A Working Theory of Love (7 page)

5

I
N THE
S
UBARU,
on my way to collect Rachel from the Coffee Barn, I wonder what in God’s name I’m
doing. This gladness of heart, this lightness of step, is it some mesmerism from my
Southern past, this attraction to the bird with the wounded wing? Am I casting myself
as the knight in shining armor, the gallant protector? In other words, am I living
out some fantasy of my father’s?

There’s more to life than happiness.
The words of an unhappy man committed to his unhappiness.

The Coffee Barn has a plum bit of real estate on the corner of the Bolinas Road in
Fairfax, wrapped in tall, sun-dappled windows and crowded with marble-topped tables
and incongruous heavy, varnished pine chairs, the kind of seating you might find in
a teacher’s lounge. Rachel told me the counter was granite, but it’s really some space
age polymer, swirled with faux veins of quartz and glittering like an art project.
The espresso machine, though, is the real deal—a four-foot-wide, bright red contraption
from Italy. There’s also an antique espresso dome in copper and a copper vat for roasting
beans, which the owner actually does, at the end of the shift. Hanging from the back
wall, a long blackboard lists drinks and sandwiches in chalk, as if they change daily,
which they don’t.

Rachel’s alternative high school allows her to work up to half time, even during the
day. She gets course credit for the job, and she otherwise takes four very unstructured
classes. Her fellow students include a dancer for the San Francisco Ballet, but are
mostly dropouts and fuckups—a group she puts herself in.

She’s counting her tips—generous I hope, since we’re in the second richest county
in America—so she doesn’t see me as I come in. There are a few customers—an aged hippie
reading the free weekly, a woman filling her Moleskine with enthusiastic jots—and
I feel a moment of solidarity with my fellow citizens, the four of us spaced nicely
along the arc of adult life, and—at this very moment, at least—neither gloating over
its victories nor sinking under its weight.

At the counter, I drumroll my fingers on the sonorous plastic. “I’d like ten lattes,
please, ma’am,” I say.

She smiles, before looking up, numbers forming on her lips.

“What’s forty-seven divided by four?” she asks.

“A little less than twelve.”

“Tight-assed bastards,” she says, looking up. “Do you really want a latte?”

“No.”

“I can make you one. I’m good at it.”

“In that case.”

She sets about turning knobs and banging cartridges. Her movements reveal the quiet
pride of expertise.

“How did you know it was me?” I ask over the grinding noise of the milk steamer.

“I can sense you,” she shouts. “Plus, you’re the only person who says ma’am.”

She charges me for the latte, which is a surprise. Then she throws her apron on the
hook, grabs her wheelie-bag, and comes around to take my hand, dragging me bright
and happy, hot cup held behind me, into the sweet Fairfax eve. Au revoir, old hippie.
Au revoir, furious scribbler. It’s Friday, and we’re driving directly back into the
city (my request—she lives with her aunt and uncle, and I’m not in any way ready to
meet them), where I have firm plans to be footloose.

“How did the story about the book fair go over?” This is our planned alibi for why
she’s coming into the city.

“I just said I was going into the city.”

“With . . .”

“With you.”

My shoe drags the gravel on the way to the Subaru. I was waiting for a category—
some guy, some older guy, a friend, someone I met
—an explanation. But there is no explanation.

With you.

•   •   •

R
EVOLVING DOOR ASIDE,
I haven’t had a date spend an entire weekend with me since the divorce. Which means
never, since Erin couldn’t be considered a date. She was the one who found the apartment.
It’s a gem, the third floor of a four-story building, looking out on Dolores Park.
I only got it in the divorce because Erin left me. Her name is still on the lease.

Rachel lingers around the front door, hanging and rehanging her coat, and I feel how
strange it is that I’m the one doing something for the first time. I have my worries.
We’ll go out to eat, visit museums, take cabs, even have drinks—thanks to her very
convincing fake ID. But there are still all those unstructured minutes. What will
we do? Downtime is the generational challenge.

“A cat!” she says. This brings her into the apartment. “What’s its name?”

“Kitty Cat.”

“You really stretched your imagination.”

The name was Erin’s idea. Her new apartment building doesn’t allow animals. “I also
had a dog growing up named D-Dog.”

