The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966

The Freewayers

I had forgotten how the streets in San Francisco go to get to the freeway. Actually, I had forgotten how San Francisco went.

It was really a surprise to be outside again, travelling in a vehicle again. It had been almost three years. My God, I was twenty-eight when I went into the library and now I was thirty-one years old.

‘What street is this?’ I said.

‘Divisadero,’ Vida said.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s Divisadero all right.’

Vida looked over at me very sympathetically. We were stopped at a red light, next to a place that sold flying chickens and spaghetti. I had forgotten that there were places like that.

Vida took one hand off the wheel and gave me a little pat on the knee. ‘My poor dear hermit,’ she said.

We drove down Divisadero and saw a man washing the windows of a funeral parlour with a garden hose. He was spraying the hose against the second-floor windows. It was not a normal thing to see, so early in the morning.

Then Vida made a turn off Divisadero and went around the block. ‘Oak Street,’ she said. ‘You remember Oak Street? It’ll take us to the freeway and down to the airport. You remember the airport, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I’ve never been on an aeroplane. I’ve gone out there with friends who were going on aeroplanes, but that was years ago. Have the aeroplanes changed any?’

‘Oh, honey,’ she said. ‘When we’re through with all this, I’ve got to get you out of that library. I think you’ve been there long enough. They’ll have to get somebody else.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying to drop the subject. I saw a Negro woman pushing an empty Safeway grocery cart on Oak Street. The traffic was very good all around us. It frightened me and excited me at the same time. We were headed for the freeway.

‘By the way,’ Vida said. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘I mean, who pays the bills for your library?’ she said. ‘The money that it takes to run the place? The tab.’

‘We don’t know,’ I said, pretending that was the answer to the question.

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ Vida said. It hadn’t worked.

‘They send Foster a cheque from time to time. He never knows when it’s coming or how much it will be. Sometimes they don’t send us enough.’

‘They?’ she said, keeping right on it.

We stopped for a red light. I tried to find something to look at. I didn’t like talking about the financial structure of the library. I didn’t like to think in terms of the library and money together. All I saw was a Negro man delivering papers from still another cart.

‘Who are you talking about?’ Vida said. ‘Who picks up the tab?’

‘It’s a foundation. We don’t know who’s behind it.’

‘What’s the name of the foundation? Vida said.

I guess that wasn’t enough.

‘The American Forever, Etc.’

‘The American Forever, Etc,’ Vida said. ‘Wow! That sounds like a tax dodge. I think your library is a tax write-off.’

Vida was now smiling.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is that I have to be there. It’s my job. I have to be there.’

‘Honey, I think you’ve got to get some new work. There must be something else that you can do.’

‘There are a lot of things I can do,’ I said, a little defensively.

Just then we slammed on to the freeway and my stomach flew into birds with snakes curling at their wings and we joined the mainstream of American motor thought.

It was frightening after so many years. I felt like a dinosaur plucked from my grave and thrust into competition with the freeway and its metallic fruit.

‘If you don’t want to work, honey,’ Vida said, ‘I think I can take care of us until you feel like it, but you’ve got to get out of that library as soon as possible. It’s not the right place for you any more.’

I looked out the window and saw a sign with a chicken holding a gigantic egg.

‘I’ve got other things on my mind right now,’ I said, trying to get away. ‘Let’s talk about it in a few days.’

‘You’re not worried about the abortion are you, honey?’ Vida said. ‘Please don’t be. I have perfect faith in Foster and his doctor. Besides, my sister had an abortion last year in Sacramento and she went to work the next day. She felt a little tired but that was all, so don’t worry. An abortion is a rather simple thing.’

I turned and looked at Vida. She was staring straight ahead after saying that, watching the traffic in front of us as we roared out of San Francisco down the freeway past Potrero Hill and towards the aeroplane that waited to fly us at 8.15 down California to land in San Diego at 9.45.

‘Maybe when we get back we can go live at the caves for a while,’ Vida said. ‘It’ll be spring soon. They should be pretty.’

‘Seepage,’ I said.

‘What?’ Vida said. ‘I didn’t hear you. I was watching that Chevrolet up there to see what it was going to do. What did you say now, honey?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get you out of that library. Maybe the best thing would be just to give the whole thing up, forget the caves and start someplace new together. Maybe we can go to New York or we’ll move to Mill Valley or get an apartment on Bernal Heights or I’ll go back to UC and get my degree and we’ll get a little place in Berkeley. It’s nice over there. You’d be a hero.’

