Pulled Over
Brad and I used to work the last shift at Hunters together. We were from the opposite ends of the spectrum. I was from San Diego and he was from Wheaton, Ohio. He was the only guy I knew who called Chicago Shytown. So even though that young boy was younger than this old boy, I admired him. He read good stuff, I read good stuff. We both had an interest in photography and the fine art of rolling a proper joint. It was usually Mexican commercial, stank, and tasted like wet cardboard. Sometimes it was better. This was “back in the day” as my son puts it now, and smoking was a highly illegal and clandestine activity.
Hunter’s was an up-scale bookstore in La Jolla, an up-scale, but not a nose-completely-turned-upward neighborhood, overlooking the blue Pacific. It was a one of a kinder. Whispering palms line avenues of brick and stone redesigning every afternoon to gold pavement, when street lights and shop lights in elegant store windows flash on. Even during the day it was pretty. The view tugged on you, even in your sleep, maybe because pacific means calm.
Brad and I worked so well together they trusted us to lock up at night at ten. We had this lady, and I mean that in the finest sense of the word, that was reasonably new, maybe on her fourth paycheck. She was pretty in the same way Beaver’s mother June was pretty. She had a nice voice and pleasing manner, strictly upper crust. I took her for a bored socialite on the make for an affair with Dr. Salk, who came in alone, when he wasn't with Picasso's mistress, Francoise Gilot. Francoise dragged Salk in one time looking for a copy of her book, Life with Picasso. We were a small bookstore and didn't have it. We only had room for books that sold. These rich folks, you learn to get over them after a while and see through their pretense. Just like you, they want love and attention.
So we told her we’d sold out, but they were “on order”.
June, our bored socialite, was giving a dinner party. “Up the hill,” she said, and gestured toward Mount Soledad. She was sporting a white summer dress, printed with scarlet hibiscus. It had narrow straps, and you could see the tan lines on her shoulders. The curves, the curves! My mouth was watering over her curves. Right there in Hunter’s, I was having a Pavlovian experience.
Sorry readers. When I got to the spot when I was making up what her shoulders look like, I took for an image my favorite shoulders, You-Know-Who’s shoulders! I’m ready to wax poetic over them any day of the week. Her curves are superb.
Oops! Back to the story…
It looked like she was trying to hitch a ride with her thumb. She’d never hitched a ride in her life.
I betcha You-Know-Who never hitch-hiked. I’ll have to ask her. She’s always good for a story.
“Oh Jeez, those places always have a view,” crossed my mind.
But we’d have to all pitch in five bucks. We all did, and gladly, because our plan was this. I had a doob and he had a doob and our intent was to go to his house directly after work, take off our ties and change clothes, smoke those two doobies, go up to Mount Soledad with an extreme case of the munchies, and devour with reckless abandon every bit of wondrous high-class sophisticated food in that fancy house.
Consume and consume and consume whatever lay in our path. Lay waste to the hordorves and canapes, whatever canapes are. Oh, and drink ourselves silly too, if there was anything to drink. We had grand plans for a late night feast. In sex and eating, imagination reigns supreme.
Ten came and we were out the door and into my Volkswagen bus. Of course it's a grey and exceedingly ugly Volkswagen bus. It's parked on the street and I fire it up and pop on the lights and away we go, crossing Girard.
That's as far as we get, because a cop turns his lights on us. This wasn't part of the plan. But I'm a positive person and Brad looks a bit concerned, and don't want Brad to ruffle his feathers, so I say,
"Don't worry, it couldn't be anything, we've only crossed the intersection."
And I give him a look and see tiny beads of sweat appear on his forehead.
"Oh, O.K." he says, just as a young officer's head appears at my open window.
to be continued...
©StevenHunley2019
https://youtu.be/Ea79npseZhk Rainy Daze - That Acapulco Gold