8   While I was having breakfast, updates on the hurricane were coming in on NPR. The storm had been downgraded to Category 4, and fears that the city’s levee system would be overwhelmed were dissipating. Still, more than one million people were said to be evacuating the area. Just then Margo called. “Guess what! Andy made to New Orleans! He rented motel rooms in Lafayette, and he’s got a van that will take at least ten people there, maybe more!” I briefly wondered how Andy was paying for his heroic exploit, but all I said was “Bravo!” I meant no irony, but Margo must have felt that it was there, because once again she hung up abruptly. I called her back immediately. Of course she didn’t pick up, but I didn’t mind speaking to her answering machine so that my words would be recorded for posterity, however brief. “Goddamn it, Margo! Just because you would have meant that ironically doesn’t mean that I would! I was sincerely applauding what Andy’s doing!” At that moment I heard the phone being picked up, but this time I clicked off. It felt good to have yelled at Margo, even if indirectly. I sat in my chair for a while, cradling the handset in my left hand and caressing it with my right hand, in a gesture of gratitude for its service as a medium for my feelings.   Any thoughts that my upcoming date with the fun-loving Chris Martinez might take my mind away from its obsession with Libby Schlemmer – thoughts I had been harboring since waking up – were dispelled when I came back to the office from the Coffeehouse and found a message from Libby on my answering machine. She had sent it from her cell phone a few minutes before. “Hi, Gary,” it said, “it’s Libby. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop by. Sorry I missed you.” I stepped out to ask Diane if Libby had come by. “Yes,” Diane said, “she asked if you were in, and when I asked her if she’d like to leave a message she said she’d do it on her own. She was looking really hot, by the way. If Jerry had seen her he would have tumbled down the stairs.” I was tempted to ask Diane what Libby was wearing, but refrained, though Diane would have relished giving me a full description of Libby’s outfit from head to toe. “Thanks, Diane,” I said and stepped back into my office. I had been delaying calling Libby until I had something concrete for her. The draft of her petition to be named sole heir and ipso facto administrator of Peter Hart’s estate was almost done, but it needed explicit citations to the affidavit of Sarah Scott, nee Davidson, of Mill Valley, California, in re the intimate relations between Peter Hart and Laura Perino. Once I had the affidavit I could complete the petition, print it out and have Libby come in in order to sign it. But it occurred to me that I did have something to tell Libby, having to do with Andy Stone’s activities. I called her back immediately, and she answered promptly. “Hi, Gary,” she said. She evidently had me among the contacts of her cell phone. “Hi, Libby. I’m also sorry I missed you. I have nothing official for you yet, but there is something I’d like to discuss with you.” “I can be there again this afternoon. How’s two-thirty?” “It’s fine.”   No description that Diane might have given me would have prepared me for Libby’s appearance when she came in to see me, at two-thirty on the dot. This time she had chosen to display both her legs and her breasts, not to mention her arms with their well-defined triceps. It was as if on her first two visits she had tested me whether I was, as Herb Caen had put it, a breast man or a leg man; and this time, as Jerry Brucker had put it, a both man. Of course I knew perfectly well that how Libby dressed had nothing to do with me, that it was just an expression of how she felt about herself at any given time. I knew that there were women for whom provocative dress is a mask over their insecurity. I felt sure that this was not Libby Schlemmer’s case. “That sounds like Andy,” she said after I told her of Andy’s journey into the eye of the hurricane. I wondered what she meant by that – what kind of decade-old memories my account of Andy’s exploit had dredged up in Libby’s mind. I also wondered whether to tell her about what Andy had said about her to Barbara. I decided to stick to business. “What concerns us,” I said, “is how he’s paying for it. If – and I emphasize if – he’s using Peter’s funds that he somehow has access to, then in effect you’re paying for it.” Libby smiled. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It seems like a worthy cause, helping evacuate people from a hurricane.” I felt chastened. I had become so overzealous in protecting my client’s material interests that I neglected the possibility of her having other interests, including humanitarian ones – she was, after all, engaged in a helping profession – that she might share with me. “Of course it is, as long as you know about it.” I changed the subject. “Now, about the legal matter…” “Yes, there’s something I meant to tell you. Laura called me this morning. She had her… her friend, who’s a lawyer, make out an affidavit of paternity for me, and it’s in the mail.” “That’s great. Our petition is almost ready for your signature. I’m just waiting for Sarah Scott’s affidavit, which should be here in a day or two.” “Good. I’m in no hurry, you know.” “Sure, but I’m your attorney, and it’s my obligation to handle the matter expeditiously.” “I have no doubt that you’re very expeditious, Gary,” Libby said with a smile as she looked at her watch. “I’d better go now. Bye!” “See you soon!”   