It was late July in Marin County and the weather had been perfect for months. I’d spent the afternoon in Fairfax drinking beer at the Gestalt Haus with my hound Odie. When I returned home to San Anselmo loud music echoed through the neighborhood. I poured a beer into a thermos cup, and we set off to investigate its origin.

I lived up on Redwood a half mile from downtown in an efficiency below a family’s home. The house sat below the road and once you climbed the stairs there was a clearing with views of the shaved hills that rolled north towards wine country. 

There is a softness to the light in the late afternoon in the Ross Valley which is where San Anselmo is. The way the light falls into the valley lends the trees and the hills and the surrounding mountains the sheen of an oil painting. Even when sober, it brings on a sense of being day drunk. 

We winded up a neighboring hill until we discovered the source of the music. The gate to the house was open, so we went down a walkway that opened into a courtyard. 

It was a wedding reception. 

I sat at a deserted table near the entrance, away from the proceedings and drank my beer and watched the people dancing and enjoying themselves. 

I sat for a while, quietly, while Odie rolled around in the grass. 

In my pleasant drunkenness, I barely noticed the father of the bride and another member of the wedding party standing beside me. 

Hey, this is a wedding, the father said. 

Buddy, what the fuck are you doing here? the other guy said.  

Their rudeness startled me. I stood to exit. They forcibly helped, pushing and dragging me toward the exit. I managed to hold on to Odie’s leash, who did nothing in the way of protecting me. In the process, my hat fell to the ground. I reached for it, but the father grabbed it first and tossed it over the fence into some woods. 

That’s my favorite hat, I said. 

I don’t give a shit about your hat.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

Look, buddy, you’re about to get fucked up, the other guy said.

Fuck you, I said.

Fuck you.

Fuck you, I said again to the father of the bride. I considered attacking him but didn’t. He was at least 60 and a foot shorter than me.

They gave me one last push toward the exit.

Fuck you.

Get out of here, scumbag.

That last push did it. I turned and slung my thermos cup at the father. He Matrix dodged it. A couple other grown men had shown up because of the ruckus. 

Sensing real danger for the first time, we sprinted down the hill towards town. 

Eventually we stopped to catch our breath. A quintessential San Anselmo couple rounded the corner with a baby in a stroller and looked at me like I needed to say something. 

They’re crazy up there, I said

 

* * *

 

Back home I sat in the recliner watching the Giants play the Dodgers. As night enveloped and beer cans emptied, my thoughts returned to the father of the bride. Something about him ate at me. I had no business being at the reception. Of course I knew that. But his attitude was so… smug, so…self-assured, that I couldn’t let it go. 

On Instagram I searched San Anselmo to see who had location-tagged themselves recently. The third picture that came up was from the wedding photographer. Weddings by Daniel. He’d posted nine photos and a link to his website which offered access to his Facebook. I flipped through the wedding photos on Instagram. The couple were there, both tagged. Braden and Alison. The bridal parties. The venue. The food. The cake. The first dance. And then the father of the bride, holding a microphone and giving a toast.  

The couple’s social media accounts were public, and they were both active across platforms. I spent the next hour combing through their various accounts. 

Eventually I nodded off in the chair. When I woke up there was news of fires on the tv. Odie slept at my feet. All the windows were open and there was a pleasant chill. I went to bed and Odie followed and I climbed under the covers for warmth with a childlike glee. 

 

* * *

 

Before finding myself in the Bay Area, I lived in New Orleans working for The Times-Picayune. The same Times-Picayune that in 2006 won several Pulitzers for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. A decade and a half later the skeletal staff consisted of a dozen legacy reporters, two Bonafide star critics and a nest of freelance and part-time rats fighting for the scraps. I only had the job because I was willing to work for peanuts for the privilege of calling myself a journalist. I’d once seen a future as an investigative journalist battling corporate greed, corrupt politicians and criminal landlords, but that ship had long since sailed. 

