Thom was waiting for me at the curb. He had Rehka in tow, camped out in the front seat. She was swaying in her seat and reminded me of a wind-blown poppy, especially since she chose a red outfit tonight. Apparently Rehka wasn’t concerned about losing sales by drinking heavily.

Thom seemed strangely satisfied, even though she was making it impossible for him to drive: punching buttons, opening and closing doors, and talking loudly to him, me, and — I presume — the ever-present boyfriend on the phone that was also being waved around. I captured Thom’s glance in the rearview mirror, and he was barely containing his laughter.

“I’m taking you to the Haight run, and Rehka is headed over to SoMa. If, of course, she makes it that far. I might have to come back and get you to take over her shift if she can’t finish it." His grin expanded and turned wicked. Rehka was getting into a lover’s quarrel on the phone, and wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the implication.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Well, besides this totally shameless display, I just made $50 bucks." Thom glanced over at Rehka, who was now hanging out the window and trying to yell incomprehensible insults at passing pedestrians.

“What do you mean?”

“We have a bet going in the office on how long it takes certain girls to get three sheets to the wind, and it looks like I won for tonight." Thom pulled out his cell and took a ten-second video of Rehka, who was still oblivious to the luck she'd just rained on Thom.

His insurance complete, he snapped his phone closed.

“That’s so…callous. And awesome," I grinned at him, happy we’d found some common ground. “So, you guys bet on the girls often?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to earn you some spare cash.”

“Thanks." Thom put on extra speed around a corner so he could hear Rehka squeal and laugh.

We pulled up in front of Hole in the Wall Saloon, and Rehka teetered dangerously out of the car, swinging around to lean in the driver’s door.

“Thooooommm! You are soooo-OOOO cuuu-UTE!” she wailed, an ice cream truck song, echoing down the street.

“See you in 45, Rehka. Keep your phone close,” he called out.

We jetted back over to the Haight/Ashbury district, rich with the history of consciousness-altering dating back 40 years. The lines those hippies crossed, the ideas they fought for, the discomfort and changes they made to themselves and the world around them, live on in the brick and concrete of the area, both symbolically and literally in the colorful stains of the sidewalks. I could see the tradition of littering the area with broken boundaries had sadly carried on by the children and grandchildren of those radical fighters.

Being in the Haight was like the one-trick pony at the circus: it was old, and you pitied the creature, but you didn’t expect it to be anything other than an old, tired pony that smelled like old hash/donkey sex, with a saggy knit hat and a dirty blanket thrown over its back. Maybe a tie-dyed blanket; it depended on whether you were in the Upper or Lower Haight. Despite these feelings, or maybe in an effort to re-capture the purity of the time before, the moth-drawing, magnetic quality of this famous place brought people here.

Thom slowed down as we the reached the top of Haight Street, just outside the entrance to Golden Gate Park. He eased into a parking space in front of a bar with double doors and an orange neon sign. I glanced back behind us at one of my favorite touristy attractions in the Haight: Kan Zaman Café. They had belly dancers, hookahs and wonderful food there. It had been one of my first and happiest experiences moving to San Francisco; it had seemed so exotic and lively to me. I felt a little happier knowing I might get to go in there on this run.

Thom went through the same steps that we did before with the Post-It, and gestured to the double doors. “You’ll start here at Milk Bar, then move on to the rest on the list. This is a shorter run; you’ll only have 20 minutes. I’ll be back to take you to the rest.”

Standing outside Milk Bar, something about the name made me hate it already. I wasn’t as nervous as I had been when I started, but I also didn’t feel like I was going to do very well with the clientele. Just a hunch.

I opened the door and took in the white tables, white walls and pastel lighting along the skinny bar. Even though it was a Friday night, there were only eight people in the whole place, though they were well into party mode. My first instinct was correct: the vibe was awful. I made a cursory pass to the customers, but their noses were already turned up by the time I got to them. No sales; time to hit the next one.

