The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(31)

“Vegetarian bacon.”

I made a face. He laughed and took back the bag to stuff his sweater inside it.

“What Muni line are we taking?” I asked as we passed a stop.

“The me line.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and stopped in front of a shiny black car that was parked in an impossibly tight space near the curb. It was an old two-seater sports coupe—all curvy and beautiful and compact, with a convertible black top and white scalloped insets in the door that looked like one side of an opened paperclip.

“This is Ghost,” Jack said with unabashed pride.

“Ghost?”

“A 1958 Corvette.” He unlocked the passenger door, which was covered with dings and scratches in an otherwise mirror-shiny paint job. “She was stolen last fall and taken for a joyride, which is why she’s a little beat up on the outside. I decided to keep her that way for now so she wouldn’t look so showy. Plus it pisses my dad off, and that’s always a good thing.”

The door squeaked when he opened it. I peered inside at dark red leather seats. A chrome steering wheel jutted from a space-age dash, every bit of it restored. “Holy smokes, Jack. This is gorgeous.”

“She doesn’t have air-conditioning, and the convertible top leaks when it rains.”

If he was trying to convince me that this wasn’t the coolest car I’d ever seen, he’d need to try harder. “Why do you even ride mass transit?”

“You ever try parking in this city?”

I shook my head. “I don’t drive.”

“Do you ride?” That sounded sort of dirty, and the way he looked at me felt sort of dirty, too. No one ever looked at me like that.

“Why ‘Ghost’?” I asked.

Grasping the top of the car door, he leaned over it and spoke in a dramatic, foreboding voice. “Because she’s so fast she disappears down the streets at night.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

His dimple appeared. “The best things in life are. Hop in, Beatrix Adams.”

I feigned hardship getting inside the tiny bucket seat. He was right about one thing: It smelled a little mildewy. But apart from that, everything inside the crowded interior was polished and beautiful. I clicked the seat belt around my waist and exhaled nervously.

After shoving the canvas bag into the tiny trunk, he somehow folded his long legs inside and fired up the rumbling engine. We rolled our windows down to let in a pleasant cross breeze. “You look pale,” he said as he plucked a pair of sunglasses off his visor. “You okay?”

“Not much cushion between our flesh and another car’s bumper if you wreck.”

He buckled up and put the car in reverse, a smile on his lips and dark shades covering his eyes. “Then I guess I’d better not.”

It had been so long since I’d been in a car other than the paddy wagon or Howard Hooper’s shit-mobile, and I’d never been in anything quite like this. He wasn’t kidding about the fast thing: The fancy muscle car zipped up and down steep inclines as if the tires and asphalt were an old married couple. But Jack was a good driver, and I felt a little silly that I’d been nervous.

I propped my bare elbow on the window frame, enjoying the warm breeze that fluttered the split in my short sleeve while the city sailed by. It was exhilarating, being so close to him again—almost as close as we were in the tea lounge, and more alone. I sneaked a few glances at his face and a few more at his half-tattooed arm as he shifted gears. When he caught me looking and smiled, I wasn’t as much embarrassed as thrilled.

Despite one minor traffic jam that detoured us through the edge of Duboce Triangle, the drive wasn’t long. When he finally slowed down to find a parking space, it took me a minute to realize we’d been steadily going uphill, and that hill was Buena Vista Park.

“You live around here, right?”

“Don’t you have a photo of my address?” he teased as he stalked a couple in running shorts heading toward a parked BMW.

“It was blurry,” I said. “Couldn’t read the house number, just the street.”

“I live a few blocks away.”

“Ah. Wait—didn’t someone get set on fire in this park?”

“Someone gets set on fire in every park, Bex,” he joked. “Sure, it’s got a few park punks that squat in certain areas at night, but the police sweep through and kick them out. I come here all the time, especially when I just want to get out of the house and think. And you’ll probably only see Benz-driving families in the day, if that makes you feel better. Which it shouldn’t. Hello, parking space. It’s our lucky day.”

Maybe it really was.

After some tight maneuvering, Ghost was parked and we were strolling up a wide walkway into the park. Apparently, we weren’t the only people with the bright idea to commune with nature, because it was pretty crowded: moms with strollers, dads with picnic baskets, teens walking dogs. But a perfect June day was a hard thing to come by in San Francisco, and the best way to enjoy it was a mass pilgrimage to one of the parks to soak up the sun.

But much like everything else worth doing in the city, the hike to the top of the park put a strain on my calves. Just when I was ready to ask Jack to slow his roll, he grabbed my hand and pulled me off the paved path and into the woods.

“Hurry before someone catches us,” he said, tugging me around a sharp curve behind some trees.