One evening, I was sent out to cover the opening of the new location of the iconic French Quarter Italian restaurant Irene’s. The restaurant had been forced to leave its original location on St. Phillip after some dispute over the lease and was moving seven blocks over to Bienville. The move had been met with concern in the community as many believed the restaurant would lose its charm and character. The assignment had been dropped on my desk because it was New Orleans Restaurant week and the star food critic, Bret Gaines, could not attend. 

Don’t get carried away writing about the food, Gaines said, as I stood in his office holding a sheet of notes he’d given me. I’m the food critic around here.  

Of course, I said. 

Basic reporting, Gaines said, How is the crowd, how does the ambience compare to the old Irene’s, does the food seem the same, a couple interviews with guests, and get the hell out of there. 

Aye, aye, Captain, I said, shutting his office door behind me. 

Gaines was an excellent food critic, a legend in New Orleans and often syndicated in The New York Times, and though he really wasn’t that bad, he carried himself with an arrogance for it, which made him easy to detest.  

At Irene’s I ate at the bar and drank martinis. I had the Mussels Marinara, Prosciutto wrapped Asparagus, the Meuniere Amandine and finally the Lasagna Bolognese. While some of the original’s ambience may have been lost, the restaurant still possessed that old, dark, candlelit, French Quarter magic and it was a fine, traditional Italian meal. 

As I was finishing up, a well-dressed man, probably mid 50s, sat at the bar with a woman much younger wearing a cocktail gown she seemed unlikely to have purchased. They ordered cocktails and when she left for the restroom, the man removed a vial from his pocket, unscrewed the top, and tapped a powder into her drink. I glanced at the bartender, who was also watching, and his eyes went from the hundred the man placed on the bar to mine. 

I turned as someone tapped me on the shoulder.       

Holy shit, how are you, man? Dave Larkin said. 

Good, I said. Look at you here. 

Dave and I were friends in high school but barely stayed in touch on socials over the years. He was with a group waiting. 

I have to go for now, Dave said. But…meet up later? 

Chart Room, I said. 10:30.  

I’ll be there, Dave said, shaking my hand as he left. 

After interviewing several guests, I smoked on the corner outside Irene’s and watched the older man and the younger woman from the bar exit the restaurant. An Uber pulled up and the man helped the woman wobbly leg inside. 

When I got to the Chart Room Dave was at a corner table. I ordered from the bar and sat down with my Sazerac and a beer chaser. 

Dave Larkin, what brings you to New Orleans? 

I’m here for the tech conference, Dave said. I run a startup out in Palo Alto these days. 

Heard you moved out there. Facebook? 

Then Google. Ten years in, I had a chunk of change saved and decided to take the leap. 

So, what’s the company? 

It’s called Proximity Drone. It’s a drone that connects to your phone and hovers around you wherever you go. You can take photos from different angles, video, or give a 360-degree first person perspective. 

Fuck me. So, you’re going to have people walking around with drones floating beside them? That’s some futuristic shit. 

We’ll see. Long way to go. Just the legality alone. 

Are they selling? 

We’re only in the test phase. 

I took a sip of Sazerac and watched the people on Chartres. A pedicab pulled up and let off a bachelorette party. 

Somebody is going to roofie them, I said. 

Dave laughed uncertainly. 

What about you? He said. Still writing? 

I’m at the Times-Picayune. 

No shit? What beat? 

I write the obituaries. 

Stop joking. 

No, I’m kind of a floater, I said. What nobody else wants, I get. 

Dave went to the bar and got us a couple shots then a couple more. New Orleans never so much woke up as the buzz set in and there you were.  

I could use a good writer on my team, Dave said. How attached are you to New Orleans? 

Hadn’t really thought about it. 

You should, Dave said, standing and holding out his hand.

How do I get in touch with you? I said. 

He pointed at my phone, which blinked with his contact he’d airdropped. Fucking tech people. And then he slinked off into the shadows of the Quarter, staggering a little but appearing totally normal for that hour in that place. 

 

* * *

 

I left New Orleans on a Tuesday and drove through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and then Southern California up to San Francisco. For fourteen months, I worked, doing very little really, coming up with advertising copy and slogan ideas for Dave’s proximity drone startup. An endeavor that I believed was brilliant in concept but had no chance of succeeding. Then one day, Dave sat us all down and said no new round of funding would be coming, the investors were moving on and the company was dead in the water. The legal hurdles to equipping thousands, if not millions, of people with small drones that flew around them wherever they went was too significant a hurdle to overcome. 

In the fourteen months I worked for Dave I brought in roughly $160,000 dollars. $117,500 of which remained in my bank account, mostly because I’d lived rent free in Dave’s pool house and hit a string of good luck betting on NBA games. 

Dave returned to his job at Google and spent his free time sailing on the bay. I liked Dave plenty, though it became clear we weren’t that good of friends. Not good enough friends for me to live in his pool house if I was no longer working for him. 

Dave claimed he could get me an entry-level position at Google, but I questioned this. Not to mention, I found arriving each day to a tech office a colossal bore. Instead, I boxed up my belongings, put Odie in the back of the car and shook Dave’s hand. He said don’t be a stranger, and just like that, my Palo Alto days were through. 

I responded to a Craigslist ad and became a bartender on The Golden Gate Ferry serving basic mixed drinks, beer, canned cocktails, soda and snacks to passengers going between Sausalito and San Francisco. I did this four days a week. It was decent money. Three, four hundred a day depending on tips. It was through this employment that I discovered Marin County and eventually San Anselmo because while our boat shepherded passengers from Sausalito to San Francisco and back, the ferry boats left from and returned to Larkspur each day, which was farther north, in Central Marin only a few miles from San Anselmo.

 

* * *

 

It was at the Gestalt House, in Fairfax, a bar for bicyclists, where I befriended Braden, the groom. I’d discovered through a Facebook group called Marin Mountain Bikers that Braden joined the group each Sunday for a lengthy ride with beers to follow. One Sunday, I sat across the street at The Corona Café and waited for their arrival. 

Recognizing Braden from the constant stream of photos he posted to social media, I sat beside him at the bar. I’d purchased a Los Angeles Dodgers hat and worn it because though Braden was born in the Bay Area, he was, inexplicably, a diehard Dodgers fan. I sipped my beer and watched the TV over the bar until Braden eventually noticed me, and my hat and a conversation began. 

Braden was nearly perfect in his Marin-ness. Born and raised, he acted, like so many who grew up in similar places, wholly unaffected and oblivious to his absurd privilege. I found the attitude this obliviousness afforded him so unpleasant, that immediately upon meeting him, I knew there were few awful fates that could befall him that I would not find joy in witnessing. 

We became friends, or something like it, because I could not deny, no matter how much I hated to admit it, some kinship with him. I was raised, not so differently in Charleston, South Carolina. The son of parents preordained to have a child to present about town in so many fancy ways though ill equipped to engage meaningfully in the most basic elements of his rearing. 

I purchased a bike and started going on rides with the group. Some of which had us traversing over 60 miles round trip out to the Point Reyes National Seashore, Tomales Bay, or Bolinas. 

One day, over Pizza Port Swami IPAs, Braden said, I got a secret vasectomy. 

I choked on my beer, Secret? 

Yeah, man, he said. They can’t tell. 

What? I said. 

My old lady, he said. Alison. She wants a baby. 

But… you can’t, I laughed, unsure. 

Exactly, he said. It seems like I keep spewing inside of her, but she never gets pregnant and she’s none the wiser. 

He laughed in a horrible way and downed his beer and asked the bartender for another. The bartender was a good looking but haggard woman likely the same age as us. In some other place she might have been someone else entirely, but she’d chosen to work service industry in Marin County, accepting a life of outsized tips over what one might call loosely a sense of self.