On Friday at 5:02 pm, I was putting my laptop away when it fully hit me that it was the weekend. It was difficult to believe how fast the time had gone by, but as of a few minutes ago, Arthur had completed his first week at Golden Gateway Publishing. To be honest, I had expected him to give up on his dream of reading the submissions all the way through, but there he was, stacking together a pile of manuscripts to bring home.
"So, what time do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?" I asked as I zipped up my laptop case.
Arthur blinked at me. "Pick me up?"
I pulled on my jacket with a grin. "Yeah. You didn't think we were going to walk to the wharf, did you?"
"O-oh, right," said Arthur, turning a little pink. "How long does it take to get there?"
He had already given me his address when I had insisted on making sure he was using the right Bart stops, and I considered his question. I shrugged. "Not long by car. I was thinking maybe I'd pick you up at 10, we could walk around a bit before the crowds get there, and then have lunch?"
Arthur smiled. "That sounds lovely."
You would think I would have figured out right away that it would be perfectly reasonable (and even polite) for me to show Arthur around town, but it had taken until Tuesday over coffee for the thought to hit me. Arthur was actually here, and that meant that I could actually get to know him better outside of work, not just over the occasional coffee and lunch. Plus, I should probably get him a housewarming present.
I nearly slammed on the breaks just after pulling out of my parking space. I hadn't gotten him a housewarming present.
What did people normally get as housewarming gifts? When I had gotten my first apartment, my mom had sent me flowers, and I had a vague memory of her giving one of our new neighbors flowers at some point, too. (My brother Matt had sent me a clock with a note reminding me to not be late so often, but that was besides the point.) I pulled into the nearest Safeway and wandered into the floral department.
Getting him a bouquet felt a little too romantic, and it wasn't really a housewarming gift if it died right away, I reasoned. I passed over the flowers that sent up a cloud of scent in case he was allergic, and I decided against the roses for the same reason I had decided against a bouquet. Finally, hidden behind a hydrangea in full flower, I saw a potted pink tulip that was just coming into bloom. Arthur seemed like someone who would like tulips. A tacky ribbon was tied around the pot, but otherwise it seemed innocuous enough. I paid for it and headed home.
On Saturday morning, I slept in only a little later than usual before I was awoken by my alarm blaring in my ear. I was running on time and the traffic wouldn't be too bad, so I drove out of Berkeley at a leisurely pace. It wasn't long before I was pulling up to the curb near Arthur's apartment complex and cutting the engine. The tulips on the passenger seat bobbed forward with the sudden stop. I picked up the pot and stepped onto the sidewalk.
The building Arthur lived in wasn't very big, but the apartment numbers weren't very clearly marked. Was Arthur's on the first or the second floor? Had he said?
As I stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the building while a tulip tickled my chin, an elderly woman in a bathrobe and slippers opened the door of the house next door. She squinted at me. "Are you picking up someone for a date, young man?" she called as she shuffled towards the newspaper resting on her front step.
"Not quite, but something like that," I replied with a chuckle. I appreciated that she had said "someone" instead of "a girl." It got a little tiring to always make that correction. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised; this was San Francisco, after all.
"Well, don't lose your courage. You're a very handsome young man," she said, and then shuffled back inside her house.
I smiled a little. I supposed it did look like I was close to chickening out. I approached the apartment building and finally spotted a number on the apartment in front of me: it was Arthur's. I walked up the stairs and knocked. A moment later, Arthur opened the door. "Hello," he said.
It took me a moment to realize why he looked different than usual. His hair was still tousled, and he was clean-shaven as always, but he wasn't wearing a suit. Instead, he was dressed smartly in a cardigan and khakis. The cardigan looked like something my grandfather would wear, but against all logic, the outfit made him look younger.
"Alfred?" he said, and I realized I was staring. When tried to meet his eyes, though, I saw that he was gazing in confusion at the tulips.
I grinned, wondering what the old lady next door would think if she saw me now. "Hey. I brought you a housewarming gift. I was going to get you something earlier, but I thought it would be better if you didn't have to take them home with you on the Bart."
The slight frown immediately disappeared from his face. "Oh, that's very kind of you." When I held out the potted plant, he took it readily. He peered at the dirt through the leaves, and then poked it with a finger to see if it needed watering. "I had to leave all my plants behind when I came here. My flat does feel a little empty without them, I admit."
"Do you like tulips?"
"I can't say there are any flowers I don't care for," he said. He shifted the pot to one arm and held the door open with his free hand. "Come in. Let me just water this and then we can get going."
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Arthur was already on his way to the kitchen, examining the tulip as he went. "Bougainvilleas, maybe," he called over his shoulder.
