In a few minutes, my wife turns up here, at the cafe area of Borders in Emeryville, Calif., beside the train station on the edge of the bay. We will pack up our books, magazines and whatever else has climbed off nearby shelves and clambered into our arms on the basis of a shiny sheen under fluorescent lights. Then we'll will wind our way back to the Public Market, where two hours previously, we ate Afghan food. From where I'm sitting, through a row of tall windows, I can see the leaves on the palm trees lazily floating, sticking out from lumps at the top of the trees, forty feet in the air above my head. A lamppost about a hundred yards away is tall, slim and golden on one side with sunlight.
Gray clouds gauze over the blue sky to the east, charcoaling in the area above the hills.
She arrives, she's cold, her head hurts. I give her my favorite shirt, a black Eddie Bauer turtleneck, and slide it over her head. She asks for a hot cocoa. The barista's Cockney voice is oddly comfortable. I feel like there isn't another kind of voice that should be coming out of his mouth.