“All this what, exactly?”

He muttered something about people I just met, and I said there wasn’t anything wrong with meeting new people, was there? I didn’t know what he meant then, and maybe he didn’t either, not really. It had not yet taken shape. All this enthusiasm for things that did not include him, that might take me far afield. Money was just the easiest complaint.

“Fine,” he said, giving up. “I kind of wish you’d gotten fascinated by, I don’t know, stocks and investing.”

“You have no poetry in your soul,” I said, fake punching him in the stomach, and that was how we left it.

I’d arranged with Doug to come in on Tuesday morning. I got up extra early and stopped at my clients’ yards in Petaluma and San Rafael on the way, doing what needed to be done so I could play hooky the rest of the day. It was almost nine when I was able to get on the freeway south. It was clogged with rush-hour traffic, of course, and there wasn’t anything you could do except relax and enjoy the world’s most beautiful commute. Past the glimpses of the bay, of Sausalito Harbor, through the tunnel with the rainbow arch in my rearview mirror. Then the Golden Gate Bridge itself, my tires humming, the bay and the ocean spread out below me like a blue plate dotted with sailboats, the city skyline as sharp as cut paper on this beautiful clear day.

Aaron and I didn’t get into the city that often. Every once in a while for a concert, or to see someone we knew. I thought we could make more of an effort to do so, not pretend that San Francisco was a world away. Yes, it all cost money, but it might be worth it.

Something else that cost money: Pacific Heights. I got off on Fillmore and cruised the neighborhood, already jazzed from the traffic and the crowds of people coming and going, the prosperous, the oddballs, the prosperous oddballs, and all the storefronts where I could imagine myself buying pottery or expensive coffee and living some different, utterly cool life.

I found Doug and Ed’s address and was glad to see they didn’t live in some historic mansion, although it was still a pretty nice pile of real estate. One of those houses that was either a real Victorian, modernized, or else a new place fitted out to look old. It was tall and gray with white trim, squeezed in between two other swell-looking houses. It had a grand flight of stairs leading up to the front door; tall, narrow windows ornamented with plaster half-pillars; and on top, diamond-shaped windows set off with some gewgaw fretwork. It wasn’t remarkable in San Francisco for houses to be this elegant, this visibly expensive. But it wasn’t like I ever got to see the insides of them.