Free House of Smoke by JF Freedman Page A

the kind back home she’d always associated with pimps. It hadn’t been washed for a while.
    “I love standing up here on clear nights like this and looking down at the city and the water and everything,” she says now, as she turns toward the ocean to get a better look. “I can fantasize that I own it all.”
    The only things of value she owns outright are her car and her computer. The rest she left behind.
    He’s moved closer to her, his arm touching hers. It feels like a deliberate touch, but she’s not certain.
    “How long have you lived here?” he asks. “In Santa Barbara, I mean.”
    “A year and a half, approximately.” She moves some hair off her face that the wind’s blown over. “Before that I lived up north. Bay Area.”
    “I love San Francisco,” he says. “San Francisco and New Orleans, those are my two favorite cities.”
    “I lived in Oakland,” she states to him.
    “Um.” He pauses. Then, slightly embarrassed (her self-conscious reading of him): “I don’t know Oakland, actually. Berkeley, a little. I can find my way to the Cal campus and Chez Panisse, that’s about it.”
    She knows Chez Panisse by reputation; it’s famous. She’s never eaten there.
    He has calluses on his hands; his fingernails are cracked. She thought he was a workingman.
    “I was born in Oakland. I lived there my entire life, until under two years ago.”
    Now he takes a good look at her. Whatever he thought she was, she isn’t—she knows that’s what he’s thinking.
    “Jack London was from Oakland,” he says diplomatically. “I’m a big fan of his, I’ve read everything he’s ever written.”
    Nice try, fellow, she thinks, fighting the knee-jerk hostility and resentment towards his attitude. He meant no harm, but still she feels the sting of his initial reaction, even though that’s not his fault. Anyway, she’s the pot calling his kettle black, because she isn’t living there anymore, either (although because of very different circumstances). Look at his good stuff, girl, she reminds herself. He’s a literate, attractive guy from Santa Barbara, one of the world’s true garden spots, with enough rough edges on him so that there’s an edginess, a sexy element of danger. And he certainly has class, if he frequents the places he so casually mentioned. He’s about as far away from the men she’s known in her life as she could get, she reflects. Certainly a step up. Except for his balls, which he obviously has—the way he carries himself, the way he can comfortably joke about himself, not take himself too seriously. All the men she’s seriously known in her life have been ballsy, and most of them were dangerous; in most cases, especially with Eric, way too dangerous. Ballsiness was never the problem. It was how the men in her life used it that was always wrong.
    “Maybe sometime if we ever find ourselves together up there you could show me around,” he says. “It’s an area of California I should know more about, being the native son that I am.”
    “I’d like to.” She feels the flush rising on her neck again. That infers a next time, the possibility of a relationship. She’s standing here with a guy she doesn’t know from Adam, three hours ago she was positive she didn’t want a “relationship,” whatever that means to her today, and yet she’s thinking about showing him around her hometown. She wants the possibility to be available, so she can decide.
    “And I could show you some of what’s around here. Seeing’s how you’re new and all.” He looks at her again. “You find things, huh? What does that mean?”
    “It means that I’m a detective,” she says, taking a hit from her Tecate.
    “A detective?” He’s openly incredulous.
    “Yeah. Detective. As in private investigator. Sometimes I’m called a dick.”
    He laughs at her.
    “I know. It’s funny. When I first started out I called myself a dick in training, which really cracked people up. Now the training’s over,