I barely remember Augie Boyer, although I saw him numerous times, years ago, at Bobby Sabbatini’s poetry church in Guerneville. Boyer, a stout, disheveled looking detective, had actually taken over the church for a short period after the attack on Sabbatini, but I’d stopped attending the church by then. Yesterday he called out of the blue about a month-old murder he was investigating, just outside of Sonoma in Boyes Hot Springs.

I’d read about the killing in the Sonoma Index-Tribune. The victim had been a server at The Girl and the Fig, a man called Jesus—a hard-to-forget moniker—whose surname, of Latino origin, I’ve forgotten. All I recall from the newspaper’s profile of Jesus is that he was a graduate of Sonoma Valley High, had overcome a drug addiction, and was leading a productive life along the straight and narrow. I can’t remember any mention of how the victim was killed or anything about the investigation. I assumed, in my ignorance, that the case was drug related. Pina and I had talked briefly about the murder, because they are so rare in this area; you see a killing occasionally in Santa Rosa or Fairfield, but not in Sonoma Valley. Neither of us could recall a waiter named Jesus.

Augie Boyer wanted to come out to Sonoma and ask me a few questions about the case. I didn’t see how I could help him, as I didn’t know the victim and had no connections in Boyes Hot Springs.

“Have you eaten at The Girl and the Fig in the last three years?” Boyer asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then maybe you’d recognize the victim. Perhaps he even waited on you.”

“Yes, but I don’t see . . .”

“Our mutual friend, Sabbatini, says you have an uncanny way of bringing clarity to difficult situations and, damn it, Charlie, I could use a little clarity after going around in circles the last few weeks. There are a couple of things I’d like to show you.”

I asked Boyer if he was working with the sheriff’s department and he laughed in a way that sounded as if that was an absurd idea. “No, no, I’m working for a private party.”

I agreed to meet him this afternoon in the square and he left me with a haiku that sent a chill:

Murder, Boyes Hot Spring:

strung up with black Rhino rope,

a dude named Jesus.

Meanwhile, I sent Sally the four videos of Roscoe I’d just finished editing this morning.

She responded quickly by email: “These spots are too generic. Where are Roscoe’s appeals to voters about the Georgia senate races? Where is his outrage re Trump pardoning his mob of criminal loyalists, about blocking the stimulus package and leaving millions of Americans to starve? Where’s the strategy, the political will, the urgency, the relevance? What you’ve made are feel-good ads, and feel-good is so twentieth century. Get a spine, pops.”

I decided to not respond and pretty soon Sally started to call. There seemed no reason to answer. Then the texts started flying and I turned off the sound. No way I was going to be terrorized by my daughter.

Walking to the square I got nervous—I remembered that the murdered Jesus had a history with drugs. Did Sally know him, know people who knew him? Anything was possible. Why else, I wondered, would detective Boyer want to see me?

I didn’t recognize the man when I got to the appointed spot in the park, but he came straight toward me. He’d either changed completely or I was thinking of another man. This guy had spiked red hair, wore platinum hoop earrings, and Ray-Ban aviators; he also appeared significantly lighter than the chubby man I remembered. The detective, if this was he, even appeared to have gained height, but his houndstooth Converse platforms may have accounted for that. The high-tops reminded me of Gita in her saffron Chuckies, and our brief tryst in San Francisco. She’s called a few times since but I haven’t picked up. If I’d only applied that strategy to the detective.

The guy wore a light tweed sport coat and pressed jeans, which, along with the hoop earrings, gave him the look of a pirate on his way to church. He stopped ten feet from me and I decided it had to be Augie Boyer because his facemask featured a haiku:

Winter evening—

 It is not a piece of cake

 To be born human.

“Good to see you, Charlie. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

I nodded to Boyer.

“I know, how could you recognize me, Charlie? My wife Quince gave me a makeover. She wanted a little more edge from her man. What could I say; I adore the woman. I also lopped off fifty pounds, became a vegan, and jump rope every morning for forty-five minutes. Quince seems happy with the transformation, but I’m in perpetual mourning: I miss my hamburgers; I miss my baby back ribs. I woke yesterday morning from a dream of fried chicken, a platter of it with pork-braised collards.” The detective looked down at the ground like a man beset with grief. Of all things, he wore a display hankie in his breast pocket, monogrammed 5-7-5, the syllabic count of a haiku.

“I like your mask,” I said.

“It’s quite a bastardization of the original haiku by Issa.” Now he gazed at me intently. “But you, you look great, Charlie. Fit as a fiddle. Hey, that would make a decent first line for a haiku. Let’s see:

Fit as a fiddle

in the middle of the plague,

he counts his blessings.

“That’s my new thing—the speed-haiku. When we get to the end of the plague, I’ll be hosting speed-haiku slams, doing my best to promote the American vernacular. In summer contestants will be encouraged to wear their Speedos. I think it will be very popular with the post-Millennials. I bet they bring amazing velocity to their haikus, with vernacular that we can’t even imagine.”

It occurred to me that Augie Boyer had turned into a full-fledged nut case in the years since I’d seen him.

Sensing that he was losing me, he said, “But back to you, Charlie—I remember you and your daughter from the church. Sally, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.” Here we go, I thought.

“And now you have Roscoe. ‘Roscoe here.’ He’s a marvelous manipulation, Charlie. I don’t know how you get him to look so real. If you’d only get him to recite haikus, the whole world might start writing them.”

Little did this chump detective know that Roscoe could compose his own.

“Oh, before I forget, Bobby and Blossom send their fond regards, and Bobby wants you to know that your one-syllable idea for his talking machine has been invaluable.”

“Glad to hear it.” I led Boyer to a bench near the duck pond. Once we were seated, the detective unzipped his canvas briefcase and pulled out a photograph.     “Do you recognize him?”

“That’s Jesus?”

“Yes, before he was crucified.”

“He was crucified?”

“Well, I’m not sure about the technical requirements of a crucifixion. If you need to be nailed to a cross, then this Jesus doesn’t qualify. He was bound to two pillars in his family’s basement, with weighted jump rope, the same kind I use. Don’t tell anybody about that, Charlie, or they’ll come looking for me.” Boyer sniggered at his little joke. “But the poor guy’s arms were stretched out just like he was on the cross. You’d think they’d bring in the FBI to look at this as a religious killing—guy named Jesus strung up like that.”

“So it wasn’t the jump rope that killed him.”

“Nope, it wasn’t the rope.” The detective was in no hurry to tell me how Jesus died.

“So do you recognize him, Charlie?”

I looked again at the photo. “Matter of fact, I do. I haven’t been to The Fig during the pandemic, but he’s waited on me before.”

“Notice anything particular about him?”

“He was business like, not the overly friendly type server.”

“Anything else?”

I shook my head and gazed down at Boyer’s absurd houndstooth hi-tops.

“Was English his first language?”

“I believe so.”

“Have you seen him around town, Charlie?”

“Can’t say I have.”

The detective’s next question frightened me: “Do you have any reason to believe that Jesus had anything to do with your friend Pina?”

“Pina?”

“Yes, Pina.”

I expected him to say Sally, but not Pina.

“Have a look at this.” Boyer pulled a Girl and the Fig restaurant check from his briefcase. Nothing about it seemed remarkable. “Flip it over.”

I took the check and did just as the spike-haired detective said. The backside, in careful, looping handwriting, looked like this:

Pina

Pina

Pina

Pina

Pina

Pina

“Does the handwriting look familiar to you?” Boyer asked. He was watching me closely now. In shock after seeing the written repetitions, I simply shook my head.

“The handwriting is very deliberate. Very neat, wouldn’t you say? Almost fastidious.”

Again, I nodded.

“You can see that the writer strove to make each Pina identical to the others, which signifies I know not what, although it may underscore an obsessive tendency. Pina is not a common name, is it, Charlie?”

“No.”

“But it’s your girlfriend’s name. She lives with you in Sonoma and her favorite restaurant is The Girl and the Fig.”

“True, but I don’t understand the connection to the murder.”

“Maybe there is none. Maybe the customer, who Jesus waited on, just chose the word at random. Maybe the guy was thinking about another Pina when he doodled the name repeatedly.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a man. The handwriting looks like a woman’s.”

“You can’t tell these days, Charlie. It could be transgender handwriting, for all we know, but I’m betting it’s a man’s, a very special man.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you end up with the check?”

Boyer rocked his head sideways and I watched his hoop earrings jiggle. “How did I end up with the check? A lot of schmoozing and, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me, a good deal of hard work.”

“I still don’t get the connection between the handwriting and the murder.”

“What if I tell you that Jesus disrespected this customer?”

“Is that what happened?”

“Could be.”

It began to feel like I’d fallen into a surreal mystery with Joe Pesci as the detective. Boyer looked at his watch and then pulled a lidded tube out of his pocket. “Hope you don’t mind, it’s my cocktail hour.” He shook a joint from the tube and lit it. After taking a few tokes, always blowing the smoke away from me, he said, “Sorry to not be able to share it, Charlie. That’s yet another casualty of the virus, what my friend Coolican calls peace pipe phobia.” The detective dropped his hot joint back into the tube, capped it, and slipped it all back into his pocket. When he noticed my surprise, he said, “The flame needs oxygen to maintain, just as my suppositions need some form of corroboration to stay kindled.”

“I don’t see how I can help with that.”

“And if I told you that the disrespected customer waited until the end of Jesus’s shift and followed him home to Boyes Hot Springs, and attacked

him . . . ”

“This is more supposition?” I asked.

“Except for the fact—and I don’t want to upset you, Charlie, because this is a very disturbing crime—except for the fact that the name Pina was also carved into the victim’s back.”

“That actually happened?”

Boyer nodded and lowered his eyes. “The handwriting match isn’t identical; the back version is roughly twice the size as the names on the restaurant check, and I think one has to make exceptions—again, this is very upsetting—given the difference of writing with pen on paper and knife on flesh.”

I stood up, not to leave, but in an involuntary response to the horror that Boyer described.

“I know how upsetting this must be, Charlie.”

I sat back down. “Why Pina?” I asked in exasperation.

“That’s what I want to know. I hear she’s a very attractive woman.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I agree, it shouldn’t, but once in a while you get a sociopath who fixates on what he knows he can’t get.”

“Do you think Pina’s in danger?”

“If she were my wife, I wouldn’t let her out of the house for the time being.”

“You should speak with her old boyfriend.”

“Vince. Yes, I just met with him down at that food truck on Broadway, El Coyote. I knew that a Mexican food truck was unlikely to have vegan fare so I decided to emulate a Jewish fellow I know who won’t eat bacon in his house, but first chance he gets in a restaurant he’s talking BLT. Two carnitas tostadas with plenty of hot sauce later, I think I may be headed to an early grave. How are you with heartburn, Charlie?”

I ignored the question. Why the fuck did I have to listen to this joker go on about his digestion? “And Vince?”

“Yes, Vince. I met with him under false circumstances. Some times you have to do that. He doesn’t know what I told you. He sent some haikus into a contest I judge for 5-7-5 Magazine and I pretended he was one of the winners. Told him I wanted to meet him. Between you and me, Charlie, his haikus were for shit. But he’s the kind of guy that dicks like me dream about—all you need to do is flatter him. I told him that to make it personal we were collecting handwritten copies of the winning haikus, then I produced pen and paper, and he scrawled out his silly three lines. No way it was his Pina on the restaurant check. This quack has been knocking out cramped, illegible prescriptions for more than thirty years. And have you looked at his hands—knuckles twisted this way and that—that junkie’s got some serious arthritis.

“Yeah, I know all about Vince: his philandering; his fear and trembling as a doc; his subterranean journeys through the Tenderloin. I know how he wronged Pina in the past and how he took advantage of her recently after he got her drunk. I can only imagine how that made you feel, Charlie. I also know that he taunted you outside of the vegetable shack, and that you put him on the ground with a single punch; that’s enviable efficiency, Charlie.”

I could feel myself blush and wondered how Augie Boyer had found all this out.

“I took a distinct approach with him,” the detective continued. I let nothing out of the bag. The dude tried to flatter me, told me he admired my haiku book, Colloquial Man, which won the annual Seventeen Syllable Prize. I played a little speed haiku with him. The free-associations can be telling. Fed him the first line: He’s known as God’s son. Old Vince came back real flashy with, a messianic nightmare; I closed it out with: for nonbelievers.”

Boyer recited the haiku:

“He’s known as God’s son,

a messianic nightmare

for non-believers.

“Then it was Vince’s turn to commence. Man without courage, he said; I followed with, like an arthritic eunuch and he brought it home with, cries for his own soul.

Man without courage,

like an arthritic eunuch,

cries for his own soul.

“I started a final haiku for Vince: The woman I love; he came back quickly, was always too good for me; and then, in a switcheroonie, I asked him to finish it; the words must have been on his tongue: oh, how I miss her. You see, three speed-haikus tell you more about a man than a year on a therapist’s couch.

The woman I love

was always too good for me.

Oh, how I miss her. “

“So, what did you learn?” I asked, getting weary of Boyer’s hijinks.

“That Vince is a nonbeliever riven with guilt, but powerless to act, and that he’s sentimental about love, but incapable of it.” Augie Boyer pulled out his joint again and lit it. “My second martini. I’m incorrigible.” Again he blew the smoke away from me.

“So, what’s your next move, detective?”

