Pecking Order One Downtown San Diego BETWEEN THE HOURS of eight and nine PM on a Thursday evening, a black Nissan Altima traveled through light traffic, heading southbound on Interstate 5 toward downtown San Diego. Overhead, a US Airways commercial airplane zoomed down toward San Diego International Airport, less than a mile west of the highway. And as the sun continued to make its descent across the far west side of the Pacific Ocean, the night lights of San Diego''s downtown skyline began to flicker into an evening glow. Inside the fairly clean two-year-old Altima was dead silence. The driver was not in the mood for music at the moment; too much else was on his mind. He checked the clock on the dashboard for the fifth time to make sure he was still on schedule for his date at Hooters on Fourth Avenue. He wasn''t particularly in the mood for flirty young women serving drinks, burgers, chicken wings, and fries in skimpy orange shorts with white tank tops. But a commitment was a commitment, so he continued on his way.
Exiting the highway on Second Avenue, the black Altima traveled southbound toward Horton Plaza, a downtown shopping center with a multilevel parking garage. When he arrived at the garage entrance, the driver stopped and rolled down his window to receive a ticket at the gate. He then accelerated past the rows of parked cars to find an open space. Once he had found a parking spot on the third level of the garage, the driver checked the time for a final countdown. It was 8:43 PM. "Right on time," he mumbled. He climbed out of the car and straightened out his button-up shirt of light blue pinstripes. His pants were dark blue denim, and his shoes were soft brown leather.
He had dressed down on purpose for a casual date. At 8:47, Ivan David strolled out of the parking garage exit. He was a light brown black man of medium build and medium height, with light brown hair and multicolored eyes. Some people described his eyes as rainbows, with rings of color from blue to light brown to green. He looked around for a second to peruse his surroundings and sniff the downtown air. The nighttime temperature was at seventy degrees. Perfect. As soon he stepped out into the street to cross it, a yellow Ferrari Spider raced around the corner from his left and forced him to freeze.
Shit! Do I move forward or backward? Ivan asked himself. He had already made it halfway across the street. Move back, he decided. As soon as he stepped out of the way, the yellow Ferrari sped past him with a California license plate that read TOO SLOW. Ivan got the message and grinned. "Maybe I am," he grunted before continuing across. Hooters was two blocks away. Ivan proceeded to enjoy his evening stroll past the young and old couples who walked in and out of the restaurants that populated San Diego''s downtown strip.
"I''ll have a glass of Chardonnay," a gray-haired businessman ordered at his outside table at Buenos Días Café. His young-as-a-daughter date sat across their small table with a controlled smile. Ivan looked into her calculating green eyes and wondered whether she loved her older man or his older money. The dirty-blond beauty looked up at him momentarily, as if to read his skepticism. Then she looked away, unconcerned by it. Ivan chuckled to himself as he passed them by, outside the waist-high black iron gate that separated their table from the sidewalk. All he could think about was the numbers game: a fifty-two-year-old man, earning a mid to high six figures, and a twenty-eight-year-old date, earning a low five figures. "I gotta stop thinking like an accountant," he reminded himself as he walked.
When he arrived at Hooters and stepped inside, he blinked and readjusted his eyes. Damn. The bright orange was enough to blind a man. "Hey, Ivan, over here." He turned to his left and spotted Catherine Boone, an old friend and fling from his undergrad days at San Diego State. She wore a lime-green dress, full of cleavage and curves, with matching lime-green heels. Her hair was shoulder length and straight, ideal for no-nonsense business. Her medium brown skin remained flawless.
As she stood up from her chair and table to greet him with an open hug, Ivan could see and feel that she had put on a good ten to twenty pounds of maturity. "Whoa, you''re filling out a little bit," he told her. She smiled. "And?" He hesitated. "And, what?" "And, what does that mean?" Women were finicky about their appearance. So Ivan remained coy. "I don''t know. You tell me," he responded.
