Happy Birthday to My Best Friend

“Alyssa Monroe, this is the sheriff’s department. You have twenty-four hours to vacate these premises,” was the unforgettable phrase she heard at seven AM as it boomed and ricocheted throughout the house. I also heard the thunder and walked over to see my best friend viscerally shaken. “How can I possibly leave by tomorrow, and where can I go?” she mumbled.

At six AM the next day, Alyssa is sitting against a pillar outside Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, with ‘SAN FRANCISCO’ scribbled with a sharpie on a large piece of cardboard. A duct-taped broken suitcase brimming with whatever belongings she could quickly grab, some papers, and a couple of hundred dollars were all that she took as we ‘vacated’ the premises just as the sheriffs descended on our front door.

Around noon, Jerry, a middle-aged white guy with a ponytail sprouting out of the back of his balding pate and overgrown red beard stops his truck in front of us. It had the Safeway logo and an oversized picture on its side of a beautiful young couple casually enjoying the bounty of their labors: a basket fresh strawberries and blueberries, full-fat milk and yogurt, baguettes, a variety of cheeses and meats, and a bottle of Bordeaux, at a picnic table in a park by a serene lake. Their young kids are in the background, walking out of the lake with their ducky floaters still around their waists. “I’m on my way to the Bay Area and could use the company,” he yelled from his high perch behind the wheel. “I’ll be happy to take you both there.”

An hour or so later, Jerry pulls into a Jack-in-the-Box and asks Alyssa if she wants some lunch. “Thanks Jerry but I can’t afford it,” she replies, politely. He comes back with three burgers, bags of French fries and bottles of water. “I stay away from those damn sodas—all that sugar will ruin our teeth and give us diabetes,” he exclaims, proudly.

Jerry is a talker alright--no wonder he wanted some company. We heard his entire life story: his abusive father terrorized and finally divorced his mother when he was a mere nine years old; his wife left him for a young woman half her age; his shoe salesman job ended at Macy’s when it shut down as the yearlong fifty-percent tariffs against China started to take an economic bite; neither of his two daughters talk to him; his dog was killed by a hit-and-run-driver; etc... Fortunately, he previously worked as a furniture mover, so with his trucker’s license and union membership, he switched to long haul driving. “Grocery stores will never go out of business, and they need their daily deliveries. It’s the best career move I ever made,” he said, confidently.

About two hundred miles later, Jerry pulls to the side of the road and makes his conditions clear. For every fifty mile that he takes us, Alyssa must take off one piece of clothing or be left on the spot. “Those burgers and the ride have a cost, and since you have no money, this is the only payment method I can think of,” he says, with a big smile. As she could see nothing but gusting dessert sand and tall cacti standing like soldiers on guard duty stretching out to infinity, she had no choice but to take off her shoe. Fifty miles later, the other shoe came off, and subsequently, the hat, blouse, bra, and pants followed.

After they had gone about two hundred miles more, my best friend could not take this indignity any further. Terrorized by what would be expected of her when she removed her last piece of clothing, she told Jerry, in a polite muffled voice, that she was putting all her clothes back on. Jerry immediately slammed the brakes so hard that our heads almost hit the windshield and pulled off to the side of the road. “It’s almost ninety-five degrees in the sun. These are the dog days of summer; if you hurry, you can try your luck at that rest stop we passed by about two miles back before you collapse,” he said, with a sadistic grin, and immediately drove back on to the road. As we stood there baking in the intense desert sun in our miserable predicament, I wondered why they called them ‘dog days?’ Do canines revert to their wolf heritage and attack their masters in packs?

Streams of sweat poured out of Alyssa’s face and underarms as she lugged her broken suitcase almost three miles back to that rest stop. After freshening up and buying water along with several candy bars from the vending machines, she seated herself on a shaded bench and retrieved her cardboard sign. She then added the words ‘DISABLED VETERAN NEEDS A RIDE TO’ before ‘SAN FRANCISCO,’ followed below by ‘GOD BLESS,’ hoping for a little sympathy and a better ride. “I could make up a poignant and heart-warming ‘disabled veteran’ story like what I saw on Netflix a couple of months ago,” she mumbled, as she settled in for the long night ahead.

Early next morning, I saw an exhausted young Hispanic woman with the darkest black hair down to her waist and bleary black eyes buy two large coffees and a couple of cold sandwiches from the vending machines. She gazed our way and walked over to the bench and gently nudged Alyssa. “Good morning. My name is Sarah, and I have been driving all night. I need to get to Sunnyvale by the end of today to start my new job tomorrow, so if you can help me drive there, I’d be happy to give you a ride,” And so began the last leg of our journey. I sensed real peace and comfort in Alyssa as she accepted this generous offer. At least she will not have to take off pieces of clothing along the way.

