By the Bay Read online

  Too late: he can’t formulate his question in time. I choose one of the others. She asks what I am going to do about the plight of the small business. I anticipated this issue and have the answer polished and ready to deliver. I pause for a sincere half-beat before delivering my key points. It’s a home run! The Hydra starts to look animated. There’s a flurry of scribbling, and typing. The journalists sit up straighter; the cameras seem to move a little nearer. I hear fingers tapping on keyboards and the print journalists flicking over pages so they don’t miss anything. I couldn’t have gotten a better reaction if I’d read out Oprah’s cell phone number.

  I glance back at the new guy; his hair is brushed forward, not sticking up in a peak, like those bloggers. Why not give him a break? I nod in his direction. And he’s still trying to get his question out. I wait for a moment and look interested. Is he going to give me a hard time about homelessness? I hope he hasn’t spoken to the protestors from last week. But still, he can’t get his question out. I move on to one of the others.

  Ten minutes later, Michael does his funny little half wave to attract my attention in a discreet manner. It’s anything but discreet, but I haven’t the heart to tell him. His signal means we have five minutes left. Keep them wanting for more: that’s my motto with the journalists.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” this is how I always finish; it’s my little catchphrase. “I would like to take one final question.” I look again at Mr. Black Leather Jacket, this time with a challenge in my raised eyebrow. Come on then, give me your worst.

  “Mr. Mayor,” he says, “we’d like to hear more about…” I see perspiration on his forehead. “I mean would you talk about…” He trails off. I signal to Mike and then point to Mr. Black Leather Jacket, now speechless and going red to the tops of his ears.

  “If you’d like to give your question to Mike, we’ll get back to you.” Mike nods and walks towards my tongue-tied questioner. “Thank you all for attending,” I say. Then, without looking back, I walk straight out of the room. No hesitation.

  After lunch Mike drops round to my office with Mr. Leather Jacket’s card. It’s cream with his name embossed on it. So, Richard Emmett is the owner of the black leather jacket, and he’s from the local rag. Not usually of any interest, but I know they’re writing features on local politicians this month. I run the card along the middle of my thumb and it leaves a momentary groove in its wake. I wonder if I should call him, wonder what he was going to ask and if he wants to set up an interview. That could be interesting. He could write a feature on me; Mike could prepare something.

  During my busy afternoon I don’t have time to make the call, but now I’m back in my office. I take his card out of my wallet and dial his number. Finally he picks up and says “Hi, Rick speaking,” his voice deeper than I remember. I feel my face warm, right to the tops of my ears. My tongue feels dry, and this time I’m the one struggling to string a sentence together, to tell Rick my name and why I’m calling him.

  On Visiting the Stanford Museum

  by Edith Algren

  This place where you have chosen to live, Daughter, so far from mine

  Recognizes me

  I too recognize it

  It welcomes me somehow home

  I am a comfortable stranger

  Warm, sandy dust and scented eucalyptus leaves

  Filtered scent among fringed palms

  These speak of a returning

  A peaceful yellow haze of acknowledgement

  And I realize as I go that this same earth and I will always remember

  That forever perches here

  Upon a particular shadow, a smell

  A peculiar hue, a shape

  Sticks

  by Arthur Carey

  When the rotting log spun out beneath his feet, briefly suspending him in mid-air like a rocket that had achieved apogee, Larry Winston thought, “Uh-oh…” And then gravity dragged him downward, Sibley bird book flying, binoculars bouncing off his chest. He landed hard, hands thrust out, knees splayed, left foot twisted beneath him. Impact with the rutted dirt path paralyzed him in mid-breath, and he rolled onto his back. As he lay there, his thoughts paralleled the Kubler-Ross stages of dying: first, denial: (this can’t be happening!); then anger: (why didn’t I check the stability of that damned log!); and finally bargaining: (I’ll settle for a few cuts and bruises if my $900 Leica binoculars aren’t damaged!). Depression and acceptance would follow.

