Travels With William

Another Santa Barbara story, to be read after "Poet's Club", "Yogi Bear" and "Before Cell Phones".

Travels With William

William lived in Santa Barbara, a place that more than tolerated gays. A city where people fully accepted them and defended them. By and large, gays were not even remarked upon. And it was in this environment that William's ways earned him the nickname of “Gay William”. Mostly from the gay community.

He was one of Molly and Jane's best friends, and quite an interesting character. He was a decent violinist and he and Molly would often play together, Molly on her viola and William on his violin. They did Christmas carols on State Street downtown every year. William had been close to achieving first violin in his high school orchestra, but a lovely little girl with long, blonde ringlets had beat him out. When the position was announced, William felt she had won with her looks, and not with her talent, and William had broken his bow over his knee and tried to strangle her with the horse hair. This got him kicked out the the orchestra and, in Williams opinion, was the reason he was now only a mediocre violinist. 

His real talent was on the piano however. He was a master of the music of Luis Moreau Gottschalk, a weird, extremely intricate form of very early jazz and ragtime that, for the most part, was never fully written down. Gottschalk wrote figured bass and chording, but most of the color notes were improvised and had to be inferred from the music's structure. Strange, wandering, rapid melodies that moved in very unexpected ways. 

William was a psychologist, but for unexplained personal reasons, no longer practiced. He didn't need to. His middle class parents had purchased four nice houses in Santa Barbara before the boom. William had inherited these, along with some other assets, and he was fine financially. He had no interest in listening to patient's problems.

Jane, Molly and William were sitting in Molly's living room on a Friday afternoon. It was the eve of the Memorial Day weekend. They were drinking chardonnay and listening to some odd music William had brought over. He had a vast collection of little known but enjoyable stuff in all genres. They were doing this while sitting on Molly's futon on the floor. The only piece of furniture in the room, if one didn't count the TV and stereo against the far wall or the potted palm under the front window. 

“You really do need a couch in here”, William said. “It would add so much to the decor. And while sitting on the floor does have it's charms, it's hard on the back after a while.” 

William offered up a toast with his wine glass as he said this.

“I had one”, Molly answered. “Paid on it for a whole year and then I sold it when I moved up here from Newport Beach. Sold it to my neighbor for thirty-five bucks. Was sick of hauling it around.” 

“I can loan you one”, William replied. “I've got all my parent's furniture in storage. Old style stuff, but good quality. Maybe a white leather over stuffed sofa and chair?”

“Nah, like I said, it'd just give it away the next time I move.”

“You could just give it back to me.”

“That might work”, said Molly, after a moment's consideration, who if truth be told, was also tired of sitting on the floor.

“I'll get on it right after this glass”, said William. 

About two hours later William showed up in is pickup truck with his friend Elmer. Molly was sure Elmer wasn't his real name, but he would never tell Molly his real name. The two guys carried in the white leather sofa and an armchair. They were heavy and Molly was glad for William's promise to take them back if she moved. They also brought a steamer trunk to use as a coffee table. They dragged the futon back into the bedroom and the furniture was set up. 

“It's beautiful”, said Jane, admiring the dark, carved hardwood on the front of the couch arm. 

“Now you two can live like girls”, said George. “Maybe I'll bring over a picture for the wall next time.”

“A dining room table for the kitchen would be nice”, said Jane, looking at Molly. 

“Here, let my take you guys out to dinner”, Molly said. “Where do you want to go?” Molly then bit her tongue. You didn't ask William and Elmer where they wanted to go, you simply offered to take them to a restaurant you had selected. Left to their own devices, they would want to go to Chameleon.  

“Chameleon!” They both said. 

Chameleon was actually a nice place, more of a bar than a restaurant, but with good food all the same. They also had a huge aquarium with chameleons in it. From the pictures Molly had seen, she had always visualized these to be huge, maybe ten inches long. But these were tiny, maybe two inches at the most. But Molly was still fascinated by them. They really did change color. 

William and Elmer knew everyone in the place and all was good, except the guys at Chameleon loved to dance. And, as the only women in the place, Molly and Jane were targets. They could have danced all night if they wanted to. But neither Molly nor Jane really liked to dance. And they weren't that good at it, while everyone else in the place was a master. 