“I’d like to speak with Pina, but I wanted to talk with you first, Charlie.”

“What do you want from her?”

“Just what you’d expect.” He holds his joint in the air. “To find out if she can think of anybody who’s obsessed with her.”

“Will you let me sit in with her when you meet?”

“You realize, Charlie, I have no legal means to compel Pina to talk with me. It’s a favor I’ll ask her, just as I asked you, but I believe it is to everybody’s benefit. By the time the sheriff’s department gets around to Pina, the killer might strike again.”

“You’re not going to play speed-haiku with Pina?” I asked, as a bad joke.

“I don’t see it as a game,” the detective said, slipping his joint back in its tube. “How about you, Charlie, you up for a quick round? Here’s the first line: The woman I love. What do you got?”

He was baiting me with the same hook he’d set for Vince. I spent some time thinking about the second line and Boyer finally barked at me: “It’s called speed-haiku, Charlie.”

“Has surprised me more than once,” I came back.

The detective said, “Why don’t you finish it, Charlie?”

With less deliberation this time, I said, “This winter alone.”

The detective recited the haiku:

“The woman I love

has surprised me more than once

this winter alone.

“Very nice, Charlie.”

Now this spike-haired creep was patronizing me. He opened his canvas case once more, pulled out a blank sheet of paper, and handed me a pen. “Would you mind writing it out, Charlie?”

For some reason I complied. I supposed I was now a suspect.

 

“Went through a rough stretch for awhile. That’s why you didn’t hear from me, Dad. The move from the Lost Coast was harder on me than I expected. I guess you could call it an identity crisis, you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t know. Anyway I got a little out of control there. Okay, a lot out of control. But I’m getting my shit together now.”

It was a little after noon and Sally and I were sitting across from each other in the Taste of Himalaya’s tented outside space. My daughter looked fresh, sassy, and even well rested. Given what she said, I puzzled over the fact that she hadn’t asked me for any money in the last weeks. Did that mean she was dealing or making money in some other illicit way? I could ask myself that question and worry about it if I wanted something new to agonize about, but I couldn’t ask her. Years ago, when I went to Al-anon meetings because of her mother’s alcoholism, I’d learned a popular boundary-building motto: Why am I talking? I knew one woman who tattooed the acronym WAIT on the inside of her wrist. The idea was to not pepper your qualifier with questions, just to listen and observe.

I did notice, among other things, that Sally’s hands were beautifully cared for. She had a white-tipped French manicure and elaborate designs hennaed on the backs of her palms. Just before the waiter arrived with our lunch platters, I told Sally how beautiful her hands were.

“Thanks, Dad. I thought it was a better idea to focus on my hands than my face, even though my face needs more help.”

“Your face doesn’t need any help, Sal. It’s beautiful.”

“Like your unbiased. How about the gap between my teeth?”

“It’s charming.”

Sally flashed me a silly gap-tooth smile, and then we went at our food. I got into trouble almost immediately. For some reason, I’d ordered my Shrimp Tikka Masala spicy. Usually I have it medium and struggle with the piquancy, but now it was blistering. I guzzled much of my Racer 5 in an effort to put out the fire. When that provided only short-term relief, I tried tamping down the heat by stuffing hunks of naan into my mouth. Sally, who ordered her Aloo Bantu, curried eggplant and potatoes, mild, started laughing at me. My eyes were running; so was my nose, which I blew into my already damp handkerchief.

“Drink a glass of milk, Dad.”

I nodded but, when the waiter passed by, I ordered another Racer 5.

“So just to finish up,” Sally said, stabbing a cube of eggplant with her fork, “I lost my job at Whole Foods but ended up with a gig at Sonoma Market. From one supermarket to another. You’d think they’d share information about personnel. When I got the second gig, I kept thinking of your cliché phrases. ‘The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.’ ‘Never a twain shall meet.’”

“You sound like you landed on your feet,” I said, my mouth still afire.

”Yep, I haven’t snorted anything for three weeks; I’m not hanging out with any bad boys, and I’m going to virtual AA meetings twice a week. I have a sponsor named Eileen Goode. Isn’t that a great name for a sponsor?”

“That’s great, Sal. Next you’re going to tell me you found religion.”

“Nope. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. There’s only so far I’m willing to go to stay clean.”

After she finished eating, Sally laid her hands flat on the table. I supposed that she wanted me to admire the hennaed medallions. They were lovely and meticulously applied.

I nodded toward her hands. “Who did the handiwork?”

“My friend from Whole Foods, Sarita. I traded her the rest of my stash for her trouble.”

“Share and share alike.”

“There’s another of those phrases. You’re like a repository of clichés from the Middle Ages, Dad.”

“I don’t think they go back that far,” I said and, dangerously, bit into another shrimp, which delivered a flash of tasty pleasure and an extended agony of picante.

“So here’s why I called the meeting, Dad.”

Again, I tried to douse the fire with beer. “You make it sound like we’re doing business.”

“We need to. That’s my point. I’m talking about Roscoe. Look, you need a partner. You’ve created an exceptional brand and you’re letting it flounder.”

I chomped down on the rest of the jumbo shrimp. Yow. “Brand? You’re talking like a Trump, Sal. Did you see the bastard wants his name on the vaccine? It should only go on the virus.”

“This isn’t about politics, Dad. The deal is you need to seize the day with Roscoe. You know carpe diem and all that. Another of your phrases from the Middle Ages. “

“That’s Latin antiquity, Sal.”

You realize you infested my childhood with your linguistic prattle.”

Infested?”

“That’s right, I’m a prisoner of the language because of you.”

For a moment it sounded like my thinking parrot speaking rather than my daughter. “You’re serious, Sal?”

“Serious as a heart attack.” Her head jerked back. “See, that’s you talking, Dad. I would never say that, serious as . . ..”

“You just said it.”

“You don’t get it, Dad.”

I opened and shut my mouth like a fish a few times; it seemed to temper the residue of chili.

“What are you doing, Dad?”

“Trying to breathe. And what exactly is your complaint, Sal: I’ve strangled you with used-up constructs, what Orwell calls dying metaphors?”

“Yes, with proverbs and platitudes and commonplaces.” Sally threw her hennaed hands in the air; she was doing a version of teenage drama girl at age thirty. “With bromides and buzzwords. With threadbare phrases, truisms, and shibboleth. . .”

“All that? Back to carpe diem, which, by the way, is from the Roman poet Horace; he died not long before Christ was born.”

“Don’t you tire of all that minutia running around your brain?”

“Beautiful word, minutia. Just like shibboleth. I’m glad to hear you use those words, Sal.”

“Enough. Can you try to stay on task, Dad?”

“Task?”

“We’re talking about branding. We’re talking about Roscoe. We’re talking about how to keep him relevant. Capiche?”

“Capiche? Sounds to me like you’re rocking the lingua franca now.” I swilled the cold beer around my mouth and wondered if chili peppers could leave lasting lacerations on my tongue and gums. “So what are your ideas for Roscoe?”

“Ideas? I don’t have any ideas. You’re the idea man. I provide support. I provide direction. Listen, Roscoe has a platform. With proper management he can accrue tens of millions of followers. Ask yourself what he can contribute to mankind.”

“That’s a tall order, Sal.”

“Would you expect anything less? These are serious times.”

My daughter sounded like she’d been watching executive training videos.   “And I remind you, as I will always remind you,” she continued, “that the success of our enterprise depends on the perception that Roscoe is an illusion. If it ever gets out that he’s an actual parrot, we’re sunk.”

“And why is that?”

“Think about it, Dad. Now that the virtual world has supplanted the actual, artifice is our only currency. What dazzles us about a magic act is not seeing how it’s done, but the illusion of its impossibility. You taught me that when I was a kid.”

“So it all comes back to haunt me.” I purposely spilled a little beer over my lower lip—it still sizzled where a large shrimp had seared it—and in so doing a little dripped onto the table.

“Dad,” Sally implored.

“Okay, let me get this straight. You want me to fabricate an illusion that something quite real, and spectacular for that reason, is illusory?”

“Exactly. I think you’re catching on, Dad. So can you rise to the occasion? I think we should meet here in three days and see what you have?”

“You want to reconnoiter in three days, Sal?”

“Stop, Dad. I don’t see why you continue to bludgeon me with language.”

“Because I’m on fire.”

With that, I slipped on my mask and left half of my meal uneaten.

“You should order mild next time, Dad. I don’t know who you were trying to impress.”

“You.”

“I know you too well for that to happen.”

I crept off feeling a bit like Rodney Dangerfield, and tipsy from the two pints of Racer 5. When I got back to the complex Pina was sitting on the stairs outside my condo, chewing on a bagel with cream cheese squirting out the sides.

“Hey, you,” I called.

She looked up startled. “Oh, you scared me, Charlie.”

“Why are you sitting there?”

“Waiting for you,” she said, watching me, big-eyed, as if I might object to her presence.

“Why aren’t you inside?” It had to be chilly on the cement stairs in the shade.

Pina stood. Her leanness melted into the railing and she wiped her lips on her sleeve. “I didn’t think I should go in without you’re being around, Charlie.”

I scooted up the steps and gathered her in my arms.

“I don’t know if you want me here.” Pina blew out an O of breath as if she were blowing a smoke ring. “Can I come back?”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

“Oh, Charlie.” Pina picked up the white bag at her feet.

“What’s in there?”

“Nine bagels. Well, eight and a half.”

“And you started with a dozen?”

Pina’s sheepish smile made me laugh.

When we got inside I spread a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese. It was as decent an antidote to my fiery lunch as I was going to find. Pina looked after her toilette and reunited with what I hadn’t lost of her property. Then she went to say hello to Roscoe and, from the next room, I could hear the enthusiasm in the parrot’s voice: “Pina, Pina, Pina, where you beena? Charlie is lost without you.”

Was I lost? Am I lost?

Pina and I walked across the street to The Patch to get some vegetables for dinner. She was shocked to see that the fields have been plowed under since she’s been here. The shed that sells vegetables will close soon until late spring. Gus, the old fellow who sits on a folding chair atop a fat pillow and weighs the produce, saw us walk in and said, “Charlie, did you hear what happened to the rooster?”

I told him I hadn’t.

“Gumbo got him. The very dog who’s job it is to protect the chickens from foxes and other creatures of the night, snaps the rooster’s neck. How do you like that?”

“That sounds biblical.”

“Well, it was light’s out, is what I heard,” Gus said, grinding what was left of his teeth, which is his habit.

The Chicken house, at the far end of the property, is a fairly recent addition to the farm. As a matter of fact, I’ve yet to see eggs for sale at The Patch. I could hear the rooster from my bedroom but his crows were distant and charmed me into thinking I lived in an actual country place. Apparently, Gumbo wasn’t charmed.

“I know how Gumbo feels,” Gus said. “I listened to that damn rooster all day long. I could have rung his neck. Maybe Gumbo read my mind. Hey, it’s a dog eat rooster world.”

I made a note to save that line for Sally.

Pina, surprisingly literal, asked, “The dog didn’t actually eat the rooster?”

“No, just snapped his throat. Nobody would eat a rooster.”

Pina, relieved, started to gather onions and squash. That and a few malformed potatoes were all that was left for sale.

I watched Gus rise off his chair into a hovering squat as he fluffed the pillow under his butt. “Had a lady come in here last week, Charlie. Get this—she passes gas like I’m not even here. Be one thing if it were a little toot, but this was a serious blast and noxious as can be. I must ask myself seven times a day, what are people thinking? Personally, I think it’s the virus. It’s got everybody distracted. My view: it’s either going to kill me or I’m gonna spend the rest of my life dodging it.”

“Hope you’re wrong, Gus.”

“Wrong? How can I be wrong?” Gus went back to grinding his teeth.

A voice, from outside the shed, called: “Hey, neighbors.” I turned to see Vince, standing in a small line. He looked smug in fancy striped pants, dangling a string bag as if he was on his way to a Paris street market. I’ve never been a violent man, but I wanted to slug him.

”Hear about the rooster?” Vince asked.

“Just did,” I said.

Pina tried to stay hidden behind the squash.

“Given all the old timers around here,” Vince said, still with the shit-eating grin on his face, “that rooster was the only dude in the neighborhood getting his at will.”

That was enough for me. I walked out of the shed and stepped close to Vince. He must have known what was coming because he stepped back, out of the line. I threw one punch, an improvised right hook, which squared up well on his jaw. He went down in a flash and rolled onto his side. A woman in line started screaming. “You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t do that.” But I did, and wasn’t feeling any worse for it.

Vince made no effort to get up nor did I offer to help. He called up to me, “Loser, loser,” but I didn’t feel like a loser.

Pina had come outside. Horrified, she looked at Vince on the ground and me rubbing the sore knuckles of my right hand. “See you at home,” I said, not sure, after I’d become a bully, whether or not she would join me.

 

 

My metabolism’s changed in the few weeks I’ve been in the city. Burning some serious calories now. Become a walking fool. I need new shoes. Going all the time like a speed freak. Afraid something’s going to catch up with me if I stop. I can sustain the pace as long as I remember to breathe, but I think I may be taking it too far. I’m losing weight. Need to eat a lot to keep up. Not possible in present circumstances.