  He began a systems check: arms and wrists…working; knees…capable of flexing, albeit with discomfort; legs… functioning; ankles and feet…not okay! He groaned as waves of pain surged from his left foot.

  Concerned faces blocked his view of blue sky and redwood trees telescoping upward.

  “What happened?… Wow, that was a nasty fall!—Are you all right?”

  Embarrassed, Larry swore under his breath as hands pulled him to his feet. He tried to put weight on the throbbing foot. No, he definitely wasn’t all right. As he struggled to control his ragged breathing, an excited voice broke in: “Two o’clock…on the stump…it’s a male Bewick’s wren!” He was no longer the focal point of attention.

  Larry hopped to the decaying trunk of a fallen tree and sat down. Gradually, his heart stopped racing and his breathing slowed. He brushed dirt and leaves off his right side and took stock. The binoculars seemed undamaged. He lifted them to his eyes and found the glass wasn’t damaged—unlike him.

  His fellow birdwatchers moved off down the loop trail. They collapsed the aluminum legs of tri-pods with viewing scopes and shouldered them as they walked, heads cocked for birdsong, eyes scanning the trees and brush.

  Larry sipped tepid water from a plastic bottle and contemplated his throbbing foot as if it were a trusted friend that had betrayed him. He tried to stand once but collapsed back onto the log, wincing.

  He was still there, waiting and hurting when they returned half an hour later. The man who had driven Larry to the bird walk helped him to the car and drove him to the hospital. Neither had much to say.

  “Thanks,” Larry said after he was dropped off. “Lunch is on me next time!”

  Depression set in once he hobbled into the emergency room. After passing the scrutiny of the security guard and registering, Larry surveyed the crowded waiting room. A sniffling, red-eyed boy, about two years of age, nestled on his mother’s lap as she rocked him wearily. Across from them sat a pregnant woman, shivering in the over-amped air-conditioning. She rested her hands possessively on her swollen abdomen as if she were fearful someone might steal the baby. Across the room, tightlipped, features contorted in pain, a gray-haired man in Levi’s and work shirt whose left hand vanished into a bloodstained towel stared straight ahead. Larry settled in, careful to maneuver his ballooning foot out of the traffic lane between the rows of scratched plastic chairs. He picked up a year-old copy of Golf Magazine even though he didn’t play.

  An hour later, after the cold compress on his foot had melted, he was placed in a wheel chair and trundled off for X-rays. Afterward, he was taken to a small examining room, isolated on two sides by white curtains, and helped onto a bed.

  Finally, a doctor wearing tiny round glasses with silver frames entered, carrying a manila envelope. He removed a large negative from the envelope, held it up to a light panel, frowned, and turned almond eyes to Larry’s puffed-up foot.

  “I am Dr. Ganapathy,” he said. “How does your foot feel?”

  “Not bad,” Larry lied. “Anything broken?”

  “No, you are fortunate. There are no broken bones; but the foot is traumatized.”

  Larry winced. I’ll say. He studied his swollen appendage, its shape grotesque under a new ice pack that burned the skin. The pain had retreated to a dull throb thanks to the numbing cold. It was his first serious injury. Growing up, he had taken his body for granted—skin and bone and muscle encasing a dependable engine that powered baseball bats, absorbed blows in sandlot football games, and propelled him through water. But now
it had betrayed him. Or was he the betrayer? It didn’t matter.

  “It’ll be okay as soon as the swelling goes down, won’t it?” he said hopefully.

  The doctor eyed the X-ray. “That depends on what’s wrong—bruising, muscle, or nerve damage. If it’s nothing serious, you should be up and walking normally within weeks.”

  “Weeks?” Larry groaned.

  “But before then you will be able to get around on crutches and a cane,” the doctor reassured him. That didn’t sound promising.

  The doctor’s dark skin looked sallow in the glare of the overhead fluorescent light, the lines accentuated. A dark fleck disrupted the stripped pattern of his gray tie. Residue from lunch? No one had asked Larry if he was hungry.

  “I’ll prescribe something for the pain,” the doctor said. “Keep the foot elevated and use ice packs for 48 hours.”

