I wanted to leave him there, let him come out and find me missing, listen for the explosion when he found he’d been stood up. I had no wheels, though, and taking the bus home was out of the question. They didn’t run this late, and even if they did, it would take two hours and three changes for sure before I got back to Ocean Beach.
Calling one of my brothers or a girlfriend crossed my mind, but at this hour on a Friday night nobody was going to be home, and I had no idea where to track anyone down except at Gus’s party. I might call there, but who would I ask for? And how could I ask anyone to trek across town to pick me up?
Then I saw a taxi stand with a telephone in the parking lot at the liquor store across the street. I got out of the car and, hugging myself against the cold, walked across to the entrance to garage. Through the window I saw that Danny was still holding the light while his boss was wiping something clean.
All right for him, I thought. I fished in my purse for paper, then scrawled two words—“gone home”—on the only thing I found, a cash register receipt. I went back to stick it under the windshield wiper of Danny’s car.
I didn’t realize just how down-at-the-heel the neighbour-hood was until I got to the corner. Two laughing men burst out of the door to the liquor store, each carrying big paper bags full of something, as I waited to cross the street. They piled into a car in the parking lot, and a third man, who was at the wheel, shoved the car into reverse so that it squealed backwards before turning and heading out into the street.
The men were Negroes, and I was suddenly frightened—the only black folks I knew were the handful at Point Loma, and I didn’t have classes with any of them. There was no taxi at the stand, and what if I called and none could come for a while? And how much would it cost? I had a five-dollar bill, but I’d only been in a taxi twice, once when my mother suddenly took ill at the supermarket and once the day my grandfather died, and both times someone else had paid.
But I was in luck because by the time I’d made it to the stand, a cab pulled up, and the driver opened the door for me and drove away even before I’d told him where I wanted to go. He didn’t know the beaches well, though, so he got lost. By the time we made it to Gus’s neighbourhood the meter registered $5.35.
“This is all I have,” I said to the driver, as I handed over the five-dollar bill. “Wait here and I’ll see if I can borrow the rest.”
“What the hell ...” he began. “I’d never have come all the way over here if I’d thought you didn’t have the fare. No,” he said, “you can’t get out. You’ve got to come up with some more.”
By then I was on the sidewalk, searching the folks gathered outside the house for familiar faces. There had to be someone I knew. Not that I wanted to go begging, particularly not when I was coming empty-handed. I’d forgotten that you were supposed to bring something to drink, somehow that had been buried under all my irritation with Danny. But everybody seemed to have something with them: a six-pack of beer, a bottle in a brown paper bag, a bola bag that probably contained wine, a big Thermos clinking with ice cubes in some sort of punch.
And from what I could see, I was the only girl alone. Oh, there was a group of girls—five or six, who I knew by sight, but not by name—standing next to the Frasers’ little front porch, but they quite clearly had come together, as a group, giving each other protection and courage.
Behind me the taxi driver yelled, “Come back here. You owe me.” He was standing beside the cab now, but he leaned in and pressed on the horn. “You owe me.”
The clutter of people up ahead turned around almost as one at the sound of horn.
“She owes you what?” a voice said off to the side. It was loud and male and registered as someone I knew, although I was so flustered I couldn’t put a name to it.
“My fare,” the cabby said. “I picked her up over in Logan Heights and she’s short ...” he hesitated, apparently taking the measure of other person “... two bucks.”
I whirled around to face the driver. “Two bucks? No, less than that, fifty cents maximum, if you count in a tip,” I said, “and giving you a tip after the way you went around Robin Hood’s barn to get here ...”
“So he’s the Sheriff of Nottingham trying a little extortion? What does that make you, Annie? Maid Marion? ”The voice was right next to me, and when I turned I saw that it belonged to R.J. He was fishing in his pockets. “Fifty cents? That’s what you want, my man? Here you go.” And he threw a handful of change at the cabby, who immediately began to scrabble on the ground. “Now get out of here,” R.J. said. “This is a private party.”
The driver, red-faced, stood up. “Listen, kid,” he said. “I ought to teach you a few manners.” But he looked around at the others, standing around, beer bottles in hand, and he thought better of it. He got back in the cab and blasted off down the street toward Naragansett.
“Lucky for him there was nobody coming,” R.J. said.
“Lucky for me you were here,” I said. I was shivering now, teeth chattering, arms bumpy with gooseflesh.
R.J. looked at me for just a beat longer than necessary. “If you say so,” he said finally. Then he noticed how I was shaking. “Come on inside. You’ll freeze out here.”
Inside it was too hot from too many folks packed into the Frasers’ little house. Before we bought our house, we’d lived in one like it: a two-bedroom cottage built before World War II. Gus’s folks had bought their home after the war, when his dad went to work for Convair. Over the years Mr. Fraser added on two more bedrooms and a family room to the back of the house so that the lot was nearly filled. But Mrs. Fraser had found room for oranges and grapefruit overgrown with bougainvillea and cup-of-gold vines. Inside, the house was full of heavy-duty over-stuffed chairs and sofas. Everything was nicked and scraped from collisions between boys and wood.
Only the tiny bedroom off the entry hall was different. That’s where Mrs. Fraser had her horoscope paraphernalia: her charts, her books, her worksheets. She also had a teak desk, and a matching black upholstered office chair was set facing Mr. Fraser’s Lazy Boy. They had taken over the room two years before when Gary, Gus’s oldest brother, moved out and got married. Gus said his parents didn’t cry at Gary’s wedding because they were so glad to claim the room.
It was off-limits for the party. The door didn’t have a lock, but Gus had taped “Entrance Prohibited” signs all over it, and Jeff, the oldest of his brothers still at home, stationed himself by the door for the first hour or so to warn off folks in search of a little quiet. “My mother would rather you slept in her bed than you messed with her stuff,” he said again and again. “I mean, don’t go in their bedroom either, but for God’s sake stay out of their den.”
By the time R.J. led me inside, the living room, kitchen, and the two bedrooms the boys shared were full of folks. Music was blasting from the hi-fi set up near the sliding glass doors, which led to the small deck in back. Folks were dancing out there as well as in the living room. Bottles of various sorts covered the table and counters in the kitchen. Cases already refilling with empties stood along the wall, and cigarette smoke had turned the air grey.
The warmth felt good to me. R.J. told me to wait for him in the hall while he got me something to drink, and I leaned against the wall, getting my bearings. Gus saw me standing there and pushed his way through the mass of people: “Hey, Annie-baby, where’s your friend?”
“Which one?” I asked. “Danny
