Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

She was trying to savor the last moments of night before a harsh winter’s sun gave everything edges-

“Hey! Get outta my way!” An agitated man wearing burgundy plaid jogging shorts and blueberry running shoes continued pumping his legs as he glared at her.

She stared at his legs. Did he actually shave them? What was in his mind when he did that? Like leg hair would slow him down? “Shhhh,” she said. “People sleepin here.”

“Dickhead.” A deep voice Gina recognized rumbled from the depths of a sleeping bag. She saw Lucas’s head appear for a moment before he burrowed back beneath the gold-striped plastic tablecloth which covered the upper half of him. “Go home.”

The jogger’s knees lifted higher, pop pop one-two one-two , as he bounced in front of Gina. He huffed, in the direction of the tablecloth, “This is a public park! Not a hotel!”

A couple more sleeping bags twitched, someone groaned. “Every fuckin mornin.”

Lucas turtled out, muttering, “Dickhead gets up befo the sun jus to spoil our mornin.” He nodded to Gina. “Mornin, Gina.”

“Sun’s not comin up today. Go back to sleep.”

The enraged jogger hissed, “You people are crap.”

Gina put her hands on her hips. “What people? Who people? Just who izzit you callin crap?” Her hands clenched as he ran across the lawn and down the steps to his SUV parked at the curb. She hollered at his retreating butt, “You rich fuckin bastaaaard!” She turned to the park’s no longer sleeping crew. “Oh. Sorry.” She headed toward the little mall at Sixteenth and Bryant.

The people who opened Peet’s in the morning didn’t smile a lot-this was important to Gina: Just pour the damn espresso into the cup and give it to me.

Double espresso. Spoonfulla steam milk. She poured the sugar over the top, circling the cup three times-

“Got you a serious sugar jones, Gina?”

Bleary-eyed, Gina glared at her coffee, “Mornin, Lucas.

Don’t talk about jonesin before coffee.” She lifted her head and motioned at the Safeway parking lot outside the window. “Gonna be a crappy day, Lucas. Another crappy day.” She poured half her coffee into a paper cup, handed it to him.

“Yup. Yup.” Lucas rubbed his stubbly chin, scratched his do-rag back over his graying curls, grinned his seven-tooth grin. “Up before the sun again. Haaaaah.” He waved at the chaotic lot, the oily drizzle. “Yunno, the world is how ya make it.” He shrugged deeper into his baseball jacket. “Got a extra cigarette you can spare?”

Gina smiled at her grubby pal. “Pfft. They don come with extra. Only twenty to a pack.” Cocking her head toward the lot, she said, “Come on back out into the wilderness with me and we’ll bring up the sun, smokin.”

She lit two cigarettes. Not gonna share one with Lucas no matter how little he annoyed her in the morning, that man’s mouth surely been some nasty places. She watched him cough on the exhale. “Sorry I woke yas this mornin.”

Lucas blew the smoke into the sky over the lot. “Nahhh. Weren’t you. That guy got somethin wrong with him. Yunno.” He watched the crows and the cars bark and circle in the morning light. “Goin down Sixteenth this morning, Gina. Anythin you want?”

Gina snorted, an unladylike noise. “I want it all, Lucas. I want it all.”

“All Sixteenth Street?” His laugh was a sustained growl. “C’n you i-magine what it’d be like just to keep it clean?”

“Pffft. What about the DPW?”

Lucas raised a grizzled eyebrow. “Yeah. What about em?”

“Right. Let it rot.”

“No. If it’s yers…” Solemn nod, years of living at the edges. “If you want it, you gotta care for it.”

Grumpy, “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” A creek used to run all the way from where they stood, started over on Seventh, emptied into the bay. Sewer line now. “You’re right. I don’t want it.” Last drag. “What you want, Lucas? What you willin to take care of?”

“Weeeeeee-ell. I cheer you, smokin the sun come up. That about good enough for my day.”

“I’m not cheered up.” Gina smiled up at him. “Not me. Not cheerful. Not in the mornin. Nope.” She turned her head, her smile fading as she saw three cop cars slide into the parking lot, sharks circling closer to a shiny black car with three shiny brownskin teenagers inside it.

The boys were oblivious, windows down, coffee cups raised to each other, their laughter shading from ghetto falsetto to royal belly roars: “Didja see that man looooooook at us? OOoooooooh yeeeeeeah. He be one jealous muthafucka nowwwww.”

Six doors opened, six cops approached the car, three hung back, two at each side, one stepping forward. “Out. Out of the car. Now.”

Gina saw the whole morning slide straight into the shitter, the tender motion of their wild night, their grand friendship-she watched their lives slip off their faces as the cops approached.

One of the cops pawed at his gun, his shoulders twitched with anticipation.

Wind it back. Way back. To the moment of celebration. Never moving forward.

Stolen car, beautiful car pounding through the night, windows down, rockin sound, good friends. Nothing on their minds, nowhere to be. Just cruisin. Maybe drivin across the bridge to Oakland howlin at the moon, back again headin west as the sun came up behind them, racin chasin and pul-lin into Safeway’s big lot, grabbem some wake-up-the-day, no one even know the car be gonnnnne yet. Three coffees, lotsa cream, take the whole sugar jar. Oh lookit that fiiiine girl, just a fine young girl. Fine. Here’s to all the fine young girls! Here’s to a night under the moon at seventy eighty ninety a hunnert miles an hour! Here’s to friends and Here’s to Forever.

Gina’s breath came slow and shallow, her eyes riveted on the three boys standing, leaning on the car, one foot behind the other, casual, doomed. The police talked then the kids talked, waving their hands in the air. Even though she stared and stared directly at them all, she couldn’t stop the forward motion from falling into the gray nothing forever of jail.

She felt Lucas fade away to her left-a soft sound like a sucker punch-right at the edge of awareness. Her lips curled in a snarl, she flung her coffee cup at the closest police car. Failed to get a splash on the tires. Grand gesture. Didn’t save a single soul.

Gina spun away, headed out Bryant Street, following some long buried waterway, work forgotten. The sound of her boots snapped the cement into grains of sand, the glare of her eyes destroyed every condom dropped in her path. She cut up to Seventh and Folsom, creek’s mouth, digging in her pocket for bills to catch a bus ride out. North. Out of the city. Like her granma used to do when things got tight in the kitchen. Far away for a day of friendly trees. There’d be lots of green shit on the hills. Big ol winter river.

When she got to her seat she half-closed her eyes, peeking out from under her heavy lids as the city rolled by. She discovered a fondness for the city buried somewhere deep in her chest, most noticeable when she was leaving. Gina sat upright at the bridge, staring at the early-morning skyline: Dawnlight glowed on fairy tale city.

“What crap.” Gina put her head back, went to sleep.

She had intended to call Karen from Santa Rosa: Get out the bong, the booze, the shrooms. I’m headin fer the high grass. The tall trees. Comin to break the monotony of yer sheltered rural ex-is-tence.

But the River Express bus was at the station when she arrived so she just kept moving, no breaks in the rhythm, not even to call work: Got stuck up the river, road’s washed out, won’t be in today. She kept moving toward the green, away from the city drizzle that hurt her eyes. Burned her heart.