What We Talk About When We Talk About Grief (Part 2)

This is it, all you get, the final piece. Maybe you deserve more; I don't know. But you wouldn't want more, so we'll just choose to finish things off.

I made the trip just as we'd discussed. The bus to Green Apple Books where I finally picked up a volume of Vollman, someone we'd often discussed but never committed to buy. I figure I owed him--and you--a chance. I walked among the stacks of books and brushed my fingers through the dust and across the dust jackets, thinking of how we'd often forget what we already owned and what we needed. And I thought of the literary conversations that carried us through the books and the dust. After Green Apple it was a beer and fries at The Bitter End, a bar that knows it's a bar and where the bartender was tall and plump and honest.

Then, the walk back toward the financial district, a long walk that started out as a short wait at the bus stop before I got restless and opted for the urban hike, something we'd done so many times in San Francisco and Chicago. Five miles later I checked into the hotel, cleaned up, rested, sat on the balcony and tried to come to grips with what seems to avoid being gripped. Later, dinner at Cafe' Zoetrope. Same meal as usual, top-shelf pinot noir, good bread. Then, on to City Lights, another great bookstore where years ago we'd glance Ferlinghetti sitting in the office, his Beat-era aura a little dull to us but nevertheless significant. Upstairs I found a volume of Jim Harrison's poetry, and I sat in the Poet's Chair for a bit as I read. Both of our bookshelves are full of Harrison's stuff, and you barely blinked the time I told you that his book Dalva is, I think, one of the better American novels ever written.

Next, a latte' at Caffe Puccini. I sat at a table on the sidewalk and watched and listened to the tourists. Traditionally, this was the final stop each night, so I stayed true to that tradition and strolled through the streets of North Beach before heading back to the hotel where I bought a glass of wine at the bar and returned to my room's balcony. I realized the evening's beer, wine, and food didn't seem to measure up to my expectations. It's the end of some things, I guess.

Maybe it's the beginning of things, too. Re-reading your stuff, for one, stuff that seldom made sense to me but now is starting to. And I came up with the official title to my novel at some point, and I owe that to you.

But this is the last piece of this nature. In the end, everything has been said.