Golden States

  He stopped at a Mobil station, sandwiched between two motels. It was an old station, with a round sign featuring the winged red horse rather than the newer, square ones that just said mobil. Paint was peeling off the white canopy over the pumps, and as David looked at it a white chip fell off and fluttered to the concrete. It pleased him, to have been the only one in the world to see that little thing happen.

  There were no cars at the pumps. He went into the glassed-in office, where a black man sat behind a gray metal desk. A pyramid of oil cans rose on the wall behind him. The man’s face looked like it had been split with an ax. A deep healed-over cleft ran down the middle of his forehead, and one eye was half an inch lower than the other. David stood in the doorway, the knob slippery in his hand. The man looked at him with his off-center ivory-colored eyes, and said nothing.

  “Urn, could you tell me how to get to the Bay Bridge?” David asked.

  “Bay Bridge is that way,” the man said. He raised a salmon-palmed hand and waved, a single broad stroke, in the direction from which David had come.

  “Is it, um, very far?” he said.

  “Bout a mile,” the man said.

  “Oh. Well. Thank you.” David went back out and closed the door behind him. He hurried back to the sidewalk and got around the corner of a motel, out of range of the man’s vision.

  A mile back. He had walked right past it. By the time he’d backtracked a mile the sun would be down behind the buildings. He didn’t want to be here after dark. Up ahead, the immaculate aluminum and glass of a phone booth stood like a survival station planted by the civilized world. He could step into the booth, drop a dime in the slot, and call Janet, who would come pick him up. Having gotten to Oakland was almost as good as turning up at her front door; it was practically the same thing. He was halfway to the booth when he decided that no, it really wasn’t the same thing at all. For it to mean anything he had to get all the way under his own power, from the front door at home to the door in San Francisco. But a mile back. A black man in a gigantic cap made of white yarn, which sat on his head like a prize chicken, walked by carrying a big radio. David stepped out between two parked cars and timidly presented his thumb to the traffic.

  He was only there a minute when a car stopped in front of him, a white Honda Civic with a white man at the wheel. He couldn’t believe his luck. The car behind the Honda honked, and David got in quickly and shut the door.

  “Hi,” the man at the wheel said, starting up again. His skin was pale and his hair was lighter than his skin, though he didn’t look much older than thirty. He had a long, graceful neck and a hooked nose.

  “Hi,” David said. He cradled his pack in his lap. It was good to be sitting in a car, moving.

  “And where are you going?” the man asked.

  “To the Bay Bridge,” David said. “I mean, to San Francisco.” “Your lucky day. San Francisco is where I’m going. Isn’t life full of wonderful surprises?”

  “Uh-huh,” David said.

  “Do you live in San Francisco?” the man asked.

  “No.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Um, Buel Town.”

  “And what brings you to San Francisco? Business or pleasure?”

  “I don’t know,” David said.

  “Are you visiting friends here?”

  “No,” he said automatically. Then he realized there was no point in making up a story. Anyway, it was said; he’d let it stand.

  “Just sightseeing,” the man said. “My name is Warren.”

  “Hi. My name is David.”

  “Pleased to meet you, David.”

  “Uh-huh. Pleased to meet you too.”

  “David, would you care to smoke a joint?”

  “Oh, sure,” David said. The car was creeping through traffic. Overhead, a green sign said bay bridge in white letters. Round reflectors the size of dimes on the letters caught the sunlight. How could he have missed seeing the sign?

  Warren took a joint thin as a wire out of his breast pocket, and lit it with the dashboard lighter. He wore a blue shirt with a tiny polo player stitched on the pocket in green. The twisted paper of the joint caught and flamed a moment, then Warren sucked in and held his breath. White-blond hairs stood up in the hollow of his throat. He passed the joint over to David. “Thank you,” David said, taking it between thumb and forefinger as Janet had done. He was grateful to her for teaching him how to smoke dope. He raised it to his lips and took a cautious hit, straight down into his lungs. It burned. His eyes watered a little, but he didn’t choke it up. He gave the joint back to Warren.

  “How old are you, David?” he asked.

  David exhaled, a pitiful wisp of smoke, and said, “Fourteen.”

  Warren took a hit and nodded wisely, as if fourteen had been the right answer. He handed the joint back to David.

  “Do you live in San Francisco?” David asked before taking his hit.

  Warren nodded and expelled smoke. The car was filling with the hot sweet smell. “I can assure you I don’t live in Oakland,” he said. “I just come here on business.”

  “Oh.” David forgot about having a hit of dope in his lungs. Smoke seeped out of his mouth when he opened it. He gave Warren back the joint.

  “I work for the United States government, postal division,” Warren said. “I sort mail. What exactly do you do for a living?”

  “Well, nothing, really,” David said.

  “Do you live with your family?”

  “No.” He didn’t want Warren taking him to a sheriff’s office.

  “When did you leave home?”

  “About a year ago, I guess.” David was surprised once again at how smoothly these alternate versions of the truth slid into his mind. He had a mother like Billy’s, shrill, a horrible cook; his father went off to the Alaska pipeline years ago. He’d been hitching around on his own, having adventures.

