After graduating from the University of Nebraska, she picked up and moved to California. She took up an apartment in San Francisco in the Mission District. She loved the vibrancy of the neighborhood, the colorful homes that danced along treeless streets, the sound of salsa reverberating from clubs and first floor garages, and the smell of fried tamales blocks away. She'd lived there only three weeks, but each day it felt as if it were all for her. As if every place longed to be explored by her. Three days per week she drove up to Marin County for her internship at a simple living magazine, but the other four were left for city expedition.
The roommates she found on Craiglist were unconventional and excellent partners in that sort of Lewis and Clark way. To be fair, all people who lived in the city of constant overcast save for their neighborhood, were perfect partners. Something about the air breathed casual adventure. The Mission, sunnier and warmer than the rest of the city, gained its name from the Catholic Missionaries of Mission San Francisco de Asis, who manifest destined all the way up to the bay area in 1776. And now it was Evelyn's personal manifesto to learn about herself through new happenings and change that would keep her busy.
"I can't be hurt!" She yelled it louder than before, determined to believe its false truth. She rubbed her forehead and leaned into the edge of the balcony, her shoes pressing against the right angle of the roof and wall. She was slightly inebriated from a night of sangria and dancing with her roommates.
Christine and Lila welcomed Evelyn into their apartment on Florida Street with open arms, as if they were sisters already. They had an empty room that faced the backyard; it was furnished with a wicker cabinet, a futon and a lamp with a red shade over it sat atop a round nightstand. Upon her first look, as she eyed everything she sarcastically thought all the room was missing was a hooka or some statue of Buddha. Looking out the bay window she could see a mismatching patio set, a lemon tree and plums that fell from the neighbors house next door into their yard. Come October both the lemons and plums were juicy and ripe for eating.
The three of them would sit on the back porch watching the sun set, the sky changing from a whitish yellow hue, fading into a peach haze before it completely darkened to navy. Christine had a record player and three records, which they would play over and again. Bonnie Prince Billy, William Elliott Whitmore and Pedro the Lion in a tripod rotation. Christine would often go to Amoeba Records in the Haight to buy more, but somehow either never made it there or would come back with a CD or a poster instead. She'd hustle up the twenty front steps to their kelly green front door, push her way through, and apologize before anyone knew what she was rambling about.
"There was a man on the bus telling me his life passions, and I missed my stop, and then I came home forgetting why I was out." Some version of this.
Her crackly voice didn't match her small stature. She had ashy yellow hair, coarse from years of dying it various shades of pink, red, orange, a pale complexion marked by freckles, and three moles on her right arm.
Whenever the front door opened, Lila would be there on the couch, a velvet faded cobalt blue number, reading her book, some biography, certainly about a random politician like Spiro Agnew or Henry Wallace. Between chapters, Lila mostly worked as a barista at Sugar Grounds around the corner or contemplated graduate school. She went to the University of California at Berkeley for undergrad. At five-nine, she was the tallest of the three and would often bring around guys in the 'about-six-foot' range. Ted, Lila's current boy, fit that bill, and was a regular in the ladies' kitchen, and could commonly be found drinking the last of the orange juice or scanning the pantry for nothing in particular. Lila would say, "If you want something, ask for it," to him time and again, but he never did. She'd psychoanalyze it later with Christine and Evelyn over bagel bites and ginger beers determining that perhaps she should take her own advice, be direct, and ask him to stop scrounging around her kitchen if he was hungry. "It's not even that he's hungry, it's that he just opens the fridge, looks inside and then closes it without grabbing anything. What is that?"
The three made for an interesting triumvirate: Lila bookish vixen, Christine high strung hippy, and Evelyn Midwestern escapee.
"You can't hurt me." Evelyn wiped tears from the corners of her make-upped eyes, whimpering the words and thinking of the joy-filled night she had earlier. Lila had invited Christine and Ev to come dancing with Ted and herself at El Rio, a local dance dive. It was on Mission Street and Cesar Chavez. The two singles said they would come, vowing to take life in stride and join in on the fun. Upon entering the club Evelyn was asked to dance nearly immediately by an elderly Latino man, who then led her to the dance floor which was three steps down, a sunken garden. Christine went to the bar, ordered a round of tequila sunrises and found a spot to watch those dancing. Ted was surprisingly good on his feet, swiftly guiding Lila who wore a black maxi dress and large coral red earrings that dangled loosely as she moved, her brown honey hair swaying to the rumba.
After a few dances Evelyn bid adieu to her partner who kissed her a wet one on the cheek before letting her join Christine for a cocktail. Then the two of them laughed and talked about their recent exploits. Across the bar the pair spied Lila, who had moved on from dancing, and waved her over. She left Ted to his own devices and joined her counterparts, all smiles and laughing. The kind shared by new friends that would inevitably be lifelong.
"I'm untouchable." Evelyn whispered it to herself. She sat facing the center of the roof patio, her back to the parapet. Lila and Christine were downstairs on the porch debating if they should pick plums as a deep neon rose haze overcame the sky. Evelyn got up dusting her exposed legs off with the palms of her hands. She would be fine. For now the bay was her calling and Lila and Christine were her life's blood.
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