Doug said they’d start work on the winter issue next week, and since I wasn’t on the payroll I could come and go as it suited me. A few mornings or a few afternoons or a mix of both. I said that I would come sometime next week, he could decide if I’d be any use to them.

He said he was sure I would be. He took out a business card with the magazine’s name, Compass Points, and his name, and street address—he worked from home, he explained—and then he wrote his cell number on the back and said I should call him if I had any questions, and that parking was a bitch, I should expect that.

“No problem,” I said. I was trying to keep my face and voice steady and neutral, though I felt like one of those starlets discovered by a talent agent at a lunch counter.

“Outstanding. How’s Aaron?”

“Fine. He’s good.”

“You’re sure he’s not a firefighter? The way you two pitched in was amazing. Please give him my best.”

I told him I would, and I loaded up my tools to head home. Everything was banging and clanging inside me all at once: Viridian and the poems I’d heard, and the magazine, and what I might be expected to do there, and Doug and Ed, and how anybody could afford to live in Pacific Heights, and maybe if Doug had a thing for Aaron or just liked guys who would dress up in uniforms.

It wouldn’t be the last time I’d wonder about people’s motives.

Aaron was amused, mostly, by my poetry pals, as he called them. He did point out that I wasn’t getting paid for any of it, Viridian’s garden work or whatever Doug would find for me to do at the magazine. I said it was like an internship, trading labor for a chance to learn things.

“Learn what, exactly? It doesn’t sound like vocational training.”

I guess it always came down to that. Some version of, Show me the money or you’re wasting your time. “They’re not doing so bad. These guys live in Pacific Heights,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, well one of the guys is a lawyer.”

“So?” I knew what he was saying. Poetry didn’t pay the bills. “Different people make different contributions.”

“You don’t even know them,” Aaron said. “You don’t have to defend them.”

“I just think, there’s such a thing as learning for its own sake.”

“There’s such a thing as gas money and bridge tolls, too.”

I didn’t like it that he kept holding money over me. Why was he trying to piss me off? “I’ll keep track of everything I spend. I’ll pay for it all myself.”

“I just don’t want you to get too carried away with all this.”