Today was the best of days, whether Maggie consciously knew it or not. This morning she woke in a sliver patch of sunlight and realized it had stopped raining. It was also, of course, her birthday.
The days themselves didn’t matter so much anymore, but she did enjoy their rhythm. And she was especially excited because today was the day she was going to tell the wedding story.
As she prepared to leave the house she spoke to herself, mostly quietly but occasionally in loud punctuations of surprise or amusement. She did this partly out of short circuited but well intentioned self-love, but mostly for comfort. She appreciated the little things, like how the cold water felt when it splashed against her face. How the last of the hot black coffee toasted her tongue and coated her teeth. If she could do one thing today, just any significant single thing, Maggie Jacobsen will have won.
She pulled her blue dress over her head and let the long hem dust the ground as she walked. Her combat boots had been left in a heap next to the door, and as she left the cold studio apartment Maggie was grateful that the power was still on. The train station across the street was quiet as a church, and the bodega next door was selling the last of the emergency supplies — cherry-flavored chapstick, twenty-dollar toilet paper and dusty tins of cat food.
As she walked along, it seemed as though the ghost of the old San Francisco, the one from three months ago, was walking alongside her. That version of the city seemed equally if not more important as today, and since today was a day when the past and future mingled, Maggie did not wonder why these days had been strange and long. Of these facts, the strongest of all was her desire to be seen and known.
She passed a small garden along the shaded walkway on the north side of town, near Coit Tower. The walkway weaved north-east and remained sheltered from the battered metropolis – because if a place no longer has a skyline, can it still be called a city?
A series of canary island date palms lined the garden’s edge. She heard a rustle and a squawk, followed by the sight of two small green heads. A flapping sound as the parents, pink-gray claws extended, landed on a nearby branch. They too had slender green bodies, one with a full red head and the other with a bold mask of red running across the eyes. They sensed her presence and squawked in low, guttural sounds. Friend or foe, they seemed to be asking.
Right at the moment Maggie turned a corner, she heard a whistle. A sudden hush came into her body as she turned to face the man with the large bowl of seed. He wore a torn flannel shirt and round glasses, hair black and knotted like hers.
Formerly strangers, now friends: those who had walked heads down, elbows out on Market Street. All assets of the intangible and self-convinced that it mattered. They’d breathed the same thick air for a long time, whether they’d known it or not.
She felt that she knew the man, perhaps had even met him before, but the fog in her own mind was thickening and she was no longer capable of cutting it.
She tells him the story about the wedding. How they’d invited the extended family. Hired a six-piece jazz band from the conservatory. How she settled on a navy blue dress instead of white, with a thin silver veil that her sister would bring. How he was traveling for work, but would be home again real soon.
The man did not argue or relent. He did not say anything, just swallowed, looked at her with his sad moon eyes until at the very end of her story, and just as Maggie turned to go he said, “See you tomorrow, Maggie,“ but already Maggie, a bounce in her step, was already on her way.