Vida seemed to be more interested in getting me out of the library than worrying about the abortion.

‘The library is my life,’ I said. ‘I d0n’t know what I’d do without it.’

‘We’re going to fix you up with a new life,’ Vida said.

I looked down the freeway to where the San Francisco International Airport waited, looking almost medieval in the early morning like a castle of speed on the entrails of space.

The San Francisco International Airport

Vida parked the van near the Benny Bufano statue of Peace that waited for us towering above the cars like a giant bullet. The statue looked at rest in that sea of metal. It is a steel thing with gentle mosaic and marble people on it. They were trying to tell us something. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to listen.

‘Well, here we are,’ Vida said.

‘Yeah.’

I got our bag and we left the van there quite early in the morning, planning, if everything went well, to pick it up that evening.

The van looked kind of lonesome like a buffalo next to the other cars.

We walked over to the terminal. It was filled with hundreds of people coming and, going on aeroplanes. The air was hung with nets of travelling excitement and people were entangled within them and we became a part of the catch.

The San Francisco International Airport Terminal is gigantic, escalator-like, marble-like, cybernetic-like and wants to perform a thing for us that we don’t know if we’re quite ready for yet. It is also very Playboy.

We went over — over being very large — and got our tickets from the Pacific Southwest Airlines booth. There was a young man and woman there. They were beautiful and efficient. The girl looked as if she would look good without any clothes on. She did not like Vida. They both had pins with half-wings on their chests like amputated hawks. I put our tickets in my pocket.

Then I had to go to the toilet.

‘Wait here for me, honey,’ I said.

The toilet was so elegant that I felt as if I should have been wearing a tuxedo to take a leak.

Three men made passes at Vida while I was gone. One of them wanted to marry her.

We had forty-five minutes or so before our aeroplane left for San Diego, so we went and got a cup of coffee. It was so strange to be among people again. I had forgotten how complex they were in large units.

Everybody was of course looking at Vida. I had never seen a girl attract so much attention before. It was just as she said it would be: plus so.

A young handsome man in a yellow coat like a God-damn maitre d’ showed us to a table that was next to a plant with large green leaves. He was extremely interested in Vida, though he tried not to be obvious about it.

The basic theme of the restaurant was red and yellow with a surprising number of young people and the loud clatter of dishes. I had forgotten that dishes could be that noisy.

I looked at the menu, even though I wasn’t hungry. It had been years since I had looked at a menu. The menu said good morning to me and I said good morning back to the menu. We could actually end our lives talking to menus.

Every man in the restaurant had been instantly alerted to Vida’s beauty and the women, too, in a jealous sort of way. There was a green aura about the women.

A waitress wearing a yellow dress with a cute white apron took our order for a couple cups of coffee and then went off to get them. She was pretty but Vida made her pale.

We looked out the window to see aeroplanes coming and going, joining San Francisco to the world and then taking it away again at 600 miles an hour.

There were Negro men in white uniforms doing the cooking while wearing tall white hats, but there were no Negroes in the restaurant eating. I guess Negroes don’t take aeroplanes early in the morning.

The waitress came back with our coffee. She put the coffee on the table and left. She had lovely blonde hair but it was to no avail. She took the menu with her: good-bye, good morning.

Vida knew what I was thinking because she said, ‘You’re seeing it for the first time. It really used to bother me until I met you. Well, you know all about that.’

‘Have you ever thought about going into the movies or working here at the airport?’ I said.

That made Vida laugh which caused a boy about twenty-one years old to spill his coffee all over himself and the pretty waitress to rush a towel over to him. He was cooking in his own coffee.

It was time now to catch our aeroplane, so we left the restaurant. I paid a very pretty cashier at the front of the cafe. She smiled at me as she took the money. Then she looked at Vida and she stopped smiling.

There was much beauty among the women working in the terminal, but Vida was chopping it down almost as if it weren’t even there. Her beauty, like a creature unto itself, was quite ruthless in its own way.

We walked to catch our plane causing people in pairs to jab each other with their elbows to bring the other’s attention to Vida. Vida’s beauty had probably caused a million black and blue marks: Ah, de Sade, thy honeycomb of such delights.

Two four-year-old boys walking with their mother suddenly became paralysed from the neck up as they passed us. They did not take their eyes off Vida. They couldn’t.

