A Working Theory of Love

by Scott Hutchins

  “A little less than twelve.”

  “Tight-assed bastards,” she says, looking up. “Do you really want a latte?”

  “No.”

  “I can make you one. I’m good at it.”

  “In that case.”

  She sets about turning knobs and banging cartridges. Her movements reveal the quiet pride of expertise.

  “How did you know it was me?” I ask over the grinding noise of the milk steamer.

  “I can sense you,” she shouts. “Plus, you’re the only person who says ma’am.”

  She charges me for the latte, which is a surprise. Then she throws her apron on the hook, grabs her wheelie-bag, and comes around to take my hand, dragging me bright and happy, hot cup held behind me, into the sweet Fairfax eve. Au revoir, old hippie. Au revoir, furious scribbler. It’s Friday, and we’re driving directly back into the city (my request—she lives with her aunt and uncle, and I’m not in any way ready to meet them), where I have firm plans to be footloose.

  “How did the story about the book fair go over?” This is our planned alibi for why she’s coming into the city.

  “I just said I was going into the city.”

  “With . . .”

  “With you.”

  My shoe drags the gravel on the way to the Subaru. I was waiting for a category—some guy, some older guy, a friend, someone I met—an explanation. But there is no explanation.

  With you.

  • • •

  REVOLVING DOOR ASIDE, I haven’t had a date spend an entire weekend with me since the divorce. Which means never, since Erin couldn’t be considered a date. She was the one who found the apartment. It’s a gem, the third floor of a four-story building, looking out on Dolores Park. I only got it in the divorce because Erin left me. Her name is still on the lease.

  Rachel lingers around the front door, hanging and rehanging her coat, and I feel how strange it is that I’m the one doing something for the first time. I have my worries. We’ll go out to eat, visit museums, take cabs, even have drinks—thanks to her very convincing fake ID. But there are still all those unstructured minutes. What will we do? Downtime is the generational challenge.

  “A cat!” she says. This brings her into the apartment. “What’s its name?”

  “Kitty Cat.”

  “You really stretched your imagination.”

  The name was Erin’s idea. Her new apartment building doesn’t allow animals. “I also had a dog growing up named D-Dog.”

  “What’s this?” She kicks a black case by the bookshelf.

  “My telescope.”

  “So science-y,” she says and goes into the bathroom.

  I pour myself a glass of white wine—the weather’s just warm enough—and settle into the pleasant Eros of a girl taking a shower in my apartment. The first shower I ever took with a girl was in college. I loved the workmanlike way she scrubbed. We were getting clean—this was no porno. It was the most intimate thing I’d ever done.

  I hear the rush of the water. Unless Rachel’s packed her own products—and I’m guessing this backpacker has come with the mere essentials—she’s lathering up her arms with the big green bar of olive oil and lavender soap, running her fingers backwards through her darkened wet hair, fumbling through the plastic bottles, reading labels, looking for her type. She soaps her chest, maybe pauses between her legs. It is a date night.

  The tap turns off. She grabs, I hope, my plushest towel, enjoys the shallow pleasures of my bathroom, the heat, the potions and lotions, the clean, crisp chamois of floor mat and robe.

  The wine tastes of honey, green apples, and sunlight. Clever vintners!

  The hair dryer shuts off, and after some rustling she emerges from the bedroom dressed as a hipster. Knit cap, skinny jeans, tiny shoes, loose sweater, the Arafat scarf tied around her neck.

  “Is the cap too much?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t know. I’ve never dated anyone who dresses like this. “I mean, it’s cute.”

  She frowns, throws the cap behind her onto my bed. She stands erect, her eyes pointed to the ceiling, as if going over her lines before she steps out into the Klieg lights. “I have a week’s pay,” she says. “And I want to eat oysters on the half shell.”

  She looks at me. We both make saucers of our eyes and let out a deep breath, laughing at our nervousness.

  “It’ll be my treat,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “I guess cute isn’t so bad.”

