The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist. A Grayson J

2

       Wednesday Morning

      There is a rail workers’ strike today. It’s the third this year, and I feel as a result as if I’m becoming an old hand at dealing with them. Taking the train normally saves me thirty minutes of traffic and $28 in a day’s parking charges, but a bus still beats out the car for second best. No reprieve from the traffic, but it’s a $2.50 ride and there’s a stop by the shop where I work, so I can hardly complain.

      It’s meant a morning on a hard, plastic bench seat rather than a padded one, and a bit more jostling of starts and stops than my generally impatient personality would prefer. But the wheels on the bus have gone round and round, and I’m fairly certain I’ll get from point A to point B alive and unscathed.

      I’d live closer to work if I could – the traditional commuter’s lament. There’s nothing in particular to recommend Diamond Heights, the neighbourhood south of the city that I call home, apart from the fact that it’s outside central San Francisco proper and, therefore, the grossly overinflated San Francisco housing market. The Planning and Urban Research Association designed the district as part of the Community Redevelopment Law of 1951, transforming most of its shanties into liveable quarters, one of which I call my own. On a rental basis, of course. To be honest, I can’t really afford living there, either, but it’s a full three or four degrees less unaffordable than even the smallest flat in the city would be, and those are the kinds of maths that make the impossible seem feasible these days. So it’s home. And it has the glamour of having diamonds in its name.

      I can’t say I entirely mind the commute. As the sun rises over the hills in the morning, its rays bouncing up off the sea, San Francisco’s not a bad city to look at. I don’t know if it’s the beauty of the bay on its inland side, with its islands and hills and bridges, or the mystery of the endless, borderless ocean stretching out on the other, but something gives this city an aura – an otherness I’ve never felt replicated anywhere else. A sliver of land wholly encapsulated by the natural world, as if the earth herself had drawn a line around the silicon and steel and said, ‘This far you may come, you may make your homes and monuments. This far, but no further.’

      The bus rounds a corner, swerving its metal bulk to avoid a tiny, parked Nissan, and pulls onto Lincoln Way. I’ve taken this line before, I know the route, but even so my heart flutters ever so slightly. It flutters because Lincoln brings us alongside my haven. Dylan Aaronsen’s perfect heaven. The place I most love.

      There, on our left, is the park. Somewhere in there: my little pond, my little bench. It will be a while until I can visit them – can retreat beneath those trees, away from all this noise – there’s still the morning’s work ahead. But just the sight is soothing. I suppose I’m an easy person to soothe. I wonder, for a moment, if everyone is like that, where merely the sight of something loved makes the demons run away and peace descend a little closer to the present.

      Apart from the modified commute, this morning has been ritualistically predictable – both before and after. In some sense there’s little to say of such a start to a day. As one who’s never fully cottoned on to the social media trend, I find myself unexercised in articulating the vacuously ordinary and unremarkable, in ‘sharing’ something as mundane as the fact that I chose brown socks today rather than black, that I bit my cheek while brushing my teeth.

      It’s simply been The Routine. Coffee, perhaps (definitely) too much. Two eggs. A scan over the emails that accrued during the night, mostly adverts and spam and announcements of new digital titles ‘We’re Sure You’re Going to Enjoy’ (though the whole phenomenon of digital books generally eludes me). Then the commute, then work, such as it is, with its customary temptations and boredom-inducing normalities. It’s hard to look at the day-to-day flow of a life and not conclude that the vast majority of it is wasted, cycling through conversations that have been had before, actions that have been done before, chasing goals that never provide the sense of completion they promise. It was that kind of morning. The expected kind.

      I have no status that allows me to escape the dross of life through rank. I’m not the sort that can claim a renowned profession or a compelling job title, so mornings generally lead organically into the mundane of the day; and I don’t particularly mind this. It’s neither as exciting as it could be, nor as boring. I’m satisfied to reside in the middle.

      There is one definitive job perk, though, and that’s my midday schedule. An extensive lunch break is one of the benefits of menial employment, and there’s little more menial than being a teller at a health food retail shop, selling vitamin capsules to yuppies whose only question is some repetitive variant on ‘Is this the organic version? I really want the organic version.’ I’ve been gainfully employed at Sunset Health Supplements for two years, and despite the persistent desire to toss our vapid customers off the nearest bridge (and we have a few good ones for that, here in the city), I have to admit that not once have I been denied an ample midday escape. One that gives time to walk down the bustling rush of 7th Avenue to Golden Gate Park, then the twisting bends of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive to the iron gates mounted under pine-green signage that reads San Francisco Botanical Gardens. Two layers of fencing and turnstiles, fortress-like, as if the plants inside required prison-level security to preserve them from the outside world.

      Today, at 12.11 p.m., I walked through those gates, produced my local ID so as to avoid the tourists’ entrance fee, and wandered through the greenery to my bench. To that spot where that which is expected is also that which is cherished. I took my familiar steps and thanked God it’s not just the dreary parts of life that are repetitive.

      I have no coffee today, here on my perch. Enough of it has already worked its way into my system. It often does on mornings like this, which, though unremarkable, follow restless nights. I have too many of those, though there’s no discernible reason why I should. My job isn’t exactly the high-stress sort, and outside of work all is generally as peaceful as I could hope for. But still sleep is often slow in coming, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. I’ve tried the tablets, descended at times to drink, even given a shot to the soothing tones of a new-age SureSleep app downloaded to my phone for ninety-nine cents. But nothing really helps (and Apple won’t refund the ninety-nine cents). Insomnia is like an unwanted family member on a holiday visit. The more you wish he would leave, the more obstinately he remains.

      So no coffee, but I have my notebook and my pencil – the productive equipment, and the food and the drink, of the poet. Which is what I consider myself and what I am, despite the fact of my rather more worldly employment. And the absence of a single published poem. A badge of honour, I’m convinced. True poets never publish. To publish a poem is to sell one’s soul, to befoul and dirty one’s words with consumerism and industrial approval-seeking. This is a realization almost all real poets come to, generally after their thirtieth or fortieth rejection letter. And however it may sound, it’s not hypocrisy, this: it’s the fruit borne of a slow evolution of genuine understanding. The kind of understanding I am proud to call my own, after many years of careful refinement.

      Since I’ve been sitting here I’ve jotted down two lines of my latest poetic effort.

       The tree-bough leans, its leaves an applause

       Cheering in the wind

      It’s what I’ve managed so far. And I’m not one to be too precious: it’s a bit shit. The muses have yet to find me at the pond today. No flashes of inspiration illumine me, no sudden bursts of creativity. That can be a frustrating thing; it’s driven some poets to madness. But today there are ducks in the water – a mother with three children paddling after her from one small bay to the next, seeking what only ducks know is there to be sought. That’s enough. I’ve learned that poems come when they will, they’re not things that can be forced. Being a poet is mostly about the waiting. Waiting for the right thought to take the right shape, then capturing it in words like pixels capture sights for a camera. And there are rice yeast tablets and kale extract drinks to sell in between,