We walked down to the PSA pre-flight lounge stimulating pandemonium among the males our path chanced to cross. I had my arm around Vida, but it wasn’t necessary. She had almost totally overcome the dread of her own body.

I had never seen anything like it. A middle-aged man, perhaps a salesman, was smoking a cigarette as we came upon him. He took one look at Vida and missed his mouth with the cigarette.

He stood there staring on like a fool, not taking his eyes off Vida, even though her beauty had caused him to lose control of the world.

PSA

The jet was squat and leering and shark-like with its tail. It was the first time I had ever been on an aeroplane. It was a strange experience climbing into that thing.

Vida caused her usual panic among the male passengers as we got into our seats. We immediately fastened our seat belts. Everybody who got on the aeroplane joined the same brotherhood of nervousness.

I looked out the window and we were sitting over the wing. Then I was surprised to find a rug on the floor of the aeroplane.

The walls of the aeroplane had little California scenes on them: cable cars, Hollywood, Coit Tower, the Mount Palomar telescope, a California mission, the Golden Gate Bridge, a zoo, a sailboat, etc, and a building that I couldn’t recognize. I looked very hard at the building. Perhaps it was built while I was in the library.

The men continued to stare at Vida, though the aeroplane was filled with attractive stewardesses. Vida made the stewardesses invisible, which was probably a rare thing for them.

‘I really can’t believe it,’ I said.

‘They can have it all if they want it. I’m not trying to do anything,’ Vida said.

‘You’re really a prize,’ I said.

‘Only because I’m with you,’ she said.

Before taking off a man talked to us over the plane’s PA system. He welcomed us aboard and told us too much about the weather, the temperature, clouds, the sun and the wind and what weather waited for us down California. We didn’t want to hear that much about the weather. I hoped he was the pilot.

It was grey and cold outside without any hope for the sun. We were now taking off. We started moving down the runway, slow at first, then faster, faster, faster: my God!

I looked at the wing below me. The rivets in the wing looked awfully gentle as if they were not able to hold anything up. The wing trembled from time to time ever so gently, but just enough to put the subtle point across.

‘How does it feel?’ Vida said. ‘You look a little green around the edges.’

‘It’s different,’ I said.

A medieval flap was hanging down from the wing as we took off. It was the metal intestine of some kind of bird, retractable and visionary.

We flew above the fog clouds and right into the sun. It was fantastic. The clouds were white and beautiful and grew like flowers to the hills and mountains below, hiding with blossoms the valleys from our sight.

I looked down on my wing and saw what looked like a coffee stain as if somebody had put a cup of coffee down on the wing. You could see the ring stain of the cup and then a big splashy sound stain to show that the cup had fallen over.

I was holding Vida’s hand.

From time to time we hit invisible things in the air that made the plane buck like a phantom horse.

I looked down at the coffee stain again and I liked it with the world far below. We were going to land at Burbank in Los Angeles in less than an hour to let off and pick up more passengers, then on to San Diego.

We were travelling so fast that it only took a few moments before we were gone.

The Coffee Stain

I was beginning to love the coffee stain on my wing. Somehow it was perfect for the day: like a talisman. I started to think about Tijuana, but then I changed my mind and went back to the coffee stain.

Things were going on in the aeroplane with the stewardesses. They were taking tickets and offering coffee inside the plane, and making themselves generally liked.

The stewardesses were like beautiful Playboy nuns coming and going through the corridors of the aeroplane as if the aeroplane were a nunnery. They wore short skirts to show off lovely knees, beautiful legs, but their knees and legs became invisible in front of Vida, who sat quietly in her seat next to me, holding my hand, thinking about her body’s Tijuana destination.

There was a perfect green pocket in the mountains. It was perhaps a ranch or a field or a pasture. I could have loved that pocket of green forever.

The speed of the aeroplane made me feel affectionate.

After a while the clouds reluctantly gave up the valleys, but it was a very desolate land we were travelling over, not even the clouds wanted it. There was nothing human kind below, except a few roads that ran like long dry angleworms in the mountains. Vida remained quiet, beautiful.

The sun kept swinging back and forth on my wing. I looked down beyond my coffee stain to see that we were flying now above a half-desolate valley that showed the agricultural designs of man in yellow and in green. But the mountains had no trees in them and were barren and sloped like ancient surgical instruments.

