The day began as all do, with a major physiological burst. Half an aerobic hour on the exercycle, a slightly worrying walk with crutch around the bedroom, weights and pulleys, stretching. Then freedom. The latter translated into meeting Stephen at the Wednesday outdoor market in San Francisco’s Civic Center. Where the elevator was listed as out of service as I entered the subway…although within minutes an announcement flooded the BART platform that all lifts were lifting. All anyone could want.
Not that one doesn’t ride the municipal transport system without misgivings. There is something inherently perilous about the elevators, and it’s not just their mechanical safety. It’s that a person of limited mobility is confined in a limited space with a limitless cross-section of humanity. On this particular morning someone in a wheelchair rolls ahead of me. The woman is old, though probably younger than I, scraggly and poor. During our brief ascent she tells me about returning from a medical appointment and being $6.80 shy of whatever she needed for whatever purpose. Could I help her? Reflexively, I tell her no…have to do some shopping for my wife. I don’t like being trapped and cornered, don’t know if her story is true or I’m being conned. Taken for a ride, the vertical one about to end.
The doors open. She rolls ahead, and this gives me a moment to fumble with my money, see how much cash I actually have for the farmers market. This operation is witnessed by a homeless person on his way into the lifts. Why don’t you give that to me, he asks. Because, of course, I’m giving 20 bucks to her. Which is possible because she is in a wheelchair, self-propelled, and I can catch up with her. Mission accomplished. She’s pleased. I’m pleased. Was her story a manipulative fantasy? Or was mine, about having so much shopping to do? Doesn’t matter, does it? Onward.
Stephen, in addition to being an opera composer and employee of a specialty grocery chain, is also a southerner. That’s why he can’t speak with authority on the subject of peaches. He assures me that the stand where I always shop has reasonable peaches, but the finest are a bit further on. He’s right. I buy an astonishing amount, too many, doubtless. Now he guides me to tomatoes. I purchase an excess. A Chinese woman backs into me, turns around and glares. I glare back. My back is hurting. My hips are hurting. Thing about getting good range of motion of a morning, is that you need to keep on getting it, that is to say, keep moving. Which I’m not. Well, yes, but only under battery power. My body is sitting. And it’s getting tired.
You get out of San Francisco’s tony confines and several discoveries occur. One is that the price of things drops noticeably. Which is one reason that it’s difficult to gauge lunch. I buy too much. The woman at my favorite tamale stand implies that one tostada is not enough. I buy two and instantly regret it. Even more, I regret sitting next to a steel drum ensemble which is blasting its amplified music in the general direction of Denver. I order a cappuccino and hit the road.
It’s only when I am hurtling homeward on the subway that it occurs to me. My bag is missing. My bag with the peaches, an uneaten tostada and the New York Times was hanging off my wheelchair armrest and now it’s gone. How could I be robbed so easily? Who? How? I curse the market and its impoverished denizens and my naïve and ill-equipped nature. Although, feeling around the back of my wheelchair…difficult in itself…there does seem to be a canvas presence. Which I can actually see reflected in the glass door of the subway car. My bag has slid to the back of the arm rest and gotten stuck. I haven’t gotten robbed. But I do remember something. Handing the $20 bill to the woman, she wanted to take my hand. She hesitated. I hesitated. And why? That’s the question of the day…and the thing I am really bringing home.