I was awed by the silence, by the sense of being the only ones there, the city beneath us, the sky all around. I was not sure where we were until Jesse called me over to a far ledge. “Look.” I looked, and then I got it. It was my office, on the fifteenth floor of the Leyman building, a few floors above us. Only a few windows away was Brillig’s. The small tortoise-shaded light was on. Brillig sat at his big desk with his jacket and tie off, his feet on a hassock. He was reading. Montaigne probably, because the book was bound in leather and he was smiling.
“This isn’t a nice thing to do,” Carlotta said. “Let’s go.”
“Usually you love to look at people in windows.”
“Yes, but if you know who they are it is not imagining but spying.”
Going back down the fire escape I thought that this typical argument was why I liked them. Their arguments were never petty.
Once I arrived when Joe and Jesse were still out fishing. Ben was there. Maggie had been crying. She handed me a letter from her fifteen-year-old Nathan. A sweet letter, telling her what they all were doing, saying that they wanted to come home.
“So, what do you think?” I asked Ben when she went to wash her face.
“I wish they’d get rid of the idea that it’s Jesse or the kids. If she got a job and a house, stopped drinking, if he’d come by once in a while, they’d see it could be okay. It could be okay. Trouble is they’re both scared that if the other one sobers up, they’ll leave.”
“Will she stop drinking if he leaves?”
“God no. I hate to think about that.”
Ben and Joe went to a ball game that night. Joe always referred to them as the “fuckin’ A’s.”
“Midnight Cowboy’s on TV. Want to come watch it?” Jesse asked. I said, sure, I loved that film. I thought they meant to go to a bar, forgetting about his age. No, they meant the Greyhound Bus Station, where we sat in adjoining seats, each with a little TV set we put quarters in. During the commercials Carlotta got more quarters, popcorn. Afterwards we went to a Chinese restaurant. But it was closing. “Yes, we always arrive when it’s closing. That’s when they order takeout pizza.” How they had originally found this out I can’t imagine. They introduced me to the waiter and we gave him money. Then we sat around a big table with the waiters and chefs and dishwashers, eating pizzas and drinking cokes. The lights were off; we ate by candlelight. They were all speaking Chinese, nodding to us as they passed around different kinds of pizzas. I felt somehow that I was in a real Chinese restaurant.
The next night Cheryl and I were meeting friends for dinner in Jack London Square. It was a balmy night, the top was down on the Porsche. We had had a good day, made love, lazed around in bed. As we got near the restaurant, Cheryl and I were laughing, in a good mood. We got stopped by one of the freight trains that invariably crawled through the Square. This one went on and on. I heard a shout.
“Counselor! Jon! Hey, barrister!” Jesse and Carlotta were waving to me from a boxcar, blowing kisses.
“Don’t tell me,” Cheryl said. “That must be Peter Pan and his ma.” She said, “Jon’s personal Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Shut up.”
I had never said that to her before. She stared straight ahead, as if she hadn’t heard me. We went to the elegant restaurant with our elegant, articulate liberal friends. The food was excellent, the wines perfect. We talked about films and politics and law. Cheryl was charming; I was witty. Something terrible had happened between us.
Cheryl and I are divorced now. I think our marriage began to end because of those Friday nights, not because she began having an affair. She was furious because I never took her to meet them. I’m not sure why I didn’t want to, whether I was afraid she would dislike them, or they would dislike her. Something else…some part of me that I was ashamed to let her see.
Jesse and Carlotta had already forgotten the boxcar when I next saw them.
“Maggie’s hopeless. We could learn how to do it. We could travel all over the USA. But every time we start clickety clacking along, she gets hysterical. We’ve only got as far as Richmond and Fremont.”
“No, once to Stockton. Far. It’s terrifying, Jon. Although lovely too, and you do feel free, like it’s your own personal train. Problem is, nothing scares Jesse. What if we ended up in North Dakota in a blizzard and they locked us in? There we’d be. Frozen.”
“Maggie, you can’t be worrying so much. Look what you do to yourself! Got your shorts in a knot about some snowstorm in South Dakota.”
“North Dakota.”
“Jon, tell her not to worry so much.”
“Everything is going to work out, Carlotta,” I said. But I was frightened too.
We checked out the watchman at the marina. At seven-thirty he was always at the other end of the piers. We’d toss our gear over and then climb the fence, down by the water where it wasn’t wired for an alarm. It took us a few times before we found our perfect boat, “La Cigale.” A beautiful big sailboat with a teak deck. Low in the water. We’d spread out our sleeping bag, turn the radio on low, eat sandwiches and drink beer. Sip whiskey later. It was cool and smelled like the ocean. A few times the fog lifted and we saw stars. The best part was when the huge Japanese ships filled with cars came up the estuary. Like moving skyscrapers, all lit up. Ghost ships gliding past not making a sound. The waves they made were so big they were silent, rolling, not splashing. There were never more than one or two figures on any of the decks. Men alone, smoking, looking out at the city with no expression at all.
Mexican tankers were just the opposite. We could hear the music, smell the smoky engines before we saw the rusty ships. The whole crew would be hanging off the sides, waving to girls on terraces of restaurants. The sailors were all laughing or smoking or eating. I couldn’t help it, once I called out Bienvenidos! to them, and the watchman heard me. He came over and shined his flashlight at us.
“I seen you two here a coupla times. Figured you weren’t hurtin’ nobody, and weren’t stealing, but you could get me in a mess of trouble.”
Jesse motioned for him to come down. He even said, “Welcome aboard.” We gave him a sandwich and a beer and told him if we got caught, we’d be sure to show there was no way he would have seen us. His name was Solly. He came every night then, for dinner at eight, and then he’d go on his rounds. He’d wake us early in the morning, before light, just as the birds were starting to whirr above the water.
Sweet spring nights. We made love, drank, talked. What did we talk about so much? Sometimes we’d talk all night long. Once we talked about the bad things from when we were little. Even acted them out with each other. It was sexy, scary. We never did it again. Our conversations were about people, mostly, the ones we met walking round town. Solly. I loved hearing him and Jesse tell about farm work. Solly was from Grundy Center, Iowa, had been stationed at Treasure Island when he was in the Navy.
Jesse never read books, but words people said made him happy. A black lady who told us she was as old as salt and pepper. Solly saying he up and left his wife when she started gettin’ darty eyed and scissor billed.
Jesse made everybody feel important. He wasn’t kind. Kind is a word like charity; it implies an effort. Like that bumper sticker about random acts of kindness. It should mean how someone always is, not an act he chooses to do. Jesse had a compassionate curiosity about everyone. All my life I have felt that I didn’t really exist at all. He saw me. I. He saw who I was. In spite of all the dangerous things we did, being with him was the only time I was ever safe.
The dumbest dangerous thing we did was swim out to the island in the middle of Lake Merritt.