Funny thing, I’m hardly drinking at all. Power walking is a different way of anesthetizing myself, flooding the zone with oxygen and endorphins. I go barefoot on the beach and then lace up for Land’s End, high step like a tomboy in her sneakers through the outer Richmond, where people are few. I love sighting the ocean from the top of Balboa and the wide end of Geary. I force myself to race up Cabrillo, the hills, instantly steep, past stucco houses built atop sand dunes in the twenties and thirties for working people, now sold to multimillionaires who pay in cash.

Today I head down 36th avenue, cross Fulton Street into the park, spill around Spreckles Lake, a little man-made, and cross to the majestic meadows, the outdoor home to great San Francisco bands of the sixties and seventies, and now to the magnificent free festival, Hardly Strictly Blue Grass, cancelled this year along with everything else. I’ve always adored that civilized celebration of the masses. Five stages of sound that never interfere with each other. Hundreds of thousands picnicking in the long meadow, drinking, smoking pot, acting kindly in close quarters. Unthinkable now. Hard to believe it ever happened.

Vince, ever the jazz purist, wouldn’t go with me, which I realized was a boon. He’d have been a lot of baggage. I like to go by myself. Slip into one stage and then another. I can make myself small, and I can charm people just enough if I want to. Last year a colleague from work, Celeste, insisted I join her little family, husband, Roddy, and two-year-old, McAllister. It turned into a disaster.

Roddy, a skinny rope of a man with carrot hair, was legendary for laying down his tarp very early on the Sunday morning at the Rooster Stage. He staked out a wide swath front and center. Celeste, McAllister, and I came six hours later, at noon, with the picnic and the booze. According to Celeste, nobody had to provide Roddy with weed.

It should have been a perfectly pleasant day as all the rest of my times at Hardly Strictly have been, but an altercation with Celeste and a pair of strangers turned the afternoon ugly.

For the first couple of hours, the adults chased after McAllister, equipped in rainbow ear protection muffs, on his looping toddle through the crowds, as bands I never heard of like St. Paul and the Broken Bones and the Infamous Stringdusters played tuneful romps that sounded as if they were geared for both toddlers and stoners.

By about two in the afternoon, after we’d eaten our deviled eggs and our pulled pork sandwiches, McAllister was out like a light. Celeste whispered to me that she’d given her son a double dose of Dramamine. “We’ve done it before,” she said, “he’ll be out until Patti Smith comes on. Then he’ll want to snuggle with me for the next hour.”

Meanwhile, the three of us finished the thermos of martinis and moved on to a fifth of Southern Comfort, which none of us really cared for, but Roddy said we were obliged to drink. “It was Janis’ spirit of choice. It’s a tradition. Once a year. After all, we’re sitting in the meadow where she played with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and she’d be playing Hardly Strictly if she were still around.”

There was no arguing with that. After Celeste and I got thoroughly smashed, we left Roddy with the sleeping boy and wandered off to hear Steve Earle, finding a cozy spot on a wooded hilltop above the Tower of Gold Stage. This is where my sense of time gets blurry. I have no idea how long it was before we were joined by two men, Ivy League types, both attorneys, both in their thirties, both black, both wearing too much cologne for my taste. One had binoculars strung around his neck, the other a camera with a very long lens. The guy with the binoculars was called Rashan, if I remember correctly, and the cameraman went by Richie. The four of us smoked a joint together.

In a little bit we paired off and I ended up talking with Richie. He pretended to have an interest in my work and suggested that it might help him with his job to take elocution lessons from me. He was a tease and I just shook my head when he started to make a move on me. It flattered me because he was a good fifteen years my junior and a nice looking fellow, but I knew it wasn’t a good idea. I do remember wondering if his cock was as long as his camera lens. I swayed back and forth to Steve Earle’s steel wool voice, particularly when he lofted the ballad, “That Old Time Feeling” over all of us.

Some time later—and, again, my recollection of time and sequence is dubious—I noticed Celeste making out with Rashan, as his binoculars slid down the hillside. The guy was playing rough, groping Celeste with one hand as he yanked on her hair. I watched his hand slide way down her pants and try to finger her.

“We should separate them,” I said to Richie.

“Why would we do that?”

“Her husband and two-year-old are right over at the Rooster Stage”

“But she’s over here. This is what we call consensual.”

“Thanks for your legal opinion. Look, she’s drunk out of her head,” I shouted.

“You are,” he said.

“Celeste,” I called.

By now Rashan was on top of her with one hand under her sweater, one down her pants.

I stood up. “You’re either going to get him off her or I am.”

“Why interrupt nature?” Richie said. “What’s your problem, auntie?”

True, I was old enough to be his maiden aunt, but I can be fierce when I need to be. I rushed over and shoved binocular man off Celeste so hard that he rolled a little bit down the hill. Then I yanked Celeste to her feet.

Drunk, woozy, and disheveled, she still managed to holler at me, “What are you doing, bitch?”

Rashan climbed up the hill with his binoculars and shot me a hard look. I like to think I stared him down. “What do you think you doing, you funky bitch?” he hissed at me.

“Fucking racist bitch is what she is. Wouldn’t mind no white boy pawing her girl,” Richie added.

Everybody was calling me a bitch at once.

I led Celeste, foul-mouthed and kicking at me, back toward her family. “You’re just a jealous old bitch,” she said at some point, keeping the theme going, “just a jealous old bitch that doesn’t know how to have fun.” Perhaps she was right, but I didn’t care to be complicit in a drunken rape.

I wandered off by myself, wondering why I had so few friends and if I was actually a racist. A bit sluggish from the drink and weed, I ended up at the Swan Stage. The sun had begun to set and spill a milky glaze over the enormous crowd. I found a perch a million miles from the stage and listened to what was left of Judy Collins’s set, amazed how pure her voice remained in her eightieth year. She finished her set with Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire.” I’ve always loved the song, particularly Johnny Cash’s rendition of it. I sang the last verse along with Judy, becoming a bit mawkish, I’m afraid, with tears slipping down my cheeks.

Like a bird on a wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

The memory of that afternoon, like the memory of all things in which shame and confusion are involved, retained the quality of an open wound. I walked with the wound, like a baby cradled in my arms—a sensation I’ve rarely had as a childless woman—and climbed the hill to Stow Lake where I rented a boat for one hour and rowed for three. During the last half hour, as I hovered near Strawberry Hill Island, just past the waterfall, I called Charlie and told him that I am hungry again and, in a breathy voice, that I loved him.

He seemed to take the news in stride and chuckled and asked me where I was.

“In the middle of a lake,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said. “Are you dressed?”

“Yes, for success.”

I prefer it when you’re undressed for success. So, how’s it going?”

“The verdict’s still out and I’m afraid it may be out for the duration.”

“The duration?”

“My natural life.”

“How long will you remain in the lake?”

“They’ll come and collect me if I don’t bring the boat back soon. But know, that no matter what happens, I love you.”

I checked out of the Seal Rock Inn this morning, after a sunrise walk and swim at the ocean. It felt a little bit sad to be leaving, having gotten in touch, during this period of isolation, with a full spectrum of my eccentricities. It’s good, I’ve decided, to know the extent of my weirdness, and to see my peculiarities as strengths rather than the contrary. Easier said than done.

I waited in line for a half an hour at The House of Bagels on Geary and chatted with the man behind me in line. He was an older guy with an intelligent face. His fading blue eyes looked like they’d seen a lot. Once in a while I encounter a random person that I assume is a fellow traveler, by which I do not refer to the term’s political usage, but to a simple sense of simpatico. I had that feeling when I first got to know Charlie.

The man in line spoke to me. “We’re crusaders, aren’t we? Our purpose is sustenance, and bagels are the means.” He had a whimsical lilt to his voice. “Don’t you think the old Jews in the Polish shtetls, the folks who invented these bad boys, would be amused to see all these gentiles spending half the day in line for high-priced bagels?”

“Indubitably,” I said, thinking of Roscoe, who enjoyed pronouncing that word.

The man wore a black face mask with the word doubletalk printed in white letters over his lips. I found that witty, just as I did the check I’d get from a former client, in which his name, rather than containing an honorific, concluded with persona non grata. I told the man in line that I admired his tee shirt, which in large, block letters read: I MIGHT HAVE BEEN BOUND FOR GLORY.

He nodded his thanks and said, through his doubletalk covered lips, “Glory is such a curious construct, part religion, part commercial commodification, part childless hero worship. Actually, I have more affinity with the ignominious.”

“You sound like an outlier.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but I believe I predate the word.”

“With all due respect, the word goes back to the Middle English,” I said.

“Hmm.” He raised his eyebrows. “How erudite we are.”

“I’m just a word nerd,” I said

“Tell me about the origins of nerd.”

“It goes back to a Dr. Seuss book in the early fifties.”

“Go on. My late husband had a love affair with Nerds, the candy. He always kept a pack of watermelon Nerds in his shirt pocket where another guy would keep his Marlboros. I think it was his way of saying, I am who I am; get used to it.”

I smiled at the man and introduced myself. “I’m Pina. I have a late husband as well.”

“Oh, my, the things we have in common—dead husbands, bagels. What’s next, Pina? I’m Gerard. Don’t tell me you’re all in on poppy seeds.”

“They’re my favorite.”

“Get out. Where will this end?”

We inched closer to the front of the line and the smell of bagels roused my appetite. It didn’t help that my new friend Gerard was waxing eloquent about the little baked treasures.

“Ah, a warm bagel, fresh or toasted, cream cheese, a couple of strips of lox when I’m feeling flush, a sprinkling of capers, and very thin slices of sweet Vidalia onion—that’s as close as I get to wholesome since I had a man who loved me.”

I felt lucky to have a man who still loved me; at least I believed he did. “Delightful to meet you,” I said to Gerard, when my time came to enter the bakery.

“We will meet again, Pina,” he said, his blue eyes brightening. “Just watch.”

I bought a dozen bagels, a mix of poppy seed, sesame, and onion, along with two flavors of cream cheese.

“Sustenance,” Gerard said, as I left the shop with my large white bag.

Back in the car I thought of ripping a bagel apart and spreading green olive cream cheese across the halves. But I slowly chewed a whole, warm poppy seed bagel instead. It took a bit of discipline to not chomp into another. Forty-five minutes later I was standing at Charlie’s front door, my sole offering: eleven bagels.

 

 

 

We made a good fire on the beach just after sunset, scraps from other fires, small sticks, and tarry hunks that it took some time to gather. Pina went wild with industry as if she were native to wood gathering on a barren beach. We no longer wore masks and any delicacy about keeping our distance had passed. We’d yet to embrace, but once the fire roared we leaned into each other and faced the ocean. It had calmed since the afternoon. The tide was out as far as it goes, and the first stretches of water seemed like a distant continent.

“I’m famished,” Pina said, “I haven’t eaten all day. You know what I’d like,” she said, batting her eyes at me in a jokey way, “a hot meal on the beach. Anything, you know, just hot.”

I accepted the challenge, dashed to the pleasantly deserted if spooky Safeway, across the Great Highway, plucked out a small, sizzling rotisserie chicken, a pound of fingerlings, stick of butter. The all beef hotdogs appealed, with buns, jars of Dijon and sauerkraut, and a tall bottle of ‘spiciest’ pepperoncinis. I also got practical with tin foil, paper plates, napkins, and a six of Racer 5.

Pina had gathered more scraps while I was gone so we had a decent stash to keep the fire going a while. I opened a beer for her and offered the jar of pepperoncinis. “You wanted something hot.”

“That’s it?” She picked out a long twist of pepper and bit into the heart of it. Her eyes blurred on contact. “Ha,” she said, breathing fire at me. “What else do you have in the bag?”

Pina must have smelled the chicken; she looked ready to maul the sack like a bear cub. I pulled out the fingerlings and washed them in beer before preparing them with butter in the foil, finding a perfect spot for them in a belly of embers. Next came the hot dogs. I carved a pair of sharp sticks and affixed the wieners. We enjoyed roasting them, and smothered in kraut and Dijon, thick skin crackling, they were superb.

Before I had the chicken laid on a plate, Pina tore off a leg and thigh and went at it. I was happy to just watch her. After dispatching the leg and thigh, she tossed the bone in the fire and tore off a wing and a hunk of breast from the red rotisserie bird, which, along with all the other indignities it’s endured, appeared to have been assaulted with a tin of paprika. Pina’s fingers had taken on a greasy patina of red pepper. She glanced at me a moment. “You hadn’t known that I am a savage.”

“I had a clue.”

After we nibbled on the buttered fingerlings, Pina stood up and started stripping off her clothes. She said, “I’ll race you in. I need to cleanse myself.”

Her diction surprised me. Suddenly Pina sounded like an eighteenth century ascetic. I looked at her, naked in the firelight, her full breasts majestic melons above her slender hips. She shook her sweet ass at me, waiting for a response. I looked up and down the beach. There was no one within sight. A couple of distant fires sparked to the south.

I shook my head. “I’m not going in that November ocean; it’s witch’s-titty cold in the middle of the summer.”

Pina laughed deep in her throat. “Suit yourself, white boy.”

Yes, I thought, I am a white boy. I stood to watch her dash off toward the water. She ran forever, it seemed, and then I couldn’t see her anymore. A mist had risen over the water. I hoped she’d come back but it didn’t seem a certainty.