I looked at the medieval intestinal flap of the wing, rising to digest hundreds of miles an hour, beside my coffee stain talisman.

Vida was perfect, though her eyes were dreaming south.

The people on the other side of the aeroplane were looking down below at something. I wondered what it was and looked down my side to see a small town and land that looked gentler and there were more towns. The towns began magnifying one another. The gentleness of the land became more and more towns and grew sprawling into Los Angeles and I was looking for a freeway.

The man I hoped was the pilot or involved in some official capacity with the aeroplane told us that we were going to land in two minutes. We suddenly flew into a cloudy haze that became the Burbank airport. The sun was not shining and everything was murky. It was a yellow murk whereas back in San Francisco it was a grey murk.

The aeroplane grew empty and then became full again. Vida got a lot of visual action while this was going on. One of the stewardesses lingered for a minute a few seats away and stared at Vida as if to make sure she were really there.

‘How do you feel?’ I said.

‘Fine,’ Vida said.

A small airliner about the size of a P-38 with rusty-looking propellers taxied by to take off. Its windows were filled with terrified passengers.

Some businessmen were now sitting in front of us.

They were talking about a girl. They all wanted to go to bed with her. She was a secretary in a branch office in Phoenix. They were talking about her, using business language. ‘I’d like to get her account! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! ha-ha!’

The ‘pilot’ welcomed the new people aboard and told us too much about the weather again. Nobody wanted to hear what he had to say.

‘We’ll be landing in San Diego in twenty-one minutes,’ he said, finishing his weather report.

As we took off from Burbank, a train was running parallel with us across from the airport. We left it behind as if it weren’t there and the same with Los Angeles.

We climbed through the heavy yellow haze and then suddenly the sun was shining calmly away on the wing and my coffee stain looked happy like a surfer, but it was only a passing thing.

Bing-Bonging to San Diego

Bing-bong!

The trip to San Diego was done mostly in the clouds. From time to time a bell tone was heard in the aeroplane. I didn’t know what it was about.

Bing-bong!

The stewardesses wanted more tickets and people to like them. The smiles never left their faces. They were smiling even when they weren’t smiling.

Bing-bong!

I thought about Foster and the library, then I very rapidly changed the subject in my mind. I didn’t want to think about Foster and the library: grimace.

Bing-bong!

Then we flew into heavy fog and the plane made funny noises. The noises were fairly solid. I almost thought that we had landed in San Diego and were moving along the runway when a stewardess told us that we were going to land shortly, so we were still in the air.

Hmmmmmmmm…

Bing-bong!

Hot Water

From San Francisco our speed had been amazing. We had gathered hundreds of miles effortlessly, as if guided by lyrical poetry. Suddenly we broke out into the clear to find that we had been over the ocean. I saw white waves below breaking against the shore and there was San Diego. I saw a thing that looked like a melting park and my ears were popping and we were going down.

The aeroplane stopped and there were many warships anchored across from the airport and they were in a low grey mist that was the colour of their bodies.

‘You can stop being green now,’ Vida said.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m new at the tree game. Perhaps it’s not my calling.’

We got off the aeroplane with Vida causing her customary confusion among the male passengers and resentment among the female passengers.

Two sailors looked as if their eyes had been jammed with pinball machines and we went on into the terminal. It was small and old-fashioned.

And I had to go to the toilet.

The difference between the San Francisco International Airport and the San Diego International Airport is the men’s toilet.

In the San Francisco International Airport the hot water stays on by itself when you wash your hands, but in the San Diego International Airport, it doesn’t. You have to hold the spigot all the time you want hot water.

While I was making hot Water observations, Vida had five passes made at her. She brushed them off like flies.

I felt like having a drink, a very unusual thing for me, but the bar was small, dark and filled with sailors. I didn’t like the looks of the bartender. It didn’t look like a good bar.

There was more confusion and distraction among the men in the terminal. One man actually fell down. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it. He was lying there on the floor staring up at Vida just as I decided not to have a drink in the bar but a cup of coffee in the cafe instead.

‘I think you’ve affected his inner ear,’ I said.

‘Poor man,’ Vida said.

Flying Backwards

The basic theme of the San Diego airport cafe was small and casual with a great many young people and boxes full of wax flowers.

The cafe was also filled with a lot of aeroplane folks: stewardesses and pilots and people talking about planes and flight. Vida had her effects on them while I ordered two cups of coffee from a waitress in a white uniform. She was not young or pretty and she was not quite awake either.

