There are parts of my city it's not safe to walk through, not at certain times of the night. I forget this sometimes.
Tonight, for instance. I was walking home from a downtown party. I'd had two Cosmos and three glasses of wine. I took a left turn when I should have kept going.
On Ellis street, after midnight, there's a gathering of dozens of men. All of them black men, lining both edges of the sidewalk for a full city block. I don't know what it is they do there. Some have all their possessions with them; some just seem to be hanging out. It's not a good time to be strolling around, not if you're a girl, alone, from another neighborhood. I knew this, but it had slipped my mind.
When I saw where I was I didn't turn around. I just ducked my head and walked a bit faster. I was twenty men deep when they started to holler. "Baby girl," "princess." There was someone in front of me. I didn't feel like looking behind me. I glanced up at him and smiled a little, and said the first thing that came to my mind.
"Evenin'."
"Evenin'," he snorted. "Evenin'! I like that!" And suddenly he was yelling: "GET OUT OF THE WAY OF THE IRISH GIRL! Get OUTTA the WAY of the SCOTTISH REDHEAD!"
And they did, they parted like wine, and I walked through them smiling all the way home.
The Frisco Kid is generally to be found all likkered up and spoiling for a fight. She's a sexy Wild West gunslinger in the great tradition of Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane, only a little less with the sharpshooting and a little more with the booze-fueled marathons of Star Trek and sodomy.