By JJ de Melo
To get to my job—where I spend my days rejecting expense reports submitted by the incompetent and the would-be corrupt—I take the L train crosstown to Civic Center, on the more bustling side of San Francisco. This morning, however, the Twin Peaks Tunnel was shut down for maintenance. Again.
I was forced to disembark the tram at the mouth of the tunnel—the “West Portal” we call it—where it normally slices through the base of Twin Peaks. I, along with the other commuters, was then shepherded by SFMTA staff onto a bus-shuttle-thing that would carry us in a crescendo over the intercity summit and back into the heart of downtown, where we all either worked or were otherwise shuffling to this A.M.
The single benefit to this impractical detour came at the peak of the rerouted journey. It was a clear morning—the fog had stayed offshore for once—leaving an unobstructed view of the city I served as a municipal financial analyst, a role in which I ensured the taxpayer dollar was spent without error or regulatory violation. The morning sun reflecting off the towering high rises renewed my passion to serve.
This bliss was brief.
We soon hit the beginnings of Market Street, where the passengers boarding the bus diversified. To put it lightly. The second we reached the makeshift, street-level stop that had replaced Castro Station, a rotund, ruddy man boarded the bus without paying—an increasingly irritable habit I’ve noticed among riders. The fare-evading man plopped himself down between two of my fellow commuters. He belched loudly. Then a liquor bottle appeared from oversized sweatpants. I recognized it to be a brand of dry vermouth, which felt particularly absurd to consume by itself at eight o’clock in the morning. He took a long swig straight from the spout.
I tried to ignore him.
A few stops later—the bus was packed at this point—more silent, zombie-like commuters joined us. That’s one thing I preferred since leaving New York: the San Francisco commute is quieter. Of course, an exception to that observation boarded soon after. A woman. With a shaved head. Sunken eyes. Her defining characteristic? Her lack of shoes. And it appeared she’d been without shoes for a very long time. Her otherwise pale feet were absolutely blackened to filth.
She entered through the back door. Without paying. Obviously. And to say she “boarded” the bus really puts it far too elegantly. I might actually say she stomped onto the vehicle. I was standing at this point—making room for more elderly riders—and she shoved right past me as she stormed in. Next thing I knew she had marched up to a petite, young woman—she looked to be fresh out of college—and was quite literally hissing at her. Glued to her phone up until the hiss, the young woman looked up at the barefoot one. Stunned. Terror painted her face.
“Give me your seat,” the barefoot woman growled.
The other woman shot up instantly and headed for the back of the bus. She also shoved me as she passed.
What was with all the shoving?
The seat free, the barefoot woman threw herself into it. Dared anyone else to say something. No one did. Myself included. But I couldn’t stop looking at her either. This barefoot woman. As the bus rolled along, I found myself questioning the label I’d mentally demarcated her with. Did her lack of shoes really define her?
I mean, she was clearly homeless. Was she better described as the homeless woman? No, wait. Unhoused woman. Or was she a woman experiencing homelessness? Houselessness? Whatever it was you were supposed to say these days. I made note to look that up again. There’d been an e-mail about this at work. And I do try to stay on top of these things, working for the city. Optics and all that.
So, as I was saying, this homeless, unhoused, woman experiencing homelessness has hissed her way into a seat. And it happened to be right across the aisle from the man partaking in a bottle of morning vermouth en route. He too found himself entranced by the hissing woman. His gray, bloodshot eyes diverged in their expression. The right maintained an intoxicated glaze. The left twinkled with a predatory shine.
He scratched his stubbly chin. Belched shamelessly. And said, “Hey.” How eloquent.
The unhoused, barefoot woman glanced at him. She broke eye contact quickly.
“Hey, girl,” he called again.
A hissed “What?” followed.
“You need shoes?” he nodded coolly at her feet.
He must have been handsome once. A cool nod and a pickup line probably used to work for him. Before he was drunk on a bus drinking vermouth in a faded Niners jersey and sweatpants. Wreaking of alcohol and body odor. Preying upon a shaved-headed woman with no shoes.
She wasn’t impressed. She just stared back at him. Dumbfounded. Looking quite like the petite, younger woman she’d scared out of the same seat moments ago. I presumed the woman’s hissing behavior earned her a sort of apex predator status amongst the city’s transit riders. She’d grown used to being yielded to by the likes of myself. This drunken man defied that status quo.
“Come on, girl,” he slurred. “Lemme buy you some shoes.”
The bus screeched to a halt. Outside a man was beating the side of the bus with a bright, yellow umbrella, despite the sunny day. He was yelling, insisting the driver let him on even though I’m quite certain this particular intersection wasn’t a shuttle stop. The driver decided to reward the uncivilized, bashing behavior by opening the back door.
Before the umbrella’ed man could board, the barefoot woman was storming out the bus. She avoided addressing vermouth man as she departed. She did, however, growl at me and anyone else even remotely close to the exit. Then she leapt off, landing on her dirtied feet like some escaped zoo animal before darting across a lane of traffic to reach the main sidewalk.
I’m not sure what compelled me at that moment. But I followed her off the bus. I needed to help her, I think. If I could.
This was new for me.
I waited patiently for the traffic signal to flash the little walking man before I crossed from the bus median to the sidewalk. It took me a moment, so I had to hustle to catch the unhoused, shaved-headed woman with no shoes. She was surprisingly speedy, though I was back on her tail soon enough. Sensing physical contact might upset her, I made sure to get her attention verbally.
“Excuse me!”
She continued walking. Feet slapping on the pavement.
“Hey!” I wasn’t sure how to address her. “Hey, lady!” Lady? Did I really say that?
She stopped. Turned to stare at me. She seemed upset that I’d broken her stride. I wondered where she was going anyway.
“I… uh,” I muttered. “I saw you on the bus and… I noticed you don’t have any shoes.”
She looked me up and down. “So?”
“Well, I…” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. “I’d like to help get you some.”
She scowled at me. The expression felt more confused than anything. I kept talking. Tried to explain.
“Would you like that?” I asked. “I work for the city. I know this support service that–”
“What shoe size are you?”
“Huh?” Now I was confused. I didn’t need shoes. I answered anyway. “Size 8.”
“Small feet for a man.” She was staring at them now.
“What?”
She looked me dead in the eyes, said, “That’ll work.”
And she punched me in the throat.
My vision turned to stars. I keeled over. Grasped at my neck.
I was struggling so hard to breathe through the pain—to breathe at all!—that I could do nothing else as she untied my laces and slipped my shoes right off me. Writhing on the ground as she pulled them onto her two bare feet. My business casual loafers looked ridiculous on her.
She clomped a few steps in them. They were a little loose. She removed them. Peeled my socks off too. Put everything back on. She took a few more cursory steps. Shrugged in satisfaction at the improved fit with the addition of my socks.
All through it I was wheezing on the floor like an asthmatic. She didn’t pay me any mind as she ran off, stomping in the same direction to the same nameless destination as before. Defeated, I laid there. Catching my breath as she returned to the wild.
A passerby walked up a moment later. He looked down at me, flat out on the sidewalk. He didn’t offer to help me up or anything. Just asked me what happened.
“Some homeless lady stole my shoes!”
* * *
JJ de Melo is a queer, Filipino-American and Portuguese writer with creative writing training from the City College of San Francisco. He’s had work published in Fiction on the Web, Space & Time, Sci-Fi Shorts, and Literally Stories. In 2025, he won the editor’s choice award for fiction from Forum Magazine.