I’d gone off to pee and gather whatever fuel I could find, and I saw Pina running back from the water, no doubt cleansed, but wet and shivering, her feet and ankles caked in sand. I took off my green alligator cardigan, the one she loves to hate, and wrapped it around her as she kneeled at the fire. The sweater’s V-neck gave her a lovely plunging neckline.

“That sweater becomes you, Pina. You can wear it whenever you like.”

She grinned at me, her teeth chattering.

We spent the night together at the Seal Rock Inn. After showering together, we made love and talked half the night about distant things—by now everything that predates the pandemic qualifies as a distant thing—old relationships we’d had, even our childhoods.

In the morning I asked Pina to come back to Sonoma and she said she wasn’t quite ready yet, she needed a little more time alone. When I got home I spent some time with Roscoe. I haven’t decided yet what the next campaign with the parrot should be and don’t have much motivation for a new project.

Roscoe had the temerity to say, “You seem out of sorts, Charlie. What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

By late afternoon I descended into a dark place. Loneliness is something I tend not to suffer but since leaving Pina at the Seal Rock Inn this morning a wave of isolation washed over me like a fever.

I took a walk to town in the late afternoon just to see people and remind myself that I am of the same species. Who knew, I’d maybe run into an old friend. That wasn’t the case. It seemed like only tourists in town except for the locals, boisterous as ever, outside of Steiner’s Tavern. The establishment, which opened in 1927 amid the Prohibition, has dealt with the current prohibition of interior imbibing by lining up tables in the alley next to Earladi’s Menswear. I noticed an empty table and decided to treat myself to a pint of Pliny the Elder.

I hadn’t eaten since our strange meal on the beach last night. I’ve thought of that curious repast much of the day. How will I ever forget the night I lived with Pina at the ocean and watched her glow in the firelight after coming out of the sea? It was one of those rare times that you realize is iconic while you are in the midst of living it.

Now my stomach was reminding me of its presence but I couldn’t find anything on Steiner’s bar menu that tempted me. Not the Chili Cheddar Tots or the hot wings, certainly not the seafood cocktail, or even the Zucchini Sticks. I settled into the brash bitterness of the Pliny, which arrived in a tall Speckled Hen glass. The glass gave the guy sitting alone at the next table an opening; he clearly wanted to talk. He was a stout young fellow, not yet forty, in a handsome Pendleton tartan jacket and tweed cap. An Irish setter slept at his feet.

He leaned toward me over his table “Don’t you love the Speckled Hen glass?”

“Yes, they’re quite elegant.”

He held a glass of whisky in his thick hand; a short beer chaser stood dangerously close to his elbow. He’d already pushed aside the leavings from his chicken wings. “My wife and I filched a couple of Speckled Hen vessels aboard the Queen Mary II. That was our honeymoon trip back from London. They made a nice souvenir.”

“How was the trip?” I asked, glad for a conversation. “I always wanted to take a trans-Atlantic voyage. Don’t think I’ll make it on a cruise ship now.”

“Yes, a petri dish. We enjoyed it,” he said, modestly, pausing, it seemed, to remember it. “I found it exciting to not see land for seven days,” he continued, and I liked changing my watch an hour each day.”

“How was the food?” I asked.

“Quite decent. My wife and I had a table by our selves for dinner. We had the same waiter and same wine steward each night. Not only did we force ourselves to eat more slowly than usual, we pretended we were in love.” He grinned, a bit smugly. “On the other hand, the entertainment was strictly second-class. Not to sound snobby or anything, but it was really geared for the lowest common denominator. On top of that there was a preponderance of Germans aboard.” He took a considered sip of his whisky, and signaled to the passing waiter for another of the same. “Hope you’re not German. I don’t mind them in ones and twos, but when you get forty-five of them in a group, they get loud and they either have no sense that anybody else is around or they don’t give a damn. I mean they don’t spook me like they’re Nazis or anything, though they could be. Don’t get me wrong, the Chinese can be just as clannish, but at least they keep it pretty quiet. I try to keep my prejudice to a minimum, but sometimes it gets the better of me. I’m Gary, by the way, Gary Arnold, or you can call me Arnold, Gary, and the comma will be understood. On the other hand, you don’t have to call me a damn thing.”

“I’m Charlie,” I said, deciding it was probably wise to leave off my last name.

“How about you, Charlie, you look like you must be more virtuous with regard to this kind of bias. A little more evolved than me.”

“I’m older,” I said, and took a long sip of Pliny. Gary Arnold shot me a sideways glance. He wanted a better answer.

I relented. “Yeah, I think I still have the thing about Chinese drivers, that they’re a particular hazard.”

“Know what you mean. It’s the slant eyes, isn’t it?”

The comment made me uncomfortable, probably because I’ve been guilty of the same thought. As the waiter came through again, we ordered another round, and Gary asked for a hot link and sweet potato fries. I still could not link my appetite with the menu.

Once we had our order, Gary settled back in his chair and said in a quiet voice, “I’ve been going through a rough patch with my wife. She’s depressive. It comes and it goes, but when it comes it’s like a wet blanket over the household. I tell her that I’m not deep enough to get depressed. I’m a what-you- see-is-what-you-get kind of a guy. I think that that’s part of what depresses her—she takes a look at me and sees what she has. Last night I asked her if she’d be happier with another man, and she says, ‘You’re not so bad.’ Talk about damning with faint praise. Story of my life.”

Gary seemed as depressed as his wife. That’s the beauty of bar culture: people that you’ve never seen before spill their guts out. I’ve never been very comfortable with the scene, bereft, as I am, of the easy wit and jocular nature the popular patrons possess.

I nursed my Pliny as Gary inhaled his hot link and then bent over his dog. The smell of the food had roused him from his slumber. The beautiful creature stretched out its long limbs, unwound itself, and rose into a standing position, head high, majestic beside his master.

Gary gave an affectionate hug to the animal and fed him a handful of sweet potato fries. When the fries were devoured, the setter’s long tongue circled its snout. “Say hello to Charlie, Aloysius.” The dog nosed forward toward me. I petted him briefly and saw that he was ready to adopt me.

“Aloysius,” I said, that’s a good Irish name for a setter.”

Gary shook his head. “It’s actually Latin, although James Joyce was given it as his second middle name: James Augustine Aloysius Joyce.”

“That’s quite an auspicious moniker. Are you a Joycean?”

“No, no. I took a Joyce class in college. That’s all.” Gary smiles, wistfully. “Was an English major; I used to want to be a writer, but it doesn’t mix well with selling real estate. Hey, I’ll recite my favorite passage for you from Ulysses. Somehow it always gets a rise from Aloysius: ‘Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices, fried with crust crumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.’”

Aloysius whimpered during his master’s recitation.

“It’s as if he knows,” Gary said, “that it’s all about offal, his favorite.”

I thought of telling him about Roscoe, but decided against it. Instead, as Aloysius quieted, I offered my own confession. I suppose the two pints of Pliny the Elder had turned me a bit maudlin. “I’ve been going through a rough time with my girlfriend as well.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Gary asked. He rested his chin in his open hands, his elbows balanced on the table. Given his hulk, he made me think of the Buddha, the Buddha as confessor.

“The problem,” I said, unable to finesse the answer, “the problem is infidelity.”

Gary nodded his head. “On whose part?”

“Both of ours.”

“What? Are you swingers, Charlie? Good for you, at your age.”

“No, no. It was only once.”

“It’s never once, Charlie. So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Ball’s in her court.”

“Do you want the ball to be in her court, Charlie?”

It was an interesting question for which I didn’t have an answer.

We both turned quiet and Gary stuffed the rest of his fries into his mouth, before downing his whisky.

“Really got to admire,” he said, “how an older guy like you stays so trim, drinking beers like that.”

“I don’t drink many of them,” I said, wondering how old Gary thought I was.

“Me,” he went on, “I’m kind of an anomaly, a fat guy who doesn’t sweat. They say that’s part of the reason I’m fat. The lymph nodes are hoarders; they retain water they should be flushing. Another thing about me—my farts don’t smell. Swear to God, Charlie. I almost wanted to ask my doctor about that. ‘Where’s my stink, doc?’”

In the annals of TMI from strangers this had to rank pretty high. I didn’t want to find out what was coming next, and yet, I wanted to tell Pina about this encounter with Gary Arnold. I thought it would amuse her, but I was going home to an empty house. The ball remained in her court. Last night I fed her when she was famished, but now I was going home to feed myself.

 

Charlie calls me this morning. I didn’t expect it. It’s been ten days since we talked. I’m happy to hear his voice. That’s what I feel at first before the confusion kicks in. Charlie’s sweet. There’s no bitterness in his voice. He’s tentative. I suppose, I am too. Things begin to feel normal while we talk about the news, and then Charlie goes off on Rudy Giuliani.

“Consider the Rudy trifecta, Pina. First he get’s played by Borat’s girl and starts to beat-off; thankfully Borat rushes out in his outlandish costume and stops him. Then the Rude does his horseshit press conference on the outskirts of Philly, at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, beside an adult bookstore, across from a crematorium. And he caps it off at another presser, where he doesn’t have a single fact to argue, and sweats rivulets of black dye down his face. It’s like the end of a bad horror film.”

“You sound like you really enjoy the Rudster, Charlie,” I say, and think back to watching the new Borat with Charlie, his legs wrapped around me on the carpet.

Charlie keeps talking and I’m glad to listen. He tells me about his friend Arrow painting Trump’s death in multiples.

“Like Andy Warhol?” I ask.

“No, no,” he says, “distinct serial deaths.”

He describes some of the ways Arrow kills Trump. I just listen. For a moment I think we might not get around to anything personal in the conversation.

“I miss you,” Charlie says, breaking the spell.

“Me too.”

“Hmmm,” Charlie says. “Hmmm.” He sounds like he’s lost his way. And when he finally speaks it’s in an altered voice: “Can we meet somewhere?”

He’s all business, like a boss about to explain why he’s firing you. Or is that just what the paranoid worm in my brain makes of his change of tone.

“Where would you like to meet?” I ask, forcing my voice to bloodlessness.

“Somewhere outside where we can be safe.”

The choice is mine, apparently. “Meet me at Kelly’s Cove. We can stand ten feet apart and nobody will bother us.”

We make a date for tomorrow afternoon, at the top of stairwell number five. I’m not sure if I’m going to show up.

The business of being a minimalist is beginning to wear on me. I have exactly one sweater, three blouses and three pairs of pants to my name. I wash everything by hand in the motel’s bathroom sink because I’m phobic about the laundromat. It’s a tedious business and the clothes, especially the jeans, take forever to hang dry. I’ve thought of calling Charlie and asking him to bring a couple suitcases of my clothes, along with my computer and stash of weed, but in the end I‘ve decided not to ask him for anything.

The other problem is eating. Although I eat well, I’m tired of the set-up. The motel boasts a mini-fridge and an electric teakettle, but there’s no hotplate. I’ve thought of buying one and cooking on the sly, but I know this temporary. I subsist on milk and cereal, ramen, raw vegetables and fruits, nuts and dried fruits, eggs, bread, cheese, deli meats, olives, tinned fish. Unfortunately, I’m at the end of my big jar of Greek caviar, taramosalata, but I know where to get more. I’ve figured a method for preparing soft-boiled eggs with two shifts of boiling water in a bowl. Yes, it’s a diet of privilege. I do know how to look after myself and feel no need to catalog on my liquid diet.

But the cost of living in a high-priced motel is unsustainable. This morning I spotted an apartment on Craig’s List. A junior one-bedroom, just a few blocks from here, 46th and Anza, 450 square feet, $2,290 a month, immediate availability. In this market, that’s a good deal. It’s only three blocks from the ocean.

I had to resort to some unseemly charm, covert flirtation, to get to see the place. The leasing agent was showing it this afternoon, and his times were all booked up. “It will be gone by the end of the day,” he boasted, ready to hang up.

“Then show it to me this morning,” I said, with honey-burnished elocution.

This tripped him up. He couldn’t quite end the call.

“Why? Why should I show it to you?” It sounded like he was posing the question to himself, but I took it as an invitation to explain why.

“Because you’re a decent man and I’m just a few blocks away.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

I slowed down my delivery: “I have all the qualities you want in a renter. I’m professional, discreet, and comely.”

It was the last two words that got him. I doubt he knew what they meant, but somehow they woke up the little man in him. He was ready for phone sex right then, and he put some giddy-up into his voice. “What time to do you want to meet, honey?”

Fuck you, you prick, I thought, but I wanted to see the place. “Ten-thirty.”

“That’s a half an hour from now.”

“Will you have to helicopter in?”

“I’ll be there. Bring a credit report.”

Up yours.

The leasing agent—blimp-like, somewhere between thirty-five and fifty—stands outside the building when I get there. He looks as wide as he’s tall, a very stout Mickey Rooney in a soiled khaki sport coat, perhaps size 64, boxy, over a yellow oxford cloth shirt with the top buttons open so that thick sproutings of blond hair above his vast chest tumble forth indecently. His feet swell out of his penny loafers. It isn’t hard to keep my distance. I pick up his aftershave from fifteen feet. It smells like the worst kind of sugared fart.