"What?" I said, busy eyeing his apartment.
"I said, if I had to dislike a flower, it would probably be bougainvilleas. They're such a pain to spell."
You could tell he hadn't lived in his apartment for very long. It was small, and to be honest, it was a little boring. The beige living room walls were decorated by nothing except a clock. A red love seat was pushed against one wall, and a blanket had been draped over the top.
What he had said finally caught up with me. "Spell?"
"Yes. You would think that if you wrote for a home and garden magazine, you would know how to spell 'bougainvillea,' but I had to correct that word more times than I can count."
Through an open doorway, I caught a glimpse of what must have been his bedroom, and through another doorway, the bathroom. I stepped towards his bedroom, intending to just peak through the door, but then Arthur poked his head out of the kitchen and asked, "Would you like some tea?"
I guilty turned to face him. "No thanks. I had some coffee before I left."
"Ah." Arthur disappeared back inside the kitchen. When he didn't immediately reappear, I followed him. The kitchen felt a little more lived in than the rest of the place, though it was small and a bit cramped. The tulips were on the counter. There was kettle – an actual kettle, not an electric one – on the stove. The burner was off, though, and Arthur was washing a teacup which must have been left over from his breakfast. I leaned against the doorway and watched. He finished up and turned to me, drying his hands. His expression was soft and warm. "Thank you again for the flowers. They're a welcome spot of color."
"Well, that isn't all of your gift," I said. Arthur raised his eyebrows. I pulled a thin book out of my jacket's inner pocket. It was a new copy, one I had bought just a few days earlier, but I still felt a little hesitant about handing it over. Arthur put aside the dishtowel and took it from me.
"The Great Gatsby?" he read off the cover.
I put my hands in my pockets and shrugged. "This isn't so much of a housewarming gift as a welcome-to-Golden-Gateway present. It's my favorite book. I read it in high school and I've loved it since. You've probably already read it, I guess."
"Yes, I have, actually," Arthur said as he turned the book over in his hands. "In secondary school as well, I think."
I smiled. "Then you know it's not maybe as deep as it's cracked up to be. It's still a fun read, though. My copy is falling apart because I've reread it so many times. The last sentence is my favorite in all of literature."
"'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,'" Arthur quoted. "I'll have to reread it. That's about all I remember," he admitted. He smiled at me and then disappeared into his bedroom with the book. When he came back out, he was empty handed. "Shall we get going?"
"Yup," I said, and led him to the car.
The fog still clung to the surface of the sea as we drove by the water's edge. Arthur seemed content to simply watch the scenery, so I navigated through San Francisco mostly in silence. I found a parking spot a few blocks from the ocean and we got out.
I considered leaving my jacket in the car, but it was still pretty cool outside, so I kept it on as we walked towards Pier 39. Arthur put his hands in his pockets but otherwise seemed unbothered by the morning chill. He kept glancing at me, so I kept looking at him out of the corner of my eye, and pretty soon I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going. When I nearly tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, I gave up. "What is it?"
"Hmm?" Arthur looked up at me in confusion.
"You keep looking at me."
Arthur smiled slightly and shrugged. "You wear that jacket a lot, don't you?"
"This?" I tugged on the collar of my bomber jacket and stood a little straighter. "Yup. It's an antique."
"Did you inherit it?"
I laughed. "Sort of. My dad bought it at an antique store and let me have it."
Arthur shook his head, but he was smiling. "A Beatles record and an aviation jacket? This is just unfair."
"What can I say? He likes old stuff, and so do I."
"Then why don't you read the classics?" Arthur gave me a sly look out of the corner of his eye.
I winced. "You got me. I guess I should read some of those, huh?"
"You really should," Arthur agreed. A smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth.
I used to go to Fisherman's Wharf a lot when I was a kid, mostly to look at the old ships and buy cotton candy. Even though I lived much closer to it than I used to, I hadn't been there for . . . had it really been a couple of years? It was just as I remembered it, though, right down to the brightly colored tram that rattled past us as we crossed the street from a freshly painted Starbucks to a series of souvenir stands that had seen better days.
"Is the ocean nearby?" Arthur asked after we had walked a few blocks. A breeze was coming up, and it smelled strongly of the sea.
"Yeah, the bay is just over there," I said, pointing to our left. "The view isn't very good until we get to the piers, though, so I thought we could make our way over there."
"Sounds fine to me," Arthur said. We crossed another street and began to walk along a row of shops. The sun was beginning to burn through the fog, and the sidewalk was getting more crowded as we moved closer to the main part of the wharf. We walked past a man reading on a Kindle and Arthur made a distinct scoffing noise.