“Hi, my name is Alyssa, and this is my best friend. We really appreciate the ride, and yes, I am more than happy to share the driving with you.”

After a bit of small talk, Sarah wanted Alyssa to drive and offered her one of the sandwiches, but she had nothing that I could eat. “What’s in San Francisco, if I may ask?”

Alyssa recounted how her small business decorating stores around Denver went into bankruptcy as those stores cut back due to the crippling tariffs, how her inebriated husband, a misogynistic brute, died in a car accident on a snow-covered road in the Rockies last winter, her eviction after missing the rent payments for almost six months, and the humiliating ride with Jerry. Sarah said she should report him to Safeway, but Alyssa said she didn’t know his last name and did not remember the license plate number. “Anyway, who would believe a homeless person. We are hoping for a fresh start in California, working in the hotel industry which is desperately short staffed due to their Hispanic workers not showing, up fearing deportation.”

As we came by Truckee, we took a short break by Donner Lake and dipped our feet in the deep blue waters of this mountain reservoir to cool off. This was my first visit to this beautiful region in the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Sarah talked about how the Donner party was snowbound over this range the winter of 1846-1847, and that they had to cannibalize the dead for their own survival. “Now, this area is a haven for the Silicon Valley techies who don’t wink at spending $200 or more on a single day’s ski ticket, gamble away what most people earn in a year in one of the many casinos, and jet-ski over the summer months, polluting this little piece of heaven,” she said, with some contempt. The puffy white clouds reflecting off the clear blue lake water looked like an impressionist painting by Chagall. Sarah, a committed vegan, took us to a health food deli and got quinoa, a baguette with a bowl of cashew cheese and salads. “Sorry, Alyssa, but after my stroke, I am relegated to a strictly vegan diet.” Once again, there was nothing there that I could eat.

As we passed the Hwy 113 exit off Hwy 80, Sarah reminisced about all the times she took this exit to get back to the campus of U.C. Davis from her parents’ home in Oakland. “It was the best time of my young life,” she said, ecstatically. “Not only did I get a good education that prepared me for my career in finance, but I met my best friend and future husband and generally grew up.” Alyssa did not mention that she too got accepted there, but her mother’s financial situation could not support the reasonable costs of room, board, and tuition in the late nineties. Instead, she chose San Jose State University which allowed her to live at home, follow her passion of English Literature while simultaneously selling shoes part-time at Macy’s, just as Jerry did, to pay for it. “If I had realized then that I would be solely responsible for putting bread on the table, I would have majored in something more practical, perhaps finance or engineering, and I too would be going off to the Bay Area to start a great job rather than being homeless now,” she whispered in my left ear.

Two hours later, Sarah wished us the best of luck as she stopped in front of a dilapidated building in the Tenderloin district.

I see Jenny’s outstretched arms about to give her sister the biggest hug ever. Her warm smile seemed so welcoming until she noticed the large duct-taped suitcase. “Don’t tell me—five years after our last meeting at mom’s funeral, you decide to grace me with a surprise visit. Not even a text message has passed between us, and I’m guessing you’ll need to hangout for a few days, or is it months?” Alyssa tried to explain that she needed only a week or two to settle in when Jenny broke the bad news: “I have got four other artists sharing this two-bedroom dump because that’s how many incomes are required to put a roof over our heads these days. Some mornings, it takes a half hour to get to the single toilet which backs up most of the time. The techies from Silicon Valley with their huge salaries and stock options have all moved up to the city to work remotely and party constantly. This gentrified Tenderloin district has only multi-million-dollar homes, and with few rentals available, they can charge whatever they want. Sorry, sis, but we can’t accommodate even one more body in this hell hole.”

Two bus rides later, Alyssa is squatting on a pavement in Ghirardelli Square, hoping for a few coins, maybe even a Washington or a Lincoln, to drop like grace from the hands of a benevolent tourist or Tesla driving, Gucci-clad high-tech entrepreneur. “We’re living like royalty off society’s breadcrumbs,” she says, jokingly.

One of the locals, probably feeling sorry for my emaciated body, pulls out a box of Farmer’s Dog from their grocery bag. Alyssa dumps the chow, my first meal since the patty that Jerry so charitably gave me, onto the pavement in front of me and belts out the happy birthday song. The annoyance on everyone ambling by is quite clear as they avoid our eyes and divert their gait just enough to avoid the stench from our bodies. She asks me to make a wish. All I could think of was “let us both at least have a roof over our heads by my next birthday.”