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of criminal lawyers I can stand to be around.”
    â€œAre you sure you feel okay?” asked Connie.
    â€œOne of the detectives told me it was not that uncommon for a killer to set a fire. It destroys evidence.” I swore to myself: he would pay for it.
    â€œIt’s utterly senseless,” said Steve, with a languid gesture, a man waving away a gnat.
    â€œThey’ll catch him,” said Connie dismissively. Rape, murder—Connie had more important things to think about.
    â€œI don’t suppose you want to drive,” said Steve. He had a manner so gentle, so detached, that he seemed to drift through life.
    I said, “I better call Matilda, see what she’s had to do to my schedule.” I wanted to say that I wanted to drive all the way down University Avenue, into the Marina, all the way out the Berkeley Pier, into the bay.
    But instead I settled into the car, finding the window down button, hating the stuffy air. I had always disliked those cardboard windshield guards, but now I could see the point.
    Connie got in beside me, shut the door, and without speaking fastened the seat belt.
    I picked up the phone, and Connie’s hand took the phone away, tenderly, putting it back into its cradle.
    I don’t know what I was going to say to Connie, but when I turned to her and began to speak I started to weep. It was the second time that day I had been another man, someone not myself. Once I had climbed into a fire to save a life. Now I grieved more fiercely than I could have imagined possible.

7
    You can’t drive, I told myself.
    But I could, taking a brittle pleasure in the operation of the vehicle, avoiding collisions. Connie didn’t say a thing, just sat there with her arms folded.
    A eucalyptus had fallen across Capistrano Street, barely missing a blue Lexus parked at the curb. The owner of the car was turning off its car alarm, shrugging sheepishly at the scattered but grateful applause that came from front porches up and down the street. We couldn’t drive straight down the street; I had to drive around the block to get home.
    We had not spoken on the way from the hospital. Now we both strolled silently up the street to look at the fallen tree. We were grateful for the distraction. The roots had levered out of the ground, and the smell in the air was sundered earth and that cough-drop scent of eucalyptus.
    When a man in a yellow hard hat failed to get his chain saw working it was a moment of mild drama. A dozen people were watching, and a companion in a white City of Berkeley pickup called out something with a laugh. The man with the chain saw took his time, going back to the truck to put on a pair of ear protectors, rubber earmuffs with a large cup that fit over each ear, as though lack of readiness on his own part had crippled the saw.
    Maybe he was right. It started easily, the air discolored with exhaust from the motor. The saw bit into the tree and white sawdust flew. The blade sliced into the tree easily, seventy years cut through in less than a minute.
    When the tree was cut in two, one side sprang upward, severed but connected to the roots. The top half fell hard to the street, the shaggy branches and leaves quaking, settling.
    We could hear the chain saw even in our house, the door shut. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, and was surprised at how commonplace my appearance was. People in movies are stained by crisis, smudged, artfully bloodied. Only my shirt was stained, with Rebecca.
    I took it off, and folded it carefully, and put on another shirt just like it, fresh from the cleaners. And then I realized that my dark trousers, olive cavalry twill, were also stained, and I put on a pair of chinos, a man at leisure, time on his hands. I washed my face and shaved, and gave myself the same look I shot myself between meetings, when I popped into the men’s room to congratulate myself.
    And then I stood with my hand on the the doorknob and could not move.