SHE had written to him, since neither of them had a phone.
I’ll be there Sunday morning at four. It’s called the Night Owl flight in case you forget the number. The number’s 349. If you can’t come get me I’ll get a taxi and come on over. I saw Johnny Vidocovitch last night. He’s got a new bass player. He told Ron he could afford to get married now that he’d found his bass player. Doesn’t that sound just like him. I want to go to that chocolate place in San Francisco the minute I get there. And lie down with you in the dark for a million years. Or in the daylight. I love you. Nora Jane
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t at the gate. Then he wasn’t in the terminal. Then he wasn’t at the baggage carousel. Nora Jane stood by the carousel taking her hat on and off, watching a boy in cowboy boots kiss his girlfriend in front of everyone at the airport. He would run his hands down her flowered skirt and then kiss her again.
Finally the bags came. Nora Jane got her flat shoes out of her backpack and went on out to find a taxi. It’s because I was too cheap to get a phone, she told herself. I knew I should have had a phone.
She found a taxi and was driven off into the hazy early morning light of San Jose. The five hundred and forty dollars she got from the robbery was rolled up in her bag. The hundred and twenty she saved from her job was in her bra. She had been awake all night. And something was wrong. Something had gone wrong.
“You been out here before?” the driver said.
“It’s the first time I’ve been farther west than Alexandria,” she said. “I’ve hardly ever been anywhere.”
“How old are you?” he said. He was in a good mood. He had just gotten a $100 tip from a drunk movie star. Besides, the little black-haired girl in the back seat had the kind of face you can’t help being nice to.
“I’ll be twenty this month,” she said. “I’m a Moonchild. They used to call it Cancer but they changed. Do you believe in that stuff?”
“I don’t know,” the driver said. “Some days I believe in anything. Look over there. Sun’s coming up behind the mountains.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “I forgot there would be mountains.”
“On a clear day you can see Mount Diablo. You ought to go while you’re out here. You can see eighty percent of California from it. You came out to visit someone?”
“My boyfriend. Well, he’s my fiancé. Sometimes he has to work at night. He wasn’t sure he could meet me. Is it far? To where I’m going?” They were in a neighborhood now, driving past rows of stucco cottages, built close together like houses in the Irish Channel. The yards looked brown and bare as if they needed rain.
“Couple of blocks. These are nice old neighborhoods. My sister used to live out here. It’s called the Lewis tract.” He turned a corner and came to a stop before a small pink house with an overgrown yard.
“Four fifty-one. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“You want me to wait till you see if anyone’s here?”
“No, I’ll just get out.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” She watched as he backed and turned and went on off down the road, little clouds of dust rising behind the wheels. She stood looking up the path to the door. A red tree peeling like a sunburn shaded the yard. Here and there a few scraggly petunias bloomed in boxes. Get your ass out here and see where the USA is headed, Sandy had written her. I’ve got lots of plans. No phone as yet. Bring some French bread. Everything out here is sourdough. Yours forever, Sandy. He’s here, she thought. I know he’s here.
She walked on up the path. There was a spider’s web across the screen door. They can make one overnight, she told herself. It’s nothing to make one overnight.
She rang the door bell and waited. Then she walked around to the back and looked in the window. It was a large room with a modern-looking stove and a tile floor. I’m going in, she decided. I’m worn out. I’m going in.
She picked up a rock and broke a pane of glass in the door, then carefully picked out all the broken pieces and put them in a pile under the steps. She reached her hand in the opening, undid the latch and went on in. It was Sandy’s house all right. His old Jazzfest poster of Dr. John and the Mardi Gras Indians was hanging on a wall. A few clothes were in the closets. Not many. Still, Sandy traveled light. He’ll be back, she thought. He’s just gone somewhere.
She walked around the house looking for clues. She found only a map of San Francisco with some circles drawn on it, and a list, on an envelope, from something called the Paris Hotel. Willets, it said. Berkeley, Sebastopol, Ukiah, Petaluma, Occidental.
She walked back into the kitchen looking for something to eat. The refrigerator was propped open with a blue tile. Maybe he’s in jail, she thought. Maybe I got here just in time.
