Lily went left along Columbus, walking quickly in an effort to warm herself up, and then she came to Broadway, and down the street she saw the lighted sign. The letter l in the word Club was on the fritz, blinking out every so often as if it were tapping out a message in code.
In a daze, she angled across Broadway, narrowly missing a taxi that honked at her as it swerved around her. She slowed to a halt in front of the club. She noticed for the first time a small window to the left of the door. It was filled in with glass blocks so that she couldn’t see inside, but it must overlook the end of the bar. She began to take in the other details around her: the stained concrete beneath her feet, blackened in spots as if people had stubbed out countless cigarettes on the ground. The faint smell of alcohol and smoke, like a bitter perfume, hanging in the chilly air. A layer of filth seemed packed onto the lower extremities of the building’s wall, which was covered in a dirty stucco that once might have been white, but had turned grayish brown over time. A particularly disgusting puce-colored patch spread over part of the wall beneath the glass-block window. The black door itself looked like it had come out of a fire, sooty and beaten, and there was a small white sign affixed to it.
She had to walk right up to it to read it in the gray light: CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE SAN FRANCISCO POLICE.
She shouldn’t have been surprised by the notice, but she was. She realized that she had stupidly thought she might go to the club—that Mickey might open the door for her, that someone might help her, or at least allow her to sit there while she figured out what she was going to do. Abruptly she became aware that she was standing right in front of the club on the sidewalk in full view. Once again she was putting herself in danger of being seen.
She turned away in a panic, not caring where she was going as long as she put distance between herself and anyone who might know her. She went uphill, racing up the steep sidewalk, and at the top she was forced to pause to catch her breath. When she raised her eyes and saw the nearest street sign, she was startled to discover it was the street that Kath lived on.
She had completely forgotten about that scrap of paper with Kath’s address, but she remembered the details: 453 Union Street. It couldn’t be far.
* * *
—
Kath’s house was a three-story building with a central entrance and bay windows stacked up on either side. In the cloudy afternoon, a lamp glowed in a first floor window, but the top two floors were dark. She went up the stairs to the entryway and looked at the three doors, examining the nameplates beside each buzzer. There it was on the right: MILLER. She raised her finger to press the button.
It sounded distantly inside the building—too distantly to be attached to the first floor with its lighted window.
No one answered the door.
She pressed the buzzer again, and leaned forward to listen carefully, but no one was coming.
She retreated down the steps and stared fiercely at Kath’s building, as if that would conjure her out of thin air, but of course it did not. In the first floor window she saw an old woman looking out at her suspiciously. She couldn’t stand here forever. The woman would call the police.
Lily turned her back on the building and continued downhill, walking aimlessly into the heart of North Beach. The neighborhood was a maze to her; some of the streets turned into dead ends, while others culminated in steep wooden steps climbing up the side of Telegraph Hill. Eventually she went all the way up to Coit Tower, joining the tourists who gathered at the overlook to gaze out at the misty city. She lingered there for some time, her mind going as numb as her feet, and then she went into the gift shop to lurk in the warmth. She used the public restroom and pretended to consider buying a miniature Coit Tower, but when the clerk started walking past her repeatedly, she left.
Maybe you should go home, she thought, but immediately recoiled from the idea. She couldn’t face her mother—her father—the entire family. There are no homosexuals in this family.
She headed downhill, taking random streets, until she emerged in Washington Square Park. She remembered that sunny September afternoon again: Kath’s legs stretched out on the grass; the cold sweet sorbetto; the wooden spoon scraping against her tongue.
The memory hurt almost physically. She went to the nearest bench on the edge of the park and sat down.
She felt hopelessness creeping upon her. The fog was rolling in; it seeped through her thin cardigan and blouse and crawled beneath her cotton skirt to settle on her skin. No matter how much she rubbed her hands along her upper arms, she was still cold. Washington Square Park was quiet. The afternoon was darkening into dusk, and few people were out, but she gradually became aware of the presence of others. There was the lumpy shape of someone stretched out on a bench not so far from her; it had been motionless when she arrived, but after some time it twitched, startling her. Then the shape seemed to ripple and roll, and she realized it was a man shifting over onto his back. He was sleeping there, exposed to the chilly air. He didn’t even have a blanket.
The sound of glass rattling against metal caused her to look to her right. Someone was rooting through the trash can. They were wearing a long woolen coat beneath a blanket that kept slipping, its ragged edges trailing on the damp ground.
She crossed her arms and legs, hugging herself closer, trying to ignore the fear that was rising inside her. She called up the memory of Kath’s mouth against hers as they kissed beneath the stairs at the club. Last night. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Kath there.
She heard footsteps coming from her left. They slowed down, and then someone sat on the bench beside her. She blinked her eyes open as a man said, “Nay ho, little girl.”
He was lanky and scraggly looking, with an unshaven chin and a stink about him, and she realized he was trying to speak to her in Chinese.