My next location, Alembic, felt more like something I could work with. It was wedged between the Red Vic movie theater and the beginning of the mixed-bag businesses that pepper the lower Haight. These start with a generic Tibetan import store named Land of the Sun, followed by a whole lineup of stores that cater to a schizophrenic taste in clothes and accessories: rockabilly/West Coast Swing gives way to Classic/Purist Hippie, followed by cutting-edge Suburban College Uniform, which only sells one white and two plain cream t-shirts (with a waiting list for those three shirts). The white one had a penguin on it.

I stepped into Alembic and broke into a big smile. They were playing a great song on the loudspeakers, and I paused a moment to enjoy the music. As I began to scope the room, a guy immediately jumped up to come over to me. He was so grateful to find some minty gum because he was feeling lucky with his second date; he tipped me well and bought her some chocolate. After that, working the room was pretty easy. Even when people didn’t buy, they were still incredibly friendly. I left the bar feeling really good.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I headed down the street, carefully not making eye contact with the various transients and homeless, as there were some dangerous addicts in the Haight. Now that I was carrying some cash, it made me feel exposed. Having a 25-pound, awkward load balanced on my hips and hanging around my neck, along with the bulk of the neck pillow, made it hard for me to keep my eye on all corners.

I continued my sales in Zam Zam but passed by Hobson’s Choice, since it was not listed on my Post-It note. As I headed on to the Gold Cane, I pondered why some bars didn’t have a deal with the company, and whether I should stop in and give it a try anyway.

My sales after Alembic weren’t exactly amazing, but I had some great interactions and received some nice compliments. The bars were mostly filled with regulars, rather than tourists or shoppers, which seemed to make for a laid-back feel that was very easy to blend into. One older lady was very excited by my Superman pez dispenser, and showed her appreciation with a tip and a spontaneous hug.

Finishing my run, I doubled back to the spot where Thom said he would meet me, and I made it on time. He rewarded me with a begrudging smile, and we took off down Haight Street towards downtown.

“SoMa?” I asked simply.

“Yep, Rehka’s too drunk.”

“Ah.”

Thom was quiet on the drive, but seemed more comfortable, less tense. I decided to attempt some conversation.

“So, why exactly do you smell even better than my dad’s cinnamon rolls on Saturday morning?” I started gently, giving him an encouraging smile.

Thom laughed, and relaxed slightly.

“I work at a bakery when I’m not here. It’s what I really love to do. But the hours between both jobs make for a damn long day, so I often run out of patience by the time I get here,” he admitted.

“I take it the bakery doesn’t pay you enough to live on?”

“The money’s okay, but I’ve had some big expenses in the last year, so I’m driving you girls around to make ends meet.”

“Wow, that’s intense. Doesn’t leave you much time for sex and rock-n-roll,” I joked.

Thom was silent for a long while, so long that I thought I might have overstepped my bounds.

“Yeah. But I have to do it,” he mumbled. It seemed like he was shutting down, so I backed off and changed the subject.

We talked about other parts of the job: the company history, the owner, the routes and the general take on holidays. Thom was actually quite pleasant when he wasn’t being prickly. He jabbed playfully now that we weren’t talking about him, and I was glad I backed off of whatever was making him uncomfortable.

We moved quickly across the city, and soon we were South of Market. Thom dropped me off with another list of bars, and said he’d be back in an hour. He gave me a smile as I smoothly exited his hellish yellow turd of a car. I was getting the hang of it, and it seemed I’d passed some sort of test in his eyes. I think that Thom just wanted some respect. That’s not hard from where I sit, but it made me sad that he hadn’t been getting much of it before now.

As I moved toward my first stop, Icon Lounge, I reflected that this should be the more profitable part of the night. It was getting close to rowdy o’clock — that time around midnight when many people get their second wind, stepping up their games to get lucky. The first sheen of makeup and cologne has worn off, the first layer stripped away. The dance was what mattered.

