Surprise
June 15, 1997
The Sunday evening before my first day as newsletter editorial intern at Elliot & Healey, Industrial Realty, Serra and Maggie and I were hanging out in our bedroom. Apple candle flickering on our thrift-store dresser, cool evening wind puffing in from the round window by Maggie’s bed.
Serra paced our brown carpet, organizing pieces of an art project that involved her latest mania—a series of office-marker self-portraits drawn on overhead projector transparencies. She had the clear rectangles laid out in rows; we’d been jumping between them for weeks. It was like playing negative Twister.
“Are those for the invitational, Serr?” I asked. “Part of your triptych?” Yvonne Copeland, her mentor/professor/boss at the museum, was putting on a student show this summer.
“No, that’s too big to work on here,” she said. “This is to get my mind off my showpiece because I’m convinced it blows. Maybe I should bind these into a sort of flip book. You know? Like those early animations? But disturbing.”
“That sounds cool,” I said.
“I like it, make your public work a little.” Maggie aimed a gray plume of smoke out the window. She’d set her bed stack up there expressly for this purpose. With one leg dangling off the layers, she looked like she was melting down the side; Serra called it her Dali Floppy Watches look.
“What’d’you think, glue or three-hole punch? Never mind, I’ll test both.” Serra plugged in her hot glue gun.
“You’re not going down to Bonnie’s tonight, Mags?” I asked.
“It’s the third time this week she’s bailed on me. And even when we do hang out, all she talks about is her hobo markings.” Maggie gazed wistfully at the floor. Bonnie was writing her dissertation on the codes homeless men chalked onto buildings as warnings and advice during the Depression, things like Work Here and Dangerous Man. “Wanna hear how desperate I’ve become? I suggested we trace hobo signs on each other in bed. You know, sort of incorporate her thesis into our sex life.”
“That’s weirdly hot,” Serra said.
“Well, she didn’t think so,” Maggie said. “I’m out of ideas. Draw me a sign for Frustrated Woman, Serra.”
“You’re a thesis widow, Mags,” I said.
“Yep.” She blew a smoke ring at me. “But this is nice. The three of us haven’t hung out in ages.”
“It is nice,” I said. “I’ve missed you guys.”
“We should—” The phone cut Serra off.
“I’ll get it,” I said, sliding off my bed. We kept our phone, a beige ’70s Trimline from Goodwill, on top of a cluttered bookcase by the door.
Cal. “Guess where I am, human.”
“Hey, Jess! Sure, let me check.” I grabbed my backpack off my bed, fished out a notebook, pretended to hunt through it. “Found them.”
“Give my regards to your roommates,” he said, laughing. “I’m on campus, changed my flight from SFO to Oakland. Thought I’d surprise you. I’m at some place on Bancroft Avenue, Caffè Strada. White awning out front, you know it?”
“No problem.”
“I’ve got a couple hours before I have to leave for the airport. Thought we could have a bite.”
“I hope you can read my handwriting!”
“I’ve got us a booth in back so you don’t need to worry. Unless you want to check into a hotel in Berkeley. You can stay after I go, take one of your baths. I can picture you as I sit through that endless due-diligence meeting tomorrow morning. All soapy and slippery, your hair wet...”
This wasn’t just dirty talk; baths were another of our inside jokes. At Plato House I didn’t have a tub, only shared access to a tepid, mildewy shower.
Cal had urged me to use the Sausalito place whenever I wanted, to make it my pied-à-terre. But I’d never gone alone, not even to take advantage of the pristine, jetted tub. I didn’t want to think of myself as a kept woman.
“Rebecca?” he said. “What do you think?”
“Let’s meet at the café.”
“See you in twenty?”
“Sounds good. Bye, Jess.”
I zipped my backpack, brushed my hair. The sounds were the same as before: the zither-y music of Serra rearranging her plastic pages, Maggie’s languid exhales. The thwack, thwack of Glenn, hacky sacking in the hall.
But now the silence seemed assertive.
“That was just this girl who wants to borrow my American lit notes for summer session,” I said. “Jess.”
Maggie coughed, but was it her usual lazy pot cough? And was Serra concentrating too hard on her transparencies? I was being paranoid. Secondhand effects of Maggie’s weed.
“I’m going to run meet her at Café Diavolo.” Everyone hated Diavolo. It was overpriced and served burned espresso; there was no chance they’d want to come. “What were you saying before, Serr?”
“Oh. I was going to suggest Chocolate Margs.”
“Excellent idea,” Maggie said.
When I stepped onto the porch, they were in the kitchen, laughing over the blender’s roar.
It hit me with awful clarity as their happy sounds faded behind me: I didn’t want to go.
It was a ten-minute walk across campus from Plato House to the café. I could do it in half that if I rushed.
But I dawdled. I waved at a boy from my Shakespeare section and chatted. When I passed the econ building, I spotted new cat graffiti on a door and took out my notebook, carefully logging the details of the sighting as I always did—date, location—so I could note it on my map and enter it in the Hiss file on my laptop later.
I didn’t get a charge out of the Fe|Co symbol tonight, and I wasn’t eager to get to the café to tell Cal so we could joke about it. “Co” probably did just stand for company like he’d said; it was a depressing marketing scheme.
Serra still asked me the occasional polite question about what she called your multiplying kitties, but everyone else thought I was wasting my time. Maybe I was.
I glanced up at the hands on the clock tower. 7:30. I should have been at the café half an hour ago.
In Sproul Plaza, a woman was playing the marimba, a sweet, echoing tune. I dropped a dollar in her bucket and lingered on a sunny patch of grass to listen.