Once I was at home, the date with Chris took over my mind again. I decided to begin planning for it. I had no memory of what music we had danced to at Ann and Jeff’s, but since had identified herself as Latina it seemed that a salsa club would be an appropriate venue for our date. I am not a fan of salsa. I had learned about Latin American music of the Caribbean variety from my father, who worked at Seeco Records as a young man (before moving to Columbia Records and from there to CBS Television) and knew Machito and Celia Cruz personally, and I appreciated the different Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican and Colombian strains of the music, but the homogenized stew that was manufactured in New York and Miami and called salsa left me cold. Still, this was a special situation. I went online and asked Yahoo for a list of San Francisco salsa clubs, but I found only one that was actually in the city and that served dinner. The menu seemed interesting – the main dishes were all named for different forms of Latin music – and dinner was served from seven o’clock on. I called and made a reservation for seven-thirty. But I decided not to call Chris quite yet. Tuesday or Wednesday seemed better. After a while I changed my mind, and called her. “Do you know the Roccapulco?” I asked her after the preliminaries. “Of course. I love the place.” “I made reservations for seven-thirty. Can I pick you up at seven?” “It would be better if I picked you up, or at least if I came over to your house.” She paused and went on. “You see, if the question of your place or mine comes up, it’ll have to be your place. I’ve got kids at home.” “How old?” “Fifteen and thirteen, boy and girl.” “And you have no problem with leaving them home alone?” “No. Should I?” She laughed, just as I had expected her to. “Of course not,” I said. Somehow the question And your ex-husband doesn’t mind? formed in my head, but I had no basis for asking it. I knew practically nothing about Chris, not even whether her ex-husband, surnamed Lynch, was even the father of her children. “It’s just that I had my son living with me till he was eighteen and I never felt comfortable with leaving him alone.” “So you brought your girlfriends home?” “There were no girlfriends.” “And you never traveled anywhere without him?” “I did, but then he would stay with his mother.” “Well, I’ve got no problem with it. My kids are Latinos, and they know about the birds and the bees.” She laughed again. I felt like asking her more questions and telling her more about myself, but I also felt that it would be better to wait until we were face to face. “Okay,” I said, “come to my place at seven.” And I gave her my address. I thought about Chris’s laugh for a while. At times it was a little louder than I was comfortable with, forcing me to move the handset away from my ear. I wondered how it would be face to face. I remembered the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry breaks up with a girlfriend because of her laugh. But I was not Jerry Seinfeld, the actor or the character. If I liked Chris, I would get used to her laugh, and even get to like it.   When I checked my e-mail at the office in the morning I found a message from Robin James. I opened it immediately. The affidavit was printed, and she had arranged to get Sarah Scott’s signature in the afternoon. As soon as that was done, she would send it to me by FedEx. I e-mailed her back, asking her to send me the unsigned document as an attachment in order that I could fill in the citations in the petition. She complied within fifteen minutes, and I went to work on the petition. By afternoon it would be ready to be signed by Elizabeth Schlemmer. I hesitated about when to call Libby and when to have her come in. My meetings with her, three to date, had been four or five days apart. The goddess-like effect of her physical presence was so strong that the thought of seeing her on two consecutive days filled me with something that was almost like fear, or perhaps awe – something that I, having had no religious upbringing whatever, was unfamiliar with. But business is business, and this business had to be done. I would call her in the afternoon, I decided, and would ask her to come in the following afternoon. By then Sarah’s affidavit would be on my desk, and Libby could read it. While the bulk of its narrative was the same as Libby’s account, there were some differences in detail, and I wondered what Libby would have to say about them. According to Sarah, for example, Laura Perino had been in love with Peter Hart, but Libby had not mentioned anything like it, only that they had dated. Later in the morning the mail came, and it brought an envelope from a law firm in Portland. The envelope contained a brief cover letter from one of the firm’s attorneys and a paternity affidavit signed by Laura Perino, not quite so brief but to the point: I, Laura Monica Perino, being duly sworn and deposed, do hereby solemnly state and declare that during the probable time of conception of my daughter Elizabeth Perino Schlemmer, born to me on the twenty-first day of June in the year one thousand nine hundred seventy-three, I engaged in sexual intercourse with, and only with, Peter Marshall Hart, now deceased and then living in San Francisco, California. I therefore claim and affirm that the said Peter Marshall Hart was the natural father of my aforementioned daughter. I further state and declare that at the said time of conception I had not been in contact with Victor Harris Schlemmer, to whom I was then legally married and who was consequently entered as my daughter’s presumed father on her birth certificate, for a length of time in excess of one year. I wondered if the lawyers in that firm got paid by the word. I also wondered why Libby didn’t use, in her signature, any part of the middle name that was on her birth certificate and in her mother’s affidavit. Libby did not answer her cell phone. I left a message asking her to make an appointment for any time starting Wednesday afternoon. She called back and asked if two-thirty was okay. I said yes. In the evening I finished Crusader’s Cross. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies were still trying to assess how much damage the storm had done to the rigs I had just read about. In New Orleans levees had been breached, floodwaters were rising, and the city remained without power or telephone service. Emergency officials were overwhelmed. Looting was rampant. The fallout prompted President Bush to return to the White House from his vacation two days ahead of schedule. I managed not to think about Libby any more than necessary.