Hailey's War

at first, but later they decide he’s right, and they throw him over, and then comes the whale part that everyone knows about. That’s what it takes for him to finally decide that maybe he’s in trouble. He prays to God-it’s kind of a pretty poem, by the way-and God intervenes, so the whale spits him up onto dry land. And then he does go to Nineveh, and everyone in Nineveh really gets with the program, from the king on down. They repent in a big way. And Jonah isn’t happy about it. He gets mad. He goes out in the desert and argues with God about destroying Nineveh.”

“He wants Nineveh destroyed?”

“Yeah, but the bigger point is, he’s arguing with the God of the Old Testament, the all-powerful white-beard guy who used to strike people dead. Doesn’t that seem a little insane? Shouldn’t Jonah be a little more afraid?”

“You think Jonah was suicidal.”

“No. I mean, not necessarily.”

“Then what’s your theory? You sound like you’ve been putting a lot of thought into this. You must have one.”

“No, sorry. I’m just a bike messenger. I don’t get paid enough to theorize.”

“Hailey…” he said, his tone a change of subject in itself.

“I know. You’re ready for work. I’ve got to get up and dressed and out. I’ll hurry.” I was already sliding his Bible back onto the bookshelf.

Jack was a newsman for the Associated Press, a Midwestern transplant to California by way of, apparently, everywhere. Photographs on the far wall of his studio, Jack’s own amateur work, attested to the width and breadth of his reporting career. Fellow reporters, editors, photographers, and other acquaintances looked out from pictures taken in the world’s capitals and war zones, places Jack had been a correspondent.

He and I had crossed paths several times at the courthouse, where he covered motions and trials and I, a bike courier, dropped off and picked up legal papers. But we didn’t get to know each other until the Friday night I’d literally backed into him in a tiny, crowded Asian grocery. When, after a few minutes of conversation, he asked me if I wanted company for dinner, I surprised myself by saying yes. Maybe it had been so long since I’d seen a guy who was neither a metrosexual nor a pierced and dreadlocked bike messenger that he had been exotic to me.

He was the first guy I ever slept with who wore boxer shorts. I didn’t tell him that, our first night together. Guys have lost erections over less.

Now, as I was pulling on my long-sleeved thermal shirt and cargo pants, Jack said, “Are you hungry? There’s bagels.”

I shook my head. “I’ll eat later.” It was my day off, and a small plan for the morning was forming.

I sat on the floor to put on my boots. When I looked up, Jack was watching me.

He said, “Every time I see you lacing up those boots, I think I’m sleeping with an undercover DEA agent.”

Bates Enforcers, heavy-soled black lace-ups with a side zip, draw a lot of attention.

“They’re comfortable, is all.”

Jack had never seen the gun. It was a.38 caliber Smith & Wesson Airweight, easy to conceal. Just five shots, but the kind of trouble I was likely to get into was the up-close-and-personal kind, and if I couldn’t get out of it with five rounds, I wasn’t getting out of it at all.

I stood and gathered up my single-strap messenger bag, putting it over my shoulder, when the newspapers on the counter caught my attention.

“Are you done with this?” I asked, indicating the Los Angeles Times Calendar section, its front page dominated by a profile of a young white hip-hop producer. “Can I have it?”

“Sure,” Jack said.

I slid the section of the paper into my bag, then walked ahead of Jack into the entryway, where my bicycle-it was my private transportation as well as my livelihood-leaned against the wall.

We emerged into the cool gray of June in San Francisco, me wheeling the bike and Jack holding the keys to his old Saab. He stopped for a moment, tapping a cigarette out of a pack, his first of the day. While he lit up, I looked downhill, toward the rest of the city. Jack’s studio was at the edge of Parnassus Heights, and the view was fantastic.

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t find San Francisco beautiful, and I couldn’t argue. I had been in San Francisco nearly a year. I had ridden every inch of its neighborhoods, the storied ones like Chinatown and North Beach, the quiet ones like the Sunset and Presidio Heights. Late at night, I had watched the lights of great containerships as they ghosted into the port of Oakland, across the water. I had seen this city in the rain, the sun, the fog, the moonlight, on moonless evenings illuminated by its own city lights. San Francisco seemed to pose for you endlessly, proving it could look beautiful under any conditions. People came from all over the country and paid exorbitant prices to own or rent a tiny part of San Francisco.

Only a philistine could stand on a hill, look out at San Francisco, and wish she were seeing the overheated sprawl of L.A. instead. But I did.

Jack had gotten his cigarette going; I could smell the fragrant-acrid smoke from behind me. I turned back to him and was just about to say, I’ll call you sometime this week, when he spoke first. “Hailey?”

“What?”

“When you say you’re going to get something to eat later, you mean later this morning, right? Not late this afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I said, baffled. “Why?”

“We had a lot to drink last night, but I didn’t see you eat anything. You’re getting thin.”

“Jack, my job burns, like, eight thousand calories an hour. I couldn’t do it if I wasn’t eating enough,” I pointed out.

He was not appeased. I said, “Something else on your mind?”

He said, “You treat yourself with a certain amount of disregard, Hailey. I’ve known you for six months, and how often in that time have you been injured on the job? First those stitches in your eyebrow, then that thing with your wrist-”

“That was an old break. The bone was weak,” I argued. “Look, I’m a bike messenger. I’ve been the top-earning rider for my service nearly every month since I hired on. I couldn’t do that without taking some risks. There’s a lot of competition.”

Jack closed his eyes briefly, then said, “You don’t want to be the most reckless bike messenger in San Francisco, Hailey. That’s like being the town drunk in New Orleans.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“You ever think about school?”

“I thought I mentioned that before,” I said. “I did a little school back east. It didn’t work out.”

“And you can never go back?”

“What’s with you today?” I asked him. “The thing I like most about you is that you’re free of all the middle-class rhetoric, and now suddenly you’re doing a guidance-counselor thing.”

Jack sighed. “I’m not trying to make you angry.”

“I’m not,” I said, relenting.

“Really?” He threw down the cigarette and stepped on it.

“Really. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll get together, I’ll eat a whole pile of food. You can watch.”

Besides, I hadn’t been lying when I said I was planning on having breakfast. Just not right away.

I didn’t own a car, which wasn’t supposed to be a problem in San Francisco. It’s said to be one of the world’s great walking cities-fairly compact, with temperate weather and beautiful neighborhoods. All true, but even so: forty-nine square miles. In my first weeks here, I’d chronically underjudged the time it was going to take me to walk places. Now, of course, I had my bike-an old silver Motobecane, very fast, with drop handlebars and paint rubbed off the top tube where someone had probably kept a chain wrapped around it.

I’d been a messenger for eight months, long enough to develop the cyclist’s long, flat ellipse of muscle in my calf-I didn’t have that even back east in school, when I’d thought I was in the best shape of my life. Now a short, easy ride brought me to my destination, the Golden Gate Bridge. Ever since I’d come out to San Francisco, it had