Switching

Weeknight, quiet city. It’s a balmy eleven o’clock in San Diego, which lies sleepy and tolerant under a deep blue sky. It doesn’t think much of night-time: the streets glow electric gold and the palm trees, tall slender personalities, nod and doze. The homeless sleep ragged humps in the shadows. We pitter-patter through the gentle streets peering in at the drinkers and diners, on our way to the supermarket.

In the sterile fluorescent aisles (American abundance multicoloured on the shelves) the only thing I want to buy is a pack of St. Paddy’s Day themed cupcakes, fifteen of them held in stiff transparent plastic, as delicate as eggs.

Another night I’m on my own, it’s nearly midnight and I’m far to the west of where I want to be. I’m crossing a dark parking lot by the harbour, breeze beating warm like feathered wings against my face, one eye on the faceless clusters of quiet-talking men around their cars. That’s why the woman surprises me – sagging face, layered clothes, hair short and wispy and too sparse, suddenly in front of me. She asks me for a quarter.

I’ve got one loose in my pocket. I saw it glint on the concrete by the sea this afternoon, picked it up with thoughts of what I could buy with it flitting through my head. Money’s tight here. I give it to her now, thinking fate and easy come, easy go.

When she hears my accent, she tells me I need to get out of town. “It’s a bad place here,” she says, “there are evil men that do evil things. Go anywhere, just get out of San Dio.” The night is close and hot around us as we hug and move on on our seperate trajectories.

Two days later found me paying attention to fate again, at the Greyhound station downtown: bag at my feet, 99-cent sunglasses glaring the last of San Diego back at itself.