Wild Awake

pound. The white lettering on the awning says MONEY FOOD ENTERPRISES, which I find impressive in its bluntness. In my neighborhood, even stores that sell nothing but lotto tickets and flavored cigars have names like Willowtree Natural and Organic Market. As I ride past on my bicycle, I can see old people with canvas shopping bags moving around the bins of dried fish and mushrooms, chatting in Mandarin.
    Past MONEY FOOD ENTERPRISES, Columbia Street extends into Chinatown proper, with the pagoda-style roofs and dragon flags and a zillion little stores selling paper lanterns and mysterious plastic cooking utensils of indeterminate function. There’s a restaurant piping out the twangs and trills of Chinese opera, and old ladies in floppy hats pushing fold-up trolleys down the sidewalk.
    I ride up and down the block a few times, looking for the gallery. When I can’t find it, I cruise down East Pender. No dice. There’s a vacant lot that worries me, surrounded by a newly erected chain-link fence. I wonder if they’ve relocated, if the old building’s been torn down. I pause next to the curb and call Doug’s number, which I carefully programmed into my phone before leaving the house. It rings interminably, just like the three other times I tried to call him this morning.
    Where Columbia meets East Pender, there’s a small grassy park with cherry trees, an overflowing garbage can, and a few benches. I put away my phone and ride past the park very slowly, trying to figure out what to do. There are some people lounging on the grass under the cherry trees, two men and a woman, listening to music on a yellow plastic waterproof radio and passing around a tall brown bottle in a paper bag. Their shopping carts are parked next to the bench, piled high with clothing and recyclables. I’m biking so slowly it’s obvious I’m either lost or looking for something, and one of the men calls out, “Whatcha looking for, honey?”
    I stop and put one foot on the curb to stay upright. The sun’s so bright I have to shield my eyes to look at them.
    The man looks me up and down and chuckles. His skin is tanned to the color of old pennies, and he has ropy muscles like when he’s not busy boozing he spends all his free time pumping iron.
    “Your boyfriend run off on ya, sweetie?”
    The woman sitting beside him punches him on the arm.
    “Don’t give her a hard time, Don. She’s a baby.”
    She’s wearing a pink corduroy jacket with fake fur around the collar, and she has the same round face and big boobs as my mom.
    “I’m trying to find this art space,” I say.
    “The what? Speak up, baby.”
    “There’s supposed to be an art space here. Somewhere on this block.”
    I feel awkward standing on the curb like this, squinting into the sun, shouting at her over the traffic noise like a dumb tourist asking for directions to Stanley Park. But I don’t feel comfortable going onto the grass, either. It somehow feels private, like a front porch or a living room, and I’m reluctant to get any closer without an invitation.
    Fake Fur Woman nudges her companion in the ribs.
    “She’s looking for the art museum, Don. You’re in the wrong place, baby. You gotta take the number nineteen bus all the way downtown and get off at Granville. The bus stops right over there. You can stick your bike on the front, they got racks.”
    She’s giving me directions to the big modern art gallery downtown. I squirm. It would be useless to explain. Instead, I nod and look where she’s pointing.
    “Okay, thanks. You guys have a good one.”
    “Take care of yourself, baby.”
    The guy named Don says something I can’t make out, and I hear Fake Fur Woman telling him to shut up and be nice to that little girl. “She’s looking for the art museum , Don!”
    I wave good-bye to them and go a little farther down East Pender, scanning the storefronts for anything resembling the brick warehouse where Sukey had her show. There’s a smoke shop and a convenience store, but nothing with the scuffed white door I remember. Then I come to some apartment buildings and a parking garage.
    A parking garage like the one we circled the neighborhood for half an hour looking for on the night of Sukey’s show.
    I hurry back to the convenience store and ask the old Punjabi guy at the counter if he knows of an art space in the area. He glares at me like I’ve just asked if I can use the employees-only bathroom and shakes his head, muttering, “No.”
    I wander down