The motor whined and the big-toothed cog on the bottom let her down the slope. Skinner called the cherry-picker his funicular. He hadnt built it, though; a black guy named Fontaine had built it for him, when Skinner had started to have trouble with the climb. Fontaine lived on the Oakland end, with a couple of women and a lot of children. He took care of a lot of the bridges electrical stuff. Hed show up once in a while in a long tweed overcoat, a toolbag in each hand, and hed grease the thing and check it. And Chevette had a number to call him at if it ever broke down completely, but that hadnt happened yet.
It shook when it hit the bottom. She climbed out onto the wooden walkway and went along the wall of taut milky plastic, halogen-shadows of plants behind it and the gurgle of hydroponics. Turned the corner and down the stairs to the noise and morning hustle of the bridge. Nigel coming toward her with one of his carts, a new one. Making a delivery.
Vette with his big goofy grin. He called her that.
Seen the egg lady?
City side he said, meaning S.F. always, Oakland being always only Land. Good one, huh? with a gesture of builders pride for his cart. Chevette saw the hraised aluminum frame, the Taiwanese hubs and rims beefed up with fat new spokes. Nigel did work for some of the other riders at Allied, ones who still rode metal. He hadnt liked it when Chevette had gone for a paper frame. Now she bent to run her thumb along a specially smooth braise. Good one she agreed.
That Jap shit delaminate on you yet?
No way.
S gonna. Bunny down too hard, its glass.
Come see you when it does.
Nigel shook his hair at her. The faded wooden fishing-plug that hung from his left ear rattled and spun. Too late then. He shoved his cart toward Oakland.
Chevette found the egg lady and bought three, twisted up that way in two big dry blades of grass. Magic. You hated to take it apart, it was so perfect, and you could never get it back together or figure out how she did it. The egg lady took the five-piece and dropped it into the little bag around her scrawny lizard neck. She had no teeth at all, her face a nest of wrinkles that centered into that wet slit of a mouth.
Skinner was sitting at the table when she got back. More like a shelf than a table. He was drinking coffee out of a dented steel thermos-mug. If you just came in and saw him like that, it didnt strike you right away how old he was; just big, his hands, shoulders, all his bones, big. Gray hair slicked back from his foreheads lifetime collection of scars, little dents, a couple of black dots like tattoos, where some kind of grit had gotten into a cut.
She undid the eggs, the egg ladys magic, and put them in a plastic bowl. Skinner heaved himself up from his creaking chair, wincing as he took the weight with his hip. She handed him the bowl and he swung over to the Coleman. The way he scrambled eggs, he didnt use any butter, just a little water. Said hed learned it from a cook on a ship. It made good eggs but the pan was hard to clean, and that was Chevettes job. While he broke the eggs, she went to the jacket off its hook, and took that case out.
You couldnt tell what it was made of, and that meant expensive. Something dark gray, like the lead in a pencil, thin as the shell of one of those eggs, but you could probably drive a truck over it. Like her bike. Shed figured out how you opened it the night before; finger here, thumb there, it opened. No catch or anything, no spring. No trademark, either; no patent numbers. Inside was like black suede, but it gave like foam under your finger.
Those glasses, nested there. Big and black. Like that Orbison in the poster stuck to Skinners wall, black and white. Skinner said the way to put a poster up forever was use condensed milk for the glue. Kind that came in a can. Nothing much came in cans, anymore, but Chevette knew what he meant, and the weird big-faced guy with the black glasses was laminated solid to the white-painted ply of Skinners wall.
She pulled them from the black suede, the stuff springing instantly back to a smooth flat surface.
They bothered her. Not just that shed stolen them, but they weighed too much. Way too heavy for what they were, even with the big earpieces. The frames looked as though theyd been carved from slabs of graphite. Maybe they had, she thought; there was graphite around the paper cores in her bikes frame, and it was Asahi Engineering.
Rattle of the spatula as Skinner swirled the eggs. She put them on. Black. Solid black.
Katharine Hepburn Skinner said.
She pulled them off. Huh?
Big glasses like that.
She picked up the lighter he kept beside the Coleman, clicked it, held the flame behind one lens. Nothing.
Whatre they for, welding? He put her share of the eggs in an aluminum mess-tray stamped 1951. Set it down beside a fork and her mug of black coffee.
She put the glasses on the table. Cant see through em. Just black. She pulled up the backless maple chair and sat, picking up the fork. She ate her eggs. Skinner sat, eating his, looking at her. Soviet he said, after a swallow from his thermos-mug.
Huh?
How they made sunglasses in the ol Soviet. Had two factories for sunglasses, one of em always made em like that. Kept right on puttin em out in the stores, nobodyd buy em, buy the ones from the other factory. How the place packed it in.
The factory made the black glasses?
Soviet Union.
They stupid, or what?
Not that simple Whered you get em?
She looked at her coffee. Found em. She picked it up and drank.
You working, today? He pulled himself up, stuffed the front of his shirt down into his jeans, the rusted buckle on his old leather belt held with twisted paper clips.
Noon to five. She picked up the glasses, turning them. They weighed too much for how big they were.
Gotta get somebody up here, check the fuel cell
Fontaine?
He didnt answer. She bedded the glasses in black suede, closed the case, got up, took the dishes to the wash-basin. Looked back at the case on the table.
Shed better toss them, she thought.
Rydell took a CalAir tilt-rotor out of Burbank into Tuesdays early evening. The guy in San Francisco had paid for it from the other end; said call him Freddie. No seatback fun on CalAir, and the passengers definitely down-scale. Babies crying. Had a window seat. Down there the spread of lights through the faint glaze of some previous passengers hair-oiclass="underline" the Valley. Turquoise voids of a few surviving pools, lit subsurface. A dull ache in his arm.
He closed his eyes. Saw his father at the kitchen sink of his mobile home in Florida, washing out a glass. At that precise moment the death no doubt already growing in him, established fact, some line crossed. Talking about his brother, Rydells uncle, three years younger and five years dead, whod once sent Rydell a t-shirt from Africa. Army stamps on the bubblepack envelope. One of those old-timey bombers, B-52, and WHEN DIPLOMACY FAILS.
Is that the Coast Highway, do you think?
Opened his eyes to the lady leaning across him to peer through the film of hair-oil. Like Mrs. Armbruster in fifth grade; older than his father would be now.
I dont know Rydell said. Might be. All just looks like streets to me. I mean he added, Im not from here.
She smiled at him, settling back into the grip of the narrow seat. Completely like Mrs. Armbruster. Same weird combination of tweed, oxford-cloth, Santa Fe blanket coat. These old ladies with their bouncy thick-soled shoes.
9. When diplomacy fails
None of us are. Reaching out to pat his khaki knee. Not these days. Kevin had said it was okay to keep the pants.