Civil Twilight. Susan Dunlap
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 dinner?”
She started, then a smile spread across her face. “I’d really like that. But my treat. Let’s go somewhere really nice. Somewhere”—she caught my eye and laughed—“above our element.”
“How far above do you have in mind?”
“One of those places you need to seriously bribe the maitre d’. Somewhere with a view.”
I glanced at my watch: 5:02. “I’m going to have to go get ready for my stunt. But listen, it’s at California and Market. Why don’t you come down and watch when you’re done with Gary? It’s a car gag, bouncing off a runaway cable car. A pretty big deal. Water gushing. Ambulances and fire trucks all over. They’re going to close Market Street and the Embarcadero. I’ll leave word to let you onto the set. The schedule calls for a twilight shot, but I can’t swear how long it’ll run. Come around eight. If it’s still going, you can watch the action. If it’s over, we’ll go eat.” I added, “Above our element.”
“Sure,” she said, so offhandedly it was hard not to feel dismissed.
A horn honked. I turned to glare. “Hang on, Karen, that’s my brother.”
“The missing one!”
“No, no. My oldest brother. Give me a minute, okay?”
She looked at me curiously. “Darcy . . .”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me!”
“Okay. None of my business, but . . . your missing brother. You don’t want to beat yourself up. ‘If only I’d noticed . . .’ ‘If only I hadn’t said . . .’ you know? I don’t mean to intrude, but you assume something happened and he fell off the pole. Maybe he made a bad decision afterwards. It’s easy to jump; hard to climb back on.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wondered what Gary had told her, and why.
“None of my business. It’s just I’ve had friends . . . and . . . don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The horn beeped again. I headed toward it and when I turned back, Karen was walking toward the parapet.
John was pulling into a legal parking spot, something he rarely troubled to do. That meant he hadn’t swung around the waiting traffic, Code 3’d it up the down lane, and parked in the crosswalk, which would have saved him twenty minutes. He was dressed in a suit that fit better than any I’d seen on him. He looked good; he looked not like a cop. “You here on a case?” I asked, leaning into his car window.
He ignored my question—his family trademark—and opened the door, forcing me to jump back. I took that to mean Yes. He put an arm around my shoulder and walked us toward the west side of the circle. I have affectionate siblings, but John is not one of them. His arm around my shoulder historically meant I was about to hear something unlikely