I remember Vince, during one of his daily jazz history bulletins, telling me about a singer built like this agent, named Jimmy Rushing. His nickname was the punch line: Mr. Five by Five. Why I retain this shit I do not know. But here I am standing across from Mr. Five by Five, only he’s not black or beloved for his voice, which soared over Count Basie’s band. This guy’s a putz, and, yes, I‘m being uncharitable. I’m not sure why; I’m not usually big on body shaming. The dude’s Mt. Rushmore mask doesn’t help. Is that code for Trump because the bastard fancies his head carved into the mountain?

In his big boy voice, the blob introduces himself, “Josh Rook.”

Crook, I think. “Like the chess piece?”

“Exactly.” He’s delighted with the association and nods his head a couple of times. He appears to no longer have a neck.

“Pina,” I say and step back from him. It’s involuntary, I fear.

“Pina, Pina,” he repeats. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name.”

“Nobody has.”

The building doesn’t look promising. It’s definitely the ugly duckling on the block, which is otherwise made up of immaculate stucco bungalows from the thirties or early forties. I shouldn’t even bother with this.

The agent sucks in his enormous girth, trying to stiffen up and turn to business. “We can walk up. It’s only on the next floor.” He stands back, for me to go first, but I don’t want this sloth behind me, breathing on my neck. He goes first; that way I control the distance. Otherwise he could throw me down and sit on me. I don’t want to end up like some poor chick in “Silence of the Lambs.”

The problem with walking behind him is that he climbs very slowly, panting with each step. If I’d gone first I could have raced up and waited for him. Now I fear he’ll fall backwards or the earthquake will hit and we’ll both be done.

“Folks are swallowing up these apartments out by the beach,” he says, turning to smile at me. “Nobody wants to be in crowded neighborhoods nowadays.”

I agree but I’m not about to tell him.

Mr. Rook’s saccharine fart pong fills the L-shaped room, which is a disaster. Somebody with cats lived here and even with the carpets gone and a fresh coat of paint, the apartment is a feline morgue, and it’s dark—the three windows are narrow and slung low—while the kitchen nook, with creamed corn wallpaper and budget appliances seems like a reasonable place to blow your brains out. I have a flash of despair. How much am I going to have to pay for a decent apartment?

“With a little imagination,” the agent says, and actually winks at me, the fat fuck. “With a little imagination you can make this place . . .”

I turn on my heels. “Sorry, I don’t think this is the apartment for me.” I hurry out the door.

“We can make an adjustment on the rent,” he calls. His voice echoes in the stairwell. “Let’s take a little ride in my Audi.”

Charlie’s leaning over the ocean wall when I get there. It looks like he’s nodding to the waves. The water is choppy today with plenty of whitecaps. Charlie’s hair’s all tousled. I’m trying to decide if his eyes are closed. He’s so cute in his ugly green alligator cardigan. It’s from the seventies and he’s proud of it. He picked it up at the Church Mouse in Sonoma. I make fun of him every time he wears it and now I’m touched that he’s worn it today. He still doesn’t see me. I don’t give a damn what he came for, I’m glad he’s here.

“Charlie,” I call, “what you doing in that ugly sweater?”

He turns, a wide smile on his face. Sweet man. I walk up as close as prescribed and grab my own spot against the concrete wall, turned to face him.

Charlie raises his eyebrows. “I’m glad you decided to come, Pina.”

“What? I’m not late.”

He looks at his watch and shrugs.

I want to tell him about the grotesque man and the apartment I just looked at. I want him to know that I’m flexible about where I live and that I take responsibility for my wayward action, but before I have a chance to say anything to him besides Hey, he bursts out with: “I fucked up. I fucked up really major, Pina.

Somehow I find this news refreshing, but Charlie’s face has turned sober. He looks like somebody’s just given him grim news, which, apparently, he’s going to give it to me.

I try to help him. “How did you fuck up? Something to do with Roscoe?”

“No, with you.”

“Me? I’m the one that fucked up, Charlie.”

He bites his nails a moment. I’ve never seen him bite his nails. “I came to the city last week,” he says, and shakes his head. “I thought I might drop off a suitcase of clothes for you and your laptop. You know, with your concierge who’s not a concierge.”

I can’t see where this is going.

“But I thought I’d take a little drive through the city first. So I head to North Beach. Drive up Columbus Avenue. There are lots of people eating at these new parklets and I think, Why not get myself a plate of gnocchi. It’s sunny out, there’s a distanced table waiting for me. So I’m deep into my gnocchi. It comes with sourdough bread and a dipping bowl of olive oil with pepper flakes.”

I don’t know why Charlie is telling me all this or what the fuck his plate of gnocchi has to do with me.

“And I’m nursing a tumbler of dago red. Oh, I’m sorry I said that. I don’t know why I said that.”

”Hey, it’s okay, this dago doesn’t mind.”

“I am sorry. Anyway, the point is, I’m completely absorbed with my meal, when this homeless man, really a mess, comes up to me without a mask, and starts hassling me. Freaks me out. I mean, the guy’s breathing all over me. By the way, I took a COVID test a few days later; it came back negative the day before yesterday.”

“So that’s good news,” I say, wondering where his shaggy dog story is going. I’m getting a little tired of it and turn my gaze from Charlie to the horizon line.

“When I got out of the restaurant, I took a little walk up Grant Avenue just to get myself to chill, and when I finally got back to the car, there was a ticket on it and some motherfucker had broken into the trunk. Your laptop and your beautiful clothes . . .” Charlie drops his hands over his face.

“Gone,” I said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Pina.”

My relief that this is the extent of Charlie’s fuck-up regarding me is palpable. The dramatic thing to do would be to display some remorse, but I’m not into being the diva. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I have everything backed up on the cloud, and I needed a new computer anyway.”

“I’ll buy you one,” he says, eagerly. “But some of your nicest clothes . . .”

“Guess who gets to go shopping.”

“On me.” Charlie sighs as if the weight of the world has been lifted.

I’m a little surprised by my equanimity. I worry about my computer for a moment, what hadn’t been backed up. The loss is negligible. I have no reason to extract damages from Charlie. Anyway, I want the man to be happy

He suggests a walk up the beach. I’m agreeable. I try not to get anxious. We hurry down brutalist stairwell #5. I kick off my Birkenstocks and have my feet in the sand. Charlie watches me. He either loves me or thinks that I’m crazy. I talk him into taking off his shoes; we hide them in a hollow beside the wall.

We start up the beach, walking in an out of the water. I’m in peddle pushers and Charlie rolls up his jeans. We stop to watch a family of sandpipers skedaddle across the damp apron.

“I read a story,” Charlie says, “in the Chronicle: Since the city has gotten quieter during the pandemic, the local birds are singing more quietly and they’ve added more nuance and lyricism to their songs. Here’s the part I really like: Baby birds learn songs from their parents’ example, and if they’ve been in the nest during this quiet period their lyrical vocabulary will have greater complexity when the world gets noisy again.”

“Isn’t that wishful thinking?” I say, even though I’m thinking wishfully.

“It could be.”

We start up the beach again and I turn once more to the razor edge of the horizon. I can sense Charlie watching me. What does he see?

 

 

 

 

Election night was a horror. Biden lost Florida and it looked like Pennsylvania might be lost. I could feel the PTSD from the 2016 election forming like a calcium deposit on my frontal lobe. My executive functions would soon start to deteriorate. I’d been thinking for some time that I wanted to work on the massive problem with PTSD that the country would be facing post-Trump and post-COVID. But how do you address the trauma when it remains ongoing and ever present?

I turned the TV off early and considered what I’d do with the rest of my life if Trump won. It seemed to me to be a problem of place. California isn’t far enough away from this madness. What about moving to Hawaii where I could pretend that paradise was enough for me? I needed to talk to someone who could save me from myself. I thought about calling Pina but I was still pissed off at her from our conversation the night before. Screw her and her goddamn self-sufficiency. Screw her and her cheating ways. I wasn’t going to let her break my heart. I considered calling Sally, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the possibility that my daughter was a coke freak.

Thankfully, the phone rang just as I was at the point of waking Roscoe for the sake of some companionship. My friend Arrow Wilk was on the horn. He likes to call me after he gets stoned and jabber. Tonight about his new series of paintings, The Deaths of Trump. 

“So you’re thinking in plurals? Isn’t killing him once sufficient?”

“What are you talking about? Who ever heard of a series of one?”

Arrow and I had been roommates in the city when we were students at the Art Institute. That was decades ago. Arrow moved to Sonoma County before me and has settled into a fine life in an old barn up Sonoma Mountain Road. He’s prolific. He paints all night. Sells his work cheap, but he sells it.  

“You miss the whole point, Charlie. I want to kill Trump a hundred different ways. Remember that old TV show on Spike, 1000 Ways to Die? That’s my inspiration. They had an episode on this Norse dude, Sigurd the Mighty, a superstar Viking who died from gangrene. Now get this, Charlie—what kills him is the decapitated head of one of his victims. For real. He tied the motherfucker’s head to his saddle, and the dead joker’s buckteeth ripped through old Sigurd’s leg while he was riding. Ain’t that a motherfucker?”

“Arrow, that’s epically grotesque.”

“Isn’t it? I worked on Trump’s gangrene today. Took it straight through his toes on up. Not for the faint-hearted, Charlie. It’s amazing what you can do with a gangrene palette. It has more blue in it than you’d think. 

“Yesterday I finished Trump’s death by quicksand. All we see is the top edge of his purple hair and one short, stubby finger sticking up in the air. You can tell it’s Trump’s finger from a mile away. I’m about to start on his golf course heart attack. I’m thinking a sand bunker right after he takes his swing. Sand is flying everywhere, the ball’s still in the trap, and Trump has collapsed to his knees; a second later he’s a dead man eating sand.”

“Sounds like you can kill him a thousand ways but, meanwhile, he’s winning the fucking election. I’m going a little nuts here.”

“He’s not going to win, Charlie. Lots of the states count the mail-ins last. That’s where Biden scores. This is common knowledge, Charlie. What have you been watching, Fox News? Do something for yourself. You sound like a wreck. Smoke a joint, Charlie, snort a couple of lines, swallow some shrooms. You know who you are? You’re a man in need of a creative outlet. How’s the bird? I saw him on Instagram. Very clever what you’ve done with him. I don’t know how you do it. But what are you going to do with a parrot now that the election’s over?”

“To be determined.”

“Charlie, for you, at your stage of the game, it’s too late to leave things to be determined.”

“Why are you busting my chops, Arrow?”

“For your own good. I’d hate to see you waste away. Atrophy is a dirty word in my book. Go to bed, Charlie. You’re no good to yourself now.”

I took Arrow’s advice and climbed into bed with a hearty snifter of Pina’s cognac. 

On Saturday morning before turning on the TV I did some self-hypnosis. I’d learned a simple technique from a hypnotist and noted blues singer in Sebastopol, Efraim Merz. He led me to some deep ass levels with his basso. At the start of a session he’d say, “Are you ready to go down?”

I’ve never been able to descend as deeply by myself, but it can get cavernous after I sample my breaths for a while and melt into the sensations of my limbs. That’s when a simple suggestion can go a long way. I’ve learned to work the method in an elementary way and it is part of what I’m teaching Roscoe to do with himself. I like to ask him, “Are you ready to go down, Roscoe?”

“I’m not afraid,” he says with his parrot smirk. “How about you, Charlie?”

So now, in thirty minutes time, I have successfully disassociated from Pina. It may only last the day. But I’m junking the cuckold routine and will let bygones be bygones. Who wants to project personal grievance when there’s such a climate of it in the air? I’m thinking seventy million Trump voters for whom grievance resonates. Meanwhile, I have Pina where I want her, in an emotional lock box.

After I brewed coffee I flicked on the TV. They finally called the election for Biden. The news rocked me. I think some horror stricken part of me believed we’d never get rid of Trump. Breathe.

I briefly watched the celebrations in cities across the country and wanted to join in or at least spectate in person. I walked down to the square. Three people were making noise with whistles, cymbals, and triangles at the foot of Broadway. It wasn’t enough clatter to keep me in Sonoma.

I packed Pina’s laptop in its sack and a suitcase of her clothes, although I doubted I’d deliver them, but I was heading to San Francisco. Perhaps I’d leave her stuff with the concierge who wasn’t a concierge. Would that delight Pina or infuriate her? Frankly, I didn’t give a damn. The self-hypnosis had done the trick. 

By the time I reached the bridge I decided against heading to the parts of town where the bigger celebrations were likely taking place: Civic Center, Market Street, and the Mission. I must have known, unconsciously, that I wanted a bit of old home week in the city. In the end I got far more than I bargained for.

I took the Marina Boulevard exit with the idea of parking somewhere in North Beach and walking around the neighborhood a bit. That’s where I’d lived during my time at the Art Institute. I shared a flat on Union Street with three pals from the college. All four of us were painting students, the three others, including Arrow, have kept at it. The undisputed star of the gang was Sheri Arnette, who went on to have a stellar career, with frequent shows at galleries and small museums across the country before she died at forty-nine, run over by a drunk in a panel truck as she crossed Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. 

Sheri, a curly-headed beauty, and I were an item for a few months at the Union Street flat. Alas, she was too intense and talented for me. I also had difficulty with the fact that she rarely showered. She called me bourgeois for taking a shower every morning. Her competitive spirit was sexy at first, but it lost its charm. I remember the night Sheri challenged us all to a pissing contest; she claimed that she could piss harder than a man. None of us had the balls to take the challenge,

I used to like to watch Sheri paint; she’d go at it all night long, lovely, lyrical paintings that belied her ferocity. I thought of her work as neo Frankenthaler, with a few bits of collaged assemblage tossed in, à la Rauschenberg. She’d have killed me for saying that but, jeez, she even relied on Frankenthaler’s soak-stain technique.

