By Amy Laprade.
Eugene led me down a dim, grey-carpeted corridor, reeking of stale cigarettes, old plaster, and other unidentifiable smells. In a sandpaper voice he explained that I’d be sharing the kitchen—a trapezoidal room no larger than a walk-in closet—with two old men. And though it made the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland seem like the Ritz Carlton, its north-facing window did provide a spectacular view of a Beefeater Gin billboard, which loomed large over a ten story office building. From the tiny gash of a window I gazed upon a forest of air ducts and waste pipes jutting out from a gaggle of oily rooftops like industrial worms.
The bathroom looked like a psych ward. The tiny window, enclaved by iron bars, provided a view of an air shaft which plunged five stories below. In another bathroom window adjacent from mine, I spotted a man in a bath towel, whistling an unfamiliar tune while he shaved. Golden sunlight and coastal breeze wafted through the bars, kissing my skin for the first time since I’d entered that stuffy victorian-style building, which I suspect had been a hotel at the turn of the century.
Giddy excitement roiled in my belly at the idea of living on my own for the first time. Unable to conceal my feelings of uncertainty, however, I looked searchingly at Dawn. She nodded her chin, her dimples exploding as she cracked a grin. It was her way of letting me know I could do it.
Dawn looked speculative a second later, however, and her bright blue eyes darkened as a man lurched into the hallway, clad in just his pajama bottoms and smelling of booze. He peered at us through bloodshot slits for eyes. My skin recoiled as I shot him a hard glance.
“That’s Jim, your neighbor,” Eugene grumbled.
Jim grinned. “Afternoon, gals.”
Ashamed by my own snootiness, I returned Jim’s greeting with a half-smile, my eyes not meeting his. Dawn giggled. At what I didn’t know, but I joined her anyway.
Eugene grunted. Disapproval smeared across his shapeless freckled face at the tattered sleeping bag slung over my shoulder, along with my stinky backpack containing a week’s worth of dirty clothes, a clock radio, and diaries which bore my soul in ballpoint ink. He looked dubious as to whether I could come up with the four hundred a month that it took to rent this dump in the heart of San Francisco.
Eugene’s keys made a jangling sound as he, with a look of disgust, unlocked the last door on the right. A single, high-ceilinged room with ample sunlight sprang into view. A radiator hissed and clanged in the corner, even though it was mid-July.
The previous night, Dawn and I and a gaggle of travelers from around the world were lounged on the roof of the European Youth hostel passing forties of Mickey’s Malt Liquor under the diffused evening sky, where the stars never materialized from under that sheath of fog. The foghorn moaning beyond the mouth of the bay, and the cheerful “ding ding” of the cable cars clattering up and down Powell and Mason Streets, reminded me that I was three thousand miles from home. The stars, slumbering among the scent of Eucalyptus and damp ocean air, fell around me. They shattered in my eyes like seashells on the wrangling shore and flickered like broad daylight. I was young, and everything and anything was possible.
“Just don’t fall into the drug scene!” My big sister preached before dropping me off at the Amtrak station less than a month before.
“Call me collect as soon as you get there,” Mom choked back tears.
I didn’t know much, but I had energy and I had time on my side. Last night had been my last at the hostel and my last chance to hook up with Zachary, a slacker kid from a well-to-do family in Connecticut, who’d landed a job and a cot at the hostel.
“The laundry room is in the basement. Be sure to lock the door behind you, or homeless people will find their way in,” Eugene’s lecturing tone cut into my thoughts as my eye followed the earthquake cracks from the ceiling’s Victorian trim to the baseboards which met the cigarette-burned carpet.
“Downtown is the safest place to be during an earthquake,” Zachary had declared. “Because it’s built on bedrock, unlike the Presidio which is nothing but landfill. Landfill is the worst. During tremors, the landfill acts like jello. Homes built on landfill quiver and wobble until they collapse. That’s why the Marina went up in flames during the ’89 quake. It’s built on landfill and the gas lines broke.”
What made Zachary an authority on earthquakes? Still, his eyes the color of lapis and his unruly crown of curls that sprang from his head like fireworks and smelled of papayas, kept me sniffing at his heels for affection. He would be the first in a succession of West Coast heartbreaks. Abusive Phil, who loved to gamble for a living, and who looked like Chris Robinson of the Black Crows, would be next among this succession.
Toot! Toot! The distant but forlorn sound of a doorman’s whistle snatched me from my daydream. The sound, I would later discover, came from a fancy hotel at the tip of Knob Hill. Everyday it would wind its way through the grit of the Tenderloin before reaching my fifth story window that overlooked the four lane traffic of 101.