  Larry nodded. After the doctor left, he shut his eyes. Another hour passed in the claustrophobic examining room. His only companion was the constant humming and beeping of machines. In the hallway, doctors, nurses and medical assistants streamed by, intent on dealing with problems other than his. Finally, he was given crutches and a plastic bag containing main medication. He was wheeled out of the emergency room and caught a cab home.

  Acceptance came on Monday, a day later. Larry awoke and groaned. He had slept intermittently, waking up in pain after repeatedly rolling over in his sleep and tangling the sore foot in bed covers. Hazy sunlight slanted through half-open blinds, bathing the room in alternating bars of light and dark. From flat on his back, his injured foot, wrapped in a brown bandage, reminded him of one of the rock monoliths on Easter Island. Wasn’t there a movie about someone with a left foot who…or was it the right foot? He sat on the edge of the bed and looked suspiciously at the crutches leaning against a wall. Twin strips of laminated wood, wide at the top, tapered to a wing-nutted, adjustable piece of plastic with a rubber tip. They looked too insubstantial to support his 180-pound frame. He pushed himself erect on the crutches, wincing as the molded, hard rubber pads bit into his armpits and the hand supports rolled beneath his palms. Clumping awkwardly into the bathroom, an unsteady tripod set in motion, he flipped up the toilet lid and faced the first of the day’s challenges, a controlled crash landing.

  Until his fall from grace, Larry had always considered himself lucky. He had been born in San Diego, the sole child in a stable family, an advantage that other children didn’t necessarily enjoy in a state with a divorce rate of almost 50 percent. His mother taught middle school science and math, and his father sold stucco and frame houses with red tile roofs to seekers of the California dream. Larry’s early life, like the Southern California weather, was clear and sunny, a picture post card upbringing in a benign, Mediterranean climate. A bicycle ride away, edged by silver strands of sand, rolled the limitless green and blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. He was swimming by age 6 and surfing at 12, light brown hair streaked almost blond by sun and salt.

  After graduating from San Diego State University with a degree in communication studies, Larry had migrated to Silicon Valley to work in public relations for a dot-com startup that provided high school alumni information. But when reality pricked the Internet bubble, his company collapsed, ending a frenetic lifestyle, an inflated salary, and the promise of stock options. Broke and jobless, he returned home to live, amiably for the most part, with his perplexed parents, who had been enjoying their vacated nest. Looking about his old room, still decorated with team banners, Little League trophies, and rock band posters, he was surprised to discover that it seemed to have shrunken.

  But three months later, thanks to diligent networking, he got lucky. His break came over two-for-one beers at a local watering hole during Monday Night Football. A fraternity brother tipped him to a job opening in the marketing department of a San Francisco advertising agency, Lambert, Olney, and Pratt. Larry called, faxed a resume, and waited. Forty-eight hours later, after a quick flight north for an interview, he accepted the job, packed his Honda Civic again, said goodbye to his parents, and joined the metal river of vehicles flowing north on Interstate 5.

  But now the yin and yang of fortune had changed again—for the worse. He called in to work to report his misfortune. Elaine Kransberg, his boss, a brittle, hard-driving group manager on the downhill side of 40, took the news in silence. “Okay,” she said at last, “sorry to hear that.” Larry wasn’t sure just what she was sorry to hear—that he was injured or that he wouldn’t be in to work soon. He imagined her steely gray eyes flickering impatiently as the conversation wore on, right hand drumming on the desk, mind already moving on to the next problem.

  Next, he called his sometime girlfriend, Ginnie, who designed sets for TV shows, to deliver more bad news: He couldn’t take her to the jazz festival in Monterey that weekend. At least she could be expected to show some sympathy, he thought. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Don’t worry about the jazz festival. I’ll call later in the week and pop over with dinner.” Larry smiled. Now that’s more like it.

  Then he called his racquetball partner, Jeff Fergosi, to cancel their regular Tuesday game.

  “Screwed-up foot? Bummer, man. I told you to stay away from extreme sports!” He laughed. Larry didn’t find the joke funny.

