What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [1]
You could see that girl walking to work at the shoe store, back and forth, going to her apartment during the lunch hour, then home again by the end of the day, no matter what the Valley weather brought: summer heat, fall rains, the terrible winter fog. Even in late November and December, when the sun had gone down by near five o’clock and the streets fell dark, she would walk home alone after the store closed. And that’s how it should have stayed, a plain girl like that all alone.
But now this: a thin sandwich and Dan Watson, who was surely going to pay for it, then the waitress coming round with the dessert menu, the girl glancing at the clock, Dan urging her to choose something, then clearly instructing the waitress to hurry back. The waitress indulges him, of course, he being who he is, and comes back with two small silver dishes of vanilla ice cream. He leans over and spoons a small scoop of her ice cream into the cola glass. There is still a lot of soda left, the way she has been sipping it, savoring it. He points for her to take a taste and she does so warily, as if she’s never tasted anything like it before. But you have to believe she never has, once that look crosses her face, an amused arch of her eyebrows and a nod of approval.
How people change when they get a taste of the good life! When suddenly the dollar bills in your hand can go for things you want instead of need. A fork-and-knife meal at the café; scarves and pearl chokers; pendants and brooches; jewelry boxes with ballerinas springing to attention; that lovely sound of pushing rings and earrings and bracelets against each other while you’re searching. Flowers from Holliday’s like the good husbands do: tulips and Easter lilies from Los Angeles in the springtime, a wrist corsage for attending a wedding. A car trip over to the coast, to Morro Bay and the enormous, beautiful rock basking just off the shoreline. A day in Hollywood, the exhilaration of knowing movie stars breathe in the very same sunshine. Silk blouses brought home in delicate paper; dresses that require dry cleaning; lingerie so elegant it refuses to be scandalous.
Is that the life she knows she has ahead of her, the way she is sitting there, her feet rocking nervously after nearly a whole hour? Does she know how every young woman in town wants exactly this? Does she know that people turn their heads to watch them leave the café, to watch him open the door of his Ford truck for her? Does she know people discuss what they’ve seen, what his mother must think?
Summer carries on, the heat still scorching into September. Harvest time has arrived in Bakersfield and more people have come into town looking for work, whole caravans sometimes. Faces are not as familiar as before, not at the supermarkets, not on the downtown streets. Bakersfield is the open door to the southern part of the state, and the workers come pouring through. So many people have arrived that it becomes difficult to find parking spots, to buy fresh meat, even to get a bench at the Jolly Kone hamburger stand. But this will be short lived—by the end of October, after much of the late-summer crop has been brought in from the fields, the town will go back to normal. The strangers will leave, counting their money, and Bakersfield will wait for those first few weeks of November when the sky goes gray and the fog rolls in over the coastal range and lingers for months on end.
In all the commotion of the harvest boom, most people don’t notice that the girl is no longer walking the streets to work. At the lunch hour, she’s nowhere to be seen over near Chester Avenue, where her apartment is. But at the shoe store, she’s there sure enough, dutifully stepping from the back storage room when Mr. Carson snaps his fingers and tells her the sizes he needs. She never