I waggled my eyebrows at Arthur once we were out of earshot. "Not a fan of technology, I take it?"
"Not a fan of an idiot device that should only be used as a paperweight," Arthur said. He immediately shot a chagrined glance in my direction. "I mean—no, I—well, I guess I haven't owned one, but they've never particularly appealed to me."
"It's okay, I get it," I reassured him, holding back a smile at how embarrassed he was. "I'm not really a fan of them either. I get why they're useful, and they're definitely more convenient, but coming from the publishing industry—"
"They're destroying the business," he finished.
"I mean, I love the smell of a good book as much as the next person, but—"
"That's beside the point," he agreed. "I can't stand how people expect they can just buy any old book for 99 pence. It's insulting to the author and the publisher. If they can afford to pay 99 pounds for the device, they can bloody well afford to buy a few books at full price!" Arthur quickly rolled up the sleeves of his cardigan and huffed. "I really do understand why they're popular. I just wish they weren't."
"My thoughts exactly," I assured him. "I got one for Christmas—" Arthur gave me a horrified look and I couldn't help a chuckle. "I got one, but I never used it. I exchanged it."
"For several actual books, I hope."
"Erm. An iPad."
Arthur threw up his hands. "How could I have expected otherwise," he said, and I laughed.
We wandered along the sidewalk, looking into shop windows as we went and occasionally ducking into one. It wasn't long before the fog had burned away almost entirely. I had taken off my jacket some time ago and draped it over my arm, so I was pretty comfortable in my t-shirt, but it was getting a little warm. As we headed towards the piers, Arthur pushed up the sleeves of his cardigan where they had slipped down. "It must be at least 30 degrees out here," he said, squinting against the glare of the sidewalk.
"It's definitely at least 30 degrees," I said with a chuckle. Arthur shot me a look. I quickly stopped smiling. "Uhhh, it's probably in the high 80s," I said, having no idea how to convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
"That's what I just said," Arthur informed me primly.
"Right," I muttered.
Arthur sighed and shaded his eyes with his hand. "I just hope I don't get sunburnt."
"Didn't you put on sunscreen?"
Arthur stopped walking and I nearly ran into him. He looked at me in horror. Then his eyes fell to my nose. "Did you?"
I touched my nose and winced. Well, that was incredibly embarrassing. "Is it red?" I asked, slapping a hand over the back of my neck as if that would keep it from getting burnt, too. We moved under the shade of a nearby shop. Arthur stepped closer to examine my nose.
"It's . . . pink," Arthur assured me, but he didn't sound very convincing. "Your tan doesn't protect you?"
I groaned. "I get burnt and then I tan."
"Ouch," Arthur said sympathetically. "I just get more freckles." He scrunched up his nose and rubbed it as if trying to clean them off. "Silly things."
"But they're cute," I said absently. I looked around and found that we were standing in front of a clothing store – not much help there. "I wonder where we could get sunscreen." When I looked back at Arthur, he had turned bright red, and it wasn't from the sun. I barely repressed a smirk.
With the help of my cellphone and Google maps, we backtracked to a Walgreens. It turned out that Arthur's nose had gotten burnt too, and the backs of both of our necks. I bought a tube of sunscreen which we applied right in the store, and after some contemplation, Arthur bought himself a baseball cap. "I feel ridiculous," he grumbled as we left. Go Giants! the front of the hat proclaimed in orange and black letters. There was a little white smudge on his cheek from the sunscreen.
He couldn't have looked more like a tourist, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I grinned. "You fit right in."
After that, we picked up our pace and soon made it to the piers. I had one last stop I wanted to make before we went to look for lunch. As we stepped onto Pier 45, we found ourselves in front of a retired submarine, the USS Pampanito. After we had both read the information plaque, I led Arthur to my personal favorite. "The SS Jeremiah O'Brien," I said, pointing proudly to the large grey ship in front of us. "It was one of the ships that stormed Normandy on D-Day."
"Oh, really?" Arthur grew very still as he looked at it.
I nodded. "I used to come here all the time when I was a kid. It's one of the few ships that made it out in one piece, and even before I knew what D-Day was, I would make up stories about who was on its crew and what its captain was like. It makes me kind of wonder who wore my aviation jacket, you know? And who was on that ship that day." While I had been talking, Arthur hadn't moved. Had I said something wrong? I shifted my weight to one foot. "They've turned it into a museum. I hadn't been planning on going in, but if you'd like to—"
"No, thank you," Arthur said immediately. "It just . . . wouldn't feel quite right."
I nodded and stood with him while we gazed at the ship, which looked so out of place in the calm bay.
