The Inexorable March [ficção]

Jerome Michael Gonçalo parked his beater Toyota pick-up in the Vallejo Ferry Terminal garage, made the sign of the cross, and hustled off to the kiosk to pay. He always chuckled to himself when the machine asked how many days you wanted to stay; as if he would ever leave the vehicle—beat-up or not—overnight.

Shit, only thing left would be the paint, he mused before the boat to San Francisco let out a warning blast that carried across the four lanes of Mare Island Way, telling all around that they had better get their asses in gear.

Parking receipt in hand, Gonçalo checked for traffic—knowing that he, himself, was often coming in hot this time of morning—before sprinting across the expanse of asphalt against the light.

“Jamoke! You almost missed it, brah,” an African-American ferryman half again his size shouted out from behind the aluminum plinth whose only discernible function was to shore up the man’s bulk as he pointed toward the waiting hydrofoil bobbing on the tide.

One morning, Gonçalo made the mistake of introducing himself as “J-Mike,” which was immediately misconstrued as “Jamoke,” an appellation that gave the older, and much larger, man no end of amusement.

“Devánte,” Gonçalo panted, disturbingly out-of-breath, “I knew you’d hold it for me, even if you had to grab that rope!”

“No way, brah,” the man laughed, “we’re on a schedule. Very tight. Like your mom.”

“Keep it professional, D.,” Gonçalo half-heartedly protested as he reached for the lanyard that held his transit card, only to realize that he wasn’t wearing it. He glanced toward the now-shuttered ticket windows at the terminal. Closed signs announced the inexorable march toward having every human interaction removed from one’s day. And yet, he silently bemoaned, Devánte persists.

Gonçalo wondered what the folks that had worked those windows were waking up to today, having been replaced by a phone app. He weighed the odds of rushing back to the house for the card but quickly calculated that he’d never make it back in time for the next boat. That would mean driving into the City, a trip that took two maddening hours just days before.

He had already come to terms with the fact that he would rather be skinned alive than undergo that ordeal again as he had barely made it to work the last time without pissing himself in traffic. Gonçalo had briefly thought about drinking less coffee in the morning and immediately realized that it would never actually happen. Public urination verses the murder charge that would surely follow going cold turkey was a steep, but manageable, price to pay.

“Use the app, brah,” Devánte, having astutely read the situation, advised. “Your phone, Jamoke.”

Gonçalo pivoted to attempting to use the very cell phone application that resulted in the sacking of the station agents and felt badly for a moment. The moment passed as the intended exchange failed with an abrasive electronic bleat.

“Y-eaz-ou l-eaz-ose,” Devánte intoned, revealing a probable past spent somewhere on the midway. “Jump on, Jamoke. This cross must move.”

Devánte’s counterpart on board the craft rattled off some half-heard, less-understood, instructions. Gonçalo stared blankly at the black rectangle in his hand as he moved toward an open seat and plopped down with a certain resignation.

All morning, Cassandras on the local news gleefully warned of power blackouts and the possible closure of outdoor public spaces as an impending heatwave threatened to blanket the entire West. Gonçalo had chosen to wear a leaf-patterned Hawaiian shirt in a light fabric, although now he was feeling that perhaps it was sending the wrong message about his mood.

As the engines below the craft begin to churn the cold morning waters of the Bay, he thought about stepping outside in the quickly warming air and slipping unseen over the rail, his cell phone dropping from his hand and sinking to the muddy bottom even quicker than he himself would.