I spent the rest of the day not making coffee. It was a comfort. And evening came. I had dinner in a restaurant and went to a bar. I had some drinks and talked to some people.

We were bar people and said bar things. None of them remembered, and the bar closed. It was two o’clock in the morning. I had to go outside. It was foggy and cold in San Francisco. I wondered about the fog and felt very human and exposed.

I decided to go visit another girl. We had not been friends for over a year. Once we were very close. I wondered what she was thinking about now.

I went over to her house. She didn’t have a door-bell. That was a small victory. One must keep track of all the small victories. I do, anyway.

She answered the door. She was holding a robe in front of herself. She didn’t believe that she was seeing me. ‘What do you want?’ she said, believing now that she was seeing me. I walked right into the house.

She turned and closed the door in such a way that I could see her profile. She had not bothered to wrap the robe completely around herself. She was just holding the robe in front of herself.

I could see an unbroken line of body running from her head to her feet. It looked kind of strange. Perhaps because it was so late at night.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘I want a cup of coffee,’ I said. What a funny thing to say, to say again for a cup of coffee was not what I really wanted.

She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. She was not pleased to see me. Let the AMA tell us that time heals. I looked at the unbroken line of her body.

‘Why don’t you have a cup of coffee with me?’ I said. ‘I feel like talking to you. We haven’t talked for a long time.’

She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. I stared at the unbroken line of her body. This was not good.

‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘I have to get up in the morning. If you want a cup of coffee, there’s instant in the kitchen. I have to go to bed.’

The kitchen light was on. I looked down the hall into the kitchen. I didn’t feel like going into the kitchen and having another cup of coffee by myself. I didn’t feel like going to anybody else’s house and asking them for a cup of coffee.

I realized that the day had been committed to a very strange pilgrimage, and I had not planned it that way. At least the jar of instant coffee was not on the table, beside an empty white cup and a spoon.