I considered, and decided it was. After holding the line for a few minutes, I was told Miss Prentice wasn’t buzzing back. I left a message for Gail that I’d be at the hotel sometime after four. I knew that waiting for her to call my room at the Claremont was going to drive me crazy. There’s no more irritating sound than a telephone that doesn’t ring.

I started to walk back to the parking lot where I’d left Larry Vance’s Nash. I could see the Claremont in the Berkeley hills quite easily from here. When I’d first played at the hotel, over twenty years ago, its façade had been a cross between dark English Tudor and Swiss chalet. Now it beamed across the bay like bleached bed-sheets drying on a clothesline, its new owner having had it recently painted white so it would glint for the benefit of those on the eastern side of Treasure Island.

Something caused me to look a bit north of the hotel, demanding my attention like a child at a parade tugging on your sleeve. It was a spire, about the same height but of a different design than the Tower of the Sun, although either would have looked appropriate in a European piazza.

There was no one on the pier except a young fellow with a soda pushcart. I bought a bottle of Jic Jac orange pop and asked, “Do you know what that tower is over there?”

“Bell tower,” he said. “I think they call it the Campanile. Part of Cal.”

“Cal.”

“Cal Berkeley. The university.”

Idiot that I was. Gail had told me she also performed on the carillon at her college. The one I play at Berkeley only has twelve bells, she’d said. Was that the tower where I was supposed to meet her for her three o’clock concert?

The Berkeley tower winked at me. That is to say, some beacon or reflection from a telescope or mirror at the top of the tower flashed on and off. It was as if it were letting me in on a joke. And although this might sound fanciful, I’d soon learn that it was Gail who was doing the winking.

Chapter 10

10

The Campanile