The cafe windows were covered with heavy green curtains that held the light out and you couldn’t see anything outside, not even a wing.

‘Well, here we are,’ I said.

‘That’s for certain,’ Vida said.

‘How do you feel?’ I said.

‘I wish it were over,’ Vida said.

‘Yeah.’

There were two men sitting next to us talking about aeroplanes and the wind and the number eighty kept coming up again and again. They were talking about miles per hour.

‘Eighty,’ one of them said.

I lost track of what they were saying because I was thinking about the abortion in Tijuana and then I heard one of them say, ‘At eighty you’d actually be flying the plane backwards.’

Downtown

It was an overcast nothing day in San Diego. We took a Yellow Cab downtown. The driver was drinking coffee. We got in and he took a long good look at Vida while he finished with his coffee.

‘Where to?’ he said, more to Vida than to me.

‘The Green Hotel,’ I said. ‘It’s—’

‘I know where it’s at,’ he said to Vida.

He drove us on to a freeway.

‘Do you think the sun will come out?’ I said, not knowing what else to say. Of course I didn’t have to say anything, but he was really staring at Vida in his rear-view mirror.

‘It will pop out around twelve or so, but I like it this way,’ he said to Vida.

So I took a good look at his face in the mirror. He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.

‘Here we are,’ he said to Vida, finally pulling up in front of the Green Hotel.

The fare was one dollar and ten cents, so I gave him a twenty-cent tip. This made him very unhappy. He was staring at the money in his hand as we walked away from the cab and into the Green Hotel.

He didn’t even say good-bye to Vida.

The Green Hotel

The Green Hotel was a four-storey red brick hotel across the street from a parking lot and next to a book-store. I couldn’t help but look at the books in the window. They were different from the books that we had in the library.

The desk clerk looked up as we came into the hotel. The hotel had a big green plant in the window with enormous leaves.

‘Hello, there!’ he said. He was very friendly with a lot of false teeth in his mouth.

‘Hello,’ I said.

Vida smiled.

That really pleased him because he became twice as friendly, which was hard to do.

‘Foster sent us,’ I said.

‘Oh, Foster!’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes. Foster. He called and said you were coming and here you are! Mr and Mrs Smith. Foster. Wonderful person! Foster, yes.’

He was really smiling up a storm now. Maybe he was the father of an airline stewardess.

‘I have a lovely room with a bath and view,’ he said. ‘It’s just like home. You’ll adore it,’ he said to Vida. ‘It’s not like a hotel room.’

For some reason he did not like the idea of Vida staying in a hotel room, though he ran a hotel, and that was only the beginning. ‘Yeah, it’s a beautiful room,’ he said. ‘Very lovely. It’ll help you enjoy your stay in San Diego. How long will you be here? Foster didn’t say much over the telephone. He just said you were coming and here you are.’

‘Just a day or so,’ I said.

‘Business or pleasure?’ he said.

‘We’re visiting her sister,’ I said.

‘Oh, that sounds nice. She has a small place, huh?’

‘I snore,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ the desk clerk said.

I signed Mr and Mrs Smith of San Francisco on the hotel register. Vida watched me as I signed our new instant married name. She was smiling. My! how beautiful she looked.

‘I’ll show you to your room,’ the desk clerk said. ‘It’s a beautiful room. You’ll be happy in it. The walls are thick, too. You’ll be at home.’

‘Good to hear,’ I said. ‘My affliction has caused me a lot of embarrassment in the past.’

‘Really a loud snorer?’ he said.

°Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a sawmill.’

‘If you’ll please wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring my brother and have him come down and watch the desk while I’m taking you upstairs to the room.’

He pushed a silent buzzer that summoned his brother down the elevator a few moments later.

‘Some nice people here. Mr and Mrs Smith. Friends of Foster,’ the desk clerk said. ‘I’m going to give them Mother’s room.’

The brother clerk gave Vida a solid once-over as he went behind the desk to take over the wheel from his brother who stepped out and he stepped in.

They were both middle-aged.

‘That’s good,’ the brother desk clerk said, satisfied. They’ll love Mother’s room.’

‘Your mother lives here?’ I said, now a little confused.

‘No, she’s dead,’ the desk clerk said. ‘But it was her room before she died. This hotel has been in the family for over fifty years. Mother’s room is just the way it was when she died. God bless her. We haven’t touched a thing. We only rent it out to nice people like yourselves.’