She reached up a fingernail and flipped open a greeting card that was tacked up over the stove. It was a photograph of a snow-covered mountain with purple fields below and blue skies above. A hawk, or perhaps it was a buzzard, was flying over the mountain. FREEDOM IS THE GREATEST GIFT THAT ONE CAN GIVE ANOTHER, the card said. IT IS A GIFT BORN OF LOVE, TRUST, AND UNDERSTANDING. Nora Jane pulled out the pushpin and read the message inside.
Dear Sandy,
I am glad I am going to be away from you during our two weeks of abstinence. You were so supportive once you realized I was freaking out. I want to thank you for being there for me. We have climbed the mountain together now and also the valley. I hope the valley wasn’t too low for you.
I know this has been hard on you. You have had to deal with a lot of new feelings and need time to adjust to them. We will both hopefully grow from this experience. I want us to have many more meaningful experiences together. I love you more than words can say. In deepest friendship.
Pam
I’m hungry, Nora Jane thought. I’m starving. She walked over to a bed in a corner. She guessed it was a bed. It was a mattress on top of a platform made of some kind of green stone. It looked more like a place to sacrifice someone than a place to sleep.
She put her pack up on the bed and began riffling through the pockets for the candy bar she had saved from a snack on the plane. When she found it she tore open the cardboard box and began to eat it, slowly at first, then faster. I don’t know, she thought. I just don’t know. She leaned up against the green stone platform eating the chocolate, watching the light coming in the window through the leaves of the red tree making patches on the mattress. That’s all we are, she decided. Patches of light and darkness. Things that cast shadows.
She ate the rest of the candy, stopping every now and then to lick her fingers. When she was finished she folded the candy box and put it carefully away in her pack. Nora Jane never littered anything. So far in her life she had not thrown down a single gum wrapper.
During the next week there were four earthquakes in the Bay Area. A five point, then a four point, then a two, then a three. The first one woke her in the middle of the night. She was asleep in a room she had rented near the Berkeley campus. At first she thought a cat had walked across the bed. Then she thought the world had come to an end. Then the lights went on. Everyone in the house gathered in the upstairs hall. When the excitement wore down a Chinese mathematician and his wife fixed tea in their room. “Very lucky to be here for that one,” Tam Suyin assured Nora Jane. “Sometimes have to wait long time to experience big one.”
“I was in a hurricane once,” Nora Jane said. “I had to get evacuated when Camille came.”
“Oh,” Tam said to her husband. “Did you hear that? Miss Whittington have to be evacuated during hurricane. Which one you find most interesting experience, Miss Whittington, earthquake or hurricane?”
“I don’t know,” Nora Jane said. She was admiring the room, which was as bare as a nun’s cell. “I guess the hurricane. It lasted longer.”
The next morning she felt better than she had in a week. She was almost glad to be alive. She bought croissants from a little shop on Tamalpais Street, then spent some time decorating her room to look like a nun’s cell. She put everything she owned in the closet. She covered the bed with a white sheet. She took down the drapes. She put the rug away and cleaned the floor. She bought flowers and put them on the dresser.
That afternoon she found a theatrical supply store on Shattuck Avenue and bought a stage pistol. It was time to get to work.
“What are you doing?” the proprietor said.
“Happy Birthday, Nora Jane. Have you ever seen it?”
“The Vonnegut play? The one with the animal heads?”
“No, this is an original script. It’s a new group on the campus.”
“Bring a poster by when you get them ready. We like to advertise our customers.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “As soon as we get some printed.”
“When’s it scheduled for?”
“Oh, right away. As soon as we can whip it together.”
Freddy Harwood walked down Telegraph Avenue thinking about everyone who adored him. He had just run into Buiji. She had let him buy her a cafe mocca at the Met. She had let him hold her hand. She had told him all about the horrible time she was having with Dudley. She told him about the au pair girl and the night he threatened her with a gun and the time he choked her and what he said about her friends. It was Freddy she loved, she said. Freddy she adored. Freddy she worshipped. Freddy’s hairy stomach and strong arms and level head she longed for. She was counting the days until she was free.
I ought to run for office, he was thinking. And just to think, I could have thrown it all away. I could have been a wastrel like Augustine. But no, I chose another way. The prince’s way. Noblesse oblige. Ah, duty, sweet mistress.