Catherine broke away. "Ivan, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Because I like my new weight. I always thought I was too skinny in college." "You thought you were skinny?" "Yeah, you didn''t think so?" Catherine sat back down. Ivan sat in the chair across the table from her. He shook his head and answered, "No, not really. Your weight was always fine to me." Catherine grinned at him.
"It''s good to see that you''re still the same Ivan. You''re as vague and as noncommittal as ever. And no new girlfriend yet, right?" Ivan smiled back. "I like keeping my concentration." Catherine grinned even harder. "Are we that bad, Ivan? I mean, really?" She got all serious and stopped smiling. She wanted a sincere answer from him. A Hooters waitress broke them out of their groove before Ivan could grant her wish.
"Welcome to Hooters, my name is Claudia." She immediately wrote her name down on a Hooters napkin in front of them. She was a breezy brunette in the bright white and orange uniform. "Are you guys ready to order yet?" The Hooters menu sat out in front of them on the tabletop. Ivan frowned and squinted his eyes. "Ahh.I really didn''t get a chance to look at the menu yet." "I''ll have a beer and some fries," Catherine ordered overtop of him.
"Okay," the brunette perked. She wrote it down on her order pad. Then she looked back at Ivan. "I''ll be right back in a minute," she promised him. Ivan nodded. "All right." As soon as the waitress left them, Catherine changed her tone and reached her gentle hands across the table to place over Ivan''s. "I''m sorry to hear about your mother," she told him.
She had compassion in her dark brown eyes. She had heard about his mother''s funeral in Los Angeles through mutual friends. But her apology caught Ivan off guard. He froze for a second and daydreamed in her direction, before he shook it off and looked away. He grunted, "It was gonna happen sooner or later." He looked back into her eyes to finish his statement. "When you got any form of cancer, you''re fighting it to win or fighting it to lose." Catherine squeezed his hands tighter.
"I know how much she meant to you." "Yeah," Ivan grumbled. Then he forced himself to perk up. He said, "But the good thing she told me was to go ahead and live my life now, you know. I mean, I had been holding on for so long." "I know," Catherine responded. She remembered it through their college years. Ivan''s mother had begged him several times each semester to stay away from home in South Central L.
A. to finish his schooling in San Diego. She knew that her illness would be too much of a strain on him at home. And when he was offered an accounting job at the firm of Hutch & Mitchell in North Clairemont, his mother advised him to take it and stay there. Now Ivan felt guilty about everything. Although returning home may not have changed the end result, he would have at least been able to see his mother more before she was confined to her deathbed. Finally, he pulled his hands away from Catherine at the table. "Look, we''re not here to talk about that.
So, what''s up with this new job you got?" he asked her, changing the subject. Catherine nodded and followed his lead. She wanted to make sure she got her empathy out of the way early. She had other plans for them that evening. "Well, I may be moving back to the San Diego area if everything goes right," she told him. She was originally from Sacramento. She said, "I had my interview this morning in Oceanside, but I made sure they put me up in a downtown San Diego hotel instead of all the way out there." Then she giggled.
"I can get my way when I want it." Ivan sat back in his chair and smiled. "Yeah, I know it already." Catherine was a whiner, beggar, wheeler-dealer, or whatever else it took to get her way. She had worked her magic all throughout college as a business management major. And she was always in the middle of things. Before she could get another word out, her conversation with Ivan was interrupted again. "Hey, Ivan David.
What''s going on, man?" Ivan turned to his right and looked up. He''d recognize the Spanish-American accent with the rapid-fire tongue anywhere. It was Emilio Alvarez, an excitable rookie shortstop for the San Diego Padres. "Hey, what''s going on, E.A.?" Ivan addressed him with an outstretched hand. They had met a few months ago at the accounting firm offices. Emilio was a new Hutch & Mitchell client of Dominican descent from Texas.
He was as brown as Catherine, with jet-black wavy hair. A happy-faced date stood attached to his right arm. She was as light as Ivan, with straight brown hair, and was Mexican. "Hey, y.