish father in me. She didn’t get it.

Get what?

I barreled down Fulton cause I had a date, see, I had to get back cause she was coming over. I wasn’t even really sure what I was doing at that point. I hung a left on 43rd and when we reached that first intersection I said, did you know there’s buffalo in the park? What do you mean she said. I said, there’s a buffalo paddock in the park, its just one of those things that people don’t know or realize. That’s crazy she said. So I shifted down into third and hurried it along.

What else did she say?

Not much really, she was quiet in that way that you’re quiet when you really don’t know what you’re doing. She thought San Francisco was full of do-gooders.

Why’d she think that?

Cause I gave her a ride I suppose.

You’re a regular mighty mouse.

I know, I told her she caught me on a good day, that’s all. She said she was from San Diego and that people weren’t quite so nice. I told her that she’s probably walking on a borrowed carpet of luck. About this time I made the left on 44th at Lincoln. It was the 1000 block.

Did you drop her off?

No, felt bad, it was cold, damp, you know the way that summers get, early on, the nights and that neo-gothic-fog thing that happens as a way of pretending that the rest of the world isn’t enjoying a bit of warmth.

Yeah.

I decided to keep driving. We went by one hundreds, each block a bit closer, each distance marked by an ever thicker silence until finally she opened her mouth and said that she didn’t know the people she was going to stay with very well. We crossed Taraval at that point and I was just a couple blocks off. I ran a stop sign and pulled up at the end of the next block, 2100. I said to her that we had arrived. She opened the door, and I was about to take that sigh…

Relief?

Something less pure… Fuck, it’s over.

So did she get out?

She looked down at her feet. Maybe the revolver was in her leg warmer, or maybe she had a shiv poked up in that furry knit cap she wore. I started to get into my mental bruce lee posture for whatever was coming. No one’s really happy she asked me.

So what did you say?

I agreed with her…

but…

I didn’t say it, I just said, I am.

That’s not like you.

No, it really isn’t. But the free ride didn’t include a chat about the world’s inclination toward unhappiness and false senses of security. So she got out of the car and said thanks as the door was closing. I pulled away as soon as she had cleared the rear tire.

Was it worth it?

I think I’m still in debt.

You know anything could’ve happened, she could’ve called the cops, and…

Yeah I know, but she didn’t seem the type.

So why’d you do it?

I think I want to live in a place where that’s possible.

What’s possible.

Depending on strangers.

But you didn’t talk to her.

I know, that’s too personal.