Gorman Hardy
PO Box 253
Cambridge, Mass. 03138
Dear Mr. Hardy,
Enclosed is your check for twenty dollars. I am really glad you are interested and I am sure your not trying to pull something, but no way am I going to send you the whole diary because where does that leave me? Maybe I am paranoid, but I need to have an agreement about my split before you can see any more diary. I think fifty-fifty would be fair, as its all my idea and you can’t do anything without the diary.
Sincerely,
Janice Crogan
GORMAN HARDY
PO Box 253
Cambridge, Mass. 03138
June 16, 1979
Miss Janice Crogan
The Welcome Inn
Malcasa Point, CA 95405
Dear Janice,
Naturally, I am disappointed by your response concerning the diary. I do, however, understand your reluctance to place trust in a total stranger. As a professional writer for nearly twenty years, I have frequently been “stabbed in the back,” not only by strangers but by those I deemed friends. One can never be too cautious.
While I do not feel that the situation, at this time, warrants an agreement of any kind, I want to assure you that I remain interested in pursuing the project.
During the last weekend in August, I will be addressing a convention of the National Library Association in San Francisco. If you are agreeable to the arrangement, I will visit Malcasa Point following the convention, prepared to discuss terms with you, read the diary, and embark on such research as will be necessary to get the project under way.
Very truly,
Gorman Hardy
CHAPTER ONE
“What you need,” Nora said, “is a good fucking.”
“I see.”
“Look around you, take your pick. You’re the bestlooking gal here.”
Tyler didn’t look. Instead, she took a sip of her Baileys.
“I’m serious,” Nora said.
“You’re plastered.”
“Plastered but lucid, hon. You need a good fucking. You’ve been pissin’ and moanin’ ever since we got to San Francisco. Shit, if you didn’t want to come to the convention, you should’ve stayed home.”
“I didn’t know it’d be this bad,” Tyler said.
“What’d you expect, Ringling Brothers? These things are always a drag. What do you want from a bunch of librarians?”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“The city.”
“What’s wrong with the city? It’s gorgeous.”
“I know.”
“You pissed ’cause the cable cars aren’t running?”
“Sure,” Tyler said. She tried to smile, but couldn’t.
“Come on, what’s wrong? Cough it up.”
“I just feel rotten, that’s all.”
“Rotten how?”
“Rotten lonely.” Tyler lowered her gaze from Nora’s shadowy face. She stared at the candle in front of her. Its flame streaked and blurred as tears came to her eyes. She backhanded the tears away, and took a drink of her Irish cream. “It’s this damn city,” she said. “Being here again. I thought I’d be okay, but…everywhere I go, everywhere I look, they’re all places I’ve been with him.”
“A guy.”
Tyler nodded. “He even brought me up here once to see the revolving bar. We had margaritas. Then we walked down to North Beach and went to the City Lights and that second-hand bookstore across the alley I showed you yesterday.”
“When was all this?”
“About five years ago. I was a senior at San Francisco State. Dan—that was his name—Dan Jenson. He lived in Mill Valley, over in Marin. I met him on the Dipsey Trail.”
Nora made a face. “The Dipsey Trail?”
“It goes from Mill Valley, up into the hills around Mount Tam, and finally ends up at Stinson Beach. Anyway, that’s where we met. I was hiking it with my roommate, and he was running it to get in shape for the annual race…”
“And it was love at first sight?”
“He knocked me on my can,” Tyler said. The memory of it forced a smile. “I gave him hell for running me down. Not exactly love at first sight. That came later—five, six minutes later.”
“Was it one-sided?”
“I think he loved me, too.”
“So what went…oh no.” Nora suddenly looked stricken with pity. “He died?”
“Hardly. I was accepted for graduate school at UCLA and he had a job in Mill Valley. I wouldn’t give up grad school, he wouldn’t give up his job. Simple as that.”
“Jesus, I don’t believe it. You just threw each other away like that?”
“We both wanted our careers. I told him he could be a cop anywhere, but…he was very stubborn. So was I.”
“That was the end of it?”
“I wrote him a letter. He never…The way he looked at it, the whole mess was my fault. I was supposed to drop everything and marry him.”
“Oh Christ, he actually