Freddy Harwood was the founder and owner of the biggest and least profitable bookstore in northern California. He had one each of every book worth reading in the English language. He had everything that was still in print and a lot that was out of print. He knew dozens of writers. Writers adored him. He gave them autograph parties and unlimited credit and kept their books in stock. He even read their books. He went that far. He actually read their books.
In return they were making him famous. Already he was the hero of three short stories and a science fiction film. Last month California Magazine had named him one of the Bay Area’s ten most eligible bachelors. Not that he needed the publicity. He already had more women than he knew what to do with. He had Aline and Rita and Janey and Lila and Barbara Hunnicutt, when she was in between tournaments. Not to mention Buiji. Well, he was thinking about settling down. There are limits, he said to himself. Even to Grandmother’s money. There are perimeters and prices to pay.
He wandered across Blake Street against the light, trying to choose among his women. A man in a baseball cap took him by the arm and led him back to the sidewalk.
“Nieman,” he said. “What are you doing in town?”
“Looking for you. I’ve got to see three films between now and twelve o’clock. Go with me. I’ll let you help write the reviews.”
“I can’t. I’m up to my ass in the IRS. I’ll be working all night.”
“Tomorrow then. I’m at Gautier’s. Call me for breakfast.”
“If I get through. If I can.”
“Holy shit,” Nieman said. “Did you see that?” Nora Jane had just passed them going six miles an hour down the sidewalk. She was wearing black and white striped running shorts and a pair of canvas wedgies with black ankle straps, her hair curling all over her head like a dark cloud.
“This city will kill me,” Freddy said. “I’m moving back to Gualala.”
“Let’s catch her,” Nieman said. “Let’s take her to the movies.”
“I can’t,” Freddy said. “I have to work.”
An hour later his computer broke. He rapped it across the desk several times, then beat it against the chair. Still no light. He laid it down on a pile of papers and decided to take a break. An accountant, he was thinking. They’ve turned me into an accountant.
Nora Jane was sitting by a window of the Atelier reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey. She was deep into a description of Uncle Pio. “He possessed the six attributes of an adventurer—a memory for names and faces; with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.” That’s just like me, Nora Jane was thinking. She felt in her bag for the gun. It was still there.
Freddy sat down at a table near hers. Your legs are proof of the existence of God. No, not that. What if she’s an atheist? If I could decipher the Rosetta Stone of your anklestraps. My best friend just died. My grandmother owns Sears Roebuck.
“I haven’t seen one of those old Time-Life editions of that book in years,” he said. “I own a bookstore. May I look at that a minute?”
“Sure you can,” she said. “It’s a great book. I bought it in New Orleans. That’s where I’m from.”
“Ah, the crescent city. I know it well. Where did you live? In what part of town?”
“Near the park. Near Tulane.”
“On Exposition?”
“No, on Story Street. Near Calhoun.” She handed him the book. He took it from her and sat down at the table.
“Oh, this is very interesting, finding this,” he said. “This series was so well designed. Look at this cover. You don’t see them like this now.”
“I’ve been looking for a bookstore to go to,” she said. “I haven’t been here long. I don’t know my way around yet.”
“Well, the best bookstore in the world is right down the street. Finish your coffee and I’ll take you there. Clara, I call it. Clara, for light. You know, the patron saint of light.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. The stranger, she thought. This is the stranger.
They made their way out of the cafe through a sea of ice cream chairs and out onto the sidewalk. It was in between semesters at Berkeley, and Telegraph Avenue was quiet, almost deserted. When they got to the store Freddy turned the key in the lock and held the door open for her. “Sorry it’s so dark,” he said. “It’s on an automatic switch.”
“Is anyone here?” she asked.
“Only us.”
“Good,” she said. She took the pistol out of her purse and stepped back and pointed it at him. “Where is the office?” she said. “I am robbing you. I came to get money.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve got to be kidding. Put that gun down.”
“I mean it,” she said. “This is not a joke. I have killed. I will kill again.” He put his hands over his head as he had seen prisoners do in films and led the way to his office through a field of books, a bright meadow of books, one hundred and nineteen library tables piled high with books.
“Listen, Betty,” he began, for Nora Jane had told him her name was Betty.
