I groan. “What does that mean?”
“It means, according to The Pact, I was not as focused on our marriage as I needed to be. The indictment lists three overt acts, including showing up late to see Dave. But the main thing is that I skipped out on the directive to go to Half Moon Bay.”
The absurdity of it hits me. “Lack of Focus? That’s bullshit!”
“You can say that because you’re not the one wearing a red prison jumpsuit.”
“When can you come home?”
“I don’t know. Victor is meeting with the prosecutor now. Jake,” Alice says quickly, “I gotta go.” The line goes dead.
I still have files to read before tomorrow, but I can’t concentrate on my work, so I clean the house and do the laundry. I finish the household tasks that have been ignored for weeks: change lightbulbs, fix the dishwasher hose. While I’m pretty good at cleaning—thanks to a childhood with a mother and sister who were both compulsively neat—I’ve never had much talent for handyman stuff. Alice is the one who repairs broken doorknobs and assembles furniture, but lately she’s been too busy. I read somewhere that men who do traditionally masculine tasks around the house have more sex with their wives than men who clean, but I haven’t found that to be true in our case. When the house is clean, Alice can relax, and when Alice is relaxed, she’s up for anything. I think about her in that bizarre getup she was wearing when they took her, and I’m ashamed to say it gives me a little erotic thrill, reminding me of an S-and-M joint we visited early in our relationship, a warehouse space in SoMa, where the music was loud, the lighting was low, and the upper floor featured a long corridor where the rooms all had a different theme, each one more severe than the one before it.
Finally, I hang the artwork Alice bought me for my Pact gift this month. It’s a colorful lithograph, a big brown bear holding an outline of our state, above the words I LOVE YOU, CALIFORNIA!
The iPad in the middle of the room dings a few times, more email. I think about that email Alice had from Eric Wilson. I think about the ones I didn’t open, and I feel drawn to read them, but I don’t. Antsy, I walk down to the beach, cellphone in hand.
Ocean Beach is windy, freezing, and mostly deserted except for the usual homeless campouts and some teenagers messing around, trying to keep a bonfire going. For some reason I think of Loren Eiseley’s brilliant piece “The Star Thrower.” It’s the story of an academic walking on a vast, long, abandoned beach. Way up in the distance, he sees a small, blurry figure, constantly repeating the same motion. When he gets closer, he realizes it is actually a boy. The boy is surrounded for miles on all sides by millions of scattered, dying starfish that have washed ashore with the tide.
The boy is picking the starfish up and throwing them back into the water. The academic approaches and asks, “What are you doing?” And the boy tells him that the tide is going out and the starfish will die. Confused, the academic says, “But there are so many, millions even, how can it matter?” The boy leans down, picks one up, and throws it far out into the ocean. He smiles and says, “It matters for that one.”
I wander up past the Cliff House and stop at the Lands End Lookout Café. It’s open late tonight for a neighborhood fundraiser. I buy hot chocolate and roam through the gift shop, drawn to the books with old pictures of San Francisco. I find one with a history of our neighborhood, the eerie cover showing a lone Edwardian house lost among miles of sand dunes. An empty road cuts straight through it, a streetcar waits at the end. I buy the book and have it gift-wrapped. I want to have something nice for Alice when she returns.
Back home, I sit down again with my laptop, still trying to muddle through the write-ups from the previous week’s sessions. I hear the iPad email ping three or four more times. I think about the email from Eric Wilson, and I try to remember what he looks like. I do a Google image search. The first thing that comes up is a picture of him and my wife standing in front of the Fillmore, the marquee above them announcing, THE WATERBOYS AND LADDER, DOORS OPEN AT 9. The picture must be from ten years ago. Eric Wilson looks good, but then I may have looked good ten years ago too. If I hadn’t seen hundreds of other photos of Alice, I may not have recognized her in this photograph. A blue mohawk, serious black eyeliner, Doc Martens, a Germs T-shirt. She looks cool. Wilson does too: sunglasses, scruffy beard, holding his bass. I can’t even remember the last time I went a week without shaving.
The iPad pings again. Even as I reach for it, I know I shouldn’t, yet I can’t stop myself. The sound of the email ping is like the telltale heart, shaking me at the very core. I punch in the password, 3399, the address of Alice’s first home: 3399 Sunshine Drive.
The email pings are not from her ex. Of course they aren’t. No, there’s a legal newsletter, a solicitation from her alumni association, a mailer from Josh Rouse, and a response from Eric Levine at work. Hope you recover from the food poisoning soon, he writes, and stop eating in the Tenderloin.
It’s then that I should stop reading, put the iPad down, and return to my work. I don’t. Scrolling down the list of endless emails, I find seventeen from Eric Wilson. Three of them contain audio files—new songs he has written, plus a cover of the great Tom Waits song “Alice.” I love the song, and Wilson’s version isn’t bad. It gives me chills, but not in a good way.
I race through the other emails. It’s mostly group emails, something about a band they all once knew. Eric wants to see her, but she doesn’t seem interested. It’s hard to tell. I feel bad for having opened the emails; I feel especially bad for having listened to the song. Why did I do it? Nothing good comes from such things. Nothing good comes from insecurity and anxiety. I have a frightful thought, and I quickly look over my shoulder. For some bizarre reason, I expect to see Vivian standing there, watching, disapproving. I turn off the iPad.
I sleep fitfully. The next morning, I wake up more tired than I was when I went to bed. I call Huang at the office and ask him to cancel the day’s appointments. I know I’d be no help to anyone today. After showering, I decide to make cookies. Chocolate chip, Alice’s favorite. I’m thinking that she might need something like that when she gets home.
As the first batch of cookies go in, my phone rings. Unidentified number.
“Alice?”
“Hey.” As soon as I hear her voice, I feel guilty again. I shouldn’t have gone through her email. She’s so far away, making this strange sacrifice for our marriage. And here I am, violating Section 4.2.15 of The Manual.
“What happened in court this morning?”
“I pled guilty. My attorney was able to get it down from Felony Six to Misdemeanor One.”