Given World by Marian Palaia Page A

some hick straight out of the backwoods, to act like I’d at least heard of some of these things. I did wonder how much getting used to San Francisco was going to take, and figured it was a lot. Maybe someone—like maybe Primo—could be my guide for a little while, until I got it. If, that is, he didn’t turn out to have a machete and a backyard full of bodies, or Bibles.
    I had been waking up early too, out there by the beach where I could hear the waves crashing, for real and in my dreams. The sound was comforting but spooky. And there was that smell: fishy and salty and dark. Since I’d had a chance to look at the ocean for real, it didn’t look the way I’d always imagined it—a constant blue, with the waves coming in row after row, steady and predictable. It was a lot wilder than I’d been expecting, and not always blue. I’d taken off my shoes and waded in a few times, but it was too cold to go any farther than about knee-deep. I wondered if it was cold on the other side too, where it was no longer the Pacific, but the South China Sea. The three words echoed in my head, in Mick’s voice. I wanted to hear them as much as I didn’t.
    On our way to the restaurant, Primo made maybe a dozen stops, pulling up to corners to check on his crew of teenage paperboys. They were huddled in apartment-building entryways, folding newspapers and doubling rubber bands around them, or slipping them into plastic bags. I was amazed at how fast they worked, how quickly their fingers moved.
    Primo orchestrated: “Make sure you get that one at Forty-Third and Balboa through the gate today. Mr. Puto is starting to give me heartburn.” And: “Just bag that one on Lake from now on. You know the one. I’m tired of hearing her bitch about wet papers.” The kids nodded, heads down and intent on their work. They’d heard it all before. “Later,” Primo said. “Do good.”
    The restaurant was a little diner that could have been anywhere; it could have been in Montana, in my town, except that it looked out on an ocean rather than on scattered mountain ranges and open plain. I had imagined a fancy, big-city place, but the tables were plain, worn-yellow Formica threaded with gold; the booths red Naugahyde, patched in places, like the top of my car, with bits of duct tape. Creased and crooked black-and-white photos of old San Francisco lined the walls. We were on a cliff overlooking the water, but it was still too dark and foggy to see it properly. The gulls stood out, though, as they were white, and noisy. I could hear them through the windows, their calls a faint echo of the feral kittens back home, mewling in the barn.
    Primo said I could have anything I wanted, and what I wanted was orange juice and bacon and eggs. When the waitress asked what kind of toast, I didn’t know what to say, because I hadn’t known there were different kinds. Primo said sourdough. He said if I was going to live in San Francisco, I’d have to learn to like it.
    “I am going to live here,” I said.
    Primo nodded. “Best place there is. But you need to get the hell out of the Avenues.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “When was the last time you saw the sun?”
    “Yesterday.”
    “For how long?”
    “Maybe fifteen minutes.”
    “It was out all day in the Mission.”
    I didn’t know what he meant. I thought missions were a kind of church, like the ones they built in Montana and sent the Indian kids to, to change their ways and their religion; make them good, short-haired Catholics. And basketball players. I remembered Darrell telling me that, about the basketball teams the Jesuits commissioned of the boys they spirited away from their families, how good some of them were, and how the white players and their coaches always accused them of cheating. But sometimes they’d get a title anyway, because there was just no question; scores were too lopsided even with the bad calls.
    Darrell was his team’s point guard in high school. Since we met after