Of the four of us in the house I had the least talent. The third was an Irishman, Toby Devaney, a photo-realist who specialized in painting cropped graffiti-tagged walls. Toby landed a teaching job at SMU. The dude was an Olympian womanizer. He liked to ask: “Do you know how many beds my brogue has gotten me into?” We kept in touch for a while after he moved to Dallas. In one of our last phone calls he told me, “These coeds all carry three things in their purses: a cell phone, a teasing comb, and a handgun.” I imagined he got into quite a few coeds’ purses. Living a bit dangerous, it seemed. 

Despite my paucity of talent, I was the first of the four of us to be represented by a gallery. I’d done a series of paintings embedded with coiled circuits. A hidden switch activated braids of light, clover leafs of night traffic. Collectors really ate up this shit. I imagined them in their fancy houses, delighting guests by flicking on the hidden switches. My first show at Branson-Holly was called “Electric Beasts.” It nearly sold out. I knew better than anybody that the work—an assortment of electrified mammals in the California funk style of Roy De Forrest’s dogs—was really a crock, novelty art that I had little desire to repeat. My roommates were surprisingly generous about my success. They must have known the work was a flash in the pan.

Despite discovering, during my time on Union Street, that I wasn’t a painter, those years were among my happiest. When the gallery finally cut a check for my share of the sales, I bought a McIntosh II, for which I began designing software. That was the beginning of my career in soundscaping and animation.

I lucked out, finding at a two-hour meter in front of Da Flora on Columbus Avenue, certain that in such a prominent spot no one would break into the trunk and pounce on Pina’s stuff. I was tempted to wait in line for a table in the parklet and a plate of gnocchi, but the day was crisp and lovely and I headed up Green Street, where a half dozen parklets had been established in front of restaurants. On Grant Avenue, several cars were blowing their horns while revelers on foot marched in my direction. A group of three—two women, and a man in an Uncle Sam hat, hailed me with a cheer: “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” 

“That’s right,” I said, “Rigor Mortis has set in.”

Someone across the street began singing that tune from The Wizard of Oz. More cars, driving five miles an hour, sat on their horns.

This was what I came to the city for. I walked north toward Filbert Street, past quirky shops and watering holes, a number of which seemed to have called it a day, and then turned back down to Washington Square Park and grabbed an empty bench on the park’s perimeter. Some celebrants, all masked, were keeping a good three feet from each other while snaking through the grass in a wondrous line dance. Apart from the sprawling dancers, a young Asian woman, barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt, did Tai Chi with a grace that was beguiling. I couldn’t remember seeing a young person doing Tai Chi. What a revelation, a body, at once strong and lithe, redefining time. 

One of the line dancers, swaying close to my perch on the bench, tried to get me to join in, but I demurred. Meanwhile a small terrier puppy sniffed at my shoes. The tall, willowy woman at the end of the dog’s leash yanked the pup away from me and apologized. I knew the voice if not the woman, masked in African batik with round, impenetrable art deco shades. I stood up. “Gita?” I just had to pair the voice with the body.

“Not Charlie?” 

”Himself.”

“Oh, my.” Gita’s long fingers spread evenly over her batiked face. “You’ve aged well, Charlie.” 

“You can’t really tell, can you? The mask does wonders for me.”

Gita stood with her feet apart, her long arm bent with a hand on her waist. Her limbs captured sharp angles; her body seemed like an architectural wonder. “Isn’t this serendipitous?” she asked.

“I didn’t think there was any serendipity left in the world.”

“There must be.” She climbed onto the tiptoes of her saffron-hued Chuck high tops, and kind of bounced, a girlish gesture that cheered me.

Gita and I had been colleagues at Industrial Light and Magic and I’d run into her only once or twice, at ILM reunions, in the decade since I retired.

“Don’t tell me you live in the city, Charlie?”

“No, just down for the day from Sonoma. But you live here, right? With a puppy.” I bent down and gave the little guy a pet.

“Dart,” she said, by way of introduction. “Yeah, so when Daryl and I split a few years ago I decided to leave Marin County behind. Wise decision. You were always an inspiration to me, Charlie, retiring before you were fifty. I thought that was so cool—a man in his prime deciding to pursue creative interests of his own.”

“Just don’t ask me how I’ve done.”

“I’m sure you’ve done nicely.” I didn’t need to see Gita’s lips to know that she was smiling. She’d taken off her shades and her dark eyes sparkled. I felt an amorous twitch inside my jeans. At ILM I’d kept my attraction to myself. Gita was a married woman, after all, and I didn’t think it was a good idea for people who worked together to get involved, not that she’d have had any part of me. Not long before I left, I fessed up, told her that I’d always had a crush on her.

She gave me a peck on the cheek. “I think you’re wrong. It’s me, I’m the one who had a crush on you, Charlie.”

Now she met my eyes. “I wasn’t as clever as you, I didn’t get out until I was fifty-two, a couple of years ago now. We’re queer ducks, as my mother from Iowa would say.”

“Queer ducks?”

“Yes, retiring early. I know a lot of people who could afford to, but would never consider it. What would they do with themselves? I don’t have that problem. I mean, I need to acknowledge my privilege—I made fortunate investments. That’s how I can afford to live here. Do you still have your sailboat, Charlie?”

 “We are privileged, aren’t we? No, I sold my share in it, not long ago. I wasn’t getting down to Sausalito often enough. It suited me for a period. 

Gita stretched her arms in the air languorously, and then they arched in a balletic gesture. I noticed that shte stood framed between the two spires of Saints Peter and Paul, across the street. The tabernacle that her arms briefly formed was lovelier.

“You never remarried, Charlie?”

I shook my head, but thought of Pina, who I’ve known for little more than six months but who has felt as much like a wife to me as anybody since I was first married.

“I live with a parrot named Roscoe,” I said.

 “Roscoe! Oh, I can’t believe it. I know about Roscoe. ‘Roscoe here.’ I knew somebody amazing was behind Roscoe. He’s brilliant. Oh, Charlie, can you come up for a glass of wine? I’m only a few blocks away. There’s a very nice deck and we can stay as far from each other as we need to.”

With that, the business in my pants acted up. I did my best to hide it by crossing my legs but felt as awkward as an outsized rubber plant in a small apartment, even though I was standing outside and made of flesh and blood. That’s when Gita noticed she’d let go of the leash and her puppy had wandered away. She sprung to action, leaping off in her saffroned high tops, her lithe strides knifing through the line dancers, calling, “Dart, Dart,” before high-stepping past the Tai Chi master.

With puppy in tow, Gita led me on a steep hike up Greenwich Street, practically to Telegraph Hill, and then to the upper unit of a posh building. This was major multi-million dollar territory, but before I worried about being out of my depth, I reminded myself that I’d only been invited for a glass of wine.

The loft was huge with gorgeous heavy timber beams under a vaulted ceiling. Gita led me past the cork-floored kitchen with its Viking stove, across from a mile of granite countertop, covered with a dozen huge jars of olives. 

Gita followed my gaze. “I’m brining twenty-five pounds of olives. Don’t ask me why.” 

The living room was even larger, with quite the view of the bay. I admired the redwood plank floors and Persian carpets. One side of the room was with oak bookshelves. A witty, madly colored ceramic sculpture of a woman, life-size, wearing vintage librarian spectacles, held forth beside the bookshelves. “You have a Viola Frey,” I said, approaching the ceramic lass.

“Yes, isn’t she lovely? Let me show you the deck.”

The view from outside was even more spectacular.

“When it gets chilly,” Gita said, “we can light a fire.”

I considered the fire pit and the possibility that I might be in for more than a glass of wine.

As Gita went inside to get refreshments, I heard her whisper to her Echo: “Sketches of Spain,” and suddenly Miles Davis’ plaintive trumpet filled the deck. I looked around to see where the music was coming from because, clearly, a superior speaker system was in play, but I couldn’t find them. 

Gita was taking her time. As I listened to Miles weaving his way through Rodrigo’s “Concierto De Aranjuez,” I thought a moment about loyalty—my loyalty to Pina and hers to me. Apparently it wasn’t fixed in stone for either of us. That reality made me sad. Briefly. In a year like this when the world goes to hell, I reasoned, it behooves us to be adaptive, a conclusion, I must say, that came a little too easily.

Gita glided out onto the deck, balancing a round tray with two cocktails, a plate of crackers and some hors d’oeuvre. “I hope you don’t mind a Manhattan. I didn’t have a chilled white. But I did find a tin of caviar just waiting for us in the fridge. We may be the only people in the world to eat caviar on bagel chips. I really need to do a serious shop.” Gita set the tray down on the red rattan table before peeling off her mask. It was good to see her generous lips, her pert nose. She smiled at me oddly, her head tilted sideways. “You’ve been really careful about the COVID, haven’t you, Charlie?”

I nodded and lifted off my mask. We toasted each other and then Gita planted her lips on mine. In no time, my hands found their way to her breasts. It was old-fashioned making out on the deck until Gita pulled us back to our caviar and martinis. 

“It’s really good on the bagel chips,” I said.

“It is, isn’t it?”

We made eyes at each other as Miles, his trumpet muted now, continued to sketch his way through Spain. I’d heard it was a recording he was unhappy with. When a reporter asked him why he said, “Too pretty.”

In the morning, after kissing Gita goodbye, I picked up a double espresso at Café Trieste. I’ve never been fond of drinking coffee out of takeout cups, but these are the times we are living in. On Columbus Avenue, I found two tickets on my car; I’d expected there to be one. Then, gobsmacked, I noticed that the trunk was ajar. Really? Somebody had made off with Pina’s laptop and suitcase of clothes.

 

When I drove off Thursday afternoon, I had no idea of a destination. I was more or less sober by then, but, as I’ve experienced innumerable times the morning after, I dripped with shame. Why did I do this damage? Who was I trying to hurt most—Charlie, Vince or myself? 

I drove south on 101, past San Rafael, where I’d spent much of my childhood, and was tempted to turn off to Stinson Beach but, after gazing with some longing at Mt. Tam, I kept south, crossed the Golden Gate, and landed like a homing pigeon at Ocean Beach. That’s where I am now. Well, close by—in my room at the Seal Rock Inn. 

I made a good choice with this motel. It’s pricey for what it is, but that’s the cost of having a room across the street from the ocean. From the foot of my bed I can see the crisp geometric edge of the horizon line, where the ocean meets the sky. Each day I walk miles up and down the beach. Some days I dislike myself a little less, some, a little more. 

I left without anything. Not even a phone charger or a change of underwear. Chaos, I figured, would be the order of the day, but a certain calm set in. I’ve talked myself into appreciating the abstract beauty of being unmoored, aligned with nobody. This existential approach is my initial posture. As if I could live my life without people at all, in a house whose furniture is a Danish Modern echo of me: sleek surfaces and edges, no attachment or resonance.

A woman can reassemble her exterior life, easily enough, if she’s sufficiently solvent. The interior is another matter, although I remind myself that my psyche was likely as twisted before my betrayal of Charlie as it is now.

At first Charlie called frequently and left simple messages. The last one really got me: “Pina, I hope you’re safe. I miss you. Tonight I wished so much I could hold you. Let me know if I can help in any way. I love you.” How to characterize a message like that? Kind. Thoughtful. Helpful. Loving. The first time I listened to it, I thought, where is his fucking malice? Why am I the one left with it? Aside from his flash of anger when I blurted out what I’d done, Charlie has been all equanimity.

I’m not clear why I haven’t returned his messages. I force myself to remember that just days ago Charlie and I were holding each other in bed, living beside each other, convivial. I won’t talk about love because I decided after my husband Marco died that there wasn’t a lot of percentage in it. Consequentially, Vince was easier for me to live with than Charlie. I knew that Vince was only looking out for himself. I didn’t have to worry about loving him; if I hurt him he had it coming. I’m not a spiteful person, but I don’t know how good I am either. Self-destructiveness is a swamp. It sucks me down like quicksand, and makes me afraid that if I talk with Charlie I’ll do more damage. I’d like to do some healing before I make contact. Or is that simply a stall tactic. A therapist once told me: you need to be your own mother once you’ve lost yours. I like that idea and sometimes I try.

My mother would ask: Why are you being so difficult? Why don’t you just break the ice, Pina? Don’t you think Charlie deserves to know where you are? Do you really mean to be cruel to somebody you love and have already hurt badly? Can’t you be a little bigger, honey? Fortunately, my mother isn’t around to hear my answers.

Charlie didn’t call yesterday nor has he called today. Has he given up on me? I could hardly blame him. Tomorrow is Election Day; I like to picture him madly posting last minute Biden videos of Roscoe. I saw one on Twitter. It lasted seven seconds and had three million views, and that was days ago. Roscoe’s perched atop the wine barrel on Charlie’s deck: Roscoe here, he says with a little jerk of his head, any parrot will tell you that a vote for Biden-Harris is a vote for diversity and justice. 

Daylight savings ended yesterday and this morning I woke ridiculously early, drained a cup of motel coffee and walked directly down the hill to the beach. I descended the first bank of stairs at the north end and gazed south. I couldn’t see anybody except a lone fisherman in the distance. The tide was way out. The water seemed a day’s walk away in the pre-dawn light.  