Five minutes, ten.
He’d be checking his watch, wondering where I was.
I was supposed to be happy, eager for a few stolen minutes. My lover hadn’t bailed on me like Maggie’s. He’d changed his plans to see me. But instead of anticipation I felt only resentment.
It’s over, I whispered, testing the words.
I couldn’t hear them over the marimba. Island music, a sound that belonged to beaches, sailboats. The thought made me so sad, picturing last summer, that I almost went home. If only I could tell my roommates, cry with them and let them console me, ply me with drinks, like everyone else going through a breakup.
But I’d reached for him in secret, and this was my punishment; I had to let him go in secret, too.
I would do it tonight. I would be direct, like the magazines advised. I would be mature, direct. We would part as friends.
I spotted him in the café before he noticed me. At a shadowy, indoor table like he’d promised. Shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened. Working on his laptop, his navy suit jacket folded crisply over his briefcase on the table. He was surrounded by summer-session kids. No one I knew, thank god. They were hunched over their textbooks, tinny music escaping from their headphones, shabby backpacks thrown on the dirty floor.
Compared with them, he looked so...complete.
A pretty redhead at the next table was eyeing him, had no doubt been neglecting her textbooks for the last hour, distracted by this beautiful, older, completely out-of-place man. But he wasn’t looking at her.
I wished he was. If I caught him flirting back, it would make it easier.
He saw me and beamed.
“Trouble getting away?” he asked when I sat down.
“Yeah, sorry. My roommates were on me.”
“Are you glad I switched my flight?”
“Of course!”
“So. Big first day tomorrow,” he said. “I still wish you’d let me—”
“Don’t, please, I—”
“Okay, okay.”
He’d offered to find me a better summer job. But much as I dreaded the real estate newsletter gig, at least I’d gotten it myself. “They’re letting me work my schedule around my Tuesday-Thursday class, it’s perfect.”
“Got it. Everything good?” he asked, a flicker of worry in his eyes. “You seem...”
“Just nervous about my first day of work tomorrow, I guess.” I made my voice light. “Should I buy you my favorite drink from here? Coconut Italian soda.”
He made a face and I laughed, trying to dredge up our old playfulness.
“I wish I could stay,” he said.
“Me, too.” We held hands under the table. Talked. Joked about my upcoming job, his. He pulled my foot onto his lap, slipped off my shoe, massaged my instep.
But surely he had to feel that things between us were not the same. That he didn’t belong here on campus.
When it was time for him to call a cab, he said, “See you Friday, human.” He stood, brushed his lips on my bare shoulder, hiding the kiss behind his briefcase.
“Wait.”
He turned. “Ah, now she wants me to stay.”
I couldn’t do it. Not yet, not here.
Whoever said just be direct hadn’t looked into blue eyes as bright as this, eyes that went from serious to laughing so quickly you wanted to watch them, try to pinpoint exactly when they changed. “Just. Have a safe flight.”
I’d do it next week when we were alone. So I could plan exactly what to say.
Later that night
Serra and Maggie were out when I came back, so I booted up my laptop to note the graffiti marking I’d seen on the econ department door.
I had to keep busy.
Waiting for my computer to groan to life, I stared down at Serra’s transparencies. She’d drawn a fake hobo marking for Frustrated Woman, as requested. A cartoon version of Maggie, shaggy hair and smoking blunt in her hand. Normally it would make me smile, but I was too sad tonight. I stared down at the picture and it started to blur.
I don’t know how long I cried. But when I stopped, I felt better. I’d decided. I felt emptied out, clear. Calmer than I’d felt in months.
I wiped my eyes and surveyed the transparencies on the floor. Serra was so talented. She wasn’t frittering away her time in indecision; she was making something that mattered. She worked late into the night on her project for the invitational—at her studio, conferring with Yvonne at the museum. Returning to Plato energized and purposeful. The way I’d once felt about reporting, about fitting pages together at the Orange Park High Squeeze.
I stared at the clear pages on the floor for a long time.
I hopped down, grabbed some blank sheets from the box, scrambled back onto my bed. Slowly at first, I held them over the campus map on the wall and marked them, dividing the sheets into groups based on the month and year they’d appeared on campus. Then, one by one, oldest sightings first, I placed the marked-up sheets over the map to see if my hunch was right.
After the second clear page I could see them. Circles around at least five buildings on campus. Not random. Not a joke.
When Serra and Maggie came in I spoke in a rush. “I think the graffiti marks specific people. Surrounds them. Targets them, or says something about them, like hobo markings.”
“What makes you think that?” Serra asked. But she had the funniest expression on her face. Like a kid who’s been caught being bad and is proud of it.
“What?” I asked.
“Hypothetically, what would you do if I knew something about it?”
“You do know who’s—?”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know. I just want the truth.”
“Attached to your byline on the front page.”
“That would be nice,” I said.
“Could someone please fill me in?” Maggie said.
“Swear not to write about it,” Serra said to me, stern. “Not unless we say it’s okay.”
“I swear,” I said fast. “Who’s we?”
“I swear, too. What’m I swearing to?” Maggie flipped through my scribbled-on transparencies, baffled.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. Glenn was hacky sacking outside our half-open door. Serra slammed it shut. “That boy is going to drive me to the counseling center.”
But when she turned she was smiling. She laid her right arm out across my mattress, palm up. Unsnapped the faded tan leather cuff bracelet she’d bought on Telegraph freshman year, the one that matched mine. She wore it night and day, even in the shower.
On her wrist was a tattoo: black cat’s whiskers like the ones in the graffiti. Two delicate arrows with the tips touching:
