Page 52 of The Frog Prince
I let my eyebrows lift. “Did you hear our conversation?”
She colors, then mumbles something like, “I better not. I’ve got lots of work. The Schlessenger wedding and the, um, other things.”
“Right.” I pick up my pen and hit a key on my keyboard so the screen saver disappears, returning me to the Excel spreadsheet on my monitor. “Have a nice evening with the wedding and other things.”
But Sara doesn’t leave. She takes several steps toward me, leans over the edge of my desk. “You don’t want Olivia mad.”
She’s right. I don’t want Olivia mad, but I also refuse to be intimidated by Olivia’s office politics. I’ve always done my own thing, made my own decisions, even if they’re disastrous. “I’m not uninviting Tessa.” I start scrolling through the spreadsheet. “I think it’s great that Tessa wants to be supportive.”
Sara stands there another moment. I can feel her frustration, as well as her indecision. And then, heaving a sigh, she walks away. I don’t even glance up. I’m starting to realize that I can’t make everybody happy today, and I’m not even going to try.
*
Josh and Iend up driving together. The Fairmont is on Nob Hill and probably my favorite place for catching a cable car.
On Powell, at the top of the hill, you can see in all directions, and as the cable car descends, it rolls and grinds, hums and clanks, and the street and the cable car shudder as the conductor rings the bell,ding-ding-ding, and the brakeman works the gears.
After parking—a slow, painstaking process of inching up and back until I’ve squeezed into the spot on the street—I join Josh on the curb just as a cable car climbs the hill.
When I was little, I thought it was the shape of the cable car that made it so evocative, but now I know it’s not the shape, or color, but the sound. That busy, cheerful hum-and-clank-and-ding sound is so San Francisco, at once festive and old-world, exciting and comforting, like Ghirardelli chocolates, clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls at Fisherman’s Wharf, or the glimpse of the deep-orange Golden Gate Bridge poking through the morning fog.
The doorman at the Fairmont holds the door for us as we duck into the grand gilt-and-marble hotel lobby. I ended up in San Francisco because it was north of Fresno, not south, and because my father lives in the southern half of the state, and because I went to college down there and this time I wanted—needed—the unknown. The unknown was north, so that’s why I’m here, but now that I’m here, I’m grateful.
We take the elevator downstairs, and as I walk through the hotel’s hallway, I know San Francisco’s right for me. It can’t quite be classified as a fairy-tale city, because I’ve seen too many homeless people sleeping on corners and been chased once too often by deranged persons when leaving the theater in the Tenderloin district, but there is a fictional quality to it.
Maybe it’s that whole western frontier movement, with the California gold rush and its infamous forty-niners (not the football team but the men and women who swarmed San Francisco in the height of gold rush fever), the hardy American novelists like Mark Twain and Jack London immortalizing life in the glorious new state of California, or the great earthquake and fire in 1906 that razed the city, but San Francisco is and always will be larger than life.
Mythical.
It’s the mythical I relate to, and the mythical I feel as Josh and I enter the Tonga Room’s exotic world of Polynesia. Tessa is already there, sitting with my mom, and they’re both sipping enormous drinks festooned with spears of fresh fruit, garish paper umbrellas, and little plastic monkeys. Mom waves to us from across the room, and for a second all I can see is a blinding flash of turquoise and pink.Please stay seated; please wave from a sitting position, I pray silently, and miraculously, my mother does.
“We’re having a great time,” she says as we reach the table, and I look at Tessa for confirmation. Tessa smiles, shrugs, and I think that’s about as warm and fuzzy as I’ve ever seen Tessa.
Mom has stories to tell tonight. She’d tried to drive here earlier and got lost and somehow ended up on some bridge but it wasn’t the Golden Gate; it was the other one, the big gray one that was severely damaged in the last big earthquake, and the traffic was impossible, traffic like you don’t believe, but she did finally get back across the bridge after paying the toll, and now here we are.
Yes we are.
I need a drink bad.
Drinks arrive, and I’m very happy with my ultra-smooth piña colada. I know piña coladas are the wimpiest of all blender drinks (perhaps only a chi-chi is lower in terms of verve), but it’s tasty and smooth and it goes down easy, and soon I’m a little mellower.
We order pupu platters and expensive entrées you’d find in many Chinese restaurants for a quarter the price, but we’re paying for the atmosphere and the band that’s setting up on their little island/raft bandstand. But wait, there’s mist and a storm, and then the rain passes and the sun comes out again, and the tropical drinks keep rolling, and we keep eating.
The band doesn’t start playing until eight, and we’ve pretty much wrapped up eating by then, but once the music starts, my mom looks so positively blissful that I resist the urge to rush her home and into bed.
Why shouldn’t she enjoy herself? She certainly can’t do this in Visalia. And as the waiter brings a third (fourth?) round of drinks, I look at Tessa and Josh, who’ve got their heads together, deep in conversation, and I think, we might have a couple here—but then I overhear bits of their soulful conversation.
“There’s nothing wrong with the Yankees loading their team. If George can pay the salaries, he should bring in the best. Other cities are just jealous.”
But Josh isn’t buying into Tessa’s argument. “Yes, because other cities don’t have the population base or the tax revenue New York does.”
“Tax revenue, pooh! If other teams could afford our players, they’d have them—”
“But other teams can’t—”
“That’s not the Yankees’ fault, and they shouldn’t be penalized.”
“But there should be some equality.”