The Dead of San Francisco

A vague story I seem to have lost the trail of. I tried to finish it up as best I could. It helps that I am in a similar black mood as when I started it.

            She drops six quarters into the machine as a small elevator ejects at least a dozen people into her path, because there are stairs, and then there is Forest Hill Station. When the way is clear, she takes the stairs down.

            “Let me start it for you,” he’d said. “You don’t know how.”

            She’d sat patiently and quietly while he sprinkled tobacco in the bowl, placed aluminum foil with a few holes poked through over top of it, and lit the coals. She found them pretty as little veins of fire ran all through them. He inhaled deeply through the hose and the water in the hookah bubbled.

            “You know,” he went on between deep puffs. “San Francisco isn’t a bad place to be dead.”

            The outbound platform is empty and yellow in the underground light. A woman’s artificial voice informs her that an inbound Embarcadero is arriving in two minutes. She �" or it �" doesn’t mention any outbound trains. The scrolling marquee only tells her to log onto their website to check possible fare updates.

            “I thought they outlawed the dead,” she’d answered, and took the hose for her own first drag.

            He smiled and offered a small, forced laugh. “That they did. So you see, it’s easy. As long as you stay away from the Presidio and dear Delores, you won’t be reminded of what could be.”

            “Very funny.”

            He smiled again.

            Across from her on the inbound platform is a girl who looks sick, her face crumpled and sad, and a boy who seems to be with her, but is not paying attention to her. They are both sitting on a bench, and there is almost enough room for another person between them. The girl is leaning toward the boy, propped against the wall like a forgotten doll, staring off into space. She’s dressed like a doll, wearing a little black dress with poofed shoulders and long sleeves, and white socks that come up to her knees. The boy is dressed like a boy.

            “Sometimes, people need reminders,” he’d said.

            She nodded her agreement and passed back the hose. “People need reminders to exist.”

            “Are you having trouble remembering to exist?”

            “Sometimes.”

            “Existing isn’t any problem. Even if your mind’s an empty shell, your body’s still there to exist. People can look at it, and poke at it. Living or dead. Matter doesn’t go away that easily.”

            “I wish it did. Be easier to fade away.”

            “Oh, sure!” He passed her the hose. “But you’re forgetting one thing. Does a body make a person?”

            “I’m not forgetting that. I don’t think a body does make a person.”

            “Then what does?”

            “I don’t know.” She took a deep, long pull, willing the smoke to every corner of her lungs. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

            The inbound train arrives and leaves, taking with it the sick girl and boy. She is left alone in the tunnel.

            “The idea of a person,” he went on, “only exists in other people’s heads. Most of us don’t know how to act without other people around. A hefty chunk of life is just reaction.”

            She exhaled slowly, ghosts of  cherries teasing her tongue. “Reaction to what exactly?”

            He accepted the proffered hose. “Everything. When you’re a child, you spend most of your time trying to figure out which behaviors please people the most.”

            “What makes Mom happy?”

            Their laughs were low, gruff, disingenuous.

            “Everyone,” he said.

           The woman’s artificial voice announces an outbound train in six minutes. She takes a seat and waits, her face relaxed, eyes lazy and unfocused. There’s little to focus on other than the usual trash cluttering up the tracks, and she hasn’t found that interesting in months. Plastic soda bottles, crumpled bits of paper: the grass and squirrels of the city.

            Thoughts drift through her mind. What was it like to be a child? It must have been easier having grown-ups tell her what to do. Eat your breakfast, drink your milk, go to school, do your homework, go to bed. Sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite. Platitudes.  

            After they’d finished their smoke, there was nothing left to be said. She rose, he walked her to the door, and they said goodbye. She walked to where she needed to walk to catch the bus that she needed to catch to get to Forest Hill Station where she now waited to ride the train that she needed to take her back to the place where she tried not to let the bed bugs bite.

            The station is silent. She is silent. And alone.

            The artificial woman’s voice announces an incoming train. When it stops, people get off. She gets on. The car is half-empty, so she takes a seat facing sideways where she can look straight out the window. The train lurches forward into a black tunnel where there is little to see. She sees her reflection. She knows it is her reflection because people have told her so. The body looking back at her sparks no feeling of recognition in her brain. She just knows.

            There is a boy and girl on this train, but this time the girl looks girl-like and the boy looks also boy-like. The boy is grinning at the girl and advancing toward her. She is smiling shyly and leaning away, but her eyes don’t tell him to back away. Her body says to him, “Come closer.” So he does because that’s what boys do.

            How does he know? she thinks as she watches them. How does he know what to do? She thinks she understands the role the girl is playing, but she doesn’t see the point of it. Why act coy? He would lie to her, and she would pretend to believe him, because that’s what girls do. Pointless.

A man notices her noticing them, and he smiles when their eyes happen to meet. She looks beyond him, as if he isn’t there. But he is there. His body is there, existing. Her body is there, too, but she doesn’t feel like existing, so she looks past this train half full of people. She doesn’t see if the man looks away.

            A man gets on at West Portal Station. He is checking his watch as he sits down next to her.

            “Excuse me,” he says to her in a clipped accent. “Does this train go past 19^th Avenue?”

            She smiles because it is polite. “Yes, it does.”

            “I’m trying to catch the 28 bus,” he continues. “That will take me to the Daly City BART station, yes?”

            She nods, still smiling. “Yes.”

            “Does it come often?”

            She waits before answering, as if thinking her response over in her head. “Yes. I’d say every ten or fifteen minutes.”

            “And the BART? Does it run often?”

            “It depends on where you are trying to go.”

            “I need to get to Millbrae.”

            This she did need to think over. “I’m not sure. I don’t go very often.”

            “You should be all right,” the man across the aisle and two seats down offers. “I’m going that way myself.”

            The first man bows his head. “Thank you both.”

            They lapse into silence, and for her the matter is closed and tossed away like crumpled paper. She looks straight ahead of her and she sees the reflections of the people around her sway in synch as the train passes over the tracks built into the street. They emerged from the underground at West Portal Station. Now they are one with traffic. It’s all right having the train amongst the cars because everyone knows what to do. Someone laid the tracks, someone painted the lines on the road, and someone taught them all how to follow. All is in accord.

            The two men leave the train at 19^th Avenue. She sees their reflections go. A few stops after, she gets off, too. The evening is chill, but that is no different from any other evening. It is quieter here than it was there, but that is no surprise either.

She walks blindly the familiar route back to the place she sleeps and allows things to collect, like books and sometimes movies on shelves, on the floor. She imagines that if the apartment burned down, there would be no great loss as she turns the key and steps inside. There is no one to greet her. She looks around and sees what she has always seen, a minimally cluttered studio apartment with only a futon and a TV in the living room. She could move the books from the floor to the shelf, but there is no one to see them to care.

She sits on the futon in her tomb and settles in for the night, just like so many dead in San Francisco.