  • • •

  THE CAB TAKES US through the dark top of Valencia, where the Mission peters out into grimy Market Street, the grand thoroughfare forever hovering at two o’clock on the city’s dial. We pass the antique shops and mattress shops and the big Honda dealership that many years ago was the Fillmore Ballroom. At Van Ness, the usual strays putter around the All Star Cafe in their wheelchairs, or plunge through the crosswalk, rattling a baby carriage full of cans.

  “At least it’s warm out,” Rachel says. She means, in comparison to the night we met.

  We get a glimpse of City Hall, which is lit up green tonight. Earth Day? Ramadan? Then it’s gone and we’re zipping past Seventh and Sixth, where the tired masses of the Tenderloin pour out like a delta into the plaza, shouting to each other in code, sitting along the fountain. The big shopping mall is next. The big Gap. The Apple Store. The great downtown shrines to buying shit. I love this little patch of skyscrapers, bristling with modest ambition. I don’t know why—in fact, my keenest memory here is a bad one, of trailing Erin through these streets like a sleuth, trying to figure out why she didn’t want to marry me. That was a bad week. She’d hatched a cockamamie, secret plan to get an ESL certificate and move to Latin America. She was so desperate for escape. That day, I followed her in and out of stores—careful at first, then brazen—and then down into the MUNI, where I spied on her while she read pamphlets. She was completely inside herself, and I realized I’d never seen her that way—unknowable and unknown. Exactly the way I felt. It seemed confirmation we were made for each other, however painfully.

  This turned out to be the wrong interpretation. Still, there are places in the city I’ll never go again—the top of Bernal Hill—but that sad day never transferred its sadness here. How much sorrow can you feel staring at a Cheesecake Factory?

  At a little table in the Ferry Building, Rachel rolls an oyster shell on the tips of her fingers, the overhead lights reflected in the gleam. The oysters are beautiful specimens from Point Reyes, silvery and plump. She rotates the shell toward me and then toward her, making strange faces, determining—it seems—the exact orientation for docking it in the mother ship.

  “You’ve had oysters before?” I say. I have to raise my voice. The restaurant is as crowded as a stock exchange.

  “I forgot how to do it.”

  “What kind of oysters did you have the last time?”

  “I don’t know. Like these. Maybe with some cheese on them.”

  “You’re sure you’re not thinking of nachos?”

  Her expression tightens, becomes prim. She sets the shell down, unwraps a knife from the napkin, and tries to cut the oyster freehanded. It slides up to the left lip of the shell and then to the right, like a skateboarder in a half-pipe. Then the shell tips and in a great clanking of utensils on bare plate she chases the oyster off the plate and onto the table. A bright red blush spreads from her shoulders to her hairline.

  “That was like a Marx Brothers movie.” She doesn’t look up, slouched like a scolded schoolgirl. “Hey.” I lean in to avoid shouting. “Look around. Nobody knows you.”

  “I know.” Her gaze remains pointed down.

  “There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”

  She’s still as a lizard while her color
returns to normal. Then she looks up with a confident smile.

  “Guess I’ll try that again,” she says.

  “Take that little fork. Make sure the oyster is loose in its shell, then pour the whole thing into your mouth.”

  “No sauce?”

  “Your first oyster should be a pure encounter.”

  She doesn’t laugh, but she’s not blushing anymore. She sits up straight, growing back into my date. She eyes the oyster warily, but humorously, as if the rascal might fool her again. I lean back, absorbed in the roar of human chatter. I appreciate her quick recovery. It suggests a strength in her I wouldn’t have guessed. In my mind I draw a black box around her, framing the moment like a photograph. Her nervous, determined face; the gray dripping oyster; the hard bread; the yellow wine; from the open kitchen behind her, a burst of roiling steam. She puts the shell to her mouth and thinks better of it. With her finger she swabs out a grain of sand. Then she closes her eyes and tilts the oyster into her mouth, spilling the liquid down the side of her cheek, leaving a trail of grit. She chews once, gulps, and then brings the napkin to her face, eyes open again, surprised and amused, as if she’s just come up from a comical dive.

