Christobel Starsky / Commander Starscream (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reapsthewind) wrote2015-05-16 11:21 pm
reapsthewind) wrote2015-05-16 11:21 pm
Here is the City -- San Francisco, 2014
Here is the City
It is June and the weather has been no different than it was in April. Which is to say: she takes the bus from Sunset to Mission and thus from deep fog to pure sunlight, but the weather here is geographic, not temporal. The weather at her apartment on 24th and Valencia is almost always sunny and exactly 60 degrees, just like Japantown, on the border of Sun and Fog, is usually 55 degrees, and the unwaking waters of the sea dream in 55 degrees and cloudy. If she wishes searing heat she can travel a half an hour north, but the humidity of her home coast is absent.
She misses: Washington DC, with liquid summers, and she knows she doesn't really miss the cloying air, the thick sunlight, but she does, and she misses Boston winters when everyone snarls and glares and snaps and yet are bound in solidarity, where every October begins a war that lasts till April.
Today, it rains, but at the same time it is no different than all other weather here: same temperature, same temperament. She remembers: the one thunderstorm she's seen here since April, how the natives screamed and she shouted in joy because my god, finally, something had changed.
It is June, and this is the shape of her days: waiting for the bus in the rain, in the rain, riding the bus through the rain to the work where she sits at the terminal, typing, typing, running her hands through her hair (too long, needs a cut) as she stares at the code written by the underpaid temp going I am not paid enough to correct this asshole's mistakes that he won't correct when I correct him anyway and why the fuck am I not programming military drones ah yes because I hate the military overpriced lunch that she yet can afford with a bunch of assholes with beards and bow ties who think they're hot shit and who all want to fuck her but don't want to admit it back to the not-cubicle ("we don't do cubicles we're better he says as he gestures at the cardboard half-walls and ~open floor plan~) and the code the lines for these morons' package delivery drones, "competition to amazon" they say but even she understands that'll never fly but she can't say shit she needs this job to pay off the debts to amass the cash to
to
to what?
To what, once the yoke is gone and the ball and chain cut? To...?
Wait for the bus, in the rain, to go home to the tiny one-room next to the apartment that burned down last year
("did anyone die," she asked the landlord. "Yeah three people, mom, dad, toddler; but it means I can lower the rent price," he says, "you won't find anything cheaper in the Mission, or, hell, in most of the city. Not for a single." It's 1200 a month and she takes it, burned reek, probable ghosts, banging from the weird wood shop downstairs, and all )
("I promise, building's up to code. they left out a candle. Something." she knows that's all a lie but christ he's right about the price)
she's on the long walk in the rain back to the place that's probably haunted to the place that smells of ashes and death and she takes out her cell phone with her sunglasses she wears in the rain (when did she pick up that habit and)
"hey, babe"
"heard you were in the city"
"you didn't even call"
"not that i blame you i wouldn't have"
"so hotcakes you gonna come visit or what"
"asshole"
she hangs up on him but she already sent him the address it's his problem now god she almost wishes she actually smoked
the sun cuts through the clouds and she stands on the street corner looking up at the burned-out husk next to her own pad and
waits
It is June and the weather has been no different than it was in April. Which is to say: she takes the bus from Sunset to Mission and thus from deep fog to pure sunlight, but the weather here is geographic, not temporal. The weather at her apartment on 24th and Valencia is almost always sunny and exactly 60 degrees, just like Japantown, on the border of Sun and Fog, is usually 55 degrees, and the unwaking waters of the sea dream in 55 degrees and cloudy. If she wishes searing heat she can travel a half an hour north, but the humidity of her home coast is absent.
She misses: Washington DC, with liquid summers, and she knows she doesn't really miss the cloying air, the thick sunlight, but she does, and she misses Boston winters when everyone snarls and glares and snaps and yet are bound in solidarity, where every October begins a war that lasts till April.
Today, it rains, but at the same time it is no different than all other weather here: same temperature, same temperament. She remembers: the one thunderstorm she's seen here since April, how the natives screamed and she shouted in joy because my god, finally, something had changed.
It is June, and this is the shape of her days: waiting for the bus in the rain, in the rain, riding the bus through the rain to the work where she sits at the terminal, typing, typing, running her hands through her hair (too long, needs a cut) as she stares at the code written by the underpaid temp going I am not paid enough to correct this asshole's mistakes that he won't correct when I correct him anyway and why the fuck am I not programming military drones ah yes because I hate the military overpriced lunch that she yet can afford with a bunch of assholes with beards and bow ties who think they're hot shit and who all want to fuck her but don't want to admit it back to the not-cubicle ("we don't do cubicles we're better he says as he gestures at the cardboard half-walls and ~open floor plan~) and the code the lines for these morons' package delivery drones, "competition to amazon" they say but even she understands that'll never fly but she can't say shit she needs this job to pay off the debts to amass the cash to
to
to what?
To what, once the yoke is gone and the ball and chain cut? To...?
Wait for the bus, in the rain, to go home to the tiny one-room next to the apartment that burned down last year
("did anyone die," she asked the landlord. "Yeah three people, mom, dad, toddler; but it means I can lower the rent price," he says, "you won't find anything cheaper in the Mission, or, hell, in most of the city. Not for a single." It's 1200 a month and she takes it, burned reek, probable ghosts, banging from the weird wood shop downstairs, and all )
("I promise, building's up to code. they left out a candle. Something." she knows that's all a lie but christ he's right about the price)
she's on the long walk in the rain back to the place that's probably haunted to the place that smells of ashes and death and she takes out her cell phone with her sunglasses she wears in the rain (when did she pick up that habit and)
"hey, babe"
"heard you were in the city"
"you didn't even call"
"not that i blame you i wouldn't have"
"so hotcakes you gonna come visit or what"
"asshole"
she hangs up on him but she already sent him the address it's his problem now god she almost wishes she actually smoked
the sun cuts through the clouds and she stands on the street corner looking up at the burned-out husk next to her own pad and
waits