  At first, he enjoyed the luxury of guilt-free time away from work. He spent the next few days sitting in a recliner, his foot elevated and iced like a keg of beer at a picnic. Although Tylenol eased the darts of pain that struck periodically like random lighting strikes, it did nothing to reduce his boredom. Network television’s daily diet of soaps, quiz shows and infomercials drove him to the History Channel and Animal Planet. He played solitaire on the computer. He read the ever-shrinking Oakland Tribune each morning. He consoled himself that his accident could have been worse. What if he had landed on his head? He could see the headline:

  Klutz, 28,

  Dies After

  Dumb Fall

  Grudgingly, he attained the stage of acceptance. He moved deliberatively, always exercising care, a turtle suspiciously eyeing the world before thrusting out its head. His new lifestyle aped that of the elderly. He moved slowly, leaving silver dollar-sized indentations in the carpet. For the first time, he noticed how his two-bedroom apartment had been designed for fully mobile occupants. The bathroom was awkward with the combination shower bath wedged beside the toilet. To take a shower, which he wanted to do badly, would require stepping over the raised splash railing, maneuvering on the slippery floor, and manipulating the shower curtain and water controls while balancing on one leg. He settled for a quick scrub bath leaning against the sink. Access to the toilet was challenging and getting up proved difficult.

  In the living room, edges of rugs sometimes caught the tips of his crutches, and the coffee table, with its lethal expanse of smoked glass, constituted an ever-present threat. The kitchen was better. Most of what he needed was in arm’s reach. But carrying a half-gallon of milk to the kitchen table strained his strength, coordination and patience.

  And then there were the crutches, constant reminders of his incapacity. He decided that if he couldn’t get them out of his life yet, he could at least get them out of his vocabulary. Whenever a friend called and asked how he was doing, Larry said, “Oh, fine. Just counting the days until I get off my sticks.”

  Word of his injury had spread among friends and coworkers. He began receiving e-mail messages and Internet get-well greetings. Most were humorous, but some were in poor taste. Pay back, he decided, for all the quickie messages he had e-mailed rather than expend time and energy to buy a card or make a telephone call. And then communication ended as if he had died. No one called. No one stopped by. Morose, convinced he had dropped off the radar screen of life, Larry turned to the telephone and began calling people during the day. He discovered people at work didn’t have the time or inclination to chat.

  Ginnie called on Thursday and said that she’d be over with dinner. Oh boy, thought Larry, a real meal. Never one to
cook, he was getting tired of ordering in pizza, Chinese, or eating TV dinners or spaghetti, washed down with a single beer. Drinking and balancing on sticks didn’t go together.

  He met her at the door. A brunette whirlwind in jeans, U2 sweatshirt, and open-toed sandals, she brushed past him into the kitchen, arms laden with plastic bags.

  “Hold on Larry,” she called out. “I’ll be in as soon as I pop this frozen pizza in the oven. It’s pepperoni and sausage. You like that, don’t you?”

  His smile faded. “Oh, yeah…that’s great.”

  “Good,” Ginnie said. “Sit down. When I get that done, I’ll be right in with a couple of beers.”

  He collapsed on the tan leather couch and rested his aching foot gingerly on the coffee table. “Hey, a beer would hit the spot.”

  After the pizza (burned on the bottom) and dessert (hard white chocolate cookies), she cleared the dishes and plopped down next to him on the couch. “Larry, you know those jazz concert tickets we had for the weekend?”

  He didn’t point out that he had tickets for primo seats close to the stage during both the Saturday and Sunday performances. Darn. Forgot about that completely. Shows you where my mind is. Probably could have sold them on eBay.

  She fluffed a pillow behind his head and said, a trifle too casually, “Since you’re hors de combat, could I use the tickets? I can probably scratch up someone to go with. No point in wasting them.”

  “Sure,” he replied without enthusiasm. “Who will you go with?”

  “Oh…I’ll find someone at the office,” she said, “probably one of the girls.”