We got into an ancient dinosaur elevator that took us up to the fourth floor and Mother’s room. It was a nice room in a dead mother kind of way.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the desk clerk said.

‘Very comfortable,’ I said.

‘Lovely,’ Vida said.

‘You’ll enjoy San Diego even more with this room,’ he said.

He pulled up the window shade to show us an excellent view of the parking lot, which was fairly exciting if you’d never seen a parking lot before.

‘I’m sure we will,’ I said.

‘If there’s anything you want, just let me know and we’ll take care of it: a call in the morning, anything, just let us know. We’re here to make your stay in San Diego enjoyable, even if you can’t stay at your sister’s because you snore.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He left and we were alone in the room.

‘What’s the snoring thing you told him about?’ Vida said, sitting down on the bed.

She was smiling.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just seemed like the proper thing to do.’

‘You are a caution,’ Vida said. Then she freshened herself up a little, washed the air travel off and we were ready to go visit Dr Garcia in Tijuana.

‘Well, I guess we’d better go,’ I said.

‘I’m ready,’ Vida said.

The ghost of the dead mother watched us as we left. She was sitting on the bed knitting a ghost thing.

The Bus to Tijuana

I don’t like San Diego. We walked the few blocks to the Greyhound bus depot. There were baskets of flowers hanging from the light posts.

There was almost a small town flavour to San Diego that morning except for the up-all-night tired sailors or just-starting-out sailors walking along the streets.

The Greyhound bus depot was jammed with people and games of amusement and vending machines and there were more Mexicans in the bus depot than on the streets of San Diego. It was almost as if the bus depot were the Mexican part of town.

Vida’s body, perfect face and long lightning hair performed their customary deeds among the men in the bus depot, causing a thing that was just short of panic.

‘Well,’ I said.

Vida replied with a silence.

The bus to Tijuana left every fifteen minutes and cost sixty cents. There were a lot of Mexican men in the line wearing straw and cowboy hats in sprawled laziness to Tijuana.

A jukebox was playing square pop tunes from the time that I had gone into the library. It was strange to hear those old songs again.

There was a young couple waiting for the bus in front of us. They were very conservative in dress and manner and seemed to be awfully nervous and bothered and trying hard to hold on to their composure.

There was a man standing in the line, holding a racing form under his arm. He was old with dandruff on the lapels and shoulders of his coat and on his racing form.

I had never been to Tijuana before but I had been to a couple of other border towns: Nogales and Juarez. I didn’t look forward to Tijuana.

Border towns are not very pleasant places. They bring out the worst in both countries, and everything that is American stands out like a neon sore in border towns.

I noticed the middle-aged people, growing old, that you always see in crowded bus depots but never in empty ones. They exist only in numbers and seem to live in crowded bus depots. They all looked as if they were enjoying the old records on the jukebox.

One Mexican man was carrying a whole mess of stuff in a Hunt’s tomato sauce box and in a plastic bread wrapper. They seemed to be his possessions and he was going home with them to Tijuana.

Slides

As we drove the short distance to Tijuana it was not a very pleasant trip. I looked out the window to see that there was no wing on the bus, no coffee stain out there. I missed it.

San Diego grew very poor and then we were on a freeway. The country down that way is pretty nothing and not worth describing.

Vida and I were holding hands. Our hands were together in our hands as our real fate moved closer to us. Vida’s stomach was flat and perfect and it was going to remain that way.

Vida looked out the window at what is not worth describing, but even more so and done in cold cement freeway language. She didn’t say anything.

The young conservative couple sat like frozen beans in their seats in front of us. They were really having a bad time of it. I pretty much guessed why they were going to Tijuana.

The man whispered something to the woman. She nodded without saying anything. I thought she was going to start crying. She bit her lower lip.

I looked down from the bus into cars and saw things in the back seats. I tried hard not to look at the people but instead to look at the things in the back seats. I saw a paper bag, three coat hangers, some flowers, a sweater, a coat, an orange, a paper bag, a box, a dog.

‘We’re on a conveyer belt,’ Vida said.

‘It’s easier this way,’ I said. ‘It will be all right. Don’t worry.’

‘I know it will be all right,’ she said. ‘But I wish we were there. Those people in front of us are worse than the idea of the abortion.’