After dinner Molly and Jane made excuses but were eventually pulled out onto the dance floor where people tried to teach them Samba and some new types of Brazilian dances. They struggled through it for an hour and then Molly claimed a bad hip and sat down. Shortly thereafter, Jane, claiming to need to help Molly, sat down too. The two guys joined them.  

“You two want to do a road trip this weekend?”, William asked. “I'm going to make a stop in the city and then go up to see some people in Guerneville.”

“What are you doing up there?” Jane asked. 

“Watch an improv group on Saturday night and then go see some friends on Sunday. They just bought a house up by Guerney and they're doing some heavy work on it. I want to see how it's going. And Elmer won't leave Santa Barbara.”

“Yup”, said Elmer. “I like it here. Why would I leave?”

Molly looked at Jane and Jane shook her head “yes”, “Yeah, it sounds like fun. We'll go.”

Per their arrangements, William picked up Molly and Jane at 10:00 AM the next morning. They arrived in San Franciso at about 4:00 that afternoon, way to early for the improv stuff. So they parked on the North side of the Golden Gate and walked back across on the pedestrian path. Neither Jane nor Molly had ever done this and it was lovely. At this hour you could see the shadows of the towers and cables on the bay. 

The improv was to perform in a huge coffee house called the Spiritual Monkey. The place looked like it had once been a church, with a high, vaulted ceiling and high frosted windows with round tops. There was a covered walkway that led to other outbuildings, with matching architecture, but these were rented to other businesses. A real estate office and a music store. The group was setting up their stage when Molly entered, a collection of two foot high plywood tables, with four by four's for legs, that all screwed together. They had two high wattage lights in reflectors at each corner of the stage.

“Billy Boy!”, shouted William, and a guy that was bent over bolting the tables together, stood up and embraced William. 

“A big classic hug for you”, said Billy Boy. 

“These are my friends Jane and Molly”, said William. 

“Are they going to need t-shirts?”, asked Billie. 

“Yeah”, said William. “Absolutely.” 

Billie went behind the stage and fished out three black t-shirts. 

“There's a bathroom over there”, said William. “Go put these on.”

“Why?” Asked Jane. 

“Because it makes you one of the group and you get free dinner that way.”

“Oh”, Jane replied, and Molly and Jane headed for the bathrooms.

The rest of the cast appeared, all dressed in black t-shirts and jeans. Just like Molly, Jane and William. They retired to tables along the covered walkway where they were served some kind of organic burrito thing. A green tortilla surrounding greens, some weird beans and a bland sauce. Molly and Jane were hungry so they ate it. Cups of coffee then came out and the group relaxed as the sun set. 

A guy sitting next to Molly suddenly opened up with his theory of humor. He was a neat, smart and well mannered guy, but to Molly and Jane his theory sounded overly complex and convoluted. He also seemed much too serious and earnest to have anything at all to do with comedy. His name was Mike and he asked Molly to tell him a joke. 

“I don't know any”, Molly replied, meaning she didn't know any clean ones, and the rest she didn't care to tell to strangers.

“I've been trying to make one up”, said Jane. “Maybe you can help me with the punch line.”

“Sure”, said the guy. “What do you have so far?”

“Well, this woman had a schnauzer dog, but she wanted a Mexican hairless chihuahua. So she went to the drugstore and asked the guy for some hair remover. And the drugstore guy said that if you put this on your legs, it's gonna ruin your skin and make your legs all dry and scaly. And the woman says, mind your own business, I'm not going to put it on my legs. And the guy says, then where are you going to put it? And the woman says, I'm going to put it on my schnauzer.”

“And?” Said Mike. 

“I need a punch line”, said Jane. 

Mike then launched into a twenty minute analysis of Jane's nascent joke, most of which went over the heads of Jane and Molly. 

The crowd had assembled and the improv group moved to the back of the stage. The game seemed to be that people simply leaped up onto the stage when they felt they had something to add to the conversation. If this slowed, then Billy Boy sent people into the game much as a football coach would. 

The group on stage asked one of their members why he looked disturbed. He explained that he'd been walking down the street when someone had jumped out of a tenth floor window and landed at his feet. With this, several people pushed Molly over. She screamed. They grabbed her wrists and ankles and carried her onto the stage. They dropped her with a loud “Whoomp” on her back, on the plywood at the guys feet. It hurt.

