Part 7 (1/2)

”Of course,” he said, regaining his composure.

He leaned toward me, as if to talk in private, although it was clear that the woman in the yellow pantsuit and the people in line behind me were eavesdropping. ”Look, I'm taking a taxi straight to the airport after this. I'm flying out to New York, but I'll be back in a couple of days. Call me.” He wrote his phone number in the book. ”No, better yet, come by, please. We have so much to catch up on.”

He was already jotting down his address. ”I mean it, come by anytime.”

I tried to formulate a response, but the woman in the yellow pantsuit had me by the elbow and was ushering me on.

”Wait,” Thorpe said, coming out from behind the table. ”Ride to the airport with me. I'll pay for your cab ride back.”

Seeing him in this room full of people was unsettling enough. I pictured us together in the cab, side by side in the closed s.p.a.ce. ”I have to get back to work,” I said.

”You'll come by my house?”

”I don't know.”

”You will,” he said, his voice firm now, full of certainty. ”I'm back on Tuesday.”

A couple of minutes later, I stood outside the restaurant in the din of Market Street traffic, clutching Thorpe's latest best seller, feeling the same way I'd felt all those years ago, when he'd called out to me in the fog on Ocean Beach, having just told me he was going through with the book, no matter what. Then, as now, he'd had the final word. It was Thorpe's talent, the thing he did best: every story he told, every conversation he engaged in, ended on his own terms.

Eighteen.

FOR EVERY HUMAN EVENT,” THORPE USED to say, ”there is a story. For every emotion, every mystery, every historical point of reference, there is narrative that seeks to explain.”

It stands to reason that there is a story for coffee. It was Henry who told me this story, on our second date. We had met just a few days before in the offices of Golden Gate Coffee, where he'd recently taken a job in sales. Henry had begun his career as a warehouse boy at Welsh's Coffee Roaster in San Mateo when he was still in high school. By the time I met him, he was spending much of his free time working as an advocate for the farmers. At that time there was such obscene wealth among young San Franciscans, it was a turn-on to meet a guy who genuinely didn't care much about financial profit-at least not his own.

He told me the story not over coffee but over beer, at the 500 Club in the Mission. While he could certainly appreciate the finer things, and would splurge once a year on a meal at Chez Panisse, he had a soft spot for dive bars. Early in our relations.h.i.+p, he would confess that the meeting at the 500 Club had been a kind of test. ”If you were sn.o.bby about the red vinyl booths and pool table,” he said, ”it would mean you weren't for me.”

But I'd been too intrigued by Henry to pay much attention to the decor. At five foot ten, he seemed to own the s.p.a.ce he walked through more authoritatively than much taller men often did. He had light brown hair, blue eyes so pale they made me think of that Velvet Underground song, and milky skin that tended to go pink in the sun. His slightly lopsided smile exuded kindness and made him appear more shy than he actually was. He rarely wore anything other than jeans and a dark sweater, but his taste in shoes tended toward the adventurous. On the day we met, he was wearing boots made of a s.h.i.+ny black material that looked like hair, which he jokingly referred to as his horsehair boots before rea.s.suring me that no horses had died in their manufacture. In public he had a pleasantly resonant voice that tended to draw attention his way, but in private he spoke so quietly that I often had to make him repeat himself.

”The story begins in Abyssinia in the ninth century,” he said. Two gla.s.ses of beer stood on the small table between us. I leaned forward to hear him. ”It begins with a young goatherd named Kaldi, and with his goats, who refuse, one evening, to follow him home. They are absorbed in a new discovery, a tree Kaldi has never seen before, with dark glossy leaves and red berries. They eat and eat, and it takes Kaldi a long time to coax them down from the mountain.”

Henry used his hands when he spoke. Even though he had an office job, he possessed the rough, calloused hands of a manual laborer. I would later learn that he moonlighted as a furniture mover to save money to start his own business.

”That night,” he continued, ”the goats don't sleep. The next morning, when Kaldi takes them again to their grazing place on the mountain, they return immediately to the same tree. Like Eve, Kaldi is curious; he must have some for himself. The berries of the strange plant give him a feeling of alertness and well-being. He feels more energetic, more clever. He goes back home and tells his family and friends what he has experienced. Within a fortnight, the dervishes at a nearby monastery have discovered that chewing the leaves of the mystical plant allows them to spend less time sleeping, more time enacting their pa.s.sionate devotions to G.o.d.”

I wondered how it was that I'd spent years at Golden Gate Coffee without ever bothering to look this stuff up. Over time I would realize that Henry had something I'd lost a long time ago-a pa.s.sion for the details, a keen memory not just for dates and place names, but for the oddities that made a story unique. He picked up the details because he paid attention, and he asked questions, and he burned things into his memory by sharing them with others, repeating stories until they became his own. For me, life was a house that I pa.s.sed through quietly, trying not to unsettle the dust or b.u.mp up against the furniture. Henry was just the opposite; he moved through life with his hands outstretched, picking everything up and measuring its weight in his hands, knocking on walls to test their strength.

