Bretton Findlay
Google
I love Cafe Bambino! Whether it’s for a latte or just an herbal tea, the baristas here know exactly how to make the perfect cup of something to fill the hollows of my heart. The outdoor patio is usually vacant in the winter, which is great, because it allows me time to tune out the world, to forget about all my problems, to sip on teas and consult google maps in peace.
See, I've been on the hunt for the perfect Phinney Ridge lookout for most of the day. I’ve seen it before. I’ve been there many times, but the path is lost to me.
It’s here somewhere.
Moments turn to minutes to hours on the hill, weaving through the narrow aves and eaves of single-lane streets, passing by all the two-to-three story multi-million dollar homes that grow less impressive with each step, fading out to background fuzz. It’s at this point, each time, that I seem to get lost. The street blur together, letters lose their meaning and signs float away. I turn left instead of right, and the crows fluttering in my wake seem to be taunting me with their caws. All I know is that Palatine A-V-E is important to me—I’m not sure if the place I’m looking for is on Palatine, but it may be a cross-street. Or it may not. I’m really not sure because, back then, I wasn't the one navigating.
It was a gal I dated for a time. We hung out a lot, smoked cigarettes and pot, and spent most of our time wishing that we could make the other person less sad.
We'd wander off to somewhere new, far away, any place that a bus could bring us to, take long walks through neighborhoods pretending like we belonged, like we were well-established: like there was real food in the fridge and we could leave our phones at home because we didn't need anyone else, we didn’t need friends or relatives to bum a few bucks off of to help pay for heat, for electricity, for rent, we didn’t need anybody and we could do it all on our own. We could just take a walk on sunny day and get lost on not being anybody, or anything.
It took a few months, but we stumbled down a dead end. It looked out over the city, the mountains, and everything in between. There was so much life sprawling out all around us, so much movement that if you unfocused your eyes you almost got a sense of something bigger heading your way. To sweep you off your feet. To lift you up. To us, it felt like a wonder, like the kind you hear about astronauts being able to see from on high up in space. This whole street knew what they had, too, because all the homes flattened into the hillside to be polite enough to let their neighbors get in on those magnificent sunsets: watch the world bleed into neon colors of lemonade and cotton-candy and oreo-cookie packaging while the clouds weaved past peaks. It was a place where rabbits chased each other across the street, where on a cloudy night the city shimmered like the stars, where the dew was ever-present, coating this slice of eden in a glossy shimmer—like those close-ups of fancy dames you see in an old hollywood film.
The last few months we were together was spent up on that ridge.
We parted ways a while back, broke up over unwashed dishes, over a fight that was long brewing, and when the words came out they rang too true to deny. When the sun came up next we were both gone, like nothing ever happened, fading back into that part of your mind where dreams go to hide.
I think I found it via satellite. I’ve drawn up a map to take me there, to help me focus more on what my gut has to say rather than the caws of passing thoughts. But, right now my gut says this tea isn’t sitting too well with my empty stomach. The bathroom here is clean, homey, and the walls are paper thin: not a place you want to spend too much time in—if you get my meaning—not with such nice baristas hanging on just the other side.
If I know my body right, I should have another half hour. Maybe forty minutes. Just enough time to hike back up and take another look around.
The sun is setting soon.
