‘We got an appointment, Sal. The doctor, you remember?’

‘I ain’t going to no doctor. I told you. They take my driver’s license, what am I supposed to do for a living?’

Graham tried to remain patient. ‘This is Dr Cutler, Sal, my friend. Not the other one – what’s his name? – Finer.’

‘They’re all the same. Finer, Cutler. I don’t care. I’m not going. He had settled himself onto his couch, arms crossed, the picture of resistance. There was a flask on its side on the table in front of him and he grabbed it and swigged from it. ’You know how tired I am of getting poked at?‘

‘Yeah, I do, Dad.’ Almost as tired as I am of all this, Graham thought. And Russ Cutler had told him the AD was only going to get worse unless this brain tumor turned out to be inoperable. Which – the good news – looked like the diagnosis.

Graham didn’t think it was funny, but the irony didn’t escape him. He’d brought Sal down to Russ Cutler for the Alzheimer’s. Sal’s eccentricity had suddenly become far less manageable. Graham had wanted an opinion whether his father should be left to live alone, or should be placed in the dreaded home. Would he even know it if he was?

Alzheimer’s wasn’t Cutler’s specialty, but he knew enough. The disease began almost imperceptibly, with smaller losses of short-term memory gradually becoming larger, more all encompassing. The distant past began to assume a more immediate reality than the present.

For Graham the most heart-rending aspect of the situation was its apparently random appearance. Forgetfulness, then a reversion to normalcy, or near normalcy. You kept wanting to deny that it had reached a point of no return. You kept hoping.

Up until a couple of months ago he had spent lots of time with his father, making his fish rounds, playing cards, going to meals, taking walks – Graham trying to get his own reality into focus. What he was going to do with his life. Where, if anywhere, he fit in. And Sal had been great. His best friend. A wise, albeit vulgar, counselor, playmate, drinking buddy.

But then, all at once, Sal wouldn’t be there in an almost literal sense. He wouldn’t know who Graham was. ‘Son, my ass! I haven’t seen either of my sons in fifteen years. Who the hell are you trying to fool? What do you want out of me? You think you’re going to get my money, you got another think coming.’

The hours Graham had spent camped in the stinking hallway of the Lions Arms, making sure Sal didn’t go out when he was this way. It was killing Graham, never mind Sal.

So he ‘d gone to Russ and learned that this randomness was part of the progress of the disease, until finally the brain didn’t appear to process anymore. Whether or not it did was impossible to say.

‘And even then,’ Russ had told him, ‘you’ll go into the nursing home to visit your dad one day. He hasn’t said a meaningful word in six months and he’ll look up and know you and say hi like it was yesterday, and maybe for him it was.’

But then they’d found the tumor and would be doing the tests on that. That was today, the first of these tests. The tumor, if it wasn’t fatal, might be affecting the Alzheimer’s, moving its schedule forward. Although that, too, wasn’t more than informed conjecture. It was possible that arresting the tumor’s growth might inhibit Sal’s memory loss for a time.

‘Come on, Dad. Dr Cutler’s going to be waiting for us. He’s a good guy.’

But Sal’s eyes were closed now. He had collapsed to one side on the couch. His pants were wet at the crotch – either alcohol or urine.

God! Graham couldn’t keep doing this for long. He wished the old man would have the good grace to go and die.

19

The ritual of a cup of coffee over the newspaper had fallen victim on most days to the mad rush of getting the kids washed, dressed, fed, teeth brushed, hair combed, lunches made, out the door to school. But Sundays still had some of that old charm.

Hardy and Frannie were still in their bed with the Sunday paper spread out all around them. They had their mugs of coffee. Last night, before he’d left North Beach with Rebecca, he stopped and picked up some cannoli and biscotti, and the crumbs in the sheets would have to be dealt with, but later.

Vincent and Rebecca hadn’t slept in – on a weekend? don’t be absurd – but for the moment were cooperating in building the world’s largest Lego castle, both of them quiet and happy.

Hardy had cracked one of the windows two inches to let in some fresh air. Sunshine filled the whole room.

The telephone rang. The portable phone by their bed had disappeared, so someone was going to have to get up and answer at the kitchen extension. Frannie flashed a smile at Hardy. ‘The walk might do you some good after your jog yesterday.’ But she was up, answering it. Reappearing a moment later, she stood in the doorway, her hand up through her long red hair, one foot resting on the other one. ‘It’s Graham Russo,’ she said.

It was also Bay to Breakers Sunday.

Every year upward of a hundred thousand people flock to the City by the Bay to run approximately seven miles from the Ferry Building on the Bay to Ocean Beach. Although only about one tenth of one percent of these people come to compete in any meaningful way, the event has evolved into a party of significant proportions.

There are running teams outfitted as caterpillars, barefoot teams, naked runners, participants who sprint for the first three blocks and then duck into bars to watch themselves on television, grandmothers, children, dogs, snakes, marching – no, jogging – bands. A party.

Graham Russo called Hardy from Jack London Square in Oakland. He told his attorney he’d gone into hiding for a few days to make some decisions, to consider his options.

Now it was time. If Hardy would like to take the Alameda ferry over and meet him, Graham was ready to turn himself in. They could talk strategy and Graham would answer Hardy’s questions as they chugged back across the Bay.

As a plan it wouldn’t have been bad on most days. But it left the race out of the equation. Hardy hadn’t even gotten to his car when the crowds and traffic around his house told him something was going on.

After a minute’s reflection – even before yesterday’s painful reminder of his lack of conditioning, Hardy had never been a Bay to Breakers kind of guy – he realized what he was dealing with. He knew it was going to be iffy taking a ferry anywhere in the next several hours. Even getting to the Ferry Building was going to be a challenge.

But he tried. He’d told Graham he’d be there in an hour, maybe a little more, though he had been hoping for less. Clients about to turn themselves in on murder charges had been known to change their minds.

Since the route of the race was along the edge of Golden Gate Park, which was several blocks south of the main east-west corridor, Geary Boulevard, he thought he might have some hope of making it. He vaguely knew that the race began at about eight o’clock, and it wasn’t yet ten. It was possible, he knew, that some of the participants still hadn’t crossed the starting line; they queued up for miles along the Embarcadero before the gun that started the race. So maybe the outbound arteries wouldn’t be clogged yet with people who’d finished and were leaving the city to go to their post-race parties.

And indeed, he got nearly to Van Ness, the western edge of downtown, before things stopped. Dead.

After ten minutes at one corner he got out of his car and looked around him. The honking was in full blare. Lines of cars, glaring in the bright sunlight, stretched out in all directions. A river of humanity – waving, singing, high-fiving, having a great old time on that fabled runner’s high, although few were actually running – flowed by. There was no place even to pull over and park, after which he could try to walk it. He wasn’t going anywhere for at least a couple of hours.