  I don’t know what mental album I’ll put this in. Probably one of the big ones: “At the Time It Seemed Meaningful” or “A Fond Memory with What’s-Her-Name.”

  Or an entirely new one, as behind Rachel the crowd parts and—like assassins—my ex-wife and a man emerge, fussing with their coats. I’ve heard she’s dating. I hold them in view for a second, hoping it’s a trick of the mind, but it’s not. You always run this risk in San Francisco, a big city that moonlights as a small town. I sometimes bump into Erin in our neighborhood, where she still lives. But the Ferry Building, I was thinking, would be safely distant. I look down, feeling a flash of guilt, as if by that recollection in the taxi I thumbed my nose at Fate. Of course Erin can’t be summoned. She’s not a ghost or a punishment. She’s just an ex-wife—surely one of many in the restaurant—beautiful as always and a fan of oysters and parsimony. Happy hour is just ending.

  “Okay, your turn,” Rachel says.

  I look down and rub my forefinger on the menu, pretending to read about our oyster selection. “Washington State,” I say. “Japan, New Zealand, Vancouver, Portland.” It’s no use. They’re going to have to walk right past us, and my acting skills aren’t good enough to feign shock.

  “Erin,” I say, pushing out my chair and standing to wave. She looks up, and I know in a second that she is acting, too. She’s already seen me. The beau on the other hand looks alarmed, threatened. He’s handsome but not too, wearing a suit with no tie and an elegant trench coat. Square of jaw, wide of shoulder.

  “What a surprise.” She comes forward for a hug. We started hugging about a year after the divorce and we’ve always kept to this form: we tilt into each other from far away, not touching anywhere below the chest, as if we’re separated by a short, disagreeable child.

  “This is Rachel,” I say. “Rachel, this is Erin, my ex-wife.”

  Rachel holds her napkin in front of her mouth, chewing, gulping. She does not stand up, and I wish she would.

  The beau shakes my hand. He barely acknowledges Rachel.

  “Are you enjoying the oysters?” Erin asks.

  “The Kumamoto are very good,” I say.

  “Aren’t they,” she says.

  “This is my first time,” Rachel says.

  Erin and her date are very still. They don’t seem to know what to make of this comment.

  “And she lives in Bolinas,” I say.

  “What do you think?” Erin asks Rachel.

  Rachel looks from Erin to the beau. She seems panicked. “Verdict’s out?”

  “It took me a while as well.” Erin nods. I don’t know if this is mercy or just Erin. She is a true-blue, literalist Californian. Maybe she hadn’t even considered a savage remark.

  “We prefer them at Swan’s,” the beau says. With relief, I see what I can dislike about him: he has a voice I don’t think Erin would have put up with ten years ago. Self-satisfied, aggressively confident.

  Of course, ten years ago she was putting up with my voice.

  She tucks herself under the beau’s arm, as if expecting him to carry her out like a rug. For her it’s an impressive amount of PDA. They say their goodbyes and leave.

  “You were married to her?” Rachel says.

  I can’t tell if she’s surprised I was married or surprised I was married to Erin.

  “For a little while. We dated for a long time before that.”

  “She’s beautiful. Like Audrey Hepburn.”

  “I wouldn’t go overboard.”

  “I just mean—she’s gorgeous, she’s sophisticated.”

  “Would you please take your napkin down from your mouth?”

  Rachel lowers her hand to the table, her face a picture of heartbreak. “What happened to your connection?”

  “You make it sound like a phone call.”

  • • •

  THE RIDE HOME SEEMS COLDER, shorter, grimmer. On Valencia Street, I look out the window at the hipsters on their fixed-speed bikes. The tight clothes, the tiny hats—their major struggle as a generation seems to be reducing drag. As if success in life requires being ever ready to slip through a narrow opening.