 And the guy said, “Yeah, it was just like that”.

The audience laughed and group gathered to discuss Molly's “suicide”. Molly, suddenly in front of several hundred people and several bright lights, just lay there.  

Jane was later pulled onto stage and told to act like a chicken whilst a guy recited  the soliloquy from “Omelette”. 

After the show, and after the stage and lights were packed up and loaded into two pickup trucks, the entire crew descended into a dark little cafe in the Lower Haight where they had whiskey and hearty bowels of beef stew to hold down the vedge and air burrito they had eaten earlier that evening.

There was some guy on the tiny stage with a huge, white beard and overalls. He played a collection of banjos and fiddles made out of automotive junk, mostly hubcaps, and he sang strange songs about such things as his cat getting out. He was followed by a young woman who would snap her fingers and recite clever, rhyming poetry about different aspects of her life. She was quite entertaining and the place filled with female couples for her act. She obviously had a fan base.  

They unrolled sleeping bags on the floor of Billy Boy's nearby apartment and spent the night. The next morning they had coffee in Billy's tiny kitchen. 

“So you're going up to see Steve and Robert?”

“See how their house is going”, William replied. 

“Quite an adventure that is, not sure I'd have the nerve for it”, said Billy. 

“Oh, they'll be millionaires if they pull it off”, observed William. “And bankrupt if they don't. But you can recover from bankruptcy.”

“Quite, but I do so miss the old Steve and Robert. Before they got quite so responsible and serious. Do you remember that time ….”

William interrupted, “Let's not go there. There are ladies present.”

Billy laughed. William noticed that he had a black coffee cup with a white saucer and that Molly had a white cup with a black saucer. He reached over and exchanged his white saucer for Molly's black one and then admired the result.  

Later, as they were loading the car, Molly and Jane saw a flock of parrots come over the roof tops and land in a nearby tree. Escaped parrots that had banded together into flocks and who now lived free. Both had heard of this, but they had never seen it until this morning. 

The group first drove around Petaluma because none had ever been there and they all wanted to see it. They then stopped in Santa Rosa for brunch. So they didn't arrive at the house outside Guerneville until just after noon. 

It was a large, white wooden structure just on the other side of the road from the Russian River. It appeared to date from the 1920's or 1930's. Eight guys were working on the well dug up yard and there were stacks of railroad ties off to one the side. Fresh concrete walls, with re-bar sticking out the top, could be seen on the slope down to the river. They pulled into a graveled parking area and began climbing from the car. 

Two guys working in the yard stuck their shovels in the ground and descended to meet the group.

“Mr. William!”, said the first.

“Roberto!”, William called back. 

The two arrived, Robert and Steve, and introductions were made all around. Both Robert and Steve appeared to be in their mid thirties and were quite good looking. 

“So this is your house?” Molly asked as they climbed the yard. 

“Yeah, Steve and I committed to it last year.”

“What are you doing to the yard here?”

“There was an earth movement problem. We're trying to stabilize it.”

“Did you know about that when you bought the house?”

“Oh yeah”, said Robert.  “We got a good price because of that and the owner carried us. It's the only way we could have bought the place. If we get the lot stabilized, we win big time.” 

Molly was fascinated and said, “Something like this is probably the only way I'll every be able to buy a house in Santa Barbara. I'd really be interested in seeing what you're doing.”

Robert laughed. “We were exactly the same way. We knew a guy who did this back in Mill Valley, and that got us looking. We found this place and he basically told us what to do about the slide. He'd been through it. Kind of gave us the guts to commit.”

After lunch, Robert and Steve took Molly on a tour of the retaining walls and drainage systems that they hoped would stabilize the property. The theory was to get the water off the property and into the river as quickly as possible. The yard was being terraced with retaining walls built of railroad ties, staggered so that there was a railroad tie wide gap between each two ties. This gap was filled on the backside with mesh. The floor of each terrace was waterproofed concrete with a foot of earth on top. Everything sloped to facilitate quick run off. 

Behind the house was a deep ditch that filled from the hill above it, and often turned into a pond. This was being expanded and graded for quick run off And someday Robert and Steve hoped to replace it with with a fast flowing concrete channel or, better still, a huge french drain. 

