Deviation

A Day of Sharp Reality

The sun’s rays echoed off the water and the traffic glided easily on the Carquinez Bridge as I drove my van through early morning traffic. Suddenly liberated from a canceled temp job, I found myself with a few hours of freedom stretching before me. Movement in the water caught my eye as I glanced out into the Bay. Fins, a shiver of sharks. No lie, it’s called a shiver, and no doubt, that word nails it. Great Whites, no less. Oh, they tell the tourists, those sharks don’t come into the Bay. I knew better. I stayed out of the water. Too cold, too damn dangerous. The surfers, the kayakers, and the sailboating fans; they sometimes came up short. The unfortunate ones felt a sudden jolt, penetration of teeth into bone, a furious pooling of blood and terror. I focused forward trying not to think.

Harding Park was harboring a masked tranquility when I pulled the van in for a sandwich stop. A curious mix of visitors collected there, drifting hippy youth, drum circle chanters, lovers engrossed in a moment, and those of us who needed to escape from the crappy sentence of hourly wages. I walked toward the center to pay homage to sky-worshipping trees when I saw the girl sitting on a bench between two predators. She was speaking earnestly, beseeching the man on her left. The two men made eye contact. The man on the right nodded and took a hypodermic needle from his pack, extracting liquid from a vile, and tapping it. He took her arm, the sinking of metal into skin, the sinking of hope into exasperation. I looked away.