7 Sunday morning there was more news about Hurricane Katrina. The storm had intensified overnight – its winds were now blowing at a hundred sixty miles an hour, making it a Category 5 hurricane – and it was headed for New Orleans. Local officials had ordered unequivocal calls to evacuate coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. I suppose that to a Californian like me, a major hurricane has an epic, almost mythical quality similar to what an earthquake might have to an Easterner. I still remember the frantic phone calls I received from my cousins in the East when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck while they were watching the warm-up for the third game of the 1989 World Series on television. But when my father, of blessed memory, called from Los Angeles, he casually said, with the Cockney accent that he liked to put on, “‘Avin’ a bit of a quake, are we?” The newscast went on to less pressing matters, and I rolled over to my bedside radio in order to change stations to KDFC. On Sunday mornings there is a two-hour slot during which the station presents its Sacred Concert. Not only are there no commercials, but it’s also the only time in the programming – two hours out of a hundred sixty-eight – during which any vocal music is heard. At other times, if you hear singing you know it’s a commercial. In the middle of Bach’s Magnificat – it was about eight-thirty – the phone rang. I lowered the volume and picked up the receiver. “Hello,” I said. “Hi, Gary. It’s Ann. Ann Mason.” Ann Mason was the only Ann I knew, but it didn’t matter. “Hi, Ann. I guess you got my e-mail message.” “Yes, that’s why I’m calling. What you asked me wasn’t the kind of question that’s easily answered by e-mail. Do you want me to tell you?” “Yes.” “Maybe it was just my intuition, but it seemed like you weren’t really looking at her, like maybe you were fantasizing about somebody else. And it seemed to me that she gave off that kind of vibe, of being with a guy who wasn’t really into her. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of experience with that, and when I met Jeff, and it wasn’t like that with him, I knew that I’d found something special. Do you know what I’m running on about?” “I understand what you’re saying, but it’s like the news about Hurricane Katrina – I know what a hurricane is, but I haven’t experienced one. Maybe men don’t pay attention that way.” “You can say that again! You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to signal to a guy that I’m not interested, and they just don’t notice. And I’ve heard the same from other women.” “Well, to get back to Friday night: I have no idea of what kind of signals I gave off, because I wasn’t being myself. I think I was drunk or something. Did you or Jeff spike the wine with anything?” “Not that I know of,” Ann said uncertainly. I decided not to pursue the matter. “Anyway, who’s Chris?” I asked. “Her name is Chris Martinez, and she works at Wells Fargo. Not in the same department as Jeff, but they know each other from work.” “Not the trust department, by chance?” “I don’t think so. Why?” “I may be having some dealings with the trust department in the near future.” “IT isn’t the trust department, is it?” “No. It’s information technology. Computers.” “That’s what I thought. Anyway, she’s trying to get back in circulation after a painful breakup, blah-blah-blah. And I think she liked you. She danced up a storm, and got kind of excited, but you weren’t there for her, so Jeff took care of her.” “I see,” I said, unsure of what to say next. I was tempted to say How nice of him! but it seemed too ambiguous – maybe facetious, maybe not – and I wasn’t even sure of how I would have meant it. “Is she Martinez by marriage?” I asked by way of digression. “No. When she was married she was Chris Lynch. Her father was Spanish or Peruvian or something like that. Why do you ask?” “I don’t know, I just…” “Are you interested in her?” “I guess so.” “Okay, let me give you her phone number. I think she’d like to hear from you. In fact, I know she would.” “Thanks, Ann,” I said after jotting down the number. I saw no reason to promise that I would call. Whether I would do so was between Chris and me, or, at bottom, between me and me.   I was feeling rested and still full from Roberta’s dinner. The weather was foggy and cool again, though the forecast had promised an early burn-off. It felt like a good day for a bike ride through Golden Gate Park, perhaps with a breakfast stop at some café along the way. A couple of months hence, when the new De Young Museum opened, the museum’s café might be a nice place for such a stop. I could literally see the fog burning off in the course of my ride through the Panhandle. When I got home I was ready for lunch, and ignored the message light blinking on my answering machine until I had finished eating. The message was from Margo: “Call me, please, Gary. It’s urgent.” I brushed my teeth and called her back. “Thanks for calling back so quickly,” she said. “You made it sound urgent.” “Well, it is. I’ve been trying to contact Andy to talk to him about the business that you told me about, and I haven’t been able to get him. Finally I heard from him a couple of hours ago. He was calling from Houston Airport. He’s going to New Orleans.” “What?” Television images of the hurricane were swirling in my head. “He’s got family there, and he needs to help them evacuate.” “Family? He’s from Oregon!” “Maybe not literally family, but people that he feels are family.” “But how’s he going to New Orleans? The airport’s closed!” “I know. He was flying to Lafayette, and was going to rent a car there.” “But I heard that all the roads around New Orleans are one way going north!” “Believe me, Gary, if anyone will find a way, it’s Andy. You don’t know what