and we drank some more booze and had a swell time, just a couple of fellows. After he left I took a shower to cool off. (First I got hot and bothered by thoughts of Ray, her helping me off the floor and holding my head so sweetly as she passed me over to Kelsey, so I had to Take Care of That Need, which I’m sure you know what I’m referring to, my oldest true friend.)
I couldn’t sleep so I told myself, Write it down for Danny. Because you’re the only one who would live the whole thing out with me if you could. That’s why these sentences are a bit wobbly though I hope it all makes sense. The truth is, I like painting out in the plain air but I don’t only paint on Sundays, so those guys can kiss my Irish ass.
A long dumb story of your friend in Frisco, hopefully entertaining for you on your birthday because you deserve a good laugh and more than that too. Send the new postal address and news of yourself.
Your friend, Teddy
(Though still Rusty if that’s the way you want it)
There was almost nothing about this letter that didn’t astonish me, starting with its imitation Kerouac veneer. Phrases like I could eat her for breakfast, lunch, midnight snack sounded like my father, the kind of goofy-embarrassing Dad I remembered from long ago—long ago being shorthand for before Mom died. But could I remember him ever saying that he was moved by anything, much less a Diebenkorn painting? Had he ever mentioned that he’d once aspired to be a painter? Was this just folly, nurtured by his lust for a beautiful woman, or did he actually take a stab at painting plein air? And what about Ray, this married woman luring younger guys out into the night to parties marked by drunken brawls and pot smoke?
The letter had never been sent, perhaps because it had gotten stuck in the binding and forgotten. Or maybe because Danny was already out of touch, not only with his brother back home but with his old pal Rusty up in San Francisco, too. I felt a rare stab of empathy for my father, or at least for this younger version of him: his obvious affection for Danny, the nearly desperate need to pour his heart out, his drunken humiliation, his late-night masturbation. Was there more of this kind of thing back in the attic in Greenlawn? Would Deirdre find it, and if she found it, would she know to save it? Or would it get thrown away, just another bit of ancient history best forgotten?
As soon as I spotted Woody’s smiling face above the crowd and heard him call my name, the guilt-stricken drama I’d set myself up for faded away. He hadn’t even told me he would be here. Now I was getting a strong hug, a public kiss, a ready arm to relieve me of an overstuffed carry-on.
“Careful with that,” I told him. “There’s Garner family treasure in there.”
“You brought the family fortune with you?”
“The family baggage, so to speak.”
In his other hand he dangled keys to a car borrowed from his friend Annie for the night. My hero. Neither of us owned a car, and the airport was chaotic because of winter-storm delays. Somewhere in that moment I let go of the notion that I would confess my men’s-room misadventure. I’d write it off as a slip and move on.
“I’m still half asleep,” I told him. “You talk first.”
He got me up to speed on our friends: Ian’s computer crashed while he was uploading his webzine, and Woody spent two nights restoring his hard drive; Brady was informed that the warehouse where he lived had been sold and would be refurbished as an office park; Colleen attempted to dye her hair pink and was flipping out at the results. They’d all been leaving messages with Woody, asking if he’d heard from me, though he hadn’t called any of them back because he’d been so busy at work. He had the usual dot-com sweatshop complaints—the extra-long hours, the urgent projects foisted on him without advance notice; the daily meetings that amounted to little more than jargony pep talks; a constantly shifting corporate mission. (Digitent had started out as an e-commerce website, but was now defining itself as something called a wireless service portal.) Worst of all was what he’d dubbed “digital daycare”: supervising a stable of young programmer-dudes who had no clue how to function in an office. Woody, at thirty-one, was one of the oldest of the bunch. He’d been hired as a web designer but was quickly shifted to management because unlike everyone else, he had real work history.
His eyes were bright and active while he talked. He had beautifully shaped eyebrows that wiggled like inchworms when his speech got animated. Woody was the first fair-haired, fair-skinned guy I’d been involved with. If I have a type at all it’s on the Danny Ficchino end of the spectrum, dark and Mediterranean, a clear contrast to what I see in the mirror. Woody comes from the neighboring Northern European gene pools, Scandinavian-Dutch-Scottish: light brown eyes shot with gold, fair cheeks that pinken when he exerts himself, thin lips made thinner by his wide smile. Since I first saw him I’d adored his ringlet curls, which in the sunshine seemed to be woven from straw and in dim light became mutt-brown, so much so that it seemed a lie that he’d labeled himself blonde on his driver’s license.
He was two years younger than me, but I often responded to him as someone older. His therapeutic mindset made him deliberative about plans, levelheaded with problems. I had always charged heedlessly into my life. My career started off as a lark in college; my move to San Francisco was an impulsive attempt to escape Nathan; plans I’d once made to leave were aborted after I met Woody; my close friendships all grew out of infatuation, a pursuit of those who sparkled. There was a trend swelling right around then among Christian teenagers, the wearing of little bracelets marked WWJD: What would Jesus do? Answer that question and you would walk the righteous path. Those days, I often asked myself, What would Woody do? He wasn’t my messiah, but I looked up to him.
Oh, and the most obvious way I looked up to him: with my eyes. He’s six-foot-four, almost six inches taller than me, all limbs, with the forward-curving shoulders typical of the tallest guy in the room. Strangers were forever asking him if he played basketball. (The answer: No, tennis. When he stretched up to serve it was like a swan craning its neck before flight.) To me he was adorable as only a gangly guy who takes himself a bit too seriously can be. He was my golden, gawky, smiling swan.
While we waited at the baggage claim, I rushed through a description of what I’d found in the attic, what I’d read on the plane. I told him how eager I was to know more about my father’s year in San Francisco and his friendship with Danny Ficchino, to satisfy my curiosity, but also because there might be something here for a radio project. I told him I’d have to visit New Jersey again, this time talking to my grandmother, and maybe even Aunt Katie, with my tape recorder in tow.
“Hey, I just got you back,” Woody said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you just take a deep breath. You’ve got a lot of important stuff waiting for you here.”
“But this is the top priority now.”
“Okay, okay.” He patted my shoulder where his hand had been resting, attempting to impart some calm. I have an easy-to-read face, I’m told—my moods are obvious even when I think I’m displaying neutrality. This must have been one of those moments, because Woody was responding to me the way I imagined him talking to the frazzled dudes at Digitent when they were in their twelfth hour of being radiated by their computer monitors. Then his gaze focused on my shoulder. “What is that?”
I peered down at a streak of encrusted spooge. “Fucking clumsy stewardess,” I hissed, trying to rub it out. “Great, now my shirt is stained.”
“It’s not that noticeable,” he offered. “I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”
“Yeah, well, you did.”
I was overdoing it—the culprit’s attempt to deflect the evidence—and feeling hot in the face, on the spot. I took off on a lap around the baggage carousel, trying to regulate my breathing as Woody had suggested, trying to will myself a clear conscience. When I got back to his side, I mumbled an apology.
San Francisco’s airport was in the middle of an enormous construction project, building a new international terminal: scaffolding, cranes, dismantled concrete, big signs with yellow flip-letters redirecting traffic, all of it disorienting for a travel-addled brain. On this night the upper roadway