THE STRANGER CAME INTO THE CITY ACROSS THE Golden Gate Bridge, crossing from the warmth of Marin into the fog of San Francisco Bay. The mist was cold and wet, but in a pleasant way. He pulled his jacket tight around him. Tourists shivered in spectacularly inappropriate shorts, taking snapshots of each other against the swirling gray background. Joggers and cars passed by.
The stranger looked over the edge of the bridge, thinking of all the suicides the Golden Gate had inspired. Wouldn’t it be glorious to see one of those? He looked around hopefully, but no one seemed interested in taking the bait. Disappointed, he kept walking.
He went through a parking lot at the end of the bridge where other bridge walkers had left their cars, and continued into the city. It had been a long walk from Red Bluff, and he had a longer walk still to go, but there was plenty of time to make it. As long as he didn’t linger too long at any one place. The trick was to plan his city excursion. The stranger took out a well-thumbed city guide, at least ten years old. He examined the dog-eared pages, compared them to his map, and plotted what looked like a good route, tracing promising fault lines and old cemeteries that had been plowed under during one of the city’s fabulously corrupt building booms.
San Francisco was a dense city, but it wasn’t large. He’d once walked from its far eastern edge to the ocean in five hours. This time, it only took him two hours to reach his first stop: an old music club he’d been to with friends years earlier. He walked through the SoMa district, got lost twice, but eventually found the address. But not the club. It was gone. All that was left was a weedy, fenced-off vacant lot with a sign showing a picture of a gleaming twenty-story condo tower that the sign said would soon occupy the lot. There was a phone number of a realty company and a photo of an attractive man and woman in matching company jackets. They looked like brother and sister. Or clones. Did everybody know how to clone yet, or was it just real estate companies? It was something to look into.
The stranger tore the page from his guidebook and dropped it into a recycling bin on the corner before moving on.
He walked to North Beach, past the Tosca Café, Specs’ bar, and City Lights Books. He’d been to all those places on earlier trips and was relieved to see them still there. Just across the alley from City Lights was the Vesuvio Café. That, too, was still intact. But he’d also been there before, so he decided to try somewhere new. The stranger walked around the corner onto Broadway and down the block, looking at the Bay Bridge in the distance. He checked the address of a café in his guidebook and went inside.
He ordered a double espresso from a young man at the counter. A lot of the people in the café had various piercings and tattoos. The stranger also had tattoos, but he kept them hidden. They weren’t for anyone’s eyes but his and those of a few close associates. He hoped for a reunion of sorts soon, but not today. Today, he would sit in a café, drink coffee, and look at his guidebook.
When the barista called the name he’d give him, the stranger went to the counter to pick up his coffee. There was a large framed photo on the wall behind the cash register. Three young men. One in baggy dress pants and two in jeans. As he paid for his coffee, the stranger nodded toward the picture.
“It must be interesting working where they used to drink,” he said.
The young man looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I’m not from around here.”
“But surely you recognize them. That’s William Burroughs on the end.”
The barista looked again. “That’s a real old photo. Were they a band? My buddy, Ryan, is into all kinds of seventies classic bands. I think I’ve heard of them. Burroughs Turner Overdrive?”
“You’re thinking of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. And they were Canadian. No, that’s William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. They were writers.”
The barista frowned. “Maybe. I’m not really a word guy. I’m more into hyperedge interactive visual happenings. Music. Video. Lights.”
“Yes. That began in this area, too. In the mid-nineteen-sixties. They were called Acid Tests.”
The young man shook his head. “You sure? I’ve never heard of them.”
The stranger smiled. “Of course. Why would you? They’re old and gone. What’s the use of old things? The now. The future. The unexpected twists and turns down the road. Those are the only things of value.”
“Exactly,” said the barista. “You get it.”
“Thank you for the coffee.”
The young man waved a counter rag at him and helped the next customer. The stranger drank his coffee, but didn’t stay. He was restless. So much had changed. It wasn’t his place to judge—that was for wiser heads than his—but it was hard not to be a little peeved at humanity’s capacity to forget. To minimize even its own accomplishments.
He turned south down Columbus Avenue until it turned into Montgomery, walked through the Financial District, then down onto Market Street. Not sure where to go, the stranger turned back toward the Pacific. He thought about returning all the way to the ocean, but that would take more time than he’d allotted himself. He took out his guidebook and thumbed through its worn pages. Everything he looked at seemed gray and lifeless to him now. The trip to North Beach had been a bad idea. The walk through SoMa hadn’t been much better. He understood how an animal, when in a trap, might gnaw its own leg off, but gnawing your leg off when things were going well, when you were prospering, that the stranger didn’t understand at all. He knew that despair was a sin, and while that’s not quite what he felt, part of him felt empty and even foolish. He threw the guidebook into a trash can and simply wandered along Market Street, no purpose or destination in mind.
He came to another vacant lot. Unlike the first one, this was paved. A dozen large, immaculate buses sat in rows. On the side of each bus in big block letters was LIQUID INDUSTRIES, DISRUPTING THE DISRUPTION. At the edge of the parking lot was a ragged circle of men and women. They had drums and, while they were playing with a tremendous amount of gusto and volume, they didn’t quite seem to have the concept of rhythm down yet. Several policemen stood in a semicircle nearby eyeing the drummers. The stranger walked over to them.