  “And what do you do for money?” Warren asked.

  “Oh, you know,” David said. Here the story fell short. He couldn’t think of what a fourteen-year-old would do for money out on the road.

  “I think I probably do know,” Warren said. “Do I know?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I thought so.” Warren smiled and winked, and David winked back. He wondered what sort of job Warren had imagined for him. Maybe if he found out he could go and get hired when he turned fourteen.

  “Look there,” Warren said. “The lady herself.” They had turned onto the bridge. David nearly gasped at the suddenness of it. The car passed from behind a shadowed brick warehouse with the ghostly remnant of an ad painted on it, and San Francisco lay across a stretch of green-black water, ablaze with evening light. The buildings were bathed in gold, each window a square of orange flame. The pink sky deepened, behind the buildings, to purple.

  “Pretty sight, isn’t it?” Warren said.

  David nodded. He felt grateful to Warren, as if Warren had given him a gift, and enamored of Warren as if the glory laid out ahead reflected partly on him. He lived there, in that golden city. David accepted the joint again and took a long, deep hit. It occurred to him that Warren was handsome, in a delicate, stemlike way. His eyes were milky blue, with a vivid black line running around the pupils. The sun caught his white eyelashes and turned them to gold.

  “Gorgeous old thing,” Warren said. “The dowager queen. Crazy old lady, absolutely haunted.”

  David was too absorbed in the distant city to speak. The girders of the bridge rolled by, pale gray X’s, with the buildings shining behind them. Girders stretched up over the cars, throwing long lacy shadows that broke and broke over the windshield like filaments of spiderweb. He forgot to pass the joint back. Warren reached for it and brushed David’s hand with his fingertips.

  “Oh. Sorry,” David said, giving him the joint. The air in the car was getting heavy, and he’d have liked to open a window. Opening a window seemed like a presumptuous thing to do, though. If the windows were supposed to be open, Warrenwoul
d open one. David felt frozen in place, his head and eyes locked where they were. He wondered if he could be getting stoned.

  “So you’re here on a pleasure trip,” Warren said. “That’s wonderful. Did you hitchhike all the way up?”

  “Well, no,” David said. He was watching the city get closer, and his mouth talked by itself, independent of his brain. “I took a bus partway.” He heard his voice as if someone else, a third person sitting between him and Warren, had spoken.

  “Ah, a bus,” Warren said. He made it sound significant. David wondered if there was something odd about his having taken a bus. A sea gull flew by, level with the car, so close he could see its glittering black eye.

  “Yes,” he said, and realized he was late in saying it.

  “Where were you planning to stay?” Warren asked.

  “I don’t know,” David said. The whole trip fluttered in his mind. Why had he come, exactly? For Janet. What if she wouldn’t come back with him? Would he sleep tonight on her sofa? Would Rob let him stay? He had pictured himself getting to San Francisco in a speeded-up sort of way, like a movie, with one scene dissolving into the next: first he’s in Santa Barbara, then he gets on a bus and (dissolve) he’s on Bush Street in San Francisco. He had not figured every minute would be this long and this real.

  “If you want to,” Warren said, “you’re welcome to stay at my place tonight.”

  David turned to him, through the heavy air. It took a long time to turn his head. “Thank you,” he said. He wasn’t going to stay at Warren’s but he couldn’t think of how to say no. Warren was kind, but strange. He was like an angel, impossible to judge by regular human standards. David saw that he had three silver rings on his fingers. His fingers were long and big-knuckled, the nails a bright, healthy-looking pink.

  “You’re very welcome,” Warren said. “It will be my pleasure.” He gave David the joint.

  David took a hit and searched his mind for the right way of saying that what he’d meant to say was thank you but no, he didn’t need a place to stay tonight. It was complicated, and he didn’t want to offend. He gave back the joint and decided he’d work things out more clearly a little later.

  The city drew closer; they were almost over the bridge. He could see the details of the buildings now, and though they were still gilded by the setting sun, their windows still molten, they were no longer so magical. They had water towers on their roofs, and balconies; cars moved through the streets. He looked back the way they had come and was surprised to see Oakland lit just the way San Francisco had been. The buildings were smaller but they, too, glowed, burnished gold with an edge of pink.

  “Do you know where Bush Street is?” David asked.

  “Yes I do,” Warren told him. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “1 have some friends on Bush Street, and I should go see them.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anybody in the city.”

  “Well, I do know some people on Bush Street.”

  “I see. People on Bush Street.” The joint was smoked down to a nub. Warren put it in the ashtray. David could not decide whether he was stoned or not. Time wasn’t passing right. First it was one moment and then it was another. They were on the bridge and then they were off it, on a street again, buildings rising on either side.

  “Tell you what, David,” Warren said. “My apartment is on the way to Bush Street. Why don’t we stop there, and we can both get cleaned up, and then I’ll take you to see your friends on Bush Street. How would that be?”

  David looked out the window; the moments ticked by. He was in San Francisco. This neighborhood was mostly warehouses, blank brick walls, and no one on the sidewalks. He was so hungry. He decided he was stoned. It was time to answer Warren. What he wanted most was to sit quiet for a while andwatch the moments pass, without having to be in them. He was moving too slowly to keep up with them. “Okay,” he said to Warren, because it was easier than trying to say anything else.