”I wish I could be more like you,” I told him once, about six months into our relations.h.i.+p. ”I wish I could just rush into life without a.n.a.lyzing everything so much.”

”What's holding you back?” he asked. We were lying face-to-face in bed, fully clothed because of the cold, and he was looking at me with those intense blue eyes, waiting.

”I don't know.”

It felt as though he was always waiting for me to tell him something, but I never could quite get the words out, never could let go enough to say exactly what I was thinking. With Henry I did make a sincere effort to open up, but most of the time I stopped short of the complete truth.

For a few minutes neither of us said anything, we just lay there, close together but not touching. I had closed my eyes and was beginning to drift off to sleep when his voice pulled me back. ”You're nothing like her, you know,” he said.

”What?”

”The girl in the book. She may have your name, your history, your face, but she's a fabrication. Andrew Thorpe made her up. You're not her.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn't convinced. Really, how could Henry think that he knew me any better than Thorpe did? I had told Thorpe everything.

”Then who am I?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

”You're you,” he said, without missing a beat. ”You're Ellie Enderlin, and I love you.”

”You do?”

It was something he'd never said before. I felt it, too, but I hadn't planned on saying it yet. I figured we were still a bit early in our relations.h.i.+p to be making such an enormous statement, the kind of thing you couldn't take back.

”I do,” he said. And then he was waiting again. I tried to work up the nerve, but the words wouldn't come. One thing I would always appreciate about Henry was the fact that he didn't turn away. That night, despite the fact that I failed to say I loved him, he pulled me close. My body relaxed, and I realized that, for the first time in my adult life, I was beginning to feel truly safe.

Nineteen.

”It was the view which finally made us take the place.”

Aldous Huxley, Young Archimedes I TURNED OFF MARKET AND TOOK THE WINDING road up to Diamond Heights, past rows of sixties-and seventies-era condos. I had always liked this neighborhood, which had the feel of a suburb plopped on a mountain in the middle of the city. It was just after midnight, and the steep streets were dark and quiet. I knew Thorpe would be surprised to see me show up on his doorstep so late, and I hoped this would work to my advantage. Nighttime was when my mind was most alert, and also when I felt most comfortable in my skin. If Diamond Heights was Thorpe's territory, then nighttime was mine.

Thorpe's house was at the top of Red Rock Hill. It was a two-story Eichler, with a white beam roof overhanging the gray front wall. A small garden was laid out in a triangle pattern in the front yard, a j.a.panese maple and several lavender bushes providing a bit of privacy from the street. I parked at the curb, sat in the car for a couple of minutes gathering courage, and walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Soon, I heard footsteps. The door opened, and Thorpe stood before me, clad in a striped cotton bathrobe, his head covered in gray stubble, save for a large bald patch on top. There were dark bags under his eyes, and he gave off a faint medicinal scent.

”Ellie?” he said, rubbing his eyes. ”What are you doing here?”

”You told me to stop by anytime.”

He smiled and said groggily, ”So I did. Come on in. I'll make coffee.”

I followed him through the open courtyard, where a stone fountain gurgled. The courtyard led into a large living room, the back wall of which was floor-to-ceiling gla.s.s. The high ceiling featured exposed white beams. Having grown up in a pretty but cramped Victorian in Noe Valley, an Eichler on the hill was my idea of a dream house. But Thorpe had made a mess of the place. The hardwood floors were covered with tatty Turkish rugs in deep reds and drab browns, the floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side of the fireplace were filled with magazines and knickknacks. The flat-panel TV was shoved inside a huge mahogany armoire, the doors of which were open to reveal a jumble of audiovisual equipment. There were two sofas, a leather recliner, a coffee table, and a couple of mismatched side chairs. Even the gla.s.s wall was obstructed by an enormous bamboo console. Stacks of newspapers and magazines were everywhere. I imagined Joseph Eichler turning in his grave.

The house reeked of stale smoke, and I noticed several empty ashtrays strewn about. ”You took up smoking?” I said.

”Not anymore. I've been clean for almost two months, knock on wood. The ashtrays are a visualization technique my life coach suggested to help me kick the habit.”

”Life coach? I always wondered who their clients were.”

”I hired her because I was suffering from a severe case of writer's block.”

”Did she fix it?”

”Ask me next month. We're currently in week nine-uncluttering my living s.p.a.ce.” He gestured helplessly at the room. ”We've hit a bit of a snag there. Week ten and eleven are spiritual awakening. Next stop, writer's block. She said we had to work our way up. Laurie Giordano-she's tough, but good-remind me to give you her card.”

I waited in the living room while he went into the kitchen to make coffee. The kitchen was separated from the living room only by a low countertop. The sink was full of dishes, the refrigerator door covered with newspaper clippings, calendars, receipts, postcards, and photographs. He rummaged around in a drawer, then another, and finally said, ”I can't find the coffee filters. We'll have to settle for tea.”