I pulled across the intersection at Post and Hyde and as I coasted to a stop, I could see that she was on drugs. The sunken face of someone awake too long, whether currently or collectively, stared back at me from the curb as she smiled at me. Even with just the streetlights to see by, the wrinkles dripping down her face were unmistakable.
She was probably younger than me even though she looked twenty years older, but it was too slow to be picky.
Besides, she had already opened the door.
“19th and Mission,” she said as I pulled away from the curb and hit the meter. I was facing the wrong direction on a one-way street, so I looped up around Leavenworth, down Sutter and back to Hyde where I caught the red light.
“Shiny is my favorite color,” she said to no one in particular as I came to a stop at the exact intersection I had picked her up at.
She rummaged through her cloth drawstring bag, one of those totes retailers give away for free with purchase.
“Can you turn on the light please?” she asked. “A girl’s got to put on her makeup.”
I turned on the interior lights with a touch of a dial and when I did, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Maybe she had makeup in there somewhere, but all I could see were bags and bags of white like she had just gone trick-or-treating with Jesse Pinkman.
And she didn’t even seem to notice I was there able to see what she was holding – at least a dozen, maybe two dozen bags the size I used to put eighths of weed in full of shards glistening in the shitty glow of the dome light. Half ounces, easy, if not ounces, and scattered in there I saw a big ziploc full of hundreds of stuffed-to-the-gills little gram baggies, obese from their contents.
She finally found her lipstick, drew the strings tight on her stash, and leaned forward between the seats until her face was right in my rearview.
“Goooooooin’ to the chapel and I’m… gonna get maaaa-aaa-aaaaried,” she sang as she smudged the lipstick harshly around her lips. Having been distracted by the huge stash she had, now that I was looking at her, I could see that she was a man.
Or had been at one point.
Not that it mattered now.
I sailed down Hyde and once she had applied the lipstick to her liking and adjusted her black bob wig, she sat back.
“You can turn the lights off now,” she said.
I hit the dial again and the lights went down as she stretched out on the backseat and we flew down Mission Street.
A couple of minutes later we pulled up to her destination, she put a five and a ten on the center console and quickly got out before I could say a word.
When I picked the money up, a single little baggie sat there on the console, staring at me, begging me to pick it up.
I didn’t touch it until I had turned back around and cruised Mission Street. I saw a shifty-eyed man walking along the curb, his eyes scanning the ground in search of something.
“Hey man,” I yelled out the window. “Happy Birthday!”
He looked up just as I snatched the little baggie and threw it through the passenger side window.
It landed right at his feet and as he leaned over and picked it up, I drove off with a wave.
