Grid #17.18.29.30 by Al McKee
The guidebook had said “Close to Union Square shops.” It had not mentioned the necessity of being buzzed through the door. Or the fact that the desk clerk sat in a cage. Or the raucous dispute outside in the street—two women in their 60s (maybe even their 70s—short skirts and sheer nylons notwithstanding) screeching at each other over… well, it was hard to say. A man? A pack of cigarettes? The guidebook hadn’t mentioned the smell of the place. Or the fact that the elevator might have been a set in a torture and mutilation movie.
Back home in Bavaria it had appeared on the map that this hotel was a short walk to the cable car, another block to Macy’s, not much farther to Nob Hill. Back home it had seemed a smashing bargain. But now, stepping off the elevator… one has to wonder. Who is this fellow standing in the hallway in his underpants? Why is the door to that room open and what are those people doing in there? One scurries—to the extent one can scurry laden with luggage—to one’s own room down the hall.
Thanks God the room itself is not so bad. Small but tidy. Comfortable bed. Yes, there is only one hanger in the closet and yes, in the sink, the hot water knob is broken—one will have to phone the desk about that—but, really, after that ominous lobby, this room must be judged a pleasant surprise. One opens a window. Here finally, five stories up, is the San Francisco suggested by the guidebook: a misty fragrance, a seagull drifting by, in the distance a bell—is it the cable car? It would be almost idyllic were it not for those women screeching. Time enough tomorrow to seek accommodations a little farther up the hill.
Thanks God one didn’t bring the grandchildren…
At the Stockton Street markets the food chain retains its essential savagery. Elsewhere in the city food is a fantasy: vegetables stacked like floral arrangements in boutique grocery stores, meat and fish and poultry abstracted into inoffensive fillets. In the restaurants these abstractions undergo a further transformation, arriving on the plate as sculpture or ikebana.
Not on Stockton Street.
Here the Darwinian fundamentals of fine dining are fully exposed. Gutted fish lie on bloody ice, their eyes pearled over gaping at nothing. Live catfish crammed into cattle-car tanks press whiskers hopelessly against the glass. In a box by the door doomed turtles crawl over each other or simply move their green claws in meaningless repetitions. If you wish, the man in the smeary apron will snatch one up and dispatch it for you. He’s a merry fellow, and he will slam it on his cutting board and split its shell with no more sentiment than you’d expect from a lion pulling down a baby gazelle. This carnage occurs also in the boutique groceries and fancy restaurants, but it’s hidden from sight. It happens in the back. Here it’s out front.
One fresh turtle ready for soup. How do you say bon appetit in Chinese?
Midnight in Huntington Park.
Whatever that function was at the Mark Hopkins or the Fairmont, it’s over now, and this silver-haired fellow in the tailored overcoat and expensive dress shoes has loosened his tie. Chilly as it is, his lady friend has taken off her wrap and handed him her heels. She wants to play on the swings! You might have thought it was a father indulging his daughter had you not noticed, a moment earlier, the way she leaned into him, laughing, as she bent to unhook her shoe or the way his hand lingered on her back to keep her steady.
She’s lovely, of course. Even lovelier on the swings. She has planted her sweet bottom squarely in the seat so that her skirt does not billow when, on the upswing, she stretches her legs forward to give herself momentum. The silver-haired fellow stands to one side smiling, her wrap slung over his arm, her heels dangling from his hand. He may be one of those bastards who expects (and gets) the world served to him on a platter. But if the look on his face is any indication, he’s more probably a man to whom something wonderful has happened late in life, a man who fully appreciates (and cannot quite believe) his good fortune.
Jury duty! It is incumbent on every citizen to participate in the orderly administration of justice by assuming civic responsibility for—blah, blah, blah… Here’s why people hate jury duty. Not because they’re busy at work and can’t spare the time (though, in fact, they are and can’t). And not because it plays havoc with their childcare arrangements (though when did mediating a traffic dispute between two fractious jerks become more important than your five-year-old’s happiness)? No the real reason people hate jury duty is because it forces them to fraternize outside their class…
Jury of your peers? It’s a safe bet very few of the people summonsed each week to the juror assembly room in the Superior Court of California at 400 McCallister consider the dismal crowd around them peers. The guy so important he has to run his office from his cell phone certainly will not regard the guy watching Wheel of Fortune on the assembly room TV as a peer, but it’s quite likely these two will sit next to each other when directed to a courtroom for jury selection—and neither one of them will be happy about it.
In the course of voir dire the attorneys will ask each his occupation.
“I’m a hedge fund manager at Blatty Sarsfield ,” the guy with the cell phone will say.
The other guy will mutter his answer and the judge will ask him to speak up.
“UNEMPLOYED.”
And yet even these two may share a common impatience when the angry woman with the crew cut and biker jacket launches a filibuster on her own unhappy history of potentially prejudicial traffic disputes…
Jury duty! Considering how unalike we are, it’s a wonder government of the people and by the people works at all.