  “Good,” Warren said, and they drove on in a silence that was like sweet sleep. David watched the street changing and changing. Warehouses turned into liquor stores and closed-up luncheonettes. Luncheonette was a funny word. He giggled a little, and was glad that Warren said nothing. Warren was all right, another friend on the road. Without him, David would have had to cover this distance by himself, all this strange territory. The thought of trudging along this sidewalk, which was littered right here with broken glass and two piles of dog shit, made him feel all the more grateful to Warren. He was so hungry and thirsty too. He was so dry he could feel his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

  They turned onto a busy street, a regular city street with all kinds of stores, and with people walking along. A trolley car, not the ornate kind from the pictures but a solid-looking, serviceable one painted green and tan, rumbled past them and spit blue sparks at the intersection. The trolley was packed full of people. Up ahead a hill cut into the deepening sky, covered with houses, some of which had lights on that shone pale lemon yellow. At the top of the hill stood a titanic utility tower, a spindly four-legged thing painted orange and white, a robot insect from a Japanese movie, pumping power down through thin steel cables to the city. A yellow dog trotted along the sidewalk, threading his way among the pedestrians, with a blue bandana tied around his neck.

  Warren’s apartment was halfway up the hill. They turned off the busy street and into a steep neighborhood of three-story houses pressed close together. Some had diamond windows, some were painted bright colors. In one window, David saw a cactus with a single red flower sprouting from its top. Or thought he saw a cactus.

  Warren parked on a level street at the top of the hill. Davidnoticed that the street was called Mars, which struck him as right and logical. Warren swung his car expertly into a short space that left less than a foot on either end. “Ta-da,” he said. “Home turf. Come with me, David.”

  David got slowly out of the car. He was definitely stoned, and getting worse. There was his one foot on the curb, there he was outside the car. There was Warren’s face, very white, luminous in the dusk. Warren said, “Come, come,” and started across the street. David remembered he was supposed to follow. He couldn’t think of how not to follow—it would take too much explaining. As he started across the street he noticed he had his backpack in his hand.

  Warren opened the door of a building. A blue door. He stood in the open doorway, waiting for David. He smiled. David realized that he was smiling too. How long had he been smiling? His upper lip snagged on a dry tooth when he tried to stop smiling. He had never been this thirsty. He told himself he would have a glass of water, then get moving again. When he passed Warren, Warren said, “Welcome to the House of Usher.”

  They walked up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs two doors faced one another. Warren put a key into one of the doors. A picture was pasted to the door, under the brass peephole. An angel, with wings and curly yellow hair, wearing sunglasses.

  Warren held the door open, and David walked inside. The room was dimly lit through a single window. Warren flicked on a light switch by the door, and the light in the room turned yellower without becoming noticeably stronger. The light came from a brown paper umbrella sitting open on the floor with a light behind it. The umbrella had Japanese writing on it.

  “The Copacabana,” Warren said. “Go on in, put your things down.”

  David stepped, one foot and then the other, toward the middle of the room. He had never seen a room like it. The walls were painted dark green and the ceiling gray. The illuminatedumbrella cast a halo of honey-colored light around itself. The furniture, a sofa and two chairs, was made of bamboo, covered with plump white cushions. Inside the fireplace sat a vase full of trumpet-shaped white flowers.

  “You like?” Warren asked.

  “Uh-huh,” David said, though it was too strange for questions of “like” or “dislike” to apply. He realized he was smiling again and vowed to try and stop.

  “Now,” War
ren said. “You’re dusty and sweaty from the road, and you’d like more than anything to take a shower. Right?”

  “Uh-huh. Um, could I have a glass of water?”

  “Of course you can. There’s mineral water, if you like. Or grapefruit juice.”

  “No thank you. Just regular water.”

  “A snap. Follow me.”

  David followed him through an arched opening, several paces down a short dark hallway to the kitchen. Warren turned on the light. The kitchen was so white, David blinked. Warren took a glass from a cupboard and filled it at the sink. The kitchen was not much bigger than a closet. David hung back in the doorway because he and Warren together in there would have been a crowd.

  Warren dropped two ice cubes into the glass, from a miniature refrigerator that came only to his waist. “Here we go,” he said, offering the glass to David. “Down the hatch.”

  David took the glass to his lips and drained it in several long, deep swallows. The ice cubes clunked up against his teeth. The water just seemed to disappear in him the way it would soak into a sponge. When he finished he was still dry. “Oh, you do like that stuff, don’t you?” Warren said.

  David nodded, embarrassed.

  “Would you like some more?”

  “Please.”

  “No trouble, it just flows right out of the taps.” Warren plucked the glass out of his hand and filled it again. On a shelf over the sink stood a line of chickens: a white glass chicken in a white glass basket, a yellow chicken and rooster that were salt and pepper shakers, a metal chicken on wheels, a white plastic chicken which, David knew, laid plastic eggs when you pushed down on its back. He drank the second glass more slowly. Although he was still thirsty he couldn’t bring himself to ask for a third glass.