The other day, during an hour trip to Target, I acquired, in addition to a humble wardrobe, a few practical items: a backpack, a cigarette lighter, flashlight, a phone charger, and a Swiss Army knife with a saw blade and a corkscrew. I brought most of those things with me to the beach this morning; . Barefoot in the sand, I collected driftwood, a few tarry hunks of logs or decommissioned telephone poles, and dry sea wrack. In short, anything that would burn. 

Once I managed to get a small fire going. I stripped off my clothes, folded them into the backpack, and dashed the 100-odd yards through the cool sand, skipping over the damp apron of waves and white water before diving into the frigid sea. My face stung with chilled needle pricks; my scalp felt like a slick surface of ice. The ocean was surprisingly calm and I swam a couple of dozen strokes perpendicular to the waves, before going out a little deeper and riding a modest wave back in. Tumbling out of the water, I dashed back to the fire, where I wrapped myself in a pair of motel towels, and stared out at the glassy sea, every bit alive.  

After I warmed up and dressed, I gathered more wood scraps to keep the fire going, and then sat cross legged in the sand and meditated. I could feel myself sink deeper, having succeeded to some degree in keeping my thoughts at bay. But soon enough I found myself recalling, of all things, The Book of Jonah. I tried to steer my attention back to my breathing and banish the image of Jonah, who, in childhood, I pictured as a gnomish fellow in a loincloth. I had limited success and, when I emerged from the meditation, Jonah was still with me. 

My father liked to tell the story of Jonah when I was a kid. Although he wasn’t a religious man, he found the tale of a man running away from God and being swallowed by a whale an apt narrative for his daughter to consider when she’d been caught telling lies or running away from the truth. He told the story lightly, particularly emphasizing its supernatural qualities. “Can you imagine being swallowed by a whale, honey? What would it be like inside a whale’s belly with all that blubber? When he burped you out, how far would you fly?” At one point the story frightened me, but by the time I was old enough to realize that I’d likely not be swallowed by a whale in this lifetime, I started to appreciate the tale’s parabolic value. Now, nearly a half-century later, I realize that I’m still running away from myself. “Can you imagine being swallowed by a whale, honey?”

Now I wonder why Jonah visited me. What am I lying about? Who, if not everybody, am I running from? And it’s not just Jonah visiting me. Along with my parents, it seems that every spirit with moral sway over me has visited.

Tonight, at dusk, I sat on the edge of my bed and watched the remaining light bleed out of the sky. When it was truly dark, I called Charlie. I began with an apology and he asked me if I was all right.

“I’m not exactly thriving, but I’ll survive.”

“Yes, I hope so.” 

He sounded distant and who could blame him. He asked me where I was and I told him.

“Do you need anything?”

“I’ll get by.”

“But do you need anything?

I wanted to say it was him I needed but I didn’t have the courage to tell him.

“I can bring your laptop and a suitcase of clothes. You don’t have to see me. I’ll leave it with the concierge.”

I laughed. “Nobody would confuse the guy at the front desk with a concierge.”

“Whatever,” Charlie said.

I wondered if his generous offer was really just a way of his dropping off my things and effectively dropping me. I told him not to bother, that I’d become reacquainted with my stuff when I finished quarantining.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and wished me goodnight. That was that; I was left with myself.

I switched on the lamplight and gazed in the mirror above the bureau. You again, I thought. I turned to the side to have a look at my profile, and then switched to the other side. In no time at all, I’d created a rogue’s gallery.

 

I was so absorbed filming new election videos with Roscoe that I didn’t notice, until after six, that Pina hadn’t returned from her lunch. At first, I didn’t think much of it. Pina often gets restless in the late afternoon and drives off somewhere to walk or catch the sunset. I went down to the carport and noticed that her car was missing. That was that. Ravenous after having skipped lunch, I grilled four merguez sausages, and sautéed a shredded red cabbage with eight strips of duck bacon, setting a portion aside for Pina. 

At 8 o’clock I started calling and when she didn’t answer I began to worry. Had I done something to upset her? Nothing came to mind. I figured it must be all the time I’ve been putting in with Roscoe. This was Pina’s little way of punishing me. I could almost hear her say, Go ahead, have your dinner with Roscoe. 

When Pina still didn’t answer her phone at 10 o’clock, I got in my car. At first I drove the two blocks to town and circled the square looking for her car. The emptiness of the square surprised me. Thursday afternoon is when the weekend tourists start arriving in Sonoma. Still in my car, I watched three local teenagers, their faces draped in bandanas, strut by the Swiss Hotel, followed, a couple of moments later, by a masked middle-aged couple walking a black lab. In my anxiety about Pina I’d almost forgotten about the pandemic.

I drove back to the east side, to Lovell Valley Road, hoping to see Pina’s car parked along the stone wall of Sebastiani Winery. She once mentioned it as one of her favorite spots in town; she said she liked to sit on the wall in front of the vineyards and watch the grapes grow. Of course it was dark now and the harvest had been weeks ago. Still, I could picture Pina poised on the wall, maybe dangling her legs, and nursing a pint of cognac. 

The only vehicle parked along the wall was a pickup with a pair of Latino men drinking from cans of beer and listening to a ranchera tune. I found the song affecting, a female voice soaring above strings and trumpets. Once I ferreted out the repeated words of the chorus: Ya me voy para siempre, I am leaving you forever, I drove off.

Back at the complex, I called Pina again, to no avail, and then checked the carport. She was still gone. I made a plan: drive out to the lonely pier at the San Pablo Bay Wildlife Refuge, where Pina sometimes went to watch a sunset, and if I didn’t find here there call the highway patrol and hospitals. 

Before I left the grounds my phone rang.

“Charlie,” she said.

“Oh my god, I was so worried about you. Are you okay?”

The long pause that followed troubled me.

“Not so good,” she said, finally.

“Are you hurt, honey?”

“Well, yes, but no.”

She sounded as if she were in some kind of shock. “Where are you?”

“I have to quarantine.”

“You have to quarantine?” I felt a flood of relief that that was all it was, and laughed as I asked: “What, from your lunch with Vince?”

Again there was an extended pause before she blurted: “No, from after lunch, getting drunk and fucking him.”

I repeated her words silently, one at a time, until I understood what they meant. I could have hung up the phone right then; I probably should have, but something kept me from abandoning the live pulse of the device, as if the grim news was still speculative. To end the call would bring everything to a full stop.

Pina started crying and making a flurry of apologies. Her words sounded like mush to me. My teeth chattered; the reality of what Pina just revealed drilled its way into my flesh. I made a quick plan to become a monk. I’d taken that approach years ago when my ex left me for a drummer. Back then I didn’t get  far with the monastery routine, though, because I had a daughter to look after. Now I wished to disassociate completely, just go off and make a flurry of last minute election videos with Roscoe.

I breathed into the phone but wasn’t ready to speak.

“Charlie,” she said. Her voice was a shy hand reaching toward me. “It won’t happen again. I promise you.”

Ha, I thought. I could tell my monkish aspirations were already failing me. “So that was the price of your freedom—one last fuck.” My voice surprised me, how mean it was. I couldn’t stop it. “What the fuck did that bum have over you, Pina?”

I heard a single sob caught in Pina’s throat. Then the phone went dead. I called back in five minutes. No answer. I still had no idea where she was, or if or when she would return. Did I want her to return? 

After getting no answer again and again, I went up to the condo and mixed a stiff negroni, which I poured down my throat quickly like medicine. Then I stalked around the carports, looking to see if Pina had tried to hide her car in an empty stall. As far as I knew she was still with Vince. The idea made me shudder. I couldn’t find her car, but Vince’s was tucked in its spot. They could have driven off together in her car. I started to imagine places they’d gone, including Vince’s house in the city. Maybe they’d return to their life as it had been before the pandemic. I winced at the idea that I’d been nothing more than a brief interlude in Pina’s life. At a complete loss as to what to do next, I did something I’m not proud of: I peed all over Vince’s BMW.

After that I decided it was time to go monkish, for real. I vowed not to call Pina anymore. I had to tough it out. No sense turning myself into a cuckold pest. I went back upstairs and stuffed a towel in the bell of my tenor sax. I didn’t want to disturb the neighbors or have them hear me sob through the horn. The towel muffled the sound, but also took out half of the lower register, its gravitas, just as I’d lost mine. 

Recently I got the tenor out—the first time in years. Really hadn’t played it since high school. I discovered that I’d kept some muscle memory in my fingers; the real problem was with the blowing. The first couple of times, I honked away, and the reed squeaked badly, almost at regular intervals. There was no ugly beauty to it. But then I worked on my breathing, drew out long tones with as little tremolo as I could manage and, later, reversed course with a wide, deliberate vibrato that I strove to keep even, before refining it to a trace. When I finally linked a few phrases together, I was surprised to hear the voice of the horn. It was a man’s voice; it was mine. I hadn’t sounded like that, if I sounded like anything, as a teenager. 

Now, the muffled voice of the horn underscored my humiliation.

I did call Pina, first thing in the morning; she still wouldn’t answer. Then I did something that felt weird: I took an inventory of Pina’s belongings. Perhaps, I thought, she snuck up here and gathered her essentials yesterday while I worked with Roscoe. I’d already noticed that she hadn’t taken her laptop. She’d also left her work journals, I discovered now. Her closet appeared full. I ran my hands through a short stack of Pina’s sweaters and the smell of her fluttered in the air, a floral hint I used to love, now turned sour. I flipped through Pina’s underwear drawer, which was chock full, to see if she’d hidden anything beneath. Damn, if I didn’t feel something at the bottom of the drawer. I scattered some of her panties onto the floor in my hurry to unearth the treasure, which turned out to be an envelope. Pina, Pina, Pina, it read on the front in my handwriting. Inside were three love notes to her I’d dashed off in March. I wanted to rip them up, but stuffed them back in the bottom of the drawer with her underwear instead. It was time to for me to go full monk.

Late morning I got a call from a Washington Post reporter wanting to do a feature story on Roscoe. It’s Friday, October 30, and they plan to run the story on Election Day. The reporter pushed to come this afternoon, but I put him off until tomorrow morning.

The idea of more notoriety got me walking around the condo in circles. Early afternoon, and I hadn’t eaten anything and was still in my underwear. Roscoe commented prudishly and erroneously on my sartorial style: “You’re naked as a jaybird, Charlie.”

“Not at all. I’ve got my underwear on.” I wondered where he heard that phrase.

“Whatever you say, Charlie,” Roscoe replied, with the tenor of condescension he’d mastered.

The phone rang again and I ran to it, disappointed, as I’d been earlier, that it wasn’t Pina. Sally was yapping syllables in garbles before I could say hello. I wondered if she was coked up.

“You got to keep Roscoe tweeting. His singularity is a necessity now. Tweeting, dad. Roscoe needs to be tweeting. Extended relevance depends on it. Eight, ten, you know, twelve new tweets a day. That’s the only way to build your brand. Look, the election is like in three days. You ever heard of zeitgeist, dad? Zeitgeist. Carp diem? Think about it, dad.”

“Are you okay, Sal?”

“Excellent. Focused as a keyhole.”

I stumbled over the simile and used it as a way to avoid any direct parental-adult child confrontation. Was a keyhole focused? I wondered, standing in my underwear in the living room, or was focus reserved for the person, or parrot, that peeps into the keyhole?

“You’re talking about a lot of work, Sal.”

“Are you afraid of work, dad?” 

She was giving me back my own shit.

“I don’t understand . . . I don’t understand your generation, dad.”

“Anyway,” I said, “Roscoe doesn’t tweet.” I had to regain some ground. “Roscoe speaks. A little parakeet might tweet, but Roscoe speaks.”

“That’s a good line, dad: Roscoe speaks. We’ve got to use it. Build a campaign around it. It reminds me of the Nation of Islam newspaper from the sixties and seventies, Muhammad Speaks.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked. 

“Did a paper on The Nation in my ‘American Religions’ class.”

Sally always knows more than I think she knows, which is more of a commentary on me than her. “Given the present climate in France, I don’t think we should conflate Muhammad with a parrot. We don’t want anybody around here to get decapitated.”

“We’re not in France, dad.”

I switched the phone to speaker. “Say hello to Sally, Roscoe.”

“Sally, Sally, Sally, are you still in the valley?”

I left the phone beside Roscoe as I went to the bedroom to grab a pair of pants. 

When I got back Sally was speaking through the phone to the parrot. “Who do you think . . . who do you think will win the election, Roscoe?” She asked it without expecting an answer. She’d already decided that the bird was worth less real, than as manipulated craft.

Roscoe’s roving eyes settled on me and he chirped a couple of times and then corralled his voice. “I am a parrot not a soot-sayer, Sally. But the one with the purple hair makes me think poorly of the human race.”

“You’re really good at that dad. Cute how you have him say soot-sayer.”

“It was all Roscoe.”

“Whatever. So here’s what we need to do . . . here’s what we need to do with Roscoe, dad. You churn out a couple of new videos everyday and I’ll post them on all the platforms. Meanwhile . . . meanwhile you feed me lines, you feed me lines like the purple hair and I’ll cut them, you know edit them. That’s what I did on the college paper.” 

