Once upon a time.

Well, so much for fairy tales. Why did she do it? Maybe she was just being friendly. Just being nice. It happens. Maybe she was depressed and suicidal. You don't pick up strange guys at a bus station without a certain amount of risk involved. Maybe I was not, am not, really so strange. Could it be she saw an ally in my eyes, those sad eyes? All these years I wondered about her but maybe I should have wondered more about the brother with the guitar case off to god knows where. Where did he go? Did she tell me? Not surprising I'd forget even if she did.

Back in her kitchen we had some food. She nursed her baby girl, Eve, at the table and I ate some eggs and toast. Coffee. Her husband slept in the next room and I was careful not to let my imagination go crazy. Is this where I'd at long last abandon my virginity? Probably not. Whether her husband was sleeping a room away or not. All these sexy ruminations were, of course, way off the mark since the scene enacted there in the kitchen had more to do with lost souls, with the sad, aimless human journey. The freight of past errors. And constant hope. I ate my eggs and had more coffee. A cigarette. James Baldwin. She asked me if I knew anything about James Baldwin.

"I read Another Country. Thought it was pretty good. He happens to be a fag, though. I know that."

"I met James Baldwin. When I was in London he gave a talk I went to and I went up and talked to him after."

What a putz I am, I thought. So what if he's a homo? I got nothing against homos. In fact I like homos. I'm just showing off how smart I am and I am in fact a putz. Lucky for me she's far too kind to pay my outburst any mind. She goes on, as if she understands my sexual anxiety, to say that despite his queerness he was the most brilliant man she ever heard talk and he was, as a matter of fact, very nice to her. They went for coffee and talked for hours. Exchanged addresses and phone numbers. She wants to write, she writes. James Baldwin looked at a story of hers and liked it, offerred advice.

Her husband shows up, half asleep from the bedroom and grunts at me when we're introduced. He couldn't care less.

"Any coffee?" Grabs a cup and gulps several mouthsfull before slamming the door on his way out. I should marry her now, I think, or at least go to bed with her and think of a way to save her life. I'm not ready for a family, though the idea has great romantic appeal. Two writers in Paris with baby Eve crawling about the atelier. I play jazz albums for them. No, expatriate black american musicians living in Paris will be our friends. James Baldwin comes for dinner. Babysits. I realize now that all those thoughts are exactly what Jane Bow is thinking as she watches me consume her scrambled eggs and toast, her delicious coffee.

Later we drive to the university district and get out of the car and walk around. The sun shines down. Eve's in her stroller happy as can be thinking, no doubt, I'll be her daddy now. I'm too young and scraggly looking but my heart's in the right place. I observe how lovely the day is, how lovely the city is. We discuss the city's qualities and Jane suggests I could stay there, since there's no more real purpose to my journey than to look things over in San Francisco. Ah, she knows I can't take her with me so she wants me to stay. So I get back on a bus and head south.

I never forgot Jane and Eve Bow. I never forgot a guy who picked me up on a northern Ontario highway and drove me to a campsite where his wife and daughter were waiting for him. They fed me and let me sleep in the back of the car and in the morning, while breakfast cooked, I took a walk in the woods with their little girl who was no more than seven or eight. She talked to me, asked questions I couldn't answer, and told me about happy family life in Ontario. I never forgot her, or that walk.

Imagine letting a strange guy walk off into the dewy morning forest with your baby girl. Imagine picking him up beside the night highway in the first place. Those were different times. And I suppose that despite my looks I appeared to be, like I said, just a sweet kid on a worthy trip. But, still. Why did they do it?

A kind of whirlwind from nowhere moves in so quick I'm stunned. Stunned and sucked up into its heart. I'm spun a year into the future. I know, I know. These things don't happen. Well, yes, they do happen when you're just writing it. Suddenly everything's gone. The house and creek and the endless rain. Paint and cabdrivers and mystery music. I'm ten flights up in an apartment from which I can see great distances. Huge ships floating in English Bay. A crazy quilt of fog-enshrouded cities. Lights and stars and everything blinking, twinkling, and trembling. I take the elevator down and walk out into the street and find a nearly-deserted restaurant with just an old lady struggling with a tiny cream container. Once I sat in the Marquis de Sade Cafe with Jane, another Jane, saying goodbye. I was heading west again. Across the aisle another old lady sat trying toget her creamer open as a silent sadness enclosed us all. I can't get those damn things open either. Suddenly the thing explodes in her fat hands and a comet tail of cream shoots over and splatters us like white blood. Oh christ I mutter to Jane and the obese but otherwise innoucuous old lady flips her wig and gets mad at me. "No need to get rude," she explains. "It's just an accident I didn't mean it you don't have to get so filthy." I only want to talk to Jane, to be there with her in a quiet parting, my last night. I never even looked at the cream lady but she won't let up. "You're really disgusting you know it was just an accident and ...." Jane and I can't get a word in. Eventually we just have to get up and go. Walk back to the flat through autumn. Dark, wet streets and the chill just coming on. Another reason to head west now: a milder climate.

I find a booth as far as possible from this new cream lady.

Once I went to the Long John Silver Ice Cream Parlour with Eddie, Spiff, Juanita, and Marcel and tried to order a banana. I don't like ice cream. I saw this pile of bananas pretty as a picture on a glass shelf above the Hamilton Beaches.

"I'll just have a banana, thanks."

"We don't sell bananas."

"What do you call those yellow things up there?"

"Those'r for banana splits."

"Well, just sell me one."

"I can't sell a banana. I wouldn't know what to charge."

"I'll pay you a dollar. Banana's probably worth a dime or less."

"No, can't do it." She's starting to get peeved.

"Okay. I'll pay the price of a banana split. Just give me the banana."

"Listen, son. We don't sell bananas. Now is there something else you would like?"

"Tell you what. Make me a banana split, okay?"

"Fine."

"Then shove everything off the banana and serve it to me."

By now Flo or Doris or whatever she's called is about ready to phone the police. Except she would never call the cops because she is in full possession of the extraordinary strength of her beliefs. Unlike my own universe, hers has order, certainty, and an unshakable confidence. I respect her for this. I even love her for it. She needs no help from the authorities.

"I can make you a banana split. But if I do you're gonna eat it. Otherwise you can sit there till your friends leave."

"Can you make me an egg cream?"

"Yes."

Tonight I sit alone over a cup of black coffee.

The lady with the cream thing gets up to leave. She lifts her cup and holds it high, turns it over and drains the last remaining drops into her lipsticked mouth. She puts the cup down and takes her smoldering fag from the ashtray and sucks the last bit of burning nicotine out of it before squashing the butt. I watch her every move because there's nothing else to watch. Shuffling out she stops at my booth and says, "I love this view."

I look out the window. There's nothing but traffic. Cars and trucks, buses, people moving quickly. No one's dawdling or talking and it's about as interesting as the pet food section at Safeway. I don't get it.

"Trouble is people nowadays, mostly Asians, never stop for the view. It's so beautiful but they're all looking straight ahead and they never see it."

I humour her. "Yes it's a great view. I like the sunsets, especially."

"No. I mean right now!"

I grab the menu and pretend I've got to read something important there, pray she'll continue her shuffle on out of here. She stands there a while and I steel myself for her next observation.

"You're obsessed by memory," she says, in perfect English. "And you smoke too much. I had a son for thirty years and I smoked the whole time I raised him and ruined his lungs, they say."

"It's all right."

"You should quit."

The waitress shows up with my coffee.

"How much for the coffee?"

"A dollar."

I put a dollar on the table. "Any tax?"

"It's included."

I get up to go.

I go.