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His persistence pulled me back to the present, to the here and now, to this incandescent orange room and sun-warmed bed, to Madison, to the sweetness in my current life.
    I rolled my eyes at Puck with playful annoyance. He whacked me again, this time slightly harder. Capitulating, “Okay, okay,” I rubbed his chest. He wagged his tail, spun around on his back in hopes then of catching it, and bounced to his still-precarious legs.
    Madison stood up, glad, I thought, to be distracted by needs other than mine. “I want to take Puck out before it gets much darker. Do you want to come?” She was already heading for the door.

    *

    We walked the narrow, winding path that spiraled up Bernal Hill to its peak. The bay lay out before us, the water the color of polished nickel, the sky a sweep of melting oranges and reds. The old red brick of San Francisco General Hospital stood out from the mass of buildings and streets that made up the Mission District. Beyond lay the Bay Bridge, a parking lot at this hour. It was cool enough that we needed layers, which even after ten years seemed strange to me in August. In fact, with the exception of maybe five days out of the year, I was always cold in San Francisco, always searching for thicker socks or a warmer jacket. It was something I didn’t give much thought to anymore. I just dressed for cooler weather and used the heat or made fires more often than made sense to anyone else. The hardest part for me was the ocean. It was maddening to live in a place with such a beautiful landscape and ocean access and not be able to go in the water without a wetsuit, which I simply refused to wear.
    As we walked, Madison took my hand. I sensed she was worried about me. Puck loped along ahead of us on his gangly legs, looking back every few feet to see if we were behind him.
    â€œHow old were you and Del?”
    â€œWhen we got together? Fourteen.”
    â€œWow, I didn’t realize you were that young. How long were you together?”
    I had to think about it, but certain markers helped me recall.
    â€œFirst kiss, November, 1982.” I knew when it was because I had just turned fourteen, and it was my first real kiss. “It was an amazing kiss.”
    Madison laughed.
    â€œWe were together after that for a little over a year.” The last night we were together I knew without having to think about it. “Christmas Eve, 1983.”
    As I said it, I felt a rush of sadness mixed with nausea, and I swallowed hard and tried to breathe through it. Puck pranced in fits and starts, as if his brain and legs disagreed. It was a little like if all three Stooges had been put into one body.
    â€œI guess there are things that one feels sad about forever,” I said.
    The way our relationship ended had been like being drawn and quartered. The parts of me that were pried away went without the parts of me that wouldn’t let go of her. Fifteen years later, I still could feel the frayed edges of my own torn flesh. And hear bones popping. And see the bits and pieces of me that lay exposed in the space between when she was my life and when she wasn’t anymore.
    â€œDel had this bruise on her face that night,” I said. “It started just under her eye and spread out onto her cheekbone.” I was using my own face as a reference point. “I asked her about it, even though I knew where it had come from.”
    â€œHer mother?”
    â€œYeah. Del had tried to stop her from going out and leaving them on Christmas Eve.” I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, pulled my elbows in close to my body for warmth. “Del just dismissed the bruise.”
    Against the horizon beyond Hunters Point were ship-loading cranes. Lined up as they were, with their industrious, long necks and pulleys, they looked like a herd of robotic brontosauruses out for a sunset stroll, at once futuristic and prehistoric. As I stared at them, I thought about how everything that has