Sand swept across the Great Highway much the way snow blows across a North Dakota road. The storm that deposited it there during the night was now spent, and the windmills turned their faces once again to the sea, while wind-bent trees pointed their branches to where the storm had gone. The ocean’s surface was now calm, quiet, dark, and exhausted from the night’s struggle. But the air was fresh and renewed. And that was how Edgar felt, too.
Turning onto Fulton Street, he cruised past the palms and began to climb eastward. Traveling to the top of the city, he turned towards Science Hall near the University of San Francisco. He slowed and pulled in line with the other machines. He shut off the ignition, and the engine became still. Edgar wondered what stories these machines told one another while their masters were in class. His old bike had plenty to say.
So far, school was easy, easier than he had imagined. He was used to working hard. Older than most other students, he didn’t have their emotional overhead to interfere with studying—he was all business. His work experience helped him, too. The drafting course was almost trivial—he knew blueprints well. Physics and electronics came naturally—just living a physical life brings a qualitative understanding of many things. All that’s left is to learn to express them mathematically. When the physics course covered adiabatic expansion, he envisioned clouds forming on the upwind side of the Bitterroot and vanishing on the Lee. He knew diffraction patterns from mists near a waterfall, waves breaking through the entrance of a harbor, and oil slicks by a river barge. His vivid memory of a brake failure on a mountain road was now regarded as the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy to inelastic deformation. When his geology professor illustrated cretaceous rock with a PowerPoint slide, he recognized the scene as Guadalupe Peak. (He had worked on a ranch nearby.) He formed a mnemonic trick for remembering other rocks by thinking of where he had seen them—schist along a Wyoming highway, basalt in eastern Washington, dolomite on a riverbank in Michigan…
Organic chemistry was a revelation. He already knew the names and purposes of many of the studied reagents, but now he discovered why they behaved as they did. It made him regret not being more careful when filling the hoppers of cropdusters and draining anhydrous ammonia tanks. He could personally relate the effects of spontaneous combustion in a South Dakota grain elevator.
German was the last class of the day. On the first day of class, he volunteered that he had already learned some German from a shipping clerk in a hat factory in Minneapolis. His boss, Karl Lesser, fled Germany before the war and never learned English well enough to speak coherently. It was easier, Edgar explained, to learn a few words of German than to struggle with Karl’s bad English. But this left him fluent in only numbers, colors, the words for truck, railroad, bill of lading, and colorful Teutonic profanities.
But the best part of German class was Roslynn.
Like him, she was older than most of the other students, so there was an immediate attraction. She was leggy and slender. Her long brown hair hung in a ponytail that flailed when she turned her head. Unlike the younger girls, she almost always wore a skirt to class. She carried her books in a large purse, not a knapsack. She talked with a southern accent Edgar recognized as rural East Texas.
Edgar had spoken to her on a few occasions after class. Now, he intended to ask her for a date. He was waiting only for the opportunity.
It was the custom of the German instructor, Herr Rottmann, to occasionally set up two students in a pretend situation that required conversation, such as purchasing a bus ticket or ordering a meal in a restaurant. Today’s exercise called for one student to report to the American Express office to request the replacement of lost traveler’s checks. The other was the American Express clerk. He asked for volunteers.
Edgar looked across the classroom at Roslynn. She looked back. He started to raise his hand very slowly. She grinned and nodded. Their two hands arose simultaneously.
Herr Rottmann chose Edgar as the tourist and Roslynn as the clerk. “Begin.”
“Guten Tag, mein Herr. Was wünschen Sie?” Roslynn asked.
“Ich habe mein Traveler’s Check gelösht. Kann Sie ersetzen?”
Herr Rottmann interrupted to say that verloren would be a better verb than gelösht. “Continue.”
“Ja, mein Herr,” Roslynn went on. “Geben Sie mir bitte die Numern des Travelers Checks.”
“Die erste Nummer ist eins-zwei-drei-vier-fünf.”
“Und the letzte Nummer?”
“Das ist sechs-sieben-acht-neun.”
Roslynn pretended to type something into a computer terminal. “Daß kostet drei hundert Marks. Hier ist ihre neue Traveler’s Checks,” she said as she reached out an empty hand.
“Vielen Dank…Sie sind sehr schön∗,” he said as he took her hand.
“Danke. Und Ich denke Sie sind etwas hübsh auch∗.”
“Wilst du mit mir Abendessen haben∗?”
There was complete silence in the class. All eyes turned to Roslynn and waited for her reply.
She paused and said “Ja doch[4].”
The class broke into spontaneous and enthusiastic applause.
One student, Jimmy Shanahan, who was not doing well in this class, leaned across the table and asked another student, “What did he ask her?”
The cable car clicked and clanged its leisurely way down Powell Street. Roslynn sat on a bench in the open half while Edgar stood on the running board beside her, holding onto a brass rail. She was wearing a beige skirt suit and a white turtle neck sweater. Her hair, released from its ponytail, flowed around her face and fell below her shoulders. Her high heels were perfectly matched in color to her suit. Edgar struggled to keep from staring at her. She was sexy and elegant, a pleasure to be with.
Evening shadows cooled the air coming in from the bay. The lights of Sausalito twinkled on the opposite side of the bay as if being swallowed by the shadow of the Marin hills. These lights were doubled in the water and mixed with boats cruising among them.
It was only a short walk from the cable car turnaround at the bottom of Hyde Street to Alioto’s restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. Along the way, they chatted about classwork, but they learned more about each other during dinner.
“What did you do before you became a student?” Roslynn asked, her eyes sparkling in reflected candlelight.
“I traveled a lot…odd jobs. I’ve cut wheat in Alberta and fished in the Gulf…factory jobs in the Midwest…things like that. Never stayed in one place for long. My expenses weren’t much, so I managed to save enough money to complete college.”
“After you graduate, are you on the road again?”
“We’ll see. My wanderlust is well satisfied now—I don’t have to wander anymore. It’s about time I started doing something permanent. Perhaps I’ll start a business. How about you? Have you always lived in Texas?”
“How did you know I’m from Texas?”
“When y’all speak, sugah, I jess know rat away,” he mimicked her, exaggerating.
“Oh yes, I’m trying to lose that twang.”
“Please don’t. The way you speak reveals what you are. If you change the way you speak, you’ll change yourself…and I like you just the way you are.”
She didn’t reply. She only looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. After a while, he continued.
“Now… tell me about yourself. What were you doing before? Any family? Ever married? What are your plans?”
“Well…let’s see,” she replied, slowly lowering the coffee cup. “I’ve traveled a lot too. I figure that it’s best to see the world in early life when it’s easy rather than later when it’s hard. I’ve worked in Arkansas as a waitress, and in Seattle as a secretary. I’ve schlepped drinks in New York. But mostly, I’ve been a flight attendant. I’ve traveled all over the country and seen most every city, but I’ve missed all the miles in between. Like you, I saved my money to finish school. My flight bags are worn out now, and I’ve seen enough. So, I plan to pick the best from what I’ve seen and stay with it. Where do I go from here? We’ll see.”
Edgar looked to the sunset across the Golden Gate. Two pelicans were gliding in from the sea. They wheeled, wingtip-to-wingtip, primary feathers outstretched, over the city’s shore. Side by side, they leveled their wings and settled into a straight descending glide, skimming closer to the water’s surface, eventually touching with twin wakes, whitening the surface behind them.
∗ You are very pretty
∗ Thank you. And I think you are rather handsome also.
∗ Will you have dinner with me?