One for the road

I saw Jack Despra last night, at the Kingfish Cafe. Didn't say hello, of course. Despra was mean once, and he could be mean again easy -- the kind of guy who wouldn't bother to kick a puppy if he could kill its mother. Oh, it's not that he enjoyed it. It's just that he saw the world a certain way, and he took steps to make what is closer to what he thought should be. Just like any do-gooder would, but in the other direction.

He looked the same as always. Tall, one of those in-between builds that still says I could break you. Black jacket, as always. White shirt with the little priest collar. Grey hair and grey eyes without the wrinkles to back 'em up.

At a time like that, I think gin is the best solution. Something to hide behind -- something to keep the tongue busy so it doesn't say anything you'll regret. Something to help you forget what came before and, later, what comes after.

Shopping lists

In front of the Safeway on 15th and Market there's a gate and two bright, bright lights -- really in front of the Safeway parking lot, so in front of a great dark space of silence, inert but full of potential harm -- a gate and two bright lights that shine down, slightly cockeyed, as if you could walk through them. You cannot. The gate is shut, just a prop for the sign that during the day says "Safeway" and at night says nothing.

There's a woman who sits at a small card table under the lights, resting on a crate that's attached to the same sort of handle and wheels that make carryon luggage work. Or did, before, when there was carryon. She sits on the crate, glowing white in the fierce glare, with a blanket draped over her head and around her face. It's already fall in Seattle, which means it's already winter.

She keeps a book in front of her, and a notebook next to it, and she reads in one and writes in the other. She must choose the spot for the lighting, as abominably direct as it is. Imagine the Nevada desert at noon, without the softness. What do they call those lights? Not Noah's arc lights, but maybe sodium lamps -- pillars of their community, darlings of the righteous.

She is the judge before the void, inscribing sins from out our tangled desires and fears onto clean, blank pages, where they are unobscured and unaswerable.

I like to go around. I'm afraid if I went through the gates -- which you can't go through -- I might not come out in the parking lot. Or I might, but in a lot of a very different sort. Either way, cake would no longer be my destination, and unambitious as it sounds, I'm pretty happy with cake most of the time.