We crossed an alley and took the two steps up to the sidewalk. Ahead, Greenwich grew even steeper. A little red Smart Car coughed as the driver downshifted and swung into the tight turning circle that ended the block at the park. “The park,” I called out as I came up beside her and started up the red stone steps into the sudden greenness. Only pride kept me from panting. Her breath, too, was coming fast, but she wasn’t complaining, nor slowing down. Telegraph Hill Boulevard, the two-lane loop to Coit Tower, bisected the stairs. As we ran in place, cars whipped by on the straightway, but when they rounded the next curve their drivers would find themselves idling in a line, waiting for the few parking spots by the tower.
“You are in damned good shape, Karen.”
“And you.”
“I have to work out every day to keep ready for work. What’s your excuse?”
“Muscle memory.”
“From?”
“Another life.” She caught her breath, and again, and for a moment I thought she’d pass over my question. “I had a job years ago, hauling stuff up a cliff. For months. I’d see that old concrete building in my dreams. At the end of the season I looked like an anatomy text picture. Every muscle outlined. But not anymore. Then I’d’ve left you in the dust, girl.”
“Where was that impressive job?”
She tightened and then gave her head a shake, laughing the way you do when you’ve suddenly realized something that’s perfectly obvious. “Alaska. I’ve done my share of uphill employment. I was hauling fish in Sue—in Alaska. Luckily, I’ve had easier jobs since.”
“You’d have to have. But listen, don’t worry. Whatever’s going on, Gary’ll take care of you. He’s the best.”
“I know. That’s why I hired him.” She hesitated. “Darcy . . . it’s not as if we’re friends . . . ”
“Yet,” I said.
“Right. I . . . wanted to . . . ”
I glanced over, but suddenly she wasn’t there. She was in the middle of the roadway.
Brakes screeched.
“Karen!”
The car was between us.
I raced around it. “Karen!”
She was standing over a teenager in jeans and T-shirt, lying on her back on the sidewalk, clutching a phone.
The driver’s head poked out the window. “Idiot!” he yelled. “Look before you walk into traffic! Fucking cell phone!”
The girl pushed herself up, face dead white, and defiantly snapped open her phone. The driver reached for the door, hesitated, shook his head, and shot off down the hill.
“I knew what I was doing!” The girl’s voice was shaky. Karen started to reach out to her and caught herself. “I wasn’t going to get hit! You didn’t need to shove me!”
“Sorry. You okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine. I didn’t need any . . . Well, maybe you . . . Maybe I . . .”
Karen shrugged. “Never mind.”
The girl gave her a nod and hurried across the roadway and down the steps, her flip-flops slapping the pavement.
Karen watched her go, and I had the sense she was more undone than the girl.
“Are you okay, Karen?”
“Maybe I did overreact. Car wasn’t that close.”
“They come at a good clip down this road. But listen, if you’ve got to err—. Like you said yourself, things happen.”
“I—” She swallowed and for an instant I thought she was going to cry, or laugh. Instead, she stared up at the tree tops until her face shifted into the same expression she’d had looking at Washington Square. “What a great park! Smell the trees! In Alaska we waited so long for spring we hated to miss a moment of sun or scent. Is that a cedar? The tower? How tall is it?” She eyed the obelisk that commemorated the firemen who saved the city after the 1906 great earthquake and fire.
“Hundred feet.”
“More. Surely more.”
“You’re right, of course. I was thinking of a koan.”
“How do you step off the hundred-foot pole?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised. “How’d you know? Are you a Buddhist?”
“No. I just read it somewhere. Love the idea. Maybe someday, when I have more time . . .”
The path ended at the boulevard. Cars in the up lane idled in line. In the down lane, one paused at the stop sign, then drove smugly on.
“How do you progress off a hundred-foot pole?” I’d chewed on that particular koan in my time. It was intended to be about life after enlightenment, but for me it was just about life. I knew how to push my way up in a business where the standards were for men, how to make myself climb higher than anyone thought I could, do stunts others had failed at, how to balance on the top in the wind. I could climb the pole, but to step off, into nothingness, that was a whole ’nother thing. “So, Karen, how do you step off the hundred-foot pole?”
“You let go.”
“A hundred feet up?”
“You step off the pole and the rules don’t matter anymore, because you’re already dead.”
“Wow. Spoken like a roshi.”
“No, listen, I just mean—it’s logical isn’t it? Better to take your shot downfield than hang on waiting to get sacked.”
The football reference surprised me, coming from her. “But still—”
“Falling, you only break your neck.” The path ended and she started across the road. A car jerked left to avoid her. She stepped back, shrugged, and said, “You’re a stunt double. Maybe you don’t break your neck if you do it right. What d’you think?”
“You couldn’t pay me enough. But that’s not the Zen answer. Actually, it’s never the Zen answer.”
She let out a laugh as if the oddly unnerving interchange had never occurred. The cars backed up and she scooted around the line, skirting the stopped cars, jumping back as passengers got out to walk while their local hosts sat in the exhaust-snorting line. She was taking it all in like it glistened. She reminded me of how I’d felt at the end of long Zen sesshins, walking down the street after days of sitting zazen and seeing everything crisp and bright and wonderful.
I wondered the same thing I had half an hour ago: Who was this woman who needed a babysitter? Who was this non-Buddhist who’d danced around this koan like it was a Maypole? I hesitated, then decided: “Karen,” I said when we got to the circle at the top, “you want to get
