“Insects are fascinating. So highly detailed. Such precise movements,” he said.
He explained that he had moved to the Bay area four years before and that he lived in a big apartment complex down in Fremont. As he spoke, he adjusted the placement of his water glass, arranging it in the precise center of his napkin. He did the same with a second napkin and a bottle of picante sauce. Then he picked up the saltshaker.
He caught me watching. “You’re wondering what I’m doing,” he said.
“Sort of,” I admitted. Actually, I had been wondering whether he’d been aware of his actions. Apparently, he had been.
“I’ve got a touch of OCD,” he said. “Obsessive-compulsive—”
“Disorder,” I said, nodding. “I see.”
“It’s not anything dangerous,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was.”
“It’s better than being a slob,” he said. “It doesn’t intrude on my life.”
“I’m not bothered by it. Really.”
“I like to keep track of where things are. And I like precision,” he continued, “in almost everything.”
“I imagine that’s a useful trait in your line of work.”
“Where is precision not useful? You need it in your job, too,” he said. “But yes, in archiving, it’s absolutely essential.”
Jeff’s entire body seemed to lift up when he spoke of archiving. He was a big fan of the database system the IRS used. It was the same one he’d worked on in his prior position, in the archives of the Oakland Police Department. He spoke of an archival conference he made a point of attending each January.
“A lot of archivists have real wild sides to them. Every January, a lot of us attend this conference and those guys, they go a little crazy.”
“And you?”
“Do I go a little crazy?”
“Do you have a wild side?”
He paused for a moment. “Not really, no,” he said. “I used to want one, but now, well, I think I get more sleep this way. Do you?”
I thought about it. I thought about the big plans I’d once had and the house and job that kept me company these days. “Not lately,” I had to admit.
“No loss,” Jeff said. “Impulse control is an underappreciated trait these days. And I like to plan ahead. I like to know what the future might hold. There’s a real comfort in that.”
I noticed, as our meal went on, that Jeff began to look uneasy. I wondered if something was troubling him about the imprecise way I was eating my enchiladas. Or perhaps his burrito was causing heartburn. I didn’t ask. I barely knew the guy.
Finally, Jeff Hill took a deep breath. “I found something I think you’ll want to see,” he said.
“Oh God, where—in your burrito?” I looked into what remained of my enchiladas.
“My burrito is fine,” he said. Very deliberately, he slid his plate aside and wiped his place setting. Then he pulled a few sheets of paper from his back pocket and unfolded them, smoothing them against the table. He tilted them so that I could see.
The pages had been printed off a Web site called “Gray’s Garden,” a site about horticulture—plants and flowers and such.
“Oh, I get it—my last name is Gardner, so you were thinking gardening. Actually, I’m not really into plants. All that dirt.” I slid the papers back in his direction. “My mother is. I don’t know—maybe it skips a generation. Thanks for the thought though.” I wanted to head off any gardening pitch he might have been approaching with. I knew my mother could get pretty obsessed with her seedlings. What would this guy be like?
Jeff frowned. “This section isn’t about gardening. Read what the guy says, right there.” He pointed.
I leaned in. Indeed, the pages Jeff had printed out weren’t about gardening at all; they were about being audited. Probably someone’s sob story, I figured. I’d seen a few of those in my time. First-person angst-filled narratives about the hellish experience of meeting someone just like me.
But as I continued reading, I realized that this one was different. This was a first-person narrative by a man who was about to be audited, not by someone like me—but by me.
Most of you know about my past year, he wrote. It’s been one thing after another. I’ve been waiting for a cyclone to touch down in my yard, or maybe a swarm of locusts. Well, the wait is finally over. Turns out that I’m getting audited. In yesterday’s mail, a letter arrived from our friends at the IRS. Imagine my excitement when they informed me of my upcoming appointment with “S. Gardner, Senior Auditor.”
He included, word for word, the letter he’d received—the one coldly notifying him of the upcoming audit—then went on to describe the dread he felt at the prospect of meeting me.
Does S. Gardner know the upheaval he or she has just dumped upon me? Does this person—and I must assume that S. Gardner is indeed a living, breathing human, and push aside the ghoulish images in my mind—have any idea of the wake he or she creates? I wonder how many people have met S. and emerged smiling, he wrote.
“So S is for Sasha,” I heard myself saying, just as Gordon, the first of my angry callers had, upon hearing my name.
“It’s from a Web site out of Stockton,” Jeff explained. “Someone must have told the guy your name. In the following section—I didn’t print it out, so you’ll just have to believe me—he’s figured it out.”
“Stockton?” I repeated.
“The man’s name is Jonah Gray. Do you know him?”
“Jonah Gray?” I shook my head. “Where did you find this?”
Jeff Hill sat up straight and started to fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers, arranging and rearranging them. He cleared his throat. “Online,” he finally said.
“Do you garden? You said you lived in an apartment.” I didn’t know which was stranger, the Web site or the fact that Jeff Hill, a man I had met not four hours before, was the one showing it to me.
“I used to garden a little. Back when I had a lawn. Too much dirt. And I really don’t like earthworms.” He shuddered.
“I thought you said you liked insects,” I said.
He looked very serious. “Yes, insects. Not worms. Segmented worms are a hermaphroditic mess.”
“But how did you find this?” I pressed, holding up the pages.
Jeff Hill took a deep breath and looked straight at me. “I looked you up,” he said. “And when I found that site, I thought you’d be interested.”
“You looked me up? Like a search? Like a police search?”
“I didn’t go to the police,” he said.
“I thought you said you’d worked for them.”
“Sure, I could have gone to them. But I prefer to do my own research.”
“On me?”
“On anyone.”
“What I mean is, you were doing research on me? Why? Why would you do that?”
“Because I liked your looks and Ricardo said that you weren’t dating anyone.”
I sat back in my seat, not sure where to go next. Was it the truth? It was certainly flattering. And I didn’t doubt that Ricardo would