The insides of the stores seemed even more exotic and mysterious than the vegetables displayed on the sidewalk, but he couldn’t get her to go in one with him. She had been grossed out by a string of dead ducks hanging in a window.
“I think it’s cool,” said Armpit.
“That’s because you’re not a duck,” said Kaira.
She agreed to stop at a store selling Chinese souvenirs because he wanted to buy something for Ginny. The silk slippers would have been perfect, but he didn’t know what size to get, and Kaira pointed out that slippers weren’t like T-shirts; they had to be an exact fit.
Going through a rack of clothes, he came across a sweatshirt that was identical to the one he was wearing. The price was nineteen ninety-nine.
“It’s not the same,” said Kaira. “It doesn’t have a hood.”
“That’s one expensive hood,” said Armpit.
“That’s not the only difference,” said Kaira. “Feel the fabric.”
It didn’t feel all that different to Armpit, but he didn’t say so.
He ended up buying Ginny a silk scarf that showed the Golden Gate Bridge stretching across a background of blue sky and green ocean.
31
“God, I can breathe again,” Kaira said. The crowds of people and the strong smells of Chinatown had gotten to her. “I could kill for a cup of coffee.”
He believed her.
They were now in the Italian section of the city, which Kaira said was called North Beach, but he didn’t see any sand or water. The streets were lined with Italian restaurants, cafés, bookstores, and other small shops. One shop sold nothing but old postcards.
“It’s not a beach,” Kaira explained. “It’s just called that.”
“Kind of like Camp Green Lake,” said Armpit.
They went down into a basement coffeehouse. Interspersed between the tables, vertical wooden beams supported the ceiling. The wood seemed especially dark and rich, as if it had been absorbing coffee for the last fifty years.
The girl behind the counter had a teardrop tattoo under her left eye. Kaira ordered a double cappuccino and asked for whipped cream on top.
“The same,” said Armpit. He would have felt dumb asking for a Coke in a place like this.
The coffee was served in cups the size of soup bowls. The eternally crying girl sprinkled powdered chocolate over the whipped cream. Kaira picked out some kind of twisted pastry that was big enough for them to share, then took her coffee and pastry and went looking for a table.
“Nine dollars and twenty cents
,” said the girl behind the counter.
Armpit was surprised by how cheerful she sounded. He paid with a ten and left the change in the tip jar.
Kaira was emptying a packet of sugar into her coffee when he sat down next to her. The remains of another sugar packet lay in a small coffee puddle next to her cup.
“Isn’t this place great?” she asked. “Beatniks used to read poetry and play bongos on that stage.”
The stage was a triangular space in the corner, raised about a foot off the floor. It was empty now, but there were small posters attached to the beams, advertising various folksingers and poets who would be performing over the next few weeks.
Armpit just hoped the beams were strong enough to hold up in an earthquake. If they’d been around since beatnik times, they must be strong, he thought. Either that or they were ready to break at the next little shake.
He tried to take a sip of his cappuccino but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it without getting whipped cream on his nose.
“I’d like to sing on a small stage like that. No flashing lights. No backup singers. No bloodsucking agents or business managers. Just get up there and sing, and then pass around a hat. People pay what they want.” Her eyes lit up. “You could be my guitar player!”
“That’d be great,” Armpit agreed. “Except I don’t know how to play the guitar.”