Most of the work was being done by hand right now as the two had little money. Once they achieved a certification that the land was stable, bank loans would be available, but they weren't right now.  Most of the workers in the yard lived in the house and exchanged labor for rent.

“That's why the house is still kind of a wreck”, said Steve. 

“Yeah, we'd love to fix it up, but first we gotta stop it from going down the hill into the river”,  Robert added.

William went to town and sprung for pizza. An impressive stack of pizzas given that he was feeding Robert, Steve, the six other residents of the house as well as his party. 

Over dinner Steve asked Molly, “You and Jane want to come to our AA meeting tonight?”

“I'm not in AA”, said Molly. 

“Me neither”, said Jane. 

“It's an open meeting, anyone can come. You'll meet a lot of good people from the area.” Said Steve. 

“All you need is a desire to stop drinking”, Robert added. “Think you'll have that someday?”

“Yeah, I'd almost bet on it”, Jane replied. 

“OK, then you're good”, Robert replied. 

“You want to go?” Molly asked William.

“Nope”, he replied. 

“William has a thing about AA”, Robert explained. “Here, look.”  Robert grabbed a book off the shelf behind him and sat it on the table in front of William. 

“Remove it, Robert”, William said. 

“No, I think you should read it”, Robert replied. “It would be good for you.”

 “Yok! I have to go pee. I'll leave you people to your silly book.” And William rose from the table.

William replaced the book on the shelf with a chuckle.

The AA meeting was in a large underground space in Guerneville. Perhaps the basement of some public building such as the city hall or court house. They had arrived at the back of the building by way of an alley so it was hard to tell. There were tables randomly placed about the room. The people were from the Russian River area, almost all same sex couples. The women were the most flamboyant, with the current fashion being heads shaved on the sides and the remaining hair dyed in vivid rainbow colors. The women sat shoulder to shoulder with their partners. The men were more casual, longing about every which way. Two people were to speak that night. 

A woman was passing around small slips of paper. She handed one to Jane.

“What's this?” 

“Are you new?”

“This is the first time I've ever been to something like this”, Jane replied. “Is it OK if I'm here?”

 “Sure”, the woman replied. “If you're here for alcohol, just stand when they ask you to. Their gonna ask for visitors and out of towners too. If that's what you are, then just stand then.”

“But what's this”, asked Jane, indicating the piece of paper. 

“That's Step Five, you read it after someone reads Step Four. Just listen and you'll know when it comes. And Robert and Steve are here. They'll kick you if you start to miss it.”

With this she gave a nod to Robert and Steve. 

“And who is this”, she continued. 

“That's Molly. I'm with her.”

“Here Molly, you get Step Six.”

“What's your name?” Asked Molly.

“Merriam”

Candles were lit at each table and the lights went off. A series of announcements were made and then the person leading the meeting asked:

“Are there any people here in their first thirty days of sobriety?”

Two people stood. 

“Hi, I'm Al and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Al”, the room mumbled. 

“Hi, I'm Joanie and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Joanie”, the room muttered. 

“Out of town visitors? Or, as we call them O.O.T.V.'s, or “Ootvees” for short.”

Jane and Molly stood. 

“I'm Jane.”

“I'm Molly.”

“Where you from?” Someone yelled from the back of the room.

“Santa Barbara”, Molly replied and everyone clapped. 

“Who wants to read Chapter Five?” The meeting leader asked, and passed a book off to a raised hand. 

Merriam came over with a small flashlight to light up the book. The woman to whom the book had been passed read from it.

 “Chapter Five, how it works”, the woman began:

“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.

There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it -- then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked.”

At this point the woman halted her reading and everyone in the room cried, “Baaaawk, Bawk, Bawk, Bawk, Bawk”, like a flock of chickens. They did this for a thirty seconds or so and then the woman resumed reading:

“..... Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.....”

A different person read each step from a different part of the room. Both Molly and Jane realized this was what their slips of paper were all about. The effect was startling, voices coming out of the darkness from all directions. Step Four was then read by someone:

“Step Four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

“Step Five”, Jane read as loudly as she could. “Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

“Step Six”, Molly followed. “Were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character.”

The rest of the 12 Step were then read and Merriam, the woman who had given them the slips of paper, was then introduced as the first speaker.
 