The man started to whisper something to the woman, who continued staring straight ahead, and Vida turned and looked out the window at the nothing leading to Tijuana.

The Man from Guadalajara

The border was a mass of cars coming and going in excitement and confusion to pass under an heroic arch into Mexico. There was a sign that said something like: WELCOME TO TIJUANA THE MOST VISITED CITY IN THE WORLD.

I had a little trouble with that one.

We just walked across the border into Mexico. The Americans didn’t even say good-bye and we were suddenly in a different way of doing things.

First there were Mexican guards wearing those.45 calibre automatic pistols that Mexicans love, checking the cars going into Mexico.

Then there were other men who looked like detectives standing along the pedestrian path to Mexico. They didn’t say a word to us, but they stopped two people behind us, a young man and woman, and asked them what nationality they were and they said Italian.

‘We’re Italians.’

I guess Vida and I looked like Americans.

The arch, besides being heroic, was beautiful and modem and had a nice garden with many fine river rocks in the garden, but we were more interested in getting a taxi and went to a place where there were many taxis.

I noticed that famous sweet acrid dust that covers Northern Mexico. It was like meeting a strange old friend again.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

The drivers were yelling and motioning a new supply of gringos towards them.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

The taxis were typically Mexican and the drivers were shoving them like pieces of meat. I don’t like people to try and use the hard sell on me. I’m not made for it.

The conservative young couple came along, looking very frightened, and got into a taxi and disappeared towards Tijuana that lay flat before us and then sloped up into some hazy yellow poor-looking hills with a great many houses on them.

The air was beginning electric with the hustle for the Yankee dollar and its biblical message. The taxi drivers seemed to be endless like flies trying to get you into their meat for Tijuana and its joys.

‘Hey, beau-ti-ful girl and BE-atle! Get in!’ a driver yelled at us. ‘Beatle?’ I said to Vida. ‘Is my hair that long?’

’It is a little long,’ Vida said, smiling.

‘Hey, BE-atle and hey, beauty!’ another driver yelled.

There was a constant buzzing of TAXII TAXI! TAXI! Suddenly everything had become speeded up for us in Mexico. We were now in a different country, a country that just wanted to see our money.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

(Wolf whistle.)

‘BE-atle!’

‘TAXI!’

‘HEY! THERE!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TIJUANA!’

‘SHE’S GOOD-LOOKING!’

‘TAXI!’

(Wolf-whistle.)

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘SENORITA! SENORITA! SENORITA!’

‘HEY, BEATLEI TAXI!’

And then a Mexican man walked quietly up to us. He seemed a little embarrassed. He was wearing a business suit and was about forty years old.

‘I have a car,’ he said. ‘Would you like a ride downtown? It’s right over there.’

It was a ten-year-old Buick, dusty, but well kept up and seemed to want us to get into it.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be very nice.’

The man looked all right, just wanting to be helpful, so it seemed. He didn’t look as if he were selling anything.

‘It’s right over here,’ he repeated, to show that the car was something that he took pride in owning.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

We walked over to his car. He opened the door for us and then went around and got in himself.

‘It’s noisy here,’ he said, as we started driving the mile or less to Tijuana. ‘Too much noise.’

‘It is a little noisy,’ I said.

After we left the border he kind of relaxed and turned towards us and said, ‘Did you come across for the afternoon?’

‘Yes, we thought we’d take a look at Tijuana while we’re visiting her sister in San Diego,’ I said.

‘It’s something to look at all right,’ he said. He didn’t look too happy when he said that.

‘Do you live here?’ I said.

‘I was born in Guadalajara,’ he said. ‘That’s a beautiful city. That’s my home. Have you ever been there? It’s beautiful.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was there five or six years ago. It is a lovely city.’

I looked out of the window to see a small carnival lying abandoned by the road. The carnival was flat and stagnant like a mud puddle.

‘Have you ever been to Mexico before, Senora?’ he said, fatherly.

‘No,’ Vida said. ‘This is my first visit.’

‘Don’t judge Mexico by this,’ he said. ‘Mexico is different from Tijuana. I’ve been working here for a year and in a few months I’ll go back home to Guadalajara, and I’m going to stay there this time. I was a fool to leave.’

‘What do you do? I said.

‘I work for the governinent,’ he said. ‘I’m taking a survey among the Mexican people who come and go across the border into your country.’

‘Are you finding out anything interesting? Vida said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all the same. Nothing is different.’

