TIME FOLLOWS ME

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN HOTEL SAINT FRANCIS

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HOTEL SAINT FRANCIS

We arrived late into the city of San Francisco, the lights just appeared and we were swallowed whole like going into the mouth of a giant circus clown.

The driver dropped the other three guys and me at a hotel where they were keeping a room.  It wasn’t very large but there was a window onto a city courtyard.  There were a lot of guys milling around the talk was of drugs and the bartering and selling was going on completely in the open.

The night clerk was an older black man with big round eyeballs that seemed to float on his face and he had gold rings pierced in both ears.  He looked like a cross between Blackbeard the Pirate and Buddha with his big all knowing lazy smile.  He nodded to the boys as we went up the stairs to their flat.

We were all dead tired after the trip.  I don’t know how long I had been awake before I was picked up in the V.W bus, but it could have been twenty hours.  There was one double bed for the four of us and they said we could all crash here.  Too tired to think, we all hit the mattress sleeping head to toe or something.  I slept in my clothes and was completely asleep in about a minute after putting my head down.  This was the first mattress that I had slept on in about a month.

When morning came a couple of the guys were already gone, just leaving me and John.  I notice that he dressed differently, still hip but he had on nicer clothes and a really fashionable sweater.

“So,” I asked, “Is this your place?”

“Yes, this is mine but I don’t spend a lot of time here. I go out a lot”.

“Where you from”, I asked to find out a little more?

“I grew up in Sacramento, my Mom is a university professor but I left home at an early age.”

I was impressed that he came from a family that was smart and as I assumed teachers were at the University.

“Let’s go and get some food.”

So I joined John and we ate in some greasy spoon with a sign that said, “Jack-In-The-Box.”  It was really cheap and I think I had a sandwich and a coffee for under $2 bucks.

John said he had some things to do and gave me an extra key to his flat.  He said he would meet me later.  I walked around and got my bearings a little and then went back to the flat.  There were the usual assortment of street wise guys and very few girls I noticed in the halls of the hotel.  Everyone was friendly or in their own space.  When you walked by they would look right at me and I would look right back, as I stuck to my path back to the flat.  I noticed a few men and boys or teenagers, hard to tell, dressed up like women.  I had never seen this before.  One guy who was very slender and effeminate, kept looking after me and smiling.   He was Latin and looked like Mick Jagger a bit.

When I got back to the flat the guys I had met yesterday were already there smoking.  I joined them and we all smoked up and got really high.  People came and went out of the flat all the time it seemed.

John came back and said, “ I need a hand unloading some things.”  I went down with him to help and he had all these plants that he had bought, big bamboo and a fern thing, as well as some other knickknacks.  I guessed it was time for decorating, but thought nothing of it.  The place was pretty bare and the plants would make it homey.  The front desk guy yelled after John, “Don’t go spending all you money.  Your rent is due in a few days.”

John waved him off saying, “Stop worrying about me.  I’m always good for the rent.”

After hanging out in the flat someone said, “ I want to do some windowpane.”

John said, “I know where I can get some, I’ll be back in a flash.”

“Have you ever done windowpane,” he asked me?

“No, never done that before.”

“Want to try some?”

I asked, “What will it do?”

He said, “You’ll see things; you’ll like it.”