“I came to get money,” she said. “Where is the money? Don’t talk to me. Just tell me where you put the money.”
“Some of it’s in my pocket,” he said. “The rest is locked up. We don’t keep much here. It’s mostly charge accounts.”
“Where’s the safe? Come on. Don’t make me mad.”
“It’s behind that painting. Listen, I’ll have to help you take that down. That’s a Helen Watermeir. She’s my aunt. She’ll kill me if anything happens to that painting.”
Nora Jane had moved behind his desk. “Try not to mess up those papers,” he said. “I gave up a chance to canoe the Eel River to work on those papers.”
“What’s it a painting of?” she said.
“It’s A.E.”
“A.E.?”
“Abstract Expressionism.”
“Oh, I know about that. Sister Celestine said it was from painters riding in airplanes all the time. She said that’s what things look like to them from planes. You know, I was thinking about that flying up here. We flew over all these salt ponds. They were these beautiful colors. I was thinking about those painters.”
“I’ll have to let you tell Aunt Helen that. She’s really defensive about A.E. right now. That might cheer her up. Now, listen here, Betty, hasn’t this gone far enough? Can’t you put that gun down? They put people in Alcatraz for that.” She was weakening. She was looking away. He pressed his luck. “Nobody with legs like yours should be in Alcatraz.”
“This is what I do,” she said. “I’m an anarchist. I don’t know what else to do.” The gun was pointing to the floor.
“Oh,” he said. “There are lots of better things to do in San Francisco than rob a bookstore.”
“Name one,” she said.
“You could go with me,” he said. He decided to pull out all the stops. He decided to go for his old standby. “We could go together ‘while the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table. Oh, do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit.’”
“I know that poem,” she said. “We had it in English.” She wasn’t pointing the gun and she was listening. Of course he had never known the “Love Song” to fail. He had seen hardhearted graduate students pull off their sweaters by the third line.
He kept on going. Hitting the high spots. Watching for signs of boredom. By the time he got to “tea and cakes and ices,” she had begun to cry. When he got to the line about Prince Hamlet she laid the gun down on top of the computer and dissolved in tears. “My name isn’t Betty,” she said. “I hate the name of Betty. My name is Nora Jane Whittington and tomorrow is my birthday. Oh, goddamn it all to hell. Oh, goddamn everything in the whole world to hell.”
He came around the desk and put his arms around her. She felt wonderful. She felt as good as she looked. “I’m going home and turn myself in,” she was sobbing. “They’ve got my fingerprints. They’ve got my handwriting. I’m going to have to go live in Mexico.”
“No, you aren’t,” he said. “Come along. Let’s go eat dinner. I’ve been dreaming all day about the prawns at Narsai’s.”
“I don’t want any prawns,” she said. “I don’t even know what prawns are. I want to go to that chocolate store. I want to go to that store Sandy told me about.”
Many hours later they were sitting in the middle of a eucalyptus grove on the campus, watching the stars through the trees. The fog had lifted. It was a nice night with many stars.
“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,” Freddy was saying, but she interrupted him.
“Do you think birds live up there?” she said. “That far up.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”
“It doesn’t look like they would want to nest that high up. I watch birds a lot. I mean, I’m not a birdwatcher or anything like that. But I used to go out on the seawall and watch them all the time. The seagulls, I mean. Feed them bread and watch them fly. Did you ever think how soft flying seems? How soft they look, like they don’t have any edges.”
“I took some glider lessons once. But I couldn’t get into it. I don’t care how safe they say it is.”
“I don’t mean people flying. I mean birds.”
“Well, look, how about coming home with me tonight. I want you to spend the night. You can start off your birthday in my hot tub.”
“You’ve got a hot tub in your house?”
“And a redwood deck and a vegetable garden, corn, okra, squash, beans, skylights, silk kimonos, futon, orange trees. If you come over you won’t have to go anyplace else the whole time you’re in California. And movies. I just got Chariots of Fire. I haven’t even had time to see it yet.”
“All right,” she said. “I guess I’ll go.”
Much later, sitting in his hot tub she told him all about it. “Then there was this card tacked up over the stove from this girl. You wouldn’t believe that card. I wouldn’t send anyone one of those cards for a million dollars. We used to have those cards at the Mushroom Cloud. Anyway, now I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll go on home and turn myself in. They’ve got my fingerprints. I left them all over everything.”
