What's that elegant looking lady across the street doing sitting on a fireplug? She appears to be reading a Sunday Chronicle but no, she's holding it up for passers-by to see. Hmmmm... ..She must be one of those guilty-rich society-ladies that need to espouse some noble-but-obscure-cause to justify her wealth. But she looks so spontaneous and fluid. That's strange; usually those well-meaning do-gooders look a bit on the stiff side or even worse, sometimes with a put-on friendly face and manner that you can spot the grisly falseness of a mile away. Strange indeed; her movement and manner, at least from this distance, seem to be genuine. I wonder what her noble cause is?"
I had stepped out of my little Hayes Valley Gough Street apartment to buy some baking soda (an item that I had not purchased for many years), from Johnnie, the sometimes moody, sometimes-cheery Vietnamese Hayes Street grocer, hoping that the bright, sunshiny Sunday morning would not be dampened by one of his occasional sulky moods. It turns out he's in a good mood and hands me a free banana that I plan to pass on to one of the many street-persons I often see lurking around the area.
Perhaps I should explain why it was baking soda that I was about and not particularly a Sunday paper:
Two nights ago, I had tenderly stroked my lovely girlfriend's lovely face only to see her wrinkle up her nose and say, "PEW! What's that awful smell? I immediately knew what it was. "Damn! I shouldn't keep my watch on when I play tennis and get all sweaty. It's my leather watchband!"
"Don't worry," she graciously replied from across the room after taking six or seven very genteel steps backward, "just get a box of baking soda and toss the watch in it and that horrible smell will be gone in twenty-four hours. It even says so right on the box!"
When I called her last night to see if she wanted to join me for Sunday brunch, it was easy to figure out that my rejected invitation was closely linked to the fact that I hadn't yet gotten around to purchasing the baking soda.
So there I was, on my intrepid mission to save a lovely, budding romance, when I see this gorgeous apparition sitting on the very fireplug that my pals and I had painted (along with forty other fireplugs all over the city), with glowing psychedelic colors and patterns one very late night more than thirty years ago. I remember that we had had lookouts to spot cop cars but an outraged plain-clothed officer in an unmarked car caught us but then apologized and drove off after I told him that it was OK, that this was a stunt for Time Magazine. I wish I were still as quick witted now as I was then.
As I approached the oh-so-tastefully-dressed-lady-on-a-plug when coming across the street from "Absinthe Corner," I realized that she was actually hawking the papers, to which I thought, "What a strange scam for such a beautiful woman. She drops six quarters in the slot, takes out all the newspapers and sells the damn things to people passing by. But "no," I'm wrong again! She's wearing a classy apron with an elegant San Francisco Chronicle emblem sewn onto it. She's legit! When I get closer, she smiles the same captivating snaggle-tooth smile that my dearest love would give me some forty years ago. Why is it that sometimes a love clings for a lifetime? Why dosen't it just disappear when there's no longer any point to feeling those feelings save knowing the plaguing good and bad of one's own unintended consistency? I'm a friendly guy so as I purchase a paper from Miss Chronicle and ask what her name is and if she lives in the neighborhood.
It's Sherry Lynn White and she lives in a homeless shelter called "The Next Door." No work in the little town she came from. The Chronicle apparently just got tired of people helping themselves to extra Sunday papers as well as wanting to call attention to their early Sunday edition and figured they'd kill two birds with one stone and be a do-gooder themselves by hiring the homeless to do the job. I'll let you know if the baking soda works. I sure hope so; I'd hate to lose Laura.
© 2004__Muldoon Elder