Merriam said that she had owned wood shop here on the Russian River and made custom furniture and mandolins. But she would not touch her power tools after she had been drinking, which got to be pretty much all the time. So she eventually lost the shop and went into a period of depression and round the clock drinking. She explained how she would lose track of the time, waking up on the couch in the dark and not knowing if the six o'clock on the clock face meant that it was the same evening or early the next morning. Or perhaps even the next evening. Eventually, her partner threatened to leave her if she didn't get help. She got sober and was now in the process of rebuilding her business. Some of her old clients came back when she explained to them how her alcohol problems had caused her to be irresponsible in the past. She now had contracts repairing furniture for a couple of the large hotels in the area. 

The second guy who spoke seemed very happy with life and had a hard time being serious. Almost everything he said devolved into a joke and the rest of the room howled and laughed. But he somehow got his story across. He'd been married for years and, as a gay man, felt out of place in the situation. For years he attributed his drinking to this. But then his wife left and his daughter entered college, and he no longer had an excuse. But his drinking got worse anyway. He had always managed to keep his job but the weekends were getting rough. His daughter came home unexpectedly and found him on a rough weekend. She knew he was a drinker, but she was horrified with what she saw, and she convinced him to seek help for her sake. He did. And once sober, he left his job in the city, which he had pretty much always hated anyway, and moved to the river. And he said that he was now quite happy with his new life as a nellie old f*g. 

The group then formed a ring around the room with everyone holding hands. They said the Lords Prayer and the meeting was over. 

“You guys coming to ice cream?” Someone called to Robert and Steve. 

“Yeah, we'll be there.”

About half the guys from the meeting were in the ice cream parlor. Several tables were taken up by the group. They must have done this on a regular bases as Molly noticed that the girl waiting the tables simply asked most if they wanted the “usual”. Al, the guy who had stood up at the start of the meeting was there talking to a couple of guys. Steve said he'd been coming for three weeks now, but that everyone had to stand up for the full first thirty days. He was almost there. 

“You might not guess it now, but we were a lot worse than that guy in the meeting”, said Steve. 

“Yeah, he was kind of a piker”, said Robert. “We were real drunks. You have to come hear one of us sometime.”

“Yeah, we used to get in trouble”, Steve continued. 

“A lot”, Robert added. “Crazy stuff.”

“We were the 'But' people”, Steve noted. “That Robert, he's a great guy, butttttt......”.

“Hey, and that Steve, he's a great guy, butttttttt......”. 

“How long have you been doing this?” Jane asked. 

“Five years now”, said Robert. “We celebrated Steve turning thirty and then turned ourselves into rehab a couple of days later.”

“When the hangovers wore off”, added Steve.

“I'm going to risk preaching a little bit here”, Robert began. “But it's something that everyone needs to know. Quitting drinking is sort of like the Three Stooges knocking down a door. They get all revved up for it, they run for the door and then someone opens it just before they hit. The day before I quit I didn't think I would ever be able to live without alcohol. The day after, I went 'Wow, this is nice. Wish I'd done this years ago.'”

“Yeah, as you go through life, notice that the people who admit they might have a problem with booze almost never do. It's the ones who think they don't have a problem that crash and burn.” Added Steve. 

“Did William tell you about Don?” Robert asked. 

“No.” Molly replied. 

“Ok, then never ask”, said Robert. “And forget we said anything.”

Back at the house sleeping arrangements were made. The house was huge and there was a spare bedroom, with a bath, for the three. No furniture, but sleeping bags on the floor would do fine. The most important thing being a close place to pee in the middle of the night. 

Knowing what she now knew, Molly saw the damage the earth movement had caused as she passed through the house. The cracked plaster on the walls and the uneven floors. 

“That's phase two”, said Robert. “Leveling the house so that it can be restored. Maybe getting the whole house up on some type of screw jacks so that it can be tweaked every few years. Or sinking pilings below the level of the hill for the house to set on. We'll figure it out when we get that far.”

“What are you going to do with a house this size?” Molly asked. 

“Cease being wage slaves”, Robert replied. “This will be a bed and breakfast for people like you who need a spell along the river.”

“That's what I want”, Molly confessed. “A little coffee shop and wine bar in the redwoods. I wasn't cut out to work for an aerospace outfit.”