“We could have your fingers sanded. Did you ever see that movie? With Bette Davis as twin sisters? And Karl Malden. I think it was Karl Malden.”
“I can’t stay out here,” she said. “I don’t know how to take care of myself out here.”
“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Listen, N.J., you want me to tell you the rest of that quote I was telling you or not?”
“The one about the trees dying?”
“No, the one about the lice.”
“All right,” she said. “Go on. Tell the whole thing. I forgot the first part.” She had already figured out there wasn’t any stopping him once he decided to quote something.
“It’s from Heraclitus. Now, listen, this is really good. ‘All men are deceived by the appearances of things, even Homer himself, who was the wisest man in Greece; for he was deceived by boys catching lice; they said to him, ‘What we have caught and what we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.’”
“Am I supposed to say something?” she said.
“Not unless you want to, come on, let’s get to bed. Tomorrow we begin the F. Slazenger Harwood memorial tour of the Bay Area. The last girl who got it was runner-up for Miss America. It was wasted on her, however. She didn’t even shiver when she put her finger in the passion fruit.”
“What all do we have to do?” Nora Jane said.
“We have to see your chocolate store and the seismograph and the Campanile and the Pacific Ocean and the redwood trees. And a movie. At least one movie. There’s this great documentary about Werner Herzog playing. He kills all these people trying to move a boat across a forest in Brazil. At the end he says, I don’t know if it was worth it. Sometimes I don’t know if movies are worth all this.”
***
The tour moved from the Cyclotron to Chez Panisse, from Muir Woods to Toroya’s, from the Chinese cemetery to Bolinas Reef.
It began with the seismograph. “That needle is connected to a drum deep in the earth,” Freddy quoted from a high-school science lecture. “You could say that needle has its finger on the earth’s heart. When the plates shift, when the mantle buckles, it tells us just how much and where.”
“What good does that do,” Nora Jane said, “if the building you’re in is falling down?”
“Come on,” he said. “We’re late to the concert at the Campanile.”
They drove all over town in Freddy’s new DeLorean. “Why does this car have fingerprints all over it?” Nora Jane asked. “If I had a car this nice I’d keep it waxed.”
“It’s made of stainless steel. It’s the only stainless steel DeLorean in town. You can’t wax stainless steel.”
“If I got a car I’d get a baby blue convertible,” she said. “This girl at home, Dany Nasser, that went to Sacred Heart with me, had one. She kept promising to let me drive it but she never did.”
“You can drive my car,” he said. “You can drive it all day long. You can drive it anyplace you want to drive it to.”
“Except over bridges,” she said. “I don’t drive over bridges.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It always seems like there’s nothing underneath them. Like there’s nothing there.”
***
He asked her to move in with him but she turned him down. “I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to live with anyone just now.”
“Then let’s go steady. Or get matching tattoos. Or have a baby. Or buy a dog. Or call up everyone we know and tell them we can’t see them anymore.”
“There isn’t anyone for me to call,” she said. “You’re the only one I know.”
In August Sandy found her. Nora Jane was getting ready to go to work. She was putting in her coral earrings when Tam Suyin called her to the phone.
“I was in Colorado,” he said. “I didn’t get your letter until a week ago. I’ve been looking all over the place for you. Finally I got Ron and he told me where you were.”
“Who’s Pam,” she said. “Tell me about Pam.”
“So you’re the one that broke my window.”
“I’ll pay for your window. Tell me about Pam.”
“Pam was a mistake. She took advantage of me. Look, Nora Jane, I’ve got big plans for us. I’ve got something planned that only you and I could do. I mean, this is big money. Where are you? I want to see you right away.”
“Well, you can’t come now. I’m on my way to work. I’ve got a job, Sandy.”
“A job?”
“In an art gallery. A friend got it for me.”
“What time do you get off? I’ll come wait for you.”
“No, don’t do that. Come over here. I’ll meet you here at five. It’s 1512 Arch Street. In Berkeley. Can you find the way?”
“I’ll find the way. I’ll be counting the minutes.”
***
She called Freddy and broke a date to go to the movies. “I have to talk to him,” she said. “I have to give him a chance to explain.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Do whatever you have to do.”
