three- PDX

At around 10 p.m. a young man leaves Deschutes Brewery where he just had a fight with his girlfriend who walked out 20 minutes ago and is now on a bus headed back to her apartment. It’s cold and he wraps his scarf around his neck in a simple loop tie. He’s not sure where he is so he walks down the biggest street in the direction he thinks is downtown. Left with a cigarette and his pride, he decides not to call her to apologize and instead determines to walk back to her apartment on his own. He didn’t realize that he was almost an hour away on foot and that the clouds gathering above were about to take a long hard piss all over him.

Ten minutes of walking, smoking, and regretting finishing the pitcher of beer before attempting to chase after his girlfriend, the young man from out of town recognizes where he is. He sees The Boiler Room, a karaoke bar the couple went to the first time he came to visit, and realizes he’s walked into Chinatown. Feeling smug and proud of his genius navigation, like a true New Yorker, he struts into the closest convenience store and rewards himself with a fresh pack of cigarettes. A click of the lighter later the victory march resumes and he crosses Burnside Street into Downtown.

He passes Voodoo Doughnuts, waving at the line of hungry hungry hippies, drops a buck in the cup of the guitar wielding cowboy-goth hipster reciting the gospel according to Al Green to the newly college-graduated California emigrants on the corner of 3rd and Yamhill, and doles out cigarettes to three teenage hobos dipping their feet in one of the fountains near Pioneer Square. He knows he’s still far but the Hawthorne Bridge is in sight and across it is the Southeast part of town where the apartment is.

The bridge is longer than it looks and the wind faster and colder. The scarf is losing its warmth and the young man zips up his brown faux-fur bomber jacket to the neck. His legs begin to get tired as he reaches the middle of the bridge. The cold stings his hands and he forces them into his pocket, leaving a lit cigarette held loosely by his shaking lips. He looks ahead across the bridge at the town and feels sad. There are no skyscrapers and no bright lights. The buildings and houses are no taller than four stories and most of the lights are turned off. He realizes for the first time that he still has forty long mostly quiet and desolate blocks to walk on this cold and dim night in the Pacific Northwest. And as he breathes in deeply to muster his courage, he feels a cold wet drop of water land on his head and roll down his face. A few minutes later and nearing the end of the bridge, it begins to rain… hard.

The first ten blocks is painful. His legs start to cramp underneath his drenched jeans and his feet are wet and sore. Hawthorne Boulevard is a gradual uphill incline and there are points where it resembles California Street in San Francisco. There are a few cars driving around and fewer people on the street.

The next ten blocks takes him past a pub and a couple strip clubs, this city is known to have the most strip clubs per capita with 50. He thanks God for the strip clubs; the bright neon lights remind him of New York and the guys smoking outside are the only other people on the streets besides himself. For a few minutes he feels less lonely.

The rain lets up a little as he reaches Southeast 30th street. Just nine more blocks down, a left then five blocks to her apartment. Tired, wet, and starting to get depressed he makes it up the last uphill section of Hawthorne and sees the big funeral home he noticed on the bus heading downtown two and a half hours earlier. He smiles thinking about how close he is to the apartment.

The next nine blocks is bright and filled with people. He passes Cup and Saucer Café, Chopsticks, Cold Stone and Bridgeport Ale House. It’s raining harder but he no longer feels wet or sore. He’s numb but also relieved. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it under the awning of a Bank of America. Across the street is the Fred Meyer Supermarket that sits on the corner of Southeast 39th. He crosses the street, turns left onto 39th and he’s five blocks away from his girlfriend’s apartment on Belmont Street.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle and he feels his phone vibrating in his left jean pocket. He pulls it out and sees that he has 2 missed calls and a voicemail. Without checking who called or listening to the voicemail, tired and miserable he immediately dials his girlfriend ready to tell her he’s sorry. She has been waiting for him at the Walgreen’s on 39th and Belmont, worried and also sorry.

As he walks the last couple of blocks he remembers how he felt leaving Deschutes an hour earlier. It’s his fault that all over his body he is either sore or numb and every piece of clothing he has on is soaked all the way through. But every minute he had walked he thought about her and how he should have stopped her from leaving. Every minute he had walked he felt more and more sad that she wasn’t with him.

On the other side of the Walgreen’s parking lot, in front of the main entrance, she is standing in the rain looking across at the young man from the east coast. Both smile as he walks faster and faster towards her. It took him over an hour to find his way back and though she’s still mad she brings him close to her and starts to lead him back to the two-story apartment building. She asks him if he’s cold and tells him he’s an idiot for walking all the way back. He tells her he’s sorry and she replies that he’s an asshole.

They reach the apartment and head straight into the bedroom, shedding their wet clothes along the way. Naked they dive under the thick blanket, wrapping themselves in each other’s arms, each trying to keep warm in the other’s embrace. Outside the rain has stopped and it doesn’t take long for the two to fall asleep.

In the apartment below, unable to fall asleep, Dylan is sitting with her feet up on her couch and a six-pack of a local microbrew on her coffee table. Three of the bottles are empty. On her legs is her laptop playing another episode of Dead Like Me. She thinks the main character is a fictional T.V. version of her self, except for the undead grim reaper part. It’s after midnight and both the episode and the bottle in her hand come to an end. She opens another bottle and puts on another episode. In a little while, she’ll finish the last beer and she’ll lie down in bed waiting to fall asleep. Around the same time the two upstairs will wake up and have the makeup sex they were too cold to have before. All around her in the apartment complex, couples will be having some kind of sex: the married couple next door having angry sex, the lesbians across the courtyard having loud sex, and the dog in the apartment above them having guilty sex with a giant teddy bear. Another Saturday night in Portland, Oregon that Dylan is spending alone.