Berkeley Noir

I shuffled in beige, exhausted from another useless night on Indeed. I sat beneath the tree, adjusting the lens of my geriatric Canon, and then assumed the position of a bored thirtysomething taking in nature’s splendor because he didn’t get laid the night before. Cars rumbled behind me to find empty spots to smoke up. Behind us all, Amtrak blew its way the hell out of Berkeley. My warm-up was shooting the parade of Aquatic Park:

— One unicycle teen with handlebar mustache.

— One forty-year-old white woman in black with full makeup who pushed a five-hundred-dollar covered stroller holding a Chihuahua who eyed all with the indifference of Molotov.

— One black man and a Latina in red exercise gear, weights tied to their ankles, lapping the old man in the gray tracksuit who was almost as overweight as me.

— Gaggle of stoner chicks in black and too much purple eye shadow and band T-shirts, shambling and laughing and speaking like texts.

— A gray homeless fortysomething in long sleeves who smelled like sun-bleached urine, pulling a trolley of corporate beer cans with craft labels and Coke bottles.

Ten burning minutes later, the bouncing blonde emerged from behind the red cabin that rents three-wheeled bikes to the disabled. Sonja: fit but chubby, unable or unwilling to kill her freshman fifteen. A white-and-blue Stanford shirt and pink trunks. No sunglasses (5Chan would be ecstatic).

I focused. Then I shot her face a hundred times, tracking her, then switched from photo to video.

“You.”

I released the trigger.

Bernie stood above me. Again. Baggy striped sweater. Elbows angular. Brown trousers and terra-cotta clogs. I kept his preferred pronoun in mind.

“Morning.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Relaxing. You?”

“I always walk the park. I never see you.”

I nodded. “Guess I’m like a ghost outside the school.”

Bernie stinkfaced. “You do photography?”

“Sometimes.”

Bernie had three emotions: rage, indifference, and excitement if we were talking about the manga and anime that he liked. Bernie’s eyes tracked Sonja and mooned, countenance starved.

The next move would dictate my future. So I said nothing.

Bernie blinked. “5Chan?”

I exhaled and smiled.

Bernie did not. “No way.”

I shrugged. Sonja had already run the exposed patch and into the thicket of shadows made by Aquatic Park’s winding corridor of trees.

“You can’t tell.”

I put my camera down. Still recording.

“You can’t say anything. I’ll tell them you sent them to me.”