Part 13 (1/2)

THE FOLLOWING MORNING AT GOLDEN Gate Coffee, Dora wasn't sitting in her usual place at the front desk. The cupping room was also empty. I pulled on the required paper cap and opened the door to the warehouse, where Reggie was feeding a batch of beans into the roaster. I had to shout to be heard over the noise of the machine. ”Where is everybody?”

Reggie pointed over his shoulder.

”What's going on?”

He grinned and shrugged.

In the holding room, Jennifer Wilson and the warehouse foreman, Bobby Love, were standing in a circle with Mike and Dora. The group was talking animatedly with someone else whose back was to me. ”Ellie, look who's here!” Dora said.

He turned around and smiled. He looked good, as always. Jeans, black sweater, unusual boots, messy hair.

”Hey, girl,” Henry said. ”Long time no see.”

”Hi,” I said, and then, because it had barely been audible the first time, I repeated too loudly and cheerfully, ”Hi!”

I moved into the group. Henry pulled me into a bear hug. I squeezed back.

Since the night Henry disappeared in Guatemala three years before, there had been many times when I'd imagined our reunion. But I'd never envisioned it like this, with a small audience of our friends. I never imagined I'd be dressed in jeans and a formless sweater, wearing a stupid paper hat.

Dora caught my eye and pointed at her tooth, the universal indicator that I had lipstick on mine. I rubbed my teeth with a finger.

”A little deja vu?” Mike said. Everyone knew the story of how Henry and I met, right here in this warehouse seven years before. That day, he'd been interviewing for a job, and Mike had taken him around to meet everyone. Then, as now, I'd been wearing the paper hat. It wasn't the kind of first impression I wanted to make. Moments after introducing us, Mike had been called to the office. As soon as Henry and I were alone together, he said, ”The hat's a good look for you. Emphasizes your dimples.”

”If you're saying that so I'll put in a good word with the boss,” I said, ”I should warn you I have absolutely no pull around here.”

”I don't care. Want to see Graham Parker with me this weekend at the Great American Music Hall?”

I already had plans, but I knew at that moment I was going to cancel them. When I finished showing Henry around the warehouse, Mike still hadn't come back, so we walked outside into the sunlight.

I pulled off my hat. ”I like that look even better,” Henry had said.

That afternoon, I told Mike he'd be a fool not to hire Henry.

At the Great American Music Hall, during a break between sets, Henry told me the story of Francisco de Melho Palheta, the Portuguese Brazilian official who was called upon to mediate a border dispute between French and Dutch Guiana in 1727. Although Palheta was thought to be a neutral party, in truth he wanted desperately to get his hands on Guiana's coveted coffee seeds, which could not be legally exported.

”So how did he do it?” I asked. My hand lay on the table between us.

”He seduced the French governor's wife,” Henry said, touching the tips of my fingers lightly with his own. ”When he left, she gave him a bouquet of flowers in which she had hidden a few coffee cherries. They ended up in Brazil.” He moved his hand so that it covered mine completely. ”Have you ever heard Rumi's poem about coffee?”

”Don't tell me you're going to start reciting poetry.”

”'When the black spirits pour inside us,'” Henry said, speaking so softly I had to lean forward to hear him, ”'Then the spirit of G.o.d and air/ And all that is wondrous within/ Moves us through the night, never-ending.'”

If it had been anyone else, I might have laughed in his face. But that was Henry. He had a gift for delivery.

Now he was back, and I didn't know how to act around him anymore. This was the man with whom I had hoped to make a life, with whom I'd thought I would have a child. Standing beside him in the warehouse, hearing his voice and breathing in the sand-and-pinecones scent of his skin, I was reminded once again that my feelings for him were not merely nostalgic.

In my addled state, I picked up enough of the ensuing conversation to understand that he'd just moved back to San Francisco from the East Coast, and that he was starting his own cafe. He wanted to buy his beans from us.

Mike excused himself for a meeting, clasping Henry firmly on the shoulders. ”We're glad to have you back,” he said. ”I never did think you'd last long in New York. Blizzards, deli-style sandwiches, who needs that stuff?”

”We'll see.”

”I'm going to leave Ellie in charge of you,” Mike said. ”There's some great coffee coming out of Nicaragua. She'll tell you all about it.” The others excused themselves, too, leaving me and Henry alone together.