The sun rose higher in the sky, and we headed towards Pier 39. The pier itself was more crowded than the streets had been, especially now that the sun had come out. Someone walked past with a soft pretzel slathered in mustard and my stomach growled. I glanced at Arthur, embarrassed, but he had fallen a few steps behind me and was looking around curiously.
"What's that noise?" he asked.
For a moment, I thought he really had heard my stomach, but after listening for a moment, I noticed what he meant. I smiled as I recognized the sound that was drifting over the pier. "You mean the barking? Come with me."
We walked along the length of the pier and threaded between two buildings to get near the water. A pile of rocks and the remains of a part of the pier jutted out into the water in front of us. The rocks were covered with sea lions, and the animals were making a lot of noise. Occasionally, one of them would waddle across the rocks and slide into the ocean.
"They're sea lions," I said, leaning on the railing. "The big ones with the funny noses are the males."
Arthur laughed in relief. "And here I thought they were just very ugly seals. They make a bit of noise, don't they?" But he was smiling as he leaned over the railing. "Are they always here?"
"Pretty much. I heard that they didn't used to always be here, but they showed up and stuck around after the Loma Prieta earthquake back in '89." We watched the sea lions for awhile. One of them rolled over on its side and stuck out a flipper into the air like it was waving at us. We looked at each other and exchanged smiles. Of course, my stomach chose that moment to growl loudly.
Arthur laughed. "Let's find some lunch," he said, the corners of his eyes still crinkled with the force of his smile. I grinned at him and we walked back to the crowded part of the pier.
"Do you like seafood?" I asked.
"That sounds excellent."
"I can promise it will be." I winked at him. "There's no way you have tasted seafood this good."
"I have lived my entire life on an island," he pointed out dryly. "I think there definitely is 'a way.'"
We reached the pretzel stand, but I bypassed it for what was behind it: Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I pointed to it proudly. "The best shrimp in the Bay."
Arthur furrowed his brow. "What a strange name for a restaurant."
"Haven't you seen Forrest Gump?" Arthur shook his head, now looking more confused. "That's something you should see," I said, and pushed open the door.
It was packed. We got a great table right next to the window, but we had to fight our way through the crowd to get there. When we sat down, we each picked up our menus and flipped through them. I was starving, and everything looked good to me. I was leaning towards a burger, though. And some onion strings. And garlic bread. And shrimp.
When I looked up, Arthur looked a little overwhelmed. "Do you see anything you like?" I prompted him.
"Do you have any recommendations?"
"Do you like shrimp?"
Arthur gave me a look. "Didn't you ask me that before we came inside? But yes."
I winked at him. "Then I'll handle the ordering."
While I listed off dishes to the waiter, Arthur gazed out the window at the Bay. Once the waiter had left, I pointed at an island a ways to our left. "That's Alcatraz."
Arthur's gaze fastened on it immediately. "Really? I didn't know it was so close by."
"Yup. You can take a ferry out to it."
"Maybe we could do that sometime." Arthur hurriedly added, "I mean, if you're interested."
"That would be fun. I haven't been there since I was a kid."
Arthur nodded absently. "I have to say, I'm thankful this job is so close to the ocean. Even London was a little too far from the sea for my taste."
"I'm very glad you took it," I replied. "I'm not sure I could live away from the ocean. I'd miss it too much. And the food, of course," I said as the waiter arrived with our dishes.
Arthur chuckled. "Of course."
Arthur refused to admit that it was the best shrimp he had ever tasted, but he did give it a, "Not bad." Coming from Arthur, that counted as a win in my book. By the time the shrimp was gone and the onion rings were just flakes of fried dough, we had lingered there for almost an hour and the check had been sitting on the table for a good fifteen minutes. It was Arthur who finally looked at his watch and said something about heading back, but he looked as reluctant to leave as I did.
While we waited for the waiter to bring back our credit cards, Arthur put his chin in his hand and looked out the window. The sky was free of clouds and the sun sparked on the waves. "That really is a nice view," he said.
I dropped Arthur off at his place. He got out of the car, baseball cap in one hand, and then leaned back inside. "Thank you. I had a really good time."
"Me too! We should do this again sometime."
"I suppose it would be nice to have someone show me around Alcatraz," Arthur said with a smile. "It would be pretty embarrassing if I somehow got myself stranded there."
I grinned. "Sounds like a plan. I'll see you on Monday."
He nodded and shut the car door. I watched him walk up the steps to the apartment, fiddle with the key, and let himself in. I thought of the old lady who had mistaken my housewarming tulips for something else. I smiled as I pulled away from the curb and started home. If that was what at date with Arthur could be like, maybe that was something I should consider after all.
