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Eleanor says Mom doesn’t care. I say goodbye and hang up the phone. I go into the kitchen and have an English muffin without asking and read parts of the paper with the glamorous people and Patrick looks up and smiles at one point which is very smart of him if he ever wants to see my ass in bed again.

Turns out Patrick is working underneath the city inside a pothole, fixing pipes or something. He gets to lift up the pothole and jump inside. I laugh, I tell him it’s like he’s fucking the city with his whole body but he doesn’t get it, and I think when he doesn’t get something he’s just quiet. In fact, he’s usually quiet. In fact, I talk mostly all the time around Patrick, or anyone.

I go to find him inside the pothole. He told me it was on Divisadero and they don’t reclose the pothole, so there it is, like some hobbit door, opened up to anybody. I slip down into the belly of the street which is incredibly exciting, and it’s dark and it smells pretty awful and I can hear the cars rushing by above me. They seem like they’re going really fucking fast.

“Hey Patrick,” I yell, “hey Patrick, you have guests.” My voice booms out through the passages, and after a while I hear a rustling and it’s Patrick wearing something orange and he does not look happy to see me.

“What are you doing here?” He’s gruff, like his boss is next to him or something, but as far as I can tell, we’re alone.

“I thought I’d come bring you a plant for your new house,” I say, laughing, wishing I had brought a plant and thinking about how witty I am and why doesn’t he love me yet.

“You need to go, Susie,” he says. “It’s totally unsafe for you to be here. You need a special permit.” He won’t even look at me. His hands are gloved and the gloves are covered with oil. I want him to grab me with those gloves and smear oil all over my body and my nice dress and throw me on the ground, with all these cars above us, a ceiling of cars.

“Susie. Go.” His voice is louder now, almost mean. I start to climb back and he puts his hands on my thighs to help hoist me up and I swear it turns me on so much that I practically drop back in there but I want to see Patrick again, and if I did that, I bet he’d lock his doors to me forever.

Back on the street, the cars seem really slow. The air is bright and I can still smell oil in my nose. I have nothing to do and it’s Saturday night almost and I don’t think Patrick is going to want to see me first thing when he exits the pothole. I go to a bar and have a beer. The bartender doesn’t look at me and instead talks a lot to the girl next to me who has a perfect ponytail, and I eat a bag of pretzels and then rip the bag into ribbons. The whole experience only takes half an hour, and I’m sick of being ignored, so I leave.

I walk up the street with beer taste in my mouth, warm and bitter and wonderful, and what do you know, there’s that girl again, the belly button girl, leaning back to show that marvelous hole to the world. She has no fucking idea.

When I walk past her, I want to grab her wrist and drag her down into the pothole, which is just a block or two back. She looks at me and smiles because she knows she has nothing to fear from me, she thinks I’m her ally, but I’m not. I really want to trample down this girl who has her belly button open wide like it’s there just for me. I want to hurt her because she looks like she might be happy and she might have a date and if she doesn’t, she will. I want to fuck her by a Dumpster and cut her down, like she’s a tree, I don’t care if she wants me back, I don’t care if so many people back home love her so much. I walk and I walk and I walk and I end up at Mount Zion Hospital which means I’m near my mom’s house and I go by the house and in the upstairs window I can see a hint of Eleanor, in front of the TV, with potato chips. I don’t really want to touch Eleanor. Mostly I just want her to wake up. Wake up! I feel like pouring water on her a lot. I keep walking; I don’t want to