“You worked on the university newspaper?” I asked, innocently.

“You don’t know anything about me, dad. I was editorial page editor of the Humboldt State Lumberjack. Anyway, let’s start out . . . let’s start out with a tweet an hour, dad. I’ll keep fresh tweets . . . I’ll keep fresh tweets going out all day.”

I told Sally about the call from the Washington Post reporter and that he was planning to have a photographer join him.

“You can’t do that interview, dad. Everybody will find out that Roscoe’s real.”

I no longer knew what was real. Reality had begun to seem beside the point.

“Goodbye Roscoe,” Sally called.

“Your father is finally decent,” said the parrot.

 

The last couple of days have been bats, what with Roscoe going viral and Charlie getting requests for custom videos from the Biden-Harris campaign and Project Lincoln, among others. Charlie had been as stressed as I’d seen him until he got his old saxophone out of the closet. I didn’t even know he played the sax. He apologized in advance and locked himself in the second bedroom with Roscoe. There was a lot of honking at first and long, siren squeaks that sounded like they might rip paint from the walls. For the first time, possibly, I felt sympathy for Roscoe.

Charlie played the horn for hours, the first day, and by the end of his lengthy session he had begun to civilize the thing, playing single notes for so long I feared he’d run out of breath and collapse. But, instead, after the long tones, he started playing recognizable songs like “Greensleeves” and “Amazing Grace.” Charlie also weaved all over the sax with sound patterns that sounded closer to classical music than jazz. At times I could swear he played snatches from some Bach composition or another.

Today I conducted two morning Zoom meetings with clients out on the deck but could still hear the saxophone in the distance, roaming around tunes I’d never heard, punctuated by occasional squawks. My client Carl Sneed asked if I was Zooming from the zoo.

Finally, Charlie emerged from the room with a saxophone strap hanging from his neck and a big smile. Again, he apologized. I told him that he’d begun to sound good and he smiled some more.

“I used to be pretty good in band class,” he said, “but that was a while ago. After I practice some more I’ll be able to play more quietly.”

I asked if he planned to teach Roscoe an instrument and he took my question seriously.

“Roscoe has the ability to sing and, if anything, we’ll do something with that.”

“Yeah, you could work up a fetching duet on ‘Amazing Grace.’ It would go viral for sure.”

Charlie had gone elsewhere. His face had an infinite calm spread across it.   “You look stoned, Charlie.”

“The thing is, playing the sax becomes a form of meditation for me—the thinking kind of meditation. I did so much musing while I noodled around that I solved all kinds of problems.”

“I didn’t know you had that many problems,” I said.

Charlie smiled at me and I tugged on his neck strap until he bent toward me and kissed me sweetly on the lips.

I made a grave mistake yesterday, the consequences of which will be with me for the foreseeable future. It began with me agreeing to have lunch with Vince, who’s been up in Sonoma going on two weeks, since the air turned clear. Every morning when I go for my walk I check to see if his car is still in the carport. Meeting him, I figured, was a way to thank him for not bugging Charlie and me. He’d kept peep. You didn’t see him around the condo the grounds; the only contact he made with us was laying the big Chinook on Charlie. His invitation to lunch was the first time he and I have talked since he came up here.

We met at garden gate of The Girl and the Fig. Vince stood tall in tomato red Bermuda shorts, a white short-sleeve Polo, and slip-on Bally loafers without socks. For some reason he decided to masquerade as a wealthy tourist in a surgical mask.

“You’re looking good, kid,” he said when I walked up. “As much as I can see you in your mask and shades. Where did you get the fancy face covering?”

I’d grabbed a zebra-striped number without much thought, on my way out the door. “Charlie makes them.”

“Charlie sews? Well, I guess he does. He’s quite the fabricator.”

I poker-faced Vince and watched him shift, awkwardly, from one foot to the other. “She’ll have a table for us in a couple of minutes,” he said, indicating the hostess.

“So what else is Charlie fabricating these days? Does he still have his wiggy parrot?”

“Roscoe happens to be a genius, Vince. Charlie’s got him doing campaign messages for Biden.”

“Get out.”

“The funny thing is, nobody believes Roscoe is real. They think he’s an animated manipulation.”

Vince’s lips puckered for a moment and, in a vaguely lewd tone, said, “I bet Charlie is a master manipulator.”

I stood back from Vince. “You know, you look like you’ve just gotten off your yacht, Vince.”

“I wish. Well, at least I look a little better than the last time you saw me.”

“Yes, you’ve always cleaned up well.” The question was: how long could he stay clean? I tried to remember that day that Charlie came to the city with me. We ended up searching the Tenderloin for Vince. I did my best to block it out. It was some time in June. We found him finally on Turk Street, or was it Eddy? His face had open sores and he’d settled against a wall in a small pool of scum—the debonair doctor, the man I referred to as my husband even though we weren’t married, had metamorphosed into a whacked out street junkie. In the aftermath of our meeting, at which I handed him a bundle of cash, I’d felt a tremendous surge of guilt, as if my leaving him had contributed mightily to his demise. I’d shared his bed for seven years, but finally had had enough of his lying and infidelities. And yet his downward spiral had begun long before he knew I’d left.

Now he was looking me up and down.

I stared back at him and said, “You’re appraising me like an old lech, Vince, like I’m a piece of meat.”

Vince, startled by my forwardness, went on a coughing jag. Once, after we made love, he’d actually described me as a cut of meat, a porterhouse steak, no less. I don’t remember being offended at the time. It was amid a short season of playful after-sex banter. “You see, the porterhouse is the champion of the steakhouse,” he said. “It’s quite formidable in stature, two cuts in one, separated by bone, and like you, Pina, one part is very tender while the other is super flavorful.”

The hostess seated us at a secluded corner table in the garden. I gathered that this was what Vince asked for, since there were open tables in the middle of the big yard. The table seemed too small for a couple that was not COVID-bonded and I edged my chair back.

“I have nothing you can catch, Pina. I haven’t been in contact with anybody. What are you going to do, eat on your lap? Maybe you should ask them to bring you a TV tray. Do you remember TV trays or are you too young for that?”

“I know what a TV tray is.”

“They were the glory of the Fifties. You’re not going to believe this after listening to me carry on as a foodie bon vivant all these years, but my ideal was a frozen Swanson TV dinner in a tin tray—fried chicken with mashed potatoes, a medley of cubed carrots, kernels of corn, and very green peas, and a little pocket of cinnamon-flecked apple fritters. That and a cherry coke and I was in heaven. I felt like a free agent. Had everything right in place. You know what I mean? I had my TV dinner on a TV tray as ‘Gunsmoke’ came on the tube.”

“Your mother must have really loved you, Vince. Sounds like the good old days.”

Vince nodded, a little sadly, it seemed. Although he perked up quickly when the waiter arrived at our table. “Will you join me in a martini, Pina?”

“Of course.” I was going to need something to get me through the hour. I didn’t pause to wonder if martinis were part of Vince’s recovery plan.

He certainly knew what he wanted. “I’ll have a Hendricks up with olives and a dash of horseradish.”

Both he and the waiter glanced at me to see how I’d customize my cocktail. You couldn’t just order a martini anymore, but I had to admit that the drink Vince described sounded tantalizing. “I’ll have the same.”

Vince’s eyes sparkled with triumph. When the martinis arrived he lifted off his mask and toasted me: “To old times.”

I undid my mask. “You mean the days of TV dinners on TV trays?”

“No,” Vince said. He shook his head and his eyes assumed a serious cast. “To pre-COVID, pre-addiction, to when you and I were together. To when I was still a doctor.”

“Aren’t you still a doctor?”

“A practicing doctor.”

“To all of that,” I said, and clinked glasses. No sense being acrimonious straight through lunch.

“I want to get to the bottom of some things with you,” Vince said.

I didn’t want to get to the bottom of anything with him. I sipped on the martini, enjoying the faint sting of horseradish.

“I want to level with you.”

I didn’t want to be leveled with and gazed at the menu, which was a card with a barcode that I had to aim the camera of my phone at. I knew I was being rude.

Vince plunged on: “What I had was an existential crisis, Pina. I don’t know what else to call it. I saw what was happening in New York in the hospitals and assumed it was going to be just as bad here. I lost my fucking nerve is the long and short of it. To be honest, it had begun before the pandemic. I never told you this. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you things. Maybe I didn’t want you to see me as weak. But, anyway, I’d started freaking out in the emergency room. More than thirty years in the ER and I was lost. I should have told you way back when, but I was always afraid to show you any weakness. I think I got it into my head that you were too cool, too distant, that when push came to shove you weren’t really sympathetic. I know that’s a terrible commentary on our relationship. Maybe it was all in my head.”

Clearly there was a measure of truth to what Vince was saying, but damned if I was going to engage with his conjecture, which felt like it was edging toward an excuse for his addiction. I wouldn’t allow him to guilt me out for turning “cool” after his string of infidelities. I focused my attention on my martini.

“It’s all instincts in the ER, Pina, and I’d started second guessing myself. Every time a patient died—and their deaths were most likely inevitable—it hit me very hard. Lots of people, nurses mostly, were covering for me.”

Of course, I thought, the nurses. How many of them had he slept with?

“And, you didn’t know this either—nobody did—but I’d been using heroin for quite a long time. Judiciously.”

I mused for a moment about the judicious use of heroin. I suppose I had been a judiciously heavy drinker during my time with Vince and just after. That my drinking has tailed off considerably since I’ve been with Charlie has to mean something, but I’m not sure what. I took a long silver slug of the horseradish martini and told myself to never stop drinking altogether. What a waste that would be.

I could see that Vince was about to launch into the next phase of his big reveal and I preempted it: “Since we’re getting to the bottom of things, Vince, I have a couple of questions. When exactly did you stop being judicious in your use of heroin, and which nurses were you sleeping with at the time?”

Vince gulped for air and his cheeks reddened. I felt briefly like a bitch for getting in the face of a recovering addict, but then I wondered if Vince’s true state was recovery or a checkered return to judiciousness. Now he looked flustered, aiming his phone at the menu card.

The waiter timed his approach perfectly, just as the old doctor vanquished a short attack of hiccups.

This was the moment Vince stopped being courtly. He barged ahead with his order as if he were eating alone. “I’ll start with the steak tartare—now you do it properly here with the raw egg atop, don’t you? And I’ll have a half-pound of the moules-frites. How about a glass of the Sonoma Roadside Grenache for starters?”

The waiter turned toward me. “Madam?” I ordered the fig and arugula salad and a bottle of San Pellegrino.

Vince glared at me once the waiter left. “What, are you on a diet, Pina?”

Vince was never particularly good at provoking me. “No,” I said, “I’m in a less-is-more groove these days.”

“You always had a knack for being spare, Pina. I used to think you had this automatic elegance—you didn’t have to do anything, you just had it. You could breeze through the world like a model, never accruing any baggage.”

“That’s how you saw me?”

“Yes. It made me jealous.“

“Is that because you need to perform all the time?”

Vince’s clean-shaved face had relaxed but now it was halfway back to pinched. His springtime and summer dissipation hardened the leatheriness of his skin and fresh crags carved their way into his chin. The lines crossing his forehead deepened into a music stave without notes. I imagined the notes of a dirge filling the stave as he died. But Vince was still handsome, almost more so, with a hint of an aged, hard-eyed Robert Mitchum.

I shifted my focus to the raw egg atop Vince’s steak tartare. It sat Cyclops-like in a pocket of the beef. Before Vince mixed the egg into the raw meat, I pictured the yolk dripping onto his white polo shirt. But, alas, his storied ER skills returned and he operated with his fork like a judicious surgeon.

Vince looked up at me after eating a couple of mouthfuls of his mash. “Why don’t you have another martini, Pina, while you wait for your salad to come?”

Not only was I tempted by the idea, I gave into the temptation.

Vince’s face again took on a triumphant look as he signaled to the waiter.

I’m not going to make a slew of excuses for what happened later in the afternoon, after quaffing the second martini and half a bottle of $105 Viognier, after barely touching my salad and telling the waiter, who looked unsure where to place the check, to give it to my father. Nor am I going to go on at length about stumbling out of The Girl and the Fig garden and being forced to grab hold of Vince’s arm as we took a weaving path through the tourists, all the way back to the condo complex. When Vince led me up the stairs to his condo I didn’t protest, and when he laid me back on the dining room table and pulled down my jeans and knickers till they puddled around my ankles, I didn’t once say no. In fact, I encouraged him: “Fuck me harder, you prick. Fuck me harder.” Maybe it was because it had happened before—not on the dining room table—but there were plenty of other times when we led each other back to our digs, snookered, and hopped into bed. In fact, I’ve always liked being drunk when I fucked. At first it was the only way I could stand it.

Clearly my self-esteem, at bedrock, is shattered. Why else would I participate in so tawdry an event? Sure, I was smashed, but not beyond reason. I knew what I was doing, what I let happen to me.

After I showered and did my best to wash the smell of Vince from my body forever, I had coffee with him on the deck. At one point I said, “You’re a bad influence on me, Vince.”

“I hope to continue being a bad influence on you, Pina.”

“It’s not going to happen again,” I said, and knew that I meant it.

Relatively sober after three cups of coffee, I stepped gingerly down the stairs and found a spot behind the oleanders to pee. Then I sat in my car for a good hour before driving off.