San Francisco

Two weeks in a car was a long time to spend, but I was finally here. 

All this time, all I’d been thinking about was to get to San Francisco. I knew that. Fresh meals, comfortable clothing, amusing company—those were all negotiable things on this trip. My destination wasn’t. 

I knew I had a distant cousin that lived there—I’d heard my parents talking about her years ago, when my aunt took the trek she made every five years up north to visit us. Her name was Catherine, but she changed it to Martine to celebrate her expulsion from Catholic school. She now worked at a record shop, and I knew more about the tattoo the covered her left shin than I did anything else about her life. I hoped she could give me a place to stay. It was the place that seemed the furthest away from the pile of coal dust that was my town, and I needed that. 

My truck rattled forward, teetering dangerously on the winding, hilly streets of downtown San Francisco. In a moment of panic, I accidentally cut a taxi off and he cursed me out colorfully with his horn. I yanked over to the side of the street, barely managed to squeeze in between a gleaming Camaro and a ratty jalopy, jerked my keys out of the ignition and plopped myself down on the side of the curb, putting my head in my hands. 

Jazz music floated out the window of a coffee shop, and I felt this potent sense of anonymity settle over me. I was no longer attached to those rumors. To Vera’s vicious eyes and to the judgmental stares of my neighbor and to the permeant silence that cloaked the room whenever I entered it. 

Suddenly a woman cut in front of me to hail a cab, but he didn’t see her. He screeched by, his eyes on the road. The woman swore softly and dropped her bag. 

I looked up at her. She was beautiful, with honey-blonde hair and painted lips quirked in a deep pout. Although she had a smooth complexion, I could see that she was exhausted, with lines around her eyes. 

She made eye contact with me, and sighed. 

I cleared my throat. “Where are you headed?” 

“The club. My husband just dumped me again, the asshole.” 

We talked on the way. She gave me directions and I drove my rattlebox of a car. She offered me a smoke and I took it. Marylou told me about her husband—or ex-husband now. His name was Dean. They were taking a road trip with Dean’s good friend Sal—short for Salvatore. Sal Paradise. She told me about how Dean loved her and how in love she was with him, about how they’d planned an entire future together—until Dean met a girl named Camille and ran off with her without a second thought. 

She threw her cigarette out the window. “They’re always so careless, those boys. They leave their jobs and their homes behind and they think they can do anything because they’ve got a car and a little bit of spare cash. That’s all that drives them, really. Excitement. New people to meet. New girls to be with. Being irresponsible and and reckless and breaking hearts and not giving a damn about it.” 

She asked me if I had ever been in love, and I told her that it was a complicated story that I didn’t know if I could ever piece together.  She looked out the window, smoke curling from her lips. “Good. Don’t fall in love. They’ll break your heart, too. That’s all boys know how to do.” 

I didn’t know what to say. What I wanted to say was that I wasn’t worried about boys breaking my heart because I would never fall in love with one, but that was also a long and complicated story. A story that not even I had quite figured out yet.