I had ten dollars to my name after handing Eugene the cash for my first, last, and deposit. Later I would have to hit up a Western Union.
“You’re on your way,” Dawn assured me after Eugene had left, over the din of traffic that occasionally rattled my windows.
“Yeah….” I replied non-committal, realizing that this was it. I suddenly wished she would stay longer. For the last three years she and I had lived up the road from one another. A day didn’t pass when we didn’t see each other. We’d spent previous summers swimming at the river, getting drunk on cheap wine, and acting wonderfully foolish at parties. We spent many restless nights, driving along rolling country roads with no destination in mind, hoping to find a good rock station. Crickets thrummed in the fields beyond our cracked windows. Often, coffee at a twenty-four-hour diner was our entertainment for the evening. What was there for her in Massachusetts?
She shook her head gently without me having to say the words, and I understood then that I had to take this journey alone—that my dreams were not hers.
Daylight began to fade. Sunsets were different on the West Coast than the ones in New England. In California?fog aside?they were golden, cloudless, and uniform. They never varied. New England sunsets, on the other hand, were like cotton candy filaments blazing across a sea of violet plum, where fireflies flickered furiously along its shore.Had I made a mistake?
“I should get going,” Dawn said. “Train leaves at eight….”
I nodded.
“Love ya, Ame.” That was her nickname for me. We hugged long and hard. “Stay in touch.”
And she was gone.
I didn’t know when we’d see each other again. For a moment I didn’t even know where to go from there. I only knew I couldn’t…go back.
I remained in the middle of the empty room for a long time, hearing the rumble of traffic, and listening to the blare of the TV that came from my other neighbor who lived on the other side of my wall but whom I hadn’t yet met. My bikini lay limp among the clothes I’d dumped in the middle of the floor. I shivered. The summers here were cold and nothing like the balmy ones in Massachusetts. Like the fog, fear began to creep in.
The sky changed from a faded, denim blue, to a deep gold, to a silvery grey. Fog fell in wisps over the rooftops of downtown buildings but hadn’t yet blotted out the moon, now a waxing crescent, that rose over the glittering skyline.
I sat in the window facing East, admiring the panoramic view of the financial district. The Trans America building jutted triumphantly over the throng of skyscrapers and became my compass. A Circuit City was across the street. The business boasted many windows. In these windows I saw fifty television sets all playing the same movie. Dances with Wolves was on. I fell in a trance, watching fifty Kevin Costners gallop mutely across the Great Plains by horseback while music played softly on my radio.
KFOG was San Francisco’s rock station and played some of the same Classic Rock hits Dawn and I listened to back home.
“…he knew right there he was too far from home….” Bob Seger lamented over the airwaves in Hollywood Nights. I closed my eyes, my skin glowing pink from the neon of the Ellis Brook’s Chevrolet sign, outside.
Across the street, a cluster of young people staggered out of Bar 101, an Irish sports dive with a wide screen TV but no claim to fame except that it served strong drinks. It was ten o’clock and I needed air. Like the protagonist in Bob’s hit song, I too was too far from home.
I rode the elevator to the marbled lobby. There, I paused to gaze at myself in the old, beveled mirrors. There was one on each wall, and each mirror created a dozen replicas of myself. If I waved, so did the other Amys. If I nodded, the other Amys did too. When I smiled, the other Amys followed suit. All twelve of us made silly faces in the mirror. We kicked one leg high in the air, looking like a row of Vegas show girls. We were gearing up for classes we would later take at Jean Shelton’s School of Acting.
A man, sporting dark shades, startled me as he came barreling through the lobby. My smile faded and I suddenly saw the back of myself in the mirror behind me for the first time. It was like I could see what other people might be seeing when they looked at me. It was unnerving.
The man ignored me as he opened his mailbox. My cheeks blazed hot, nevertheless, as I bounded past him, letting the cool, damp air slap my skin as I pushed the heavy, glass doors open. Outside, the coastal wind was picking up as it often did around this time, and as usual I wasn’t dressed warmly enough.
Last night, when I was uncertain as to whether I’d secured the room or not, I only dared to walk five blocks South of my building, because the streets beyond stank of urine and teemed with ladies who cruised Larkin and O’Farrell in their hot pants and stilettos. The night before last, I only got as far as a movie theater called The Galaxy.
Tonight I vowed to venture further, much further. Tonight the shift in me would begin.
I never found out if Zachary’s theories on earthquakes had been correct or not, since the only tremors I would come to experience in that magical city were of the personal kind, occurring in a series of aftershocks. My soul, having rested delicately on emotional landfill, rocked and swayed during each provocation. I came close to collapsing at one point, but didn’t. This retrofitting, called life experience is what helps us all to remain standing.