“Don’t sound like that.”
“What do you want me to do? Pretend like I don’t care? Your old boyfriend shows up at eight o’clock in the morning…the robber baron shows up, and I’m supposed to act like I think it’s great.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother. I won’t be here. I’m going out of town.”
He worked all morning and half the afternoon without giving in to his desire to call her. By two-thirty his sinus headache was so bad he could hardly breathe. He stood on his head for twenty minutes reciting “The Four Quartets.” Nothing helped. At three he stormed out of the store. I’m sitting on her steps till she gets home from work, he told himself. I can’t make myself sick just to be a nice guy. Unless that bastard picks her up at work. What if he picks her up at work. He’ll drag her into drugs. She’ll end up in the state pen. He’ll put his mouth on her mouth. He’ll put his mouth on her legs. He’ll touch her hands. He’ll touch her hair.
Freddy trudged up Arch Street with his chin on his chest, ignoring the flowers and the smell of hawthorn and bay, ignoring the pines, ignoring the sun, the clear light, the cool clean air.
At the corner of Arch and Brainard he started having second thoughts. He stood on the corner with his hands stuck deep in the pockets of his pants. A white Lincoln with Colorado plates pulled up in front of Nora Jane’s house. A tall boy in chinos got out and walked up on the porch. He inspected the row of mailboxes. He had an envelope in his hand. He put it into one of the boxes and hurried back down the steps. A woman was waiting in the car. They talked a moment, then drove off down the street.
That’s him, Freddy thought. That’s the little son-of-a-bitch. The Suyins’ Pomeranian met him in the yard. He knocked it out of his way with the side of his foot and opened Nora Jane’s mailbox. The envelope was there, in between an advertisement and a letter from a politician. He stuck it into his pocket and walked up the hill toward the campus. He stopped in a playground and read the note.
Angel, I have to go to Petaluma on business. I’ll call tonight. After eight. Maybe you can come up and spend the weekend. I’m really sorry about tonight, I’ll make it up to you. Yours forever.
Sandy
When he finished reading it he wadded it up and stuck into a trash container shaped like a pelican. “All right,” he said to the pelican. “I’ll show him anarchy. I’ll show him business. I’ll show him war.”
He walked back down to Shattuck Avenue and hailed a taxi. “Where’s the nearest Ford place?” he asked the driver. “Where’s the nearest Ford dealer?”
“There’s Moak’s over in Oakland. Unless you want to go downtown. You want me to take you to Moak’s?”
“That’s fine,” Freddy said. “Moak’s is fine with me.”
“I wouldn’t have a Ford,” the driver said. “You couldn’t give me a Ford. I wouldn’t have a thing but a Toyota.”
Moak Ford had just what he was looking for. A pintsized baby blue convertible sitting in the display window with the sunlight gleaming off its chrome and glass. The interior was an even lighter blue with leather seats and a soft blue carpet. “I’ll need a tape deck,” he said to the salesman. “How long does it take to install a tape deck?”
At six-thirty he called her from a pay phone near her house. “I don’t want to bother you,” he said. “I just want to apologize for this morning. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay,” she said. “I’m terrible. I’m just terrible.”
“Could I come over? I’ve got a present for you.”
“A present?”
“It’s blue. I bought you something blue.”
She was waiting on the porch when he drove up. She walked down the steps trying not to look at it. It was so blue. So very blue. He got out and handed her the keys.
“People don’t give other people cars,” she said. “They don’t just give someone a car.”
“I do whatever I need to do,” he said. “It’s my charm. My fabled charisma.”
“Why are you doing this, Freddy?”
“So you’ll like me better than old Louisiana Joe. Where is he, by the way? I thought you had a big date with him.”
“I broke the date. I didn’t feel like seeing him right now. Did you really buy me that car?”
“Yes, I really did. Get in. See how good it smells. I got a tape deck but they can’t put it in until Thursday. You want the top down or not?”
She opened the car door and settled her body into the driver’s seat. She turned on the key. “I better not put it down just yet. I’ll put it down in a minute. I’ll stop somewhere and put it down later.”