A Telephone Call from Woolworth’s

The government man, whose name we never got, left us on the Main Street of Tijuana and pointed out the Government Tourist Building as a place that could tell us things to do while we were in Tijuana.

The Government Tourist Building was small and glass and very modern and had a statue in front of it. The statue was a grey stone statue and did not look at peace. It was taller than the building. The statue was a pre-Columbian god or fella doing something that did not make him happy.

Though the building was quite attractive, there was nothing the people in that little building could do for us. We needed another service from the Mexican people.

Everybody was shoving us for dollars, trying to sell us things that we didn’t want: kids with gum, people wanting us to buy border junk from them, more taxi-cab drivers shouting that they wanted to take us back to the border, even though we had just got there, or to other places where we would have some fun.

‘TAXI!’

‘BEAUTIFUL GIRL!’

‘TAXI!’

‘BEATLE!’

(Wolf whistle.)

The taxi-cab drivers of Tijuana remained constant in their devotion to us. I had no idea my hair was so long and of course Vida had her thing going.

We went over to the big modern Woolworth’s on the Main Street of Tijuana to find a telephone. It was a pastel building with a big red Woolworth’s sign and a red brick front and big display windows all filled up with Easter stuff: lots and lots and lots of bunnies and yellow chicks bursting happily out of huge eggs.

The Woolworth’s was so antiseptic and clean and orderly compared to the outside which was just a few feet away or not away at all if you looked past the bunnies in the front window.

There were very attractive girls working as sales girls, dark and young and doing lots of nice things with their eyes. They all looked as if they should work in a bank instead of Woolworth’s.

I asked one of the girls where the telephone was and she pointed out the direction to me.

‘It’s over there,’ she said in good-looking English.

I went over to the telephone with Vida spreading erotic confusion like missile jam among the men in the store. The Mexican women, though very pretty, were no match for Vida. She shot them down without even thinking about it.

The telephone was beside an information booth, next to the toilet, near a display of leather belts and a display of yarn and the women’s blouse section.

What a bunch of junk to remember, but that’s what I remember and look forward to the time I forget it.

The telephone operated on American money: a nickel like it used to be in the good old days of my childhood.

A man answered the telephone.

He sounded like a doctor.

‘Hello, Dr Garcia?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘A man named Foster called you yesterday about our problem. Well, we’re here,’ I said.

‘Good. Where are you?’

‘We’re at Woolworth’s,’ I said.

‘Please excuse my English. Isn’t so good. I’ll get the girl. Her English is… better. She’ll tell you how to get here. I’ll be waiting. Everything is all right.’

A girl took over the telephone. She sounded very young and said, ‘You’re at Woolworth’s.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re not very far away,’ she said.

That seemed awfully strange to me.

‘When you leave Woolworth’s turn right and walk down three blocks and then turn left on Fourth Street, walk four blocks and then turn left again off Fourth Street,’ she said. ‘We are in a green building in the middle of the block. You can’t miss it. Did you get that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When we leave Woolworth’s, we turn right and walk three blocks down to Fourth Street, then we turn left on Fourth Street, and walk four blocks and then turn left again off Fourth Street, and there’s a green building in the middle of the block, and that’s where you’re at.’

Vida was listening.

‘Your wife hasn’t eaten, has she?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Good, we’ll be waiting for you. If you should get lost, telephone again.’

We left Woolworth’s and followed the girl’s directions amid being hustled by souvenir junk salesmen, the taxi drivers and gum kids of Tijuana, surrounded by wolf whistles, cars cars cars, and cries of animal consternation and HEY, BEATLE!

Fourth Street had waited eternally for us to come as we were always destined to come, Vida and me, and now we’d come, having started out that morning in San Francisco and our lives many years before.

The streets were filled with cars and people and a fantastic feeling of excitement. The houses did not have any lawns, only that famous dust. They were our guides to Dr Garcia.

There was a brand-new American car parked in front of the green building. The car had California licence plates. I didn’t have to think about that one too much to come up with an answer. I looked in the back seat. There was a girl’s sweater lying there. It looked helpless.

Some children were playing in front of the doctor’s office. The children were poor and wore unhappy clothes. They stopped playing and watched us as we went in.

We were no doubt a common sight for them. They had probably seen many gringos in this part of town, going into this green adobe-like building, gringos who did not look very happy. We did not disappoint them.