“What’s this?” She kicks a black case by the bookshelf.

“My telescope.”

“So science-y,” she says and goes into the bathroom.

I pour myself a glass of white wine—the weather’s just warm enough—and settle into
the pleasant Eros of a girl taking a shower in my apartment. The first shower I ever
took with a girl was in college. I loved the workmanlike way she scrubbed. We were
getting clean—this was no porno. It was the most intimate thing I’d ever done.

I hear the rush of the water. Unless Rachel’s packed her own products—and I’m guessing
this backpacker has come with the mere essentials—she’s lathering up her arms with
the big green bar of olive oil and lavender soap, running her fingers backwards through
her darkened wet hair, fumbling through the plastic bottles, reading labels, looking
for her type. She soaps her chest, maybe pauses between her legs. It
is
a date night.

The tap turns off. She grabs, I hope, my plushest towel, enjoys the shallow pleasures
of my bathroom, the heat, the potions and lotions, the clean, crisp chamois of floor
mat and robe.

The wine tastes of honey, green apples, and sunlight. Clever vintners!

The hair dryer shuts off, and after some rustling she emerges from the bedroom dressed
as a hipster. Knit cap, skinny jeans, tiny shoes, loose sweater, the Arafat scarf
tied around her neck.

“Is the cap too much?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t know. I’ve never dated anyone who dresses like
this. “I mean, it’s cute.”

She frowns, throws the cap behind her onto my bed. She stands erect, her eyes pointed
to the ceiling, as if going over her lines before she steps out into the Klieg lights.
“I have a week’s pay,” she says. “And I want to eat oysters on the half shell.”

She looks at me. We both make saucers of our eyes and let out a deep breath, laughing
at our nervousness.

“It’ll be my treat,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I guess cute isn’t so bad.”

•   •   •

T
HE CAB TAKES US
through the dark top of Valencia, where the Mission peters out into grimy Market Street,
the grand thoroughfare forever hovering at two o’clock on the city’s dial. We pass
the antique shops and mattress shops and the big Honda dealership that many years
ago was the Fillmore Ballroom. At Van Ness, the usual strays putter around the All
Star Cafe in their wheelchairs, or plunge through the crosswalk, rattling a baby carriage
full of cans.

“At least it’s warm out,” Rachel says. She means, in comparison to the night we met.

We get a glimpse of City Hall, which is lit up green tonight. Earth Day? Ramadan?
Then it’s gone and we’re zipping past Seventh and Sixth, where the tired masses of
the Tenderloin pour out like a delta into the plaza, shouting to each other in code,
sitting along the fountain. The big shopping mall is next. The big Gap. The Apple
Store. The great downtown shrines to buying shit. I love this little patch of skyscrapers,
bristling with modest ambition. I don’t know why—in fact, my keenest memory here is
a bad one, of trailing Erin through these streets like a sleuth, trying to figure
out why she didn’t want to marry me. That was a bad week. She’d hatched a cockamamie,
secret plan to get an ESL certificate and move to Latin America. She was so desperate
for escape. That day, I followed her in and out of stores—careful at first, then brazen—and
then down into the MUNI, where I spied on her while she read pamphlets. She was completely
inside herself, and I realized I’d never seen her that way—unknowable and unknown.
Exactly the way I felt. It seemed confirmation we were made for each other, however
painfully.

This turned out to be the wrong interpretation. Still, there are places in the city
I’ll never go again—the top of Bernal Hill—but that sad day never transferred its
sadness here. How much sorrow can you feel staring at a Cheesecake Factory?

At a little table in the Ferry Building, Rachel rolls an oyster shell on the tips
of her fingers, the overhead lights reflected in the gleam. The oysters are beautiful
specimens from Point Reyes, silvery and plump. She rotates the shell toward me and
then toward her, making strange faces, determining—it seems—the exact orientation
for docking it in the mother ship.

“You’ve had oysters before?” I say. I have to raise my voice. The restaurant is as
crowded as a stock exchange.

“I forgot how to do it.”

“What kind of oysters did you have the last time?”

“I don’t know. Like these. Maybe with some cheese on them.”

“You’re sure you’re not thinking of nachos?”