She drove off down Arch Street wondering if she was going crazy. “You don’t have to stop to put it down,” he said. He reached across her and pushed a button and the blue accordion top folded down like a wing, then back up, then back down again.
“Stop doing that,” she said. “You’ll make me have a wreck. Where should I go, Freddy? I don’t know where to go.”
“We could go by the Komatsu showroom and watch ourselves driving by in their glass walls. When I first got the DeLorean I used to do that all the time. Don’t look like that, N.J. It’s okay to have a car. Cars are all right. They satisfy our need for strong emotions.”
“Just tell me where to go.”
“I want to take you to the park and show you the Brundage collection but I’m afraid they’re closed this time of day. They have this jade Buddha. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in your life. I know, let’s give it a try. Go down University. We’ll drive across a couple of bridges. You need to learn the bridges.”
“I can’t drive across a bridge. I told you that.”
“Of course you can. We’ll do the Oakland first, then the Golden Gate. You can’t live here if you can’t go across the bridges. You won’t be able to go anywhere.”
“I can’t do it, Freddy. I can’t even drive across the Huey P. Long, and it’s only over the Mississippi.”
“Listen to me a minute,” he said. “I want to tell you about these bridges. People like us didn’t build these bridges, N.J. People like Teddy Roosevelt and Albert Einstein and Aristotle built those bridges. People like my father. The Golden Gate is so overbuilt you could stack cars two deep on it and it wouldn’t fall.”
“Go on,” she said. “I’m listening.” She was making straight for the Oakland Bridge, with the top down. In the distance the red girders of the Golden Gate gleamed in the sun. She gripped the wheel and turned onto University Avenue leading to the bay.
“All right,” he continued, “about these bridge builders. They get up every morning and put on a clean shirt and fill their pockets with pencils. They go out and add and subtract and read blueprints and put pilings all the way down to the bedrock. Then they build a bridge so strong their great- grandchildren can ride across it without getting hurt. My father helped raise money for the Golden Gate. That’s how strong it is.”
Nora Jane had driven right by the sign pointing to the Oakland Bridge. The little car hummed beneath her fingers. She straightened her shoulders. She kept on going. “All right,” she said. “I’ll try it. I’ll give it a try.”
“I wish to hell the Brundage was open. You’ve got to see this Buddha. It’s unbelievable. It’s only ten inches high. You can see every wrinkle. You can see every rib. The jade’s the color of celadon. Oh, lighter than that. It’s translucent. It just floats there.”
“Don’t talk so much until I get through the gate,” she said. She almost sideswiped a black Mazda station wagon. There was a little boy in the back seat wearing a crown. He put his face to the window and waved.
“Did you see that?” Nora Jane said. “Did you see what he’s wearing?” She drove through the toll gate and out onto the bridge. She was into it now. She was doing it.
“Loosen up,” Freddy said. “Loosen up on the wheel. This Buddha I was telling you about, N.J. It’s more the color of seafoam. You’ve never seen jade like this. It’s indescribable. It’s got a light of its own. Well, we’ll never make it today. I know what, we’ll stop in Chinatown and have dinner. I want you to have some Dim Sum. And tomorrow, tomorrow we’re going to Mendocino. The hills there are like yellow velvet this time of year. You’ll want to put them on and wear them.”
I haven’t been to confession in two years, Nora Jane was thinking. What am I doing in this car?
The Mazda passed them again. The boy with the crown was at the back window now. Looking out the open window of the tailgate, eating a package of Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos and drinking a Coke. He held up a dorito to Nora Jane. He waved it out the window in the air. The Mazda moved on. A metallic green Buick took its place. In the front seat was a young Chinese businessman wearing a suit. In the back seat, a Chinese gentleman wearing a pigtail.
A plane flew over, trailing a banner. HAPPY 40TH, ED AND DEB, the banner said. Things were happening too fast. “I just saw an airplane fly by trailing breadcrumbs,” she said.
“What did you say,” he said. “What did you just say?”
“I said…oh, never mind. I was thinking too many things at once. I’m going over there, Freddy, in the lane by the water.” She put the turn signal on and moved over into the right-hand lane. “Now don’t talk to me anymore,” she said, squeezing the steering wheel, leaning into it, trying to concentrate on the girders and forget the water. “Don’t say any more until I get this car across this bridge.”