“Excuse me, but what’s happening here? Is this a religious ceremony?” he said.
One of the cops gave the stranger a look like he was considering arresting him just for being there. “It’s a drum circle. Hippies protesting fuck-all.”
“I’m not familiar with them. What are the tenets of ‘fuck-all’?”
“Are you being a wise-ass?” the cop asked, reaching for his nightclub.
“No, sir. It’s just that I’m new here and want to make sure that I understand the situation.”
“Listen,” said the cop. “Business has been good to this town. It brought in a lot of money, even if it also brought a lot of douche bags. These lowlifes don’t like the corporate buses, so they do this all day. It’s giving me a goddamn migraine.”
“Me, too,” said a couple of the other police.
“So, the people who own the buses and are driving the local economy are people you don’t like.”
“Rich assholes.”
“And the people protesting the businesspeople are also people you don’t like.”
“Hippie assholes.”
“Is there anyone around here who isn’t an asshole?”
“What?” said the policeman, reaching for his club again.
“Never mind. A pointless question,” said the stranger. Before the cops could begin debating whether it would be more fun to beat or pepper-spray him, he walked over to one of the drummers.
“Hello. What exactly is it you’re doing?”
A young woman nodded. “We’re showing that we won’t take it anymore.”
“And banging drums is how you’re going to unseat an entrenched oligarchy?”
“We’re doing it for Mother Earth,” said the young woman.
“Yeah. This is the rhythm of her heart,” said a young man next to her.
The stranger scratched his chin. “Maybe she should see a doctor. Her heart seems to be skipping a lot of beats.”
The young man gave him a darkly assessing look.
“Thank you. You’ve been very educational,” said the stranger.
“Are you a narc?”
“What’s a narc?”
“Yeah. He’s a narc,” said the young woman.
“You know, you can take lessons for this sort of thing,” said the stranger. “Drumming, I mean. People have been teaching it to each other for thousands of years.”
The drummers ignored him. When the stranger turned, one of the cops crooked a finger at him to call him over.
“What’s your connection to this bunch?” he asked.
“I was just curious about what they—and, of course, you—were doing.”
The policeman stood absolutely still for a moment looking at the stranger. Then he said, “Let’s see your ID.”
“You mean a driver’s license or birth certificate?”
“You carry a birth certificate around with you?”
“No. I don’t have one.”
“Then yes, a driver’s license.”
“I don’t have one of those, either.”
“How about a passport?”
“I don’t have any ID and I threw my guidebook away. I wrote my name in it, if that would help. It’s just back a block or so.”
Two more policemen came over and stood on either side of the stranger.
“I’m going to ask you one more time . . .”
“You can ask all you like. I don’t have any ID. But if it’s any consolation, I think I now know why you’re in such a bad mood. That awful drumming is giving me a headache, too.”
One of the cops took the stranger’s right arm in a powerful grip. “Come with us,” he said and tried to move him. But the stranger remained rooted where he was, much to the policeman’s surprise.
“I don’t think I’ll be coming with you. I don’t have time. But I want to leave you all with something.”
The cop kept tugging on his arm. Two more grabbed the stranger, but couldn’t move him.
“What I want to leave you with is a thought: with all the wonders of the world at your disposal, the one thing you shouldn’t be is boring.” The stranger turned to the policeman on his left arm. “You’re boring.” He turned to the policeman on his right. “You’re boring, too.” He shouted to the drum circle. “Technically, you’re not boring. You’re well meaning, but you’re awful. Just horrible.”
The city began to tremble. Market Street rippled down its length, like waves at the edge of the ocean. Skyscrapers swayed. Windows broke and glass rained into the streets below. The policemen let go of the stranger’s arms and tried to run, but the street was wobbling too violently for them to get more than a couple of steps before they fell. Buses and cars smashed into each other. Electrical wires snapped.
A crack opened in the street. It split a nearby crosswalk and shattered the pavement where the stranger stood. The crack, an extension of a heretofore unknown fault line, ripped open the parking lot and one by one, the Liquid Industries buses slid into the Earth, followed by the drum circle and the police. Buildings toppled behind him. When the shaking stopped, for a second there was only the sound of geysers where fire hydrants and water mains had broken. Then the silence was torn apart as a million car alarms went off at once. People covered their ears. Some screamed. Others simply turned in slow circles, looking at the damage in mute shock.
The stranger checked his map—the one he kept folded up, not the one from the guidebook—and started down Van Ness Boulevard, where he’d left himself a relatively undamaged corridor that he could pass through. He climbed over wrecked cars, made his way past shouting drivers, heading for the freeway. He took a new guidebook from his coat pocket and riffled the pages. This one had palm trees and a picture of the Hollywood Chinese Theater on the front. The cover of the book said, A WALKING TOUR OF LOS ANGELES. The stranger took a breath. Walking was the thing. The only thing right now. He headed onto the entirely undamaged 101 freeway—now mostly deserted, since all the entry ramps had collapsed—and started south.