And now that I knew the basic steps, no one was keeping me off the dance floor.

As I finished up at Acme, I reflected on the whirlwind that had been the past hour. At Icon Lounge the patrons had all been really brassy, and practiced a contrary, friendly-yet-insulting nature. I didn't get very far showing respect; in fact, I found that the more I tried to push people’s buttons, the better my sales had been. I was learning that it was a game to them, the one-upmanship: how intelligent was the cute girl who’s peddling her wares? I’d seen the dumb girls at the bar getting crushed to a pulp socially, ignored and jeered at for being exactly what they appeared to be: arm candy.

I'd been keeping up my ‘It’s my first night’ line, which sounded cheesy, but it was earning me more tips. A number of people asked me what happened to Rehka; she was apparently a regular on this run. Her customers all laughed knowingly when I told them that she was “indisposed." In the short time since she’d started, she’d already left a strong impression.

I was yanked back to the present as a guy grabbed my arm and leaned in to whisper to me. His breath was so pungent, I nearly gagged. He was dressed sharp, but his eyes were hostile. “All you girls are the same…seducing us, tricking us, manip-…." He lost track of what he’s saying; he was so busy trying to hold himself upright by leaning on my arm, tightening his grip painfully.

“Manipulating?” I said sarcastically. I figured he wouldn’t hear the tone, but he was starting to piss me off.

“Yeah, exactly! ManIPulating us into believing that you care, when yuuurr just waiting to RIP our heaaarts right out…" he trailed off, looking in the direction of the street where the main door was.

“Miss, is this man bothering you?”

I heard a deep rumbling thunder, and looked toward the door for what I assumed would be a thunderstorm outside. Bizarre, the weatherman had predicted a mild evening.

The voice cut across the hall as a figure strode toward me, almost casually. It was one of those moments where everything appeared to be easy-going, but in actuality, a fight was about to break out.

I was looking at one of the biggest men I’d ever seen: a bouncer built like a two-story brick doghouse, all muscle and the towering certainty that goes with it. He was wearing a perfectly cut black blazer over a bright blue shirt stretched taut over his chest, complete with tailored black pants and big black shoes. I mean, a girl has to catch her breath for a moment, because lordie, those are some big black shoes.

“Miss, is this man disturbing you?” he repeated, leaning down toward me, with concern and menace. I hoped the menace wasn’t meant for me.

“He really is,” I said, in what I hoped was an I could-take-care-of-this-myself, but-wouldn’t-it-be-so-much-cooler-if-you-did-it tone of voice. A tone of voice that conveyed confidence, intelligence, female fragility, and the guarantee that my panties just dropped.

I thought I was starting to get the hang of how this worked.

Before I could even draw my next breath, Big Black Shoes had grabbed Slurred Speech and thrown him bodily down the hall. Though the movement was impressive, what was even more so was that he didn’t even look, he just bowled him down the hall, and we both watched him skid to the door with a small fwoomp as his head lightly concussed the doorframe.

Big Black Shoes turned back to me and gave me a wide grin. “I’m really glad he was. I needed that excuse. And he needed to meet the floor, not you. You? You are meant for me."

This entire speech was delivered with such density and rumbling, I thought I was caught in some sort of audio avalanche. I guess if we were to tumble into bed, he would likely shatter my eardrums. I took a second look down, and considered it worth my life.

“My name is Vincent. And you should know, since I’ve never seen you before, that while you are in this place, I’m looking after you. Always." He gave me a wink and walked away, headed back to the front door, looking every bit the protective sphinx.

“I’m Pale!” I called after him. My own voice sounded ludicrous in the aftermath of those rolling syllables.

“Yes, you really are. I’ll see you next time, sugar." He chuckled to himself, giving a small wave of his hand over his departing shoulder.

He doesn’t know I’ve heard that a thousand times. But in his case, he can say it. All. Night. Long.