“And I wasn't cut out to work for a bank. So you better get busy with getting out.”

The next morning William, Molly, Jane, Steve and Robert had a wonderful breakfast on the deck of a little cafe just down the road from the house. That morning the cafe featured eggs Benedict with spinach and avocado. Molly noted the combination for her next life. 

Driving home, William opened up with Molly and Jane. 

“I don't want to scare you two, I think the world of you, but I want you to know that I was in the joint for five years. And that's why I don't practice anymore. I lost my license over it.”

“What?” Said Molly, this was a shock out of the blue. 

“I killed my partner. And probably why I'm still single today. I just can't get back into it. The couple thing.”

Both Molly and Jane just sat there, kind of numb. Neither could picture George killing anyone. 

“He was about dead anyway. I see it as kind of just putting him out of his misery. The court kind of saw it that way too. That's why I got off light. He was HIV positive and he had a crack problem. But he got cleaned up and was doing OK, but then he relapsed. Got off his drug program for the HIV and was going down hill fast. Didn't want help. We could both see the end coming and one day I just went kind of nuts and shot him. We'd been arguing all day and I just went kind of crazy at the end.”

Molly tried to think of something helpful to say, but could not. 

“Kind of got into it with the NA people. While he was going down, they wanted to take over everything and manage our lives. People showing up everyday with worthless advice. Getting in the way and messing things up. That's why I sort of have a bad taste about all that recovery stuff.”

“Steve and Robert seem OK”, said Jane. 

“It's a two edged sword”, William said. “It can do a lot of good, but it can also do harm. It really helped Steve and Robert, but when I was in the city I saw a suicide that probably could be traced to a bunch of amateur psychologists messing with the guy's head.”

The somber mood held until they pulled into Santa Barbara and William helped Jane and Molly unload their stuff onto Molly's porch.

After William left, Molly invited Jane to come in for a moment, explaining that they could carry her stuff around to her cabin in the back later. 

Sitting on the coach that William had given her, Molly began, “We're both thirty years old, and neither one of us is doing what we want. We're both kind of stuck in a rut. And a lot of time we don't notice because the rut isn't that bad �" at least most of the time it isn't. But I think it's gonna get worse.”

Jane only nodded. 

“I think we need to work together to get out. Get something we really want. Like Steve and Robert.”
“
You and me?” Asked Jane. “Together?”

“Yeah”, said Molly. “Let's put that stuff on the porch in the bedroom here. We can move the rest of your stuff tomorrow. We're going to need that rent money you pay on that little s**t hole out back for when we move North.”

Jane was silent for a moment, and then replied: “I like the idea. I wanted to suggest it, but I was afraid.”

And all went well for the rest of the summer, and then into the early fall. But Molly should have seen the next phase coming. 

Her father, Bjorn, was smart, and more than smart, he usually missed nothing. His education qualified him to be a physician, but he had never taken the necessary exams and continued on with his biochemistry. He was now installed as a senior administrator at the Vail Valley Medical Center. One of the better institutions in the country. 

He had unexpectedly come to California to fill in for another colleague at a conference at UCLA. That weekend, he had decided to surprise his daughter in Santa Barbara with a visit. He pulled up in front of the duplex, a somewhat shabby and plain structure, but with the palm trees in the yard, and the other foliage, and the nearby Victorian mansions, he had to admit it had a certain charm.

Knocking at the door, Molly seemed unusually surprised to see him. 

“Dad!”, she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Come in.”

“Had to cover for a guy at a conference at UCLA and I thought I'd stop up for a visit.”

Her father entered the small living room and was gratified to see that his somewhat eccentric daughter finally had some furniture. Specifically, an elegant white leather couch and a matching arm chair, along with an interesting looking steamer trunk for  a coffee table. With a piece of glass on top, no less. A decorating feat he would never have expected her capable of. He had expected to find a collection of model airplanes and motorcycle parts laid out around her somewhat grimy lavender futon, and little else.

A petite, attractive woman, with long brown hair, and baggy men's clothing was washing dishes at the kitchenette. A young woman he recognized as Molly's friend Jane. She smiled.

“Hi Jane”, said Molly's father. “Done any skiing since you were up at my place?”

