He’d been in Sausalito at his regular Saturday night gig at a place everyone called the No Name because it literally had no name. “There’s no sign, just a door,” he said. You push through a heavy wooden block and then you’re in an open air bar like an old-fashioned Spanish courtyard. “I’ve never really dug blondes before,” he said, “but…” But maybe it was how the bar had white Christmas lights hanging from the trees and she looked like a little angel with her platinum hair framing her face in wisps. Or maybe it was how she drank Shirley Temples one after another. Or how even from the stage he could see that she was shivering. He said to me, “She’s practically your size.”

During the break he grabbed his jacket and offered it to her. Up close she had the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. They were “bewitching.” He said her name, “Kristen,” and then repeated it again in a reverent whisper. I promised on the spot that one day a man would say my name with that much awe. “That one’s gonna break my heart,” he said, “but I don’t care.”

We played Sinatra records and rolled up the rug and Phoebe and I took turns letting Stan spin us on the hardwood floors and out to the deck and then down to the grass where the dew was sticky between my toes. In the lilac hours of daylight, the sheets pulled up to my chin, I dreamt about the shimmy and women who looked like angels, and the promise of flight.

Tonight Stan denies Kristen’s spell. He’s pretending things didn’t change when she came around. “That’s hogwash,” he says, “Baloney!”

I’m so hungry I can hear my stomach growl. At my house my parents shove food down your throat the second you walk through the door. If you don’t eat anything, they’ll put a papaya in your backpack or give you some persimmons to take home to your parents.

At Phoebe’s house we eat at odd hours and drink coffee. We sit in the shadows of the living room where it’s dark and musty and smells like old wood and roasted coffee and we listen to Stan’s jazz albums. He makes coffee drinks from his fancy Italian espresso machine while we write down “the vibe” we get from the song. “How’s the piano talking to the sax? What are the sounds saying to you?” Stan encourages us to express ourselves.

Phoebe and Stan live in Noe Valley in a real house where the sun shines and there’s a backyard that smells of jasmine. We live in a box in the fog of the Richmond district squished between other boxes. My father doesn’t like that I’m always staying the night away. “Is there something wrong with our home?” He tells me that in Vietnam, the word “sleepover” doesn’t exist.

I say words like “privacy” and “passion” aren’t in the Vietnamese language either. “Does that mean they don’t exist?”