Her expression tightens, becomes prim. She sets the shell down, unwraps a knife from
the napkin, and tries to cut the oyster freehanded. It slides up to the left lip of
the shell and then to the right, like a skateboarder in a half-pipe. Then the shell
tips and in a great clanking of utensils on bare plate she chases the oyster off the
plate and onto the table. A bright red blush spreads from her shoulders to her hairline.

“That was like a Marx Brothers movie.” She doesn’t look up, slouched like a scolded
schoolgirl. “Hey.” I lean in to avoid shouting. “Look around. Nobody knows you.”

“I know.” Her gaze remains pointed down.

“There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”

She’s still as a lizard while her color returns to normal. Then she looks up with
a confident smile.

“Guess I’ll try that again,” she says.

“Take that little fork. Make sure the oyster is loose in its shell, then pour the
whole thing into your mouth.”

“No sauce?”

“Your first oyster should be a pure encounter.”

She doesn’t laugh, but she’s not blushing anymore. She sits up straight, growing back
into my date. She eyes the oyster warily, but humorously, as if the rascal might fool
her again. I lean back, absorbed in the roar of human chatter. I appreciate her quick
recovery. It suggests a strength in her I wouldn’t have guessed. In my mind I draw
a black box around her, framing the moment like a photograph. Her nervous, determined
face; the gray dripping oyster; the hard bread; the yellow wine; from the open kitchen
behind her, a burst of roiling steam. She puts the shell to her mouth and thinks better
of it. With her finger she swabs out a grain of sand. Then she closes her eyes and
tilts the oyster into her mouth, spilling the liquid down the side of her cheek, leaving
a trail of grit. She chews once, gulps, and then brings the napkin to her face, eyes
open again, surprised and amused, as if she’s just come up from a comical dive.

I don’t know what mental album I’ll put this in. Probably one of the big ones: “At
the Time It Seemed Meaningful” or “A Fond Memory with What’s-Her-Name.”

Or an entirely new one, as behind Rachel the crowd parts and—like assassins—my ex-wife
and a man emerge, fussing with their coats. I’ve heard she’s dating. I hold them in
view for a second, hoping it’s a trick of the mind, but it’s not. You always run this
risk in San Francisco, a big city that moonlights as a small town. I sometimes bump
into Erin in our neighborhood, where she still lives. But the Ferry Building, I was
thinking, would be safely distant. I look down, feeling a flash of guilt, as if by
that recollection in the taxi I thumbed my nose at Fate. Of course Erin can’t be summoned.
She’s not a ghost or a punishment. She’s just an ex-wife—surely one of many in the
restaurant—beautiful as always and a fan of oysters and parsimony. Happy hour is just
ending.

“Okay, your turn,” Rachel says.

I look down and rub my forefinger on the menu, pretending to read about our oyster
selection. “Washington State,” I say. “Japan, New Zealand, Vancouver, Portland.” It’s
no use. They’re going to have to walk right past us, and my acting skills aren’t good
enough to feign shock.

“Erin,” I say, pushing out my chair and standing to wave. She looks up, and I know
in a second that she is acting, too. She’s already seen me. The beau on the other
hand looks alarmed, threatened. He’s handsome but not too, wearing a suit with no
tie and an elegant trench coat. Square of jaw, wide of shoulder.

“What a surprise.” She comes forward for a hug. We started hugging about a year after
the divorce and we’ve always kept to this form: we tilt into each other from far away,
not touching anywhere below the chest, as if we’re separated by a short, disagreeable
child.

“This is Rachel,” I say. “Rachel, this is Erin, my ex-wife.”

Rachel holds her napkin in front of her mouth, chewing, gulping. She does not stand
up, and I wish she would.

The beau shakes my hand. He barely acknowledges Rachel.

“Are you enjoying the oysters?” Erin asks.

“The Kumamoto are very good,” I say.

“Aren’t they,” she says.

“This is my first time,” Rachel says.

Erin and her date are very still. They don’t seem to know what to make of this comment.

“And she lives in Bolinas,” I say.

“What do you think?” Erin asks Rachel.

Rachel looks from Erin to the beau. She seems panicked. “Verdict’s out?”

“It took me a while as well.” Erin nods. I don’t know if this is mercy or just Erin.
She
is
a true-blue, literalist Californian. Maybe she hadn’t even considered a savage remark.