Ernesto: Take this vehicle across the stubby bridge, Anselmo. It is time to depart Fremont. Too many bicycles and berets. Too many radicals who never miss a meal.
Anselmo: But Ernesto, I like it here. There's the Rocket. And Lenin. And best of all, in summer, the running of the nudist bicyclists. Ernesto, they ride without helmets.
E: Enough! Let us cross over into Queen Anne. This is not the Fremont I remember. I could go three rounds with Tolstoy or Tur-genev, but not the Suzie Burke.
A: Truly, Ernesto.
E: Ah, Anselmo. This is a fine canal, smooth and green and flowing. Now we go to Queen Anne where I have not been for more than a dozen years. Take a left up Florentia, Anselmo. Faster! A real man does 70 here.
A: Ernesto, these Geos have no cojónes.
E: It is all in the foot, man. Go!
A: Ernesto, suppose Queen Anne has changed.
E: Some things do not change, Anselmo. Queen Anne is Seattle's Gibraltar. It stands high and true and beautiful above the flux. I don't know about God, Anselmo, but I do know if you face north on Queen Anne Avenue at Boston, Salladays will be on your right. Let the philosophers, like rabbits, make little pills of their thoughts, but they cannot dispute that fact. One who sees the world clearly and writes truly, with a Number 2 pencil and no eraser, is a shockproof crap detector.
A: Ernesto, you write without an eraser?
E: Does the matador pad the bull's horn? Take life straight, man.
A: But that bulge in your pocket. It is not an eraser?
E: It is a rabbit's foot, you fool. Enough questions. Drive!
A: Now we approach the boulevard, Ernesto.
E: Yes, there is A&J Meats, Anselmo. See, little has changed, my worrisome friend. Here you can buy a decent roof over your head for a price that is reasonable. Here Democrats and Republicans live in equal shares. Soon we shall repair to the coolness of Hoyt's for a beer. We shall salute the liquor store in passing, and the hobby shop, and check to make sure the sidewalk dish is full of water for all the neighborhood doggies, and then we shall turn right on Galer to say hello to Mr. Nelson in the ancient store of the canned chickens. And then we shall look for a restaurant. The boulevard always lacked restaurants.
A: There is much traffic here, Ernesto.
E: And this stoplight is new.
And so the Geo drives the full length of Queen Anne Avenue North, lurches right on McGraw and pulls over.
A: Ernesto, you are green or blue or maybe green-blue of the face.
E: It is too much for Papa, Anselmo. Everything has changed. It is how it must have been with Rip Van Winkle. Turn around. I must be sure. Truly, Anselmo, I have not had such a shock since we found the leopard carcass embedded in the ice on Kilimanjaro.
A: Ernesto, you know it was a Kool-Aid stand.
E: A shock is a shock. Now turn around!
They drive toward the Existential Crosswalk at Boston.
E: Coffee places, Anselmo. And more coffee places. And people sitting at outdoor tables reading The New York Times. What is this? It smells Vichy.
A: You narrate, Ernesto. I will drive. The shopping tanks worry me.
E: It is a healthy worry, my friend.
A: Ernesto. The Paragon. I have heard of it. "Wild Nights. Wild Nights." Ha. Ha. Can we go there tonight, please?
E: Fool! I too know of it. Sometimes Papa keeps his tambourine to the window, eh? It is a clean, well-lighted place of such quiet that a man can pile his saucers into a leaning tower and rap his forehead on the table for another Pernod and not be considered strange. It is a good place to write on a Saturday night. The beautiful and shallow and Eastside rich who get drunk and perpetuate their species on car hoods and in the neighbor's flowerbeds do not go there.
A: But Ernesto, couldn't we just once...
E: Enough! Let us go to the Highland Drive.... Regard the Park View Apartments. Such beauty and charm are eternal. Good God! The Black House. It is gone. She was like a sailing ship, sleek and true and yar. What manner of people is this? Speed on, Anselmo. Stop at Parsons Gardens. This is too much. I must relieve myself.
A: But the neighbors, Ernesto, they will object.
E: If they objected, Anselmo, would there not be a Sanikan? I shall do as I did on the Piave, when I consecrated the spot where I was wounded in 1916.
A: Please, Ernesto, I beg you. The neighbors.
E: OK, my little friend of delicate sensibilities, I shall tease you no more. Let us descend the hill to the Hansen Baking Company. There we will admire the beautiful brick building of vines and its fountain and then....
A: Yes, Ernesto?
E: We shall repair to Harry's and speak to the parrots and drink deeply of the Electric Ice Teas. It is a limit of three, Anselmo, by federal law strictly enforced. By the second cup, my friend, you will speak fluent Dutch and be in possession of unlimited clairvoyance.
A: The parrots will remember you, Ernesto.
E: Everyone remembers Papa.
Ernesto takes off his glasses and wipes them and takes a deep breath. There is a catch in his voice as he speaks.
E: The Basques of Magnolia should blow their bridge before it is too late, Anselmo. But now we go to the bar where the good and the true and brave congregate on Lower Queen Anne. Why does your lip quiver, my friend?
A: What if it is changed down there?
E: Never, my overwrought friend. Never. Lower Queen Anne is East Berlin.
A: Truly, Ernesto, you have the true genius. You are the greatest writer of our generation.
E: Now let us sing a little song, Anselmo, to celebrate my return to the place I love best.
Ernesto secretly touches his rabbit's foot, and then the Geo is pointed down the Counterbalance, Elliott Bay shining hard and blue in the distance. Passers-by later claimed they could make out snatches of a song - "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands" - issuing from the Geo as it careened by.
Down the hill it went.
Down.
Down.
To the place that is called Uptown.
[[In-content Ad]]
