They're like deer on two legs, graceful creatures that prance not through the woods but along the sidewalks. They stream in and out of the Haight's little bar-cafes in tight jeans and short skirts, tossing their hair and smiling. Their earrings shimmer and you can see the ridges of cartilage in their throats, delicate as eggshell. Perspiration glistens on their skin. You walk among them, brush against them. They don't pay any attention. You look like one of their kind.
The street you're on is a blue-black tunnel of sky, slashed by car headlights. Music spills through the hot air, red electric and easy violet and the misty rose of an alto sax. It all blends together like voices, lifting the crowd's feet on an invisible cushion and moving them along. The shop windows are filled with bright tinsel. But the open doorways are like caves, with the glow of fires inside and figures eating and drinking and mating.
She's here somewhere, in one of those caves.
Her voice sings in your head, calling you. Sometimes it gets lost in the other noise, but if you close your eyes you can hear it clearly. It leads you into a doorway. There's a live band at the far end of the room, with a crowd dancing. Lots of tattoos and colored hair. Not really your kind of place.
But that could be her at the bar, sitting alone.
You take the empty seat next to her. She moves her purse over a little, to give you more room. The top of the wine list is a Mondavi Reserve cabernet at twenty-four dollars a glass. You order it, and listen hard to the voice inside.
"What kind of music do you call that?" you ask her.
She shrugs. "Mostly hip-hop, I guess," she says uncomfortably, and she turns to watch the dance floor. She's young, twenty-two or -three, and to her, you seem old.
You know by now that she's not the one.
The band quits. Another girl her age, who's been dancing, comes and sits on her other side. They start talking immediately, chattering like birds.
You pocket your change and slip away.
Outside, you find a quiet spot and lean against a wall, close your eyes, and shut everything else out. The voice in your head is a blur of echoes hammering around.
But her song will start again sweet and clear, and lead you to her. It always has.