48...

“Frank, I honestly didn’t think that you would come,” Evelyn said with this special voice she had; it seemed completely engaged, yet committed to nothing. Frank had always wondered just how she managed that.
“Well, you know, I don’t like to miss out on free booze.”
She laughed a light, glass-like laugh that may have seemed legitimate to a very young child. She was completely back in her element now, no longer slumming it. Frank felt a sad smile touch his lips and wanted nothing more than to hold onto it like some sort of life raft.
“You haven’t changed at all since the days back at Monte Video,” she said with a smile. Yet again that dreaded dichotomy was all over her as her eyes admonished him there in front of everyone.
Frank was suddenly reminded of the idea that there is no light without shadow, that there are no rich without a structure of poor to keep them up and contrast them. He suddenly knew his job as entertainment, as clown.
“Evelyn, this is my roommate Bryan.”
Bryan, able to snap into pristine social graces with an amazing speed and agility, threw on his best smile and shook Evelyn’s hand warmly.
“And this is Vanessa, I actually just met her, but she was just telling me the most fascinating story,” Evelyn said turning to the tall and slender woman standing beside her.
Frank shook her hand and looked at her with brows deeply furrowed. She noticed this as she slightly jerked her hand away, a look of alarm creeping into her eyes.
“Sorry,” Frank said quickly. “You just really remind me of someone and I can’t quite place it.”
Frank looked at Bryan for help and he merely shrugged.
“I get that a lot,” she said with a smile, turning back towards Evelyn. “I’ll let you go Evelyn, I just wanted to say hello.”
“Oh,” Evelyn looked mildly confused. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
Evelyn and Frank looked at each other for a moment. Frank searched for something to talk about and Evelyn appeared as uncomfortable as her stiff new façade would allow.
“Well,” Frank started.
“Well, I better go finish making the rounds,” she said with a small smile. “It’s nice to meet you Bryan. You guys help yourself to the keg and punch, it’s downstairs in the kitchen area.”
With that, she was off with a squeal of pleasure at seeing a woman she knew.
“Were we just dismissed?” Frank asked Bryan.
“You’re way overanalyzing. Let’s get a drink.”

47...

There were a couple of drunks milling about on the steep stairs up to the attic apartment, nuisances to most trying to gain access what with their wobbly drinks and slowly widening circles that made up their version of standing still. But this was a delight the likes of a boat cruise to blow job heaven compared to the sheer blast of humanity to be met at the landing.
What had probably been designed as a “quaint” version of an attic had been turned into a loft bedroom. The bedroom was the central party room, revelers naturally spilling out into other rooms of the flat, and it was filled with well-dressed individuals. Frank mentally pictured his thrift store button down and torn jeans and put on a fortifying, and slightly contentious, smile.
A wave of heat and a variety of colognes slapped Frank in the face as he entered the room. He looked back behind him at Bryan as if for affirmation that he really had to go through with this. Bryan smiled, certainly knowing how much Frank hated this sort of thing. Frank pushed on though, Evelyn was up here somewhere and he needed to make his appearance.
Frank carefully pushed past a variety of attractive people who ignored him as much as he had wanted them to. He looked around the room and noticed that it was done in a lot of peaches and lavenders.
“Where do you work out?”
The voice sounded nearly as lame as the come on line. Frank thought it might be joke when he’d heard the first time, but now he saw the guy. Lascivious eyes and a tight, short sleeved and collared pullover roamed the room. Those eyes would rarely rise above the breast line of his attempted conquests.
“Wherever I can press 270, man,” Bryan said in the same deep and thick tongued tone as the nimrod who asked the question to begin with.
Frank threw out a quick snort of surprised laughter and looked back at Bryan with genuine gratitude. When he brought his eyes forward again, he spied Evelyn towards the back of room. She spoke to another young woman and her hands flailed about like delicate and frightened birds.
Evelyn had dated this cat Scotty that Frank had worked with at the video store when he first moved to the city. She had never said it, but Frank got the feeling that she was slumming it, that she was dating bad boy Scotty for the rebel factor, for story fodder after the breakup, to piss off certain friends as well as her parents.
They got to know each other when the three of them would hang out at The Foxhole, the local dive bar, and he and Evelyn became closer when she would use his ear to complain about Scotty. He was fine with that, Scotty was an asshole.
Scotty was one of those guys that still looked and acted like the bully from third grade. He had small, angry eyes and his idea of a good time was drinking a large number of tall boys in a parking lot and starting an argument with anyone who looked like a challenge. If you looked closely, you could see that anger and emptiness carving out a larger hold within him. One night, Scotty took a pocket knife to the throat outside The Foxhole and died on the sidewalk.
Evelyn looked over and caught Frank’s eye with a surprised little smile that was somehow both completely endearing and completely false. She gave him a small wave over.

46...

Frank refused to look back again until he had reached Oak Street, one of the two major streets that bordered the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. When he did look behind him, pretending to scratch his chin on his shoulder, Tommy and his friend had gone back to playing the game.
How long could you play Frisbee for, for fuck’s sake?
Waiting for a break in the traffic, Frank dashed across the road and hopped up on the curb. He marched up the hill towards the house. He was aware that he would look like he was walking quickly if the two of them happened to look over at him, so he attempted to walk a little slower, a little more in control. But the promise of the safe haven of home was too much and he pressed on at the same rate.
Charging the front steps two at a time, he threw open the front door with a well-practiced, one-handed move. Once inside, he again took the stairs one at a time.
Did he remember that guy from Evelyn’s party? No. And he had spent a lot of time mocking the others that were there.
There were a lot of people there though, and how could the guy pull out the name Evelyn and the location of the party on Fulton as a fluke?
Frank opened the apartment door, and dropping the keys on the table per usual, stormed into the bedroom.
He would know the names and places if he had been watching Frank for awhile.
“Calm the fuck down man,” Frank muttered to himself. “You are freaking out.”
Nonetheless, he pressed himself against the window that just marginally looked out over the park and slowly drew the hand me down curtain back. He had to contort himself around the dresser just to get a slight view of the park. He then had to stretch his neck to a nearly impossible angle to see the section of the park that he needed.
He could see Tommy make another fantastic throw, his stance a picture of beauty. His target and partner in crime were hidden behind a eucalyptus tree at this angle. Frank sat with the side of his face pressed against that cold window and continued to watch. At no point did Tommy turn to look up at the small window, but after a number of minutes his friend came back into view and approached him. They talked for a minute before Tommy gestured him back out into the field and fired another one at him.
Feeling the outside air attempting to press its way through the glass, Frank stood there, closed his eyes and tried to remember Evelyn’s party. He could imagine that packed, fake Victorian flat as if he were looking directly at it.