”You haven't changed,” Henry said.

”Neither have you.” My mouth was dry. I had that old feeling I'd always had with him, like I wanted to get closer. Even during those last few months together, when we were fighting so much, the need to touch his skin and feel his hands on me never diminished.

”I'm actually heading out,” he said. ”I have to go sign the lease on the new place. Want to have dinner on Friday?”

I couldn't believe he would ask so casually, as if he'd never left. As if the last three years hadn't happened.

”I'd love to, but I already have plans,” I said. And it was true. Ben Fong-Torres had called. He'd found the tape Billy Boudreaux gave him in 1999. He thought I might like to hear it.

We walked outside. The fog hung low over the buildings, and the world felt cool and quiet. There was a car parked just outside the door, a silver Prius.

”This is me,” Henry said, putting a hand on top of the car.

”You've gone green.”

”It's a good city car,” he said, ”pretty zippy. I still couldn't bring myself to give up the Jeep, though. It's sitting on the street outside my place as we speak. I have to move it every couple of days so I won't get a ticket.”

”I loved that Jeep.”

”We were in an accident about a year ago in upstate New York,” he said. ”The Jeep behaved like a dream. I was actually in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I'd probably be dead if I'd been driving this little thing.”

My first thought was, What would I have done if I'd received news that Henry was dead? And my second thought was, Why is he using the plural p.r.o.noun?

For three years I'd wondered what had happened to him, what exactly had gone wrong. Dozens of times, I'd replayed that final fight in my mind, and had admonished myself for going out instead of staying in the hotel room with him to work it out. I wanted to ask him what had happened, why he had left, whether he had simply stopped loving me. And if so, when? But I couldn't ask. Instead, we were talking about cars.

I looked at his left hand. He wasn't wearing a ring. And then I said it, because I couldn't stop myself. ”Who's we?”

”Come again?”

”You said we were in an accident.” Now I wished I hadn't asked, but it was too late to back out.

”The Jeep,” he said, grinning. ”I meant me and the Jeep.”

Twenty-nine.

AT HOME THAT NIGHT, I TURNED MY ATTENTIONS to Strachman. I began with the article from the Chronicle, ”The Most Efficient Man in SF.” Then I read an interview in Marin magazine, in which he talked about his two kids, his love of deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng, his affection for Frank Sinatra, and a cafe near his office, Crossroads, where he bought his coffee every morning. In the interview, he seemed like a normal, nice guy. But twenty years had pa.s.sed since he took home the Hilbert Prize. Was it possible for people to change? Given enough time and favorable circ.u.mstances, could a violent criminal transform himself into a productive, even likable, member of society?

The next morning, I went to Crossroads in South Beach. I was there at six forty-five but a sign in the window said the cafe opened at seven, so I went for a walk to kill time. There had been a Giants game the previous night, and the sidewalks were littered with pennants and commemorative plastic cups. I pa.s.sed a man in a bathrobe and sneakers, hosing vomit off the sidewalk in front of his multimillion-dollar loft. I pa.s.sed a schoolgirl in a plaid skirt and saddle shoes waiting for the bus, alternately puffing on a cigarette and glaring at it as if it had done something to p.i.s.s her off.

When I got back to Crossroads, it was open. I ordered a Sumatra and browsed the bookshelves. The place had an interesting, eclectic selection of fiction and biographies. A handwritten note on one of the shelves said that the month's theme was fog. The books on display included Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's San Francisco; Moon Palace, by Paul Auster; and A Dream in Polar Fog, by Yuri Rytkheu, among others. On the bottom shelf I spotted a novel that I'd read recently, a sort of literary mystery about a kidnapping set in San Francisco. The book had been interesting, if somewhat drawn out. Halfway through I started skipping long pa.s.sages on memory and guilt just to get to the meat of the story. As I was reading it I found myself thinking that, sometimes, a story just needs a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe that was what made Thorpe's books so popular. He never dillydallied with esoteric matters. He drew the characters early in the book and quickly, almost methodically, got on with the plot. If I could look at his work objectively-which was almost impossible to do under the circ.u.mstances-then I could see that he knew how to get into a story, pull you along, and bring the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion just a few pages before you were ready for the book to end; he left you wanting more.