Sebastian – Page 3 – Sebastian Malloy

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A Chess Game of Cards

I am meeting Suzi at the Palace of Fine Arts, beneath the giant dome on the edge of the pond. The crowd is much larger than I’d been expecting, a thick herd of people milling about, blocking my way, nearly tripping over one another as they walk the grounds. I’d forgotten it is Memorial Day weekend, which explains why I’d had to park in Timbuktu and walk a million miles to get here. My phone buzzes, and I see that it’s Suzi calling me. “Hello,” I say, answering it. “Hi,” she says. “I’m here. I have no idea where…

Perpetual Smug

“In my dream,” Rivi says, “I’m standing outside a blue house at the top of a big hill. There’s a black cat in the yard, and I try to walk around it to look at its face, but no matter where I’m standing, it’s always looking away from me.” We are laying in her bed, with dozens of photographs spread out around us. She has been looking through photo boxes, pulling out some, transferring others from one box to another. I have seen myself in many of them, and more full of faces I don’t know. “I can see my…

Cultural Archaeology

Rivi and I are waiting for the BART to arrive. The low hum of distant trains hovers in the air of the underground station like the thrum of surf against the shore. Rivi pokes at the back of my neck with her fingernail. “You got sunburned,” she says. “Is it bad?” I ask. “Not really. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it’s bad, sure. Sunburn is just one step away from skin cancer.” She pokes me again. “Okay,” I say. “Is it cancer?” “Nah,” she says. “It’s just a sunburn.” We had spent the afternoon at Amoeba in…

Typhoid Magpie

From her bedroom, Rivi brings me a copy of a used book she’s picked up earlier in the day: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. “I found it at Green Apple,” she says. “It was mis-shelved in the poetry section.” I turn the book over and look at the back cover. “I think I’ve read this,” I say. “It sounds familiar.” “Doesn’t matter,” she says. She takes the book back from me and flips through the pages. Mid-way through, she stops, and I see that there’s something stuck between the pages of the book. It’s a photograph,…

The Secret Architectures of Spiders

Hannah is sucking on a Blow Pop as we drive. She is scrolling through my iPhone, looking at my music. “Don’t you have anything from this century in here?” she asks. “Don’t give me any grief,” I say. “You’re the same age I am.” “Maybe, but my musical education didn’t stop in 1987.” She finally picks something, and The Boomtown Rats start playing from the car speakers. “I do listen to new music, you know,” I say. “It’s just new music that sounds like old music.” The road is all curves here, in the hills along the California and Nevada…

At the Edge of the Continent

“I should take a trip,” Hannah is saying. “Someplace far away. Darjeeling, maybe. Someplace where the air is spicy.” We are walking outside the zoo, and the air is not spicy here. It smells of eucalyptus and salt air. “I want to be in one of those hotels that you see in the movies,” she continues. “Old wood on the walls and a balcony overlooking a marketplace.” “How about Fresno?” I ask. “Fresno is exotic.” “Fresno is an armpit,” she says. “Don’t be a putz.” She has work this morning, and so we are here walking in the dawn, the…

Fist-Fighting Shatner on the Acropolis

Rivi and I are walking along Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. As we go, she is counting the number of turtle heads she has seen breaking the surface of the water. “Three,” she says. “We should take a paddleboat,” I say. “Haven’t done that in a long time.” “Nah. I’m not feeling the call of the waves today.” “There aren’t any waves. There are never any waves. It’s Stow Lake.” “Let’s go to the de Young. That’s always nice.” She points at the water. “Four.” We have been in the park for a few hours today, having walked a…

Springtime Honey

Hannah and I don’t go skiing, because going skiing was never the point. Instead, we are at her house in Daly City, in her bedroom. We are laying in her bed, but it’s friendly, and not a romantic thing. There is a cemetery across the street from her house. I can see it through the window. I try not to read anything into it, but of course it’s hard not to right now. Hannah has not told me what it is she is having tests for, what disease is gnawing at the edges of her body, and I haven’t asked…

Constellations of Desire

Hannah plays Iggy Pop through the speakers of her iPhone as we walk down the wooded path, which leads to an overlook by the Golden Gate Bridge. The wheels of traffic buzz like honeybees on the pavement from just out of sight. I glance over at her as we walk, and a gust of wind blows her hair back, revealing the galaxy of freckles there on her cheeks and nose. She mouths the lyrics to “The Passenger,” but I can’t tell if she’s singing quietly to herself or not over the cars and wind. A woman stands smoking at the…

Measures of Triscuits and Waffles

“I hate that it doesn’t snow here,” Rivi says from the kitchen. “It’s a drought,” I say, laying on the chaise in the living room. “It doesn’t snow anywhere anymore.” It is ungodly early, somewhere around seven in the morning, and I haven’t slept all night. Rivi had appeared on my doorstep about nine the evening before, full of too much energy, and with no one to expend it on besides me. The day is going to be a long one. “It’s December. There should be at least a foot on the ground,” she says. “You have to go east…