Electric Avenue • [h.s]

chapter eight

San Francisco, California
May  24th 1976

Delilah's pink converse stay in motion as she peddles her bicycle along the cracked slats of the boardwalk.  Her morning had only been slightly improved by finding the woven basket and lightly rusted bell endowed two-wheeler hiding out in her fathers tool-shed, and although it had seen better days, she was grateful for her old faithful childhood bike and the journey time it would allow her to cut down.

Usually her mind would drift to appreciate every blossom and bird on her ride across the seafront, but today she was busy chewing the inside of her cheek as thoughts of the morning replayed like a broken record.

A handful of things about the awkward encounter puzzled her. Delilah, as analytical as ever, split the ordeal into three segments in her head, in hopes she could make more sense of everything.

First of all was Harry himself. The ridiculous cluster-fuck of contradictions, all bundled up into a sheer blouse and avant-garde embroideries. The boy was like nobody she had come across in all her life, not in a dazed, yearning sense but in more of a what the fuck kind of way.

Coarse and sour, then ripe and sweet.

Whether his stand-offish attitude was the product of a tough guy façade or the need to be mysterious and aloof, she was frustrated that she couldn't figure out what he was thinking, his intentions; he kept them close to his chest. With Harry she was left in the dust at the starting line while he was finishing in first place. What frustrated her most is that thanks to his and Janes friendship, she was damned to keep running into him as long as she was in town. Half of her was reassured by this, there was something addictive about Harry, and it wasn't just his good looks. The other half, however, was protective of her feelings. She knew that Harry was bad news, and there was nothing she could do about it. 

Secondly, waking up to him. Delilah gripped the handle bar a little tighter as the memory replayed in her mind. She shook off any thoughts of his perfectly messy, sleepy curls and focused on how he had gotten there in the first place. She decided that she would have to speak to Jane, and hoped that maybe she could offer her some insight into what the hell happened in the small hours.

Delilah also made a conscious decision to never touch another pina colada for as long as she lived, because the usually welcomed rays of California sunshine were not warming her skin as she had always loved, but instead got in her eyes and made her head pound even more than it had before.

She held her foot on the peddle without urging it forward, allowing the front wheel of her bike to drift by a group of joggers approaching her. They nodded and smiled, which she returned, but she didn't offer them a 'Morning' or 'Hello' as she was accustomed to.

Any nerves about her first day at the gallery were swamped by the need to know why her dad had reacted that way to Harry in the kitchen.

Which brought her to her third segment.

San Francisco was hardly a small town in the middle of nowhere, it was a bustling city housing millions of people, and so Delilah couldn't imagine a way for Harry and her father to run in any of the same circles. Her dad, a retired mechanic from the Midwest, and Harry a 20-something British wannabe rockstar hardly had anything in common.

Delilah was careful not to arrive late to the gallery on her first day, and so forced herself out of her trance the second she arrived outside that familiar hot pink building. With one leg swung over the leather seat, and her wind-ruffled hair promptly smoothed out, she secured her trusty if not outgrown pastel bicycle to a pole beside the entrance. Her jitters returned as she looked across the street and set her sights on the coffee shop Martin had instructed her to pick up his morning treat from.