Richard had sold Gillian's piano. He'd offered to ship it out to California, but neither Jess nor Emily played. Emily had quit her lessons at Streets of Laredo and Jess only got as far as The Teddy Be...
Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall spac...
Sandra turned to the page with the title Toklas' Hashich Fudge.The original hashish brownies. 'Peppercorns, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds, peanuts,... A bunch o...
Once he left the Haywood out for her with a page number on a scrap of paper, and she opened the book to recipes for Distillation. Jess laughed at the page George had found for her. There, between inst...
His fantasies were nurturing, not predatory. If he could have Jess, he would feed her. Laughable, antique, confusingly paternal, he longed to nourish her with clementines, and pears in season, fresh w...
She had no idea how George delighted in her funny ways, or watched her through the window as she stood outside, finishing an apple or nibbling sunflower seeds. She did not register his glances, his qu...
Sentimentally, he thought of Jess. Irrationally, he despaired of having her. But this was not a question of pursuit. Raj would laugh at him, and Nick would look askance. His fantasies were nurturing,...
At first she felt overwhelmed by the house, its airy symmetry its silence. Now she was accustomed to the place, but she caught herself wondering, Is this still Berkeley? George's neighborhood felt as...
Who are you? She asked silently, as she laid away the collector's quotations, his drawings, his scraps of famous poetry: Come live with me and be my love... interleaved with menus: 'oysters, fish stew...
I used to write poetry when I was younger, Jess said. She had kept a notebook by her bed, in case some line or image came to her in her dreams, but she had always been a sound sleeper, and no Xanadus...
To make a tarte of strawberyes, wrote Margaret Parker in 1551, take and strayne theym with the yolkes of four eggs, and a little whyte breade grated, then season it up with suger and swete butter and...
When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, Jess read aloud, from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet...
She turned the next several pages and found a black-ink drawing on a slip of typing paper, a nude woman holding a round fruit to her mouth. Jess plucked it out and read the collector's tiny caption: D...
He draws asparagus and cabbages, but he's obsessed with artichokes. He draws them more than any other vegetable. Why artichokes?George drained his glass. The artichoke is a sexy beast. Thorns to cut y...
You're a throwback.To what?Jess considered this. Hi-tech at work, Emily was paradoxically old-fashioned in her life. She didn't even own a television. The nineteenth century, Jess concluded. No. Eight...
She had never seen the Tree House at night. Vast and dark, lit with candles for the occasion, the rooms looked magical, the staircase a citadel, with its own strange inglenooks and deep dusty treads....
She knew she was overextended, but she couldn't help herself. Student, tree lover, citizen of the Earth, she was busier than ever as she raced through Berkeley on her bicycle, and stood on street corn...
On the third day, she smelled the fruit as soon as she came in. She followed the scent to the kitchen, and the peach was radiant, dusky rose and gold, its skin so plush she thought her fingertip might...
A peach, slightly unbalanced, so that it listed to one side, its hue the color of an early sunrise. Had George remembered their conversation at the party and left the peach for her to eat? Strange. Fo...
Everyone expected Emily to take care and take charge. It had always been this way. When her mother was sick, she'd filled out her own permission slips for school. When Jess signed up to bring home the...
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