Pharma Bros
Intersection: Birdsall and Monticello. Vexed on how to pronounce either one. Plural birds followed by all, or what, then are we doing a -ch sound or a soft s, how the owner of this house says it and she's Italian. You can see what I'm up against. Plus there's nowhere to cross so I sprint into the grill of a Toyota Rambler. Running wears me out.
Bandages are in order, maybe some salves, maybe some sugar-free gum. Down Burdzawl (every direction is up or down) to the pedestrian bridge over the freeway which I know now exists. Lady with a cyberpunk mohawk twitches around the entrance. She's picking up litter and I nod at her like I'm showing approval because I don't have another greeting in the tank.
Dense hedge between the street and the embankment down to 580. Great spot to ambush an idiot like me but truth is almost nobody walks around down here so it's not the best place to plan a mugging operation. My great great great felon ancestor Bold Jack Donohoe would've made it work. Mom and I found him in a book about Australia, this penal colony folk hero, infamous for a lot of things like slipping through the hangman's noose and setting up spots in the outback to rob folks. He'd prowl the roads for curves choked by vegetation or an outcropping so there was no way for his marks to run away, then he and his guys sat on boxes until a wagon came by with stuff they wanted to steal. They didn't even have to stand up, just leave your stuff and go, messiers. They got a little bit rich and embarrassed the Crown and might've kept it up if he hadn't gotten drunk in Sydney and bragged to a cop about his accomplishments.
By now I'm halfway over this bridge, a concrete tunnel in a cage over a river of traffic. What concerns me most is the constant heavy hiss from all the tires. People live down here. This is what they sleep to. I stick a fan in my face every night but at least I can turn the knobs. What color background noise is that? They used to have just white and that was enough but Big Noise had to come up with pink and brown and probably blue, and you can imagine their qualities, their aural textures, but if that loud uneven swooshy chord of thousands of rubber wheels under metal has a hue it has to be a dirty dark gray like charcoal smoke. Soot flavored sleepytime.
Cardboard placards lying around, homemade signs, maybe, but it’s pretty filthy in here and I'm not up to flipping things over if I can avoid it. If they’re from protesters they probably say something like 47 Must Go or Release the Files or Justice for Harambe, who knows.
View's pretty good, you get a sense of where you are, there’s Coit Tower way off at the top of San Fran on the other side of the Bay, and you can see a couple of bridges from there, and then the hills way up north of Oakland where there’s some gleaming cathedral looking building I keep meaning to look up and probably won’t remember that I've been meaning to look it up until I’m walking around in there staring at the ceilings like a tourist.
Pharmacy's a real neighborhood kind of place. Lots of folks in line, a whole wall with neck and bust mannequins displaying jewelry for sale. Black upright piano in the corner with candies from the last century for sale on top. By god I think that's Pez.
Is this the line? No it's over here. Okay thanks. Anyone ever play that piano? I ask. I've been coming here forty years and nope. Older gent with a pony tale and rainbow Robin Williams suspenders and a German Shepherd on leash. Offers me some advice about my purchases. Baking soda is better as an antacid, he says. I lift a box. This stuff helps me sleep, I say. Antihistamine. I don't mention that I'm here when I have other more responsible things to take care of because whenever I run out of this stuff I'm jolted awake by insane nightmares like the one last night where I'm doing a bunch of mundane things like getting ready to take a shower but all with an undercurrent of heart-pounding terror and dread. I was an army medic, he says. Wow, I say, you must have seen some stuff. I don't mention I've been meaning to get trained as a battlefield medic in case more worst things happen. I was a (lowers voice) hospice nurse after that, he says. Wow, I say, you must have learned some stuff. I learned to let go, he says.
In my fantasy I’m a solid enough musician to just sit down and start banging out some blues on the piano and part of me wants to see what would happen if I did but thankfully for everyone I’m next in line.