“Do me a favor, Frank,” she said. She wrote her name and cell phone number on the pink cardboard of the doughnut box and handed it to him. “When he comes back, give him these for me. Tell him to call me, day or night. There’s a lot more than doughnuts waiting for him if he does.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Gus had been to the Santa Barbara Yacht Club only once in his life, on a sales call to a plastic surgeon who was concerned the Feds were spying on his office and didn’t want to take a chance on asking for a kickback where they might be listening. He hadn’t made a sale that day, since the only bribes he was authorized to offer came in the form of T-shirts and tote bags with pharmaceutical logos on them and the doctor was hoping for someone who would at least pick up his moorage fees at the club. But that unpleasantness aside, he’d had a wonderful time sitting out in the sun, watching the waves lap against the dock as the rich and beautiful sailed their multimillion-dollar boats out for the day.
When he saw on the invitation that Steve Ecclesine’s memorial service was going to be held at the San Francisco Bay Yacht Club, he’d felt guilty for looking forward to it so much. He was remembering the Santa Barbara club and anticipating another lovely afternoon, sitting out on the water, knowing that he could safely zone out because nothing important was going to transpire. Which was the wrong way to approach what was, for all intents and purposes, a funeral. He should spend the ceremony contemplating the tragedy of a life cut short. Even if it was true that he hadn’t particularly cared for Ecclesine, he should use the occasion to meditate on the nature and purpose of human existence. That was what you did at these things.
But as he walked down Market toward the waterfront, he couldn’t focus on the meaning of life or any other deep issues. He felt the warm sun and the cool bay breeze against his skin, and no matter how many times he reminded himself this was a solemn occasion, he couldn’t stop feeling like school had just let out early on the first day of summer.
Gus was feeling so good that he barely noticed where he was going until he had crossed the wide Embarcadero and found himself heading away from the new baseball stadium. The GPS on his phone told him he wanted to keep going past AT amp;T Park and continue for half a mile. But as he scanned the waterfront walk ahead of him all he saw were industrial piers and warehouses. The Santa Barbara Yacht Club had a rolling lawn in front of it; if the Bay Club had ever had any such thing it had already rolled into the water. More perplexing, given that his phone was telling him that he was within five hundred yards of the correct address, was the complete absence of anything that could be described as a yacht. There were a couple of vessels bobbing on the gray water, but even someone with as little nautical knowledge as Gus would have had a hard time describing these decaying houseboats as yachts.
By the time the GPS had beeped to announce his arrival at his destination, Gus was ready to toss the phone into the bay. Clearly it had sent him to the wrong place. He was standing outside a small, shabby, whitewashed wood building. It looked like the kind of bar that did most of its business selling vodka to people who couldn’t afford to be seen drinking during office hours.
He was about to turn back in disgust when a burst of laughter from inside made him look up, and now he noticed the small sign over the door: SAN FRANCISCO BAY YACHT CLUB.
Of course, Gus realized too late, this was San Francisco. There probably were real yacht clubs for the superrich, but for every one of them there would be a dozen of these ironically named establishments. Yacht clubs for the rest of us, they’d call them.
Once again, Gus considered turning back to the office. His vision of a day spent playing hooky in the sun had vanished, and now he was facing the reality of spending who knew how many hours sitting in this dump, listening to people who’d never liked Ecclesine when he was alive talking about how much they were going to miss him.
But Gus knew that wasn’t an option. He was an executive at Benson Pharmaceuticals. He was part of the company’s public face. And if that meant putting on a mask every now and again to pretend he was something he wasn’t-in this case, a grieving colleague-then that was part of being an adult. The days of skipping out on obligations simply because he felt like it were over.
He pushed open the door. The space inside was divided into two rooms, but the divider had been pushed aside to make one large space. A long bar ran across the back wall; just beside it was a table heaped with salads and cold meats and breads. In between the bar and Gus was a solid mass of people packed in like the New Year’s Eve crowd in Times Square.
Great, Gus thought, I’m the last one here. And it did seem as if everybody else who worked in the San Francisco office of Benson Pharmaceuticals was already there. Gus spotted Ed Vollman standing by the bar, finishing up a martini as the bartender slipped him the next one in the sequence. Lena Hollis was leaning into a younger man, clearly her intended target for the evening. But he seemed to be interested only in a spot over her shoulder, and when Gus followed his gaze he understood why. Chanterelle had apparently decided that her usual minidress wasn’t formal enough for such an occasion and had managed to find one that was even shorter. She was leaning into her father, who was whispering something in her ear. Gus was wondering if he was suggesting she might want to put on a slightly longer dress. Probably not, since she smiled and nodded when he finished.
Gus scanned the crowd quickly, checking out the faces familiar and new. There was one face he was eager not to see, and his heart lightened greatly once he realized that Shawn wasn’t there. It wasn’t that Shawn couldn’t be trusted to behave at funerals-although his picture was posted in the guard shacks at several of Santa Barbara’s better cemeteries-so much as what his absence here would mean. Maybe Shawn had actually listened to him and decided to go back home, to go back to his own life and let Gus have his new one.
He’d miss Shawn. He already did. But seeing him at work was too hard. Whenever he was with his old friend, all he wanted was to fall back into old patterns, old rhythms. He wanted to run and play and joke and bicker, and these were not behaviors that were appreciated in the adult world he’d moved into. As soon as he had some vacation time saved up, or maybe even at the next three-day weekend, he’d head back south and he and Shawn could spend all the time they wanted just hanging out. But for now balancing his old self and his new made him dizzy, and he knew everything would be immeasurably easier if he didn’t have to run into Shawn whenever he popped into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
Gus took a step into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. It hit its frame with a bang, and every head swiveled to look at him. He gave them a little wave and moved away from the door.
The entire crowd turned to follow him.
This was weird. If this had been Gus’ memorial service, it would have made perfect sense for the attendees to treat his appearance as worthy of note. But Gus was just one of hundreds of employees in the office. True, he was an executive, and one on the fast track at that, but all these people saw him at work every day and never found him quite so fascinating as this. He glanced over his shoulder to see if someone more interesting had slipped in behind him, but unless everyone in the company was desperate to buy the used sofa, bed, and dining table that were advertised on a flyer above the light switch, there was nothing that could garner such rapt attention.
Gus looked back at the crowd. They were still staring at him. He glanced at Chanterelle and her gaze was exactly what it was when she entered his late-afternoon daydreams, asking if there was any way he might be willing to come to her apartment that evening. That would have been gratifying, if he wasn’t getting exactly the same look from everyone else in the company. It looked a lot less appealing on the unshaven face of Fat Walter from accounting.