Читать книгу Man Alive - Thomas Page McBee - Страница 9

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Oakland

April 2010 ♦ 29 years old

Here’s what you need to know about Parker: she hummed with a magic that vibrated her long strides, her quick-wit, her dressings-down. Though softened by Southern manners, her mood could turn sharp as a knife’s edge, and it wasn’t too hard to find yourself on the sticking side of it. I’d seen her make a cat-caller wither and call a real dick of a roommate a piece of shit, repeatedly, until he just sort of disappeared, his stuff packed and gone within the month.

It was like loving a hurricane.

That night she was wound-up, the plastic bag with a new pair of shoes tossed over her shoulder. We’d spent the day in San Francisco, bumming around and seeing a play neither of us cared much for—something about three generations of women—it felt like those sorts of plays were always about three generations of women. As we left the BART station and headed to our neighborhood in Oakland, Parker outlined her issue with associating women with domesticity in the sort of hilariously acidic free-association tirade she’d go on just for kicks.

She was in her French New Wave phase, and it suited her: short hair, shirts thick with nautical stripes. She looked like Jean Seberg in Breathless, her blue eyes big as saucers. She could be merciless in her assessments, but beneath that lay a kindness so clear it was almost painful to observe. I squeezed her hand, and she startled into holding my gaze.

“What?” she asked.

I shook my head. Six years in, she knew.

Mostly, she was a smart-ass. “I have an opinion on everything,” she’d say.

“How about whales?” I’d ask.

“Love them! Key to the ecosystem; smart.”

I’d try to think of the most innocuous, boring subject. “Row houses?”

“Depressing in brick, cute in wood.”

Parker also had strong opinions about walking home so late at night, and I knew why: our friend who discovered a man under her bed, our friend who was bound to a chair during a home invasion, our friend who got punched in the face in broad daylight for no good reason.

That night was the worst kind of foggy: you could breathe it in, feel it stick. I pulled my collar up, my hat down, my hood on. We walked because we were too broke to take a cab, because we couldn’t afford to be afraid and for me that meant being fearless, and mostly because she was in a good mood and I’d convinced her to.

We started down 40th, and I ignored my twitchy heart, and walked tall. If I’d learned anything since I was a kid, it was that if I wanted my life to start, I needed to show up for it.

Foolish, maybe, but I’d peacock through a warzone before I’d admit to that twitch.