this guy is capable of.” I wonder if you do, I thought of saying but didn’t. I said nothing, and Margo went on. “So anyway, Gary, I’m asking you, as a courtesy, to put the matter on hold until I can talk to Andy.” Courtesy between lawyers? Or between ex-spouses? Ex-spouses who are opposing lawyers? That’s like honor among thieves, I thought. “As far as my case is concerned,” I said, “it doesn’t involve Andy Stone. My client is Peter Hart’s daughter. Andy was his live-in companion. Peter left no will that anyone knows of. The law is clear.” “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is this the Gary Einhorn that I was married to?” You were married to a sap, I thought. “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Maybe it’s time you learned that.” It was harsh, but it felt good to have said it. Margo hung up without another word. I sat down on the sofa to browse through the Sunday Chronicle. There was nothing in the paper yet about the hurricane. The main article on the front page dealt with a planned State crackdown on transit diesel buses. The Pink section was unusually thick, fattened with the Fall Arts Preview.   I spent most of the afternoon reading and listening to music, interspersed with a little Web-surfing. Around three o’clock I looked outside through my open window. The weather seemed warm, and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I couldn’t help thinking about Andy Stone. What Margo had told me about him made him seem heroic. But he was undoubtedly a liar. Was he a liar-hero, like Odysseus? Was he even telling the truth about his voyage to New Orleans? For dinner I made myself a simple pasta dish and a salad, and ate while watching CNN’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. I even made myself watch Bush’s speech, and put up with his recital of the people with whom he had spoken about the disaster. But once he diverged from the topic in order to talk about the proposed Iraqi constitution, which he called “an inspiration to those who share the universal values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law,” a slight feeling of nausea set in, and I snapped the power off. In the evening I decided to call Chris Martinez. I was not ignoring my reluctance to get involved with friends of friends. But I was not calling her for a date. I felt that, since she was now an acquaintance, I owed it to myself to rectify the impression I may have made on her Friday evening at Ann and Jeff’s. I dialed her number, and got her recorded message. “Hi, this is Chris. Please leave me a message after the beep.” Her voice was pleasant. “Hi, Chris, this is Gary Einhorn. I hope you remember who I am.” I then paused, in order to test if she was screening calls. Sure enough, the same voice answered live. “Hi, Gary. Sure I remember.” She laughed, rather loudly. “Well, I’m calling to say two things. One is that you probably remember me better than I remember you.” She laughed again. “And the other thing, which I hope explains the first, is that how you remember me is not how I am.” “That’s too bad,” she said, laughing yet again, though with a softer laugh. I was taken aback. “What do you mean?” I asked. “I liked you the way you were.” This time there was no laugh. “I was drunk!” “So? You were funny, dancing and singing and joking and all that. Until you, kind of, went inside your own space.” Her reaction was so unexpected that I had to gather my thoughts before continuing. “Chris, I’m fifty years old, and I’ve never, never in my life, been drunk before.” This time it was Chris who paused. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe… maybe you should try it again, so you get to know that part of you, which you seem to be denying. I hope I’m not being too presumptuous,” she said with another soft laugh. “Not at all,” I said. “That’s very good advice from someone who barely knows me. Just recently I’ve been learning things about myself that I didn’t know, or maybe didn’t want to know, and it feels good.” “I’m glad,” she said. I sensed a tacit Is there anything else? in her intonation. “I’m curious if you’d like to meet my sober self, what I like to think of as my real self. Though I may be wrong,” I added with a laugh, in which she joined me. “Yeah, sure, I’d like that.” “Are you free for dinner next Friday?” “Friday… Let me turn the calendar page. September second. Yes, I’m free. But I hope it’s more than dinner.” “You mean…” Her loud laugh was back. “I mean dancing, music, whatever. You may not remember, but I’m a Latina girl who likes to have fun. I haven’t had any in a while, and I don’t want to waste time.” Just like Rose Bargallo, I thought. “It so happens that that’s what I do remember,” I said, “and it sounds good to me. Shall I call you later in the week to make arrangements?” “Sure. But give me your phone number, just in case.” After giving it to her I said, “It’s been great talking to you, Chris.” “Likewise, Gary.” “Hasta el viernes,” I said, having surmised from the way she said Latina that she spoke Spanish fluently. There was a moment’s pause. “¿Hablas español? ¡Estupendo!” “¡Hasta luego!” “¡Hasta luego!” I had, willy-nilly, committed myself to a date. With a friend of a friend. Since so many changes had happened to me in the nine days since Libby Schlemmer stepped into my office, what was yet another change? Thinking about changes led me back to thoughts about the seemingly protean Andy Stone and his upcoming exploits in Louisiana. What little I knew of Louisiana came from the Dave Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke, and I remembered that I had recently bought his latest, Crusader’s Cross, but had not opened it yet. It was time for another vicarious sojourn in the sweat-drenched, mosquito-infested, hurricane-ridden swamps of the Gulf Coast…