“Not since we came back”, Jane replied. “And thank's for having us. Those were the most fun two weeks of my life. I never would have done anything like that on my own.”
 
“Jane and I are roommates now”, Molly noted. “We're both trying to save some money.”

“Well, I just drove up from Westwood”, said Molly's father. “Can I use your bathroom? I have to pee.”

He saw a odd look momentarily cross Molly's face, “Yeah, you know where it is, Back in the bedroom.”

Traveling through the bedroom to the bath, Molly's dad noted that the grimy, lavender futon was not lost, merely moved to the bedroom. Against one wall was a large pile of s**t, clothing, books, a compound bow and a couple of large model airplanes. Obviously Molly. But against the other wall was a dresser, a neat clothing rack and a small make-up table. But there was no other bed in the room. 

“So does Jane sleep on the couch?” Molly's father wondered as he entered the uncharacteristically clean bathroom.

They went to dinner at the Paradise Cafe, a wonderful open air restaurant just off State Street. Jane tagged along without being asked. 

They were seated on the patio and they enjoyed the sunshine for a few minutes. Banana trees filled the planters around the patio. There was a colorful fresco of a western scene on the wall directly above them. 

“So what have you been up to?” Asked Molly's father. 

“Like I said, mostly we're trying to save up some money”, Molly replied. “We're sick of what we're doing and we want to get a nice little coffee shop up above San Fran. I talked to you about that a while back, but we're serious now.”

“We?”

“Jane and I”.

“You and Jane are partners now. Huh?”

“Yeah”, said Jane. 

“We are”, said Molly, looking a bit disturbed. 

The night went well and Molly's father retired to his hotel and promised to return again in the morning for breakfast.  

“Does your dad like me?” Asked Jane that night under the blankets. 

“Of course he does”, Molly replied. 

“Does he know about us?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven't told him yet. OK? I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

It was clear this bothered Jane, but Molly didn't want to get into it, so she feigned sleep. 

Jane was still silent and thoughtful as she showered and dressed for work the next morning. Molly's father showed up about an hour after she left. 

“So, where for breakfast?” Her father asked. “That place up on De la Vina where we used to go or the beach?”

“De la Vina closed but the beach is still there. And they still have those biscuits we liked.”

“Where's your woman? Doesn't she want to come?” Her father asked. 

“My what?” Molly's jaw dropped. “What are you saying?”

“Here, sit down”, said her father as he sat on the elegant white leather couch. “You two are pretty close. I saw that when you came skiing last winter.”

Molly sat and her eyes welled up.  

“You and Jane are a little more than roommates. Right?”

“You're right, We're close. And we have our little secrets.” Molly replied. She was crying. 

“Those aren't little secrets”, her father replied. “They're huge ones.”

Molly sobbed. 

“It looks like you  basically got married. You took a life partner, I assume that's what Jane is, and you didn't tell me.”

Molly continued to sob. Finally she said, “I'm sorry, I was so afraid”. 

The two were silent for a long time, and then Molly's father said, “My friend Tom Mulvaney, you know him, his daughter married a creep. She had three kids and then he left her. She's working at a convenience store now. Trying to support those kids. I was always afraid you'd end up like that. You were always kind of a free spirit and I was always afraid that you'd get in trouble. But it looks like you've teamed up up with a really nice and supportive person. You have some nice plans for your lives.”

Molly could only nod.

Her father said: “Why don't we go out tonight and celebrate this? Welcome Jane into the family.” 

The next day Molly called her mother. 

“Dad's here and we've been talking. And I know you don't like him, but I need to let you know what is going on.”

“What?” Her mother asked. Molly could hear that she had been drinking. 

“Well, I sort of joined up with someone”, Molly said. “I'm part of a couple now.”

“What's his name”, her mother asked suspiciously. 

“It's not a him, it's a her”, Molly replied. 

The line was silent for a long time and then her mother began screaming. Molly never tried to interrupt. She listened for about two minutes and then it just became too horrible and she hung up. 

She cried for a long time. As far as she could tell, her mother was now dead. And, as time went on, her mother ensured this. All attempts at reconciliation were met with insulting questions about Jane and the relationship. Years later Jane would notice that sometimes, when the conversation died, Molly would look off into the distance and there would be tears in her eyes.