  We arrive back at my apartment, quiet. Rachel says she’d like to use the telescope, and so I grab a blanket and lead her to the dirty stairwell that climbs past my upstairs neighbor’s to the roof. The telescope was an unusual extravagance of my father’s, bought when he was in his early twenties, before he and my mother married. When I was a kid, he was reluctant to get it out, embarrassed—I think—by its perfection. In South Arkansas, perfection was considered a type of vanity. Tools should be just sufficient—less than, if you were courting glory. There was no higher boast than to say you’d fixed some troublesome mechanical problem in the most unlikely manner possible—with chewing gum or a well-aimed kick. My father prided himself on his descent from Louisiana plantation aristocracy, but on this issue he went native. He loved to boast about the time he fixed the Buick by hitting the manifold with a stick of firewood.

  But he wasn’t always opposed to perfection, as these German optics prove. It’s a reminder that change can be bad as well as good.

  “I’m sorry about the restaurant,” Rachel says, as we spread out the blanket. “Sometimes I have low self-esteem.”

  “Only idiots don’t.”

  “Not Erin.”

  “She used to. She’s probably all better now.” Through the viewfinder, I search for the Crab Nebula, but the air is hazy. The days have been warm and windless, gathering smog. “Her boyfriend doesn’t have apparent self-esteem issues.”

  “Tell me about it. He was staring at me like I was a bug.”

  “That’s called ogling.”

  “Please,” she says. “With a girlfriend like that you don’t ogle me.”

  “If she’s sleeping with him. She didn’t really sleep with me, towards the end.”

  “I can hardly believe that,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you?”

  “You must be kidding.” But, Sweet Jesus, she doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. She’s sitting Indian-style, wineglass held like a beggar’s bowl, shoulders exposed to the rare warmth. “I’m changing tacks here—I’m looking for Io.”

  “I don’t even know any constellations.”

  “Nobody does. Io is just a moon. She’s a cow who was Zeus’s lover.”

  “He fucked a cow?”

  “I think he changed her to a cow afterwards. I couldn’t swear to the exact timing.”

  “If I was a constellation, I’d be a butter churn.” I hear her shifting on the blanket, moving her
legs, lying back. “My dad took us over to one of those Amish places, for fried chicken, in Pennsylvania? When I was like twelve. And they had this little barn, where you could watch the women churning butter and the kids chasing a goat and everybody thought it was so funny. But you know what I thought? Adopt me. Seriously. Let me do something. Churn butter. One stick of butter. Wrap it in that cloth. Put a stamp on it. The way they do?”

  “A butter churn.” I lean back, look to Orion—maybe his sword could be repurposed as a wooden plunger. “I would be a man sitting alone on a very nice chair.”

  “I think it would be a couch. And you’re waiting on someone.”

  “I seem like I’m waiting on someone?”

  “Don’t you want to fall in love again?”

  I stop turning the main tube—Io too is obscured. “That sounds ambitious.”

  “Maybe you’re waiting on your wife to come to her senses.”

  “Ex-wife. And we already came to our senses.”

  “You seemed kind of, you know, shook up at the restaurant.”

  “If I was pining for her, would I be here with you?”

  “Maybe you’re working through some roadblocks. I’m approachable.”

  “You make yourself sound very therapeutic.”

  “That’s okay, right? I can work through some things with you, and you can work through some things with me. We can be there for each other.”

  My heart falls at this vision, but is it really so bad? She at least sees a purpose, a set of benefits that will accrue. It beats the thin nihilism of seizing the day.

  Rachel’s phone rings. She picks it up and begins an exasperated conversation with someone—the aunt or uncle she lives with, I assume. “Are we on the good side of the Mission or the bad side of the Mission?” she asks me.

  “That’s Dolores Park.”

  “Did you hear that?” she says into the phone. “I’m not biting your head off. I love you, too.” She hangs up. “Sorry about that. They worry about me, after my last relationship. But I’m much more grounded. To click is to stick. That’s something we say in Pure Encounters.”

  I try my tactic again—imagining she’s a tribeswoman explaining her ancient traditions. Maybe one of those Burmese women, with beautiful rings stretching her neck.