I Almost Forgot About You Read Free

Young. I just pray no one was seriously injured.”
    “I hope not, too. Apparently we’re going to have to thank Noelle for the referral. Her floral arrangements are like sculpture. We never know what to expect from one week to the next. So. Your last name is Strawberry. That’s not a very common name.”
    “No it isn’t. That’s why I like it!”
    “Eons ago, when I was an undergrad, I had a good friend with that same last name.”
    “What college?”
    “UCSF.”
    “My dad went to UCSF for undergrad, too!”
    “I graduated in ’76.”
    “He was the class of ’75! His first name is Raymond.”
    I can’t believe what she’s just said. Ray Strawberry and I always thought of each other as Best Friends with Benefits, because his girlfriend was at Harvard and he was madly in love with her. I wasn’t really attracted to him at first. Ray and I were both studying our butts off and lonely and needed some relief, so we made a pact that we would call each other up for sex with no strings attached, which at first we did once a week, but then it got up to twice weekly and then whenever we could steal a half hour. All was going well until his girlfriend came for spring break and I realized I was jealous, because unbeknownst to me I had accidentally fallen in love with him.
    “I can’t believe you’re his daughter! We kind of lost touch after he went off to Yale. Ray was serious about becoming a surgeon. So did he? And is he practicing in the Bay Area? How is he? I’d love to say hello. Wow. What a small world this is.”
    “Well, he’s passed on.”
    I gently put the ophthalmoscope back on the instrument tray. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen or thought much about Ray in all these years. I can’t believe his daughter is sitting in this chair, in my office, and has just told me that the first man I fell in love with is dead.
    “It’s been five years now,” she says as she brushes her fingers through those thick black tendrils. “A six-car pile-up. A deer.”
    Shit.
    “I am so sorry to hear this. So very sorry.”
    Shit.
    I grab a Kleenex for myself and then hand her one. I give her the exam, measure her vision, and dilate her pupils in total silence. She starts to tell me her father’s history but suddenly stops. She knows. When we’re finished, I write her a prescription for new contacts, tell her how nice it was to meet her, that her vision will probably be blurred for the next few hours, and to avoid direct sunlight. On her way out, she hugs me like it’s good-bye, and I know she won’t be coming back.
    —
    I’m melancholy for the rest of the day. I don’t feel like driving in rush-hour traffic and don’t feel like going home. I walk six blocks toward Fisherman’s Wharf. Even though it’s only six o’clock, it’s almost dark, and the breeze coming from the bay bites. No matter how warm it is in San Francisco during the day, the temperature is guaranteed to drop as much as twenty degrees by evening, which is why I have on my lined trench coat with a wool scarf wrapped around my neck four or five times. My hands are in my pockets. I turn left on the Embarcadero and almost bump into a homeless woman blocking the sidewalk. She’s wrapped in a grimy green blanket. Her hair is colorless, and her face is dirty. I can’t tell how old she is, but what I do know is right now this sidewalk is her home. I open my purse and pull out a bill that happens to be a twenty. I put it in her can and keep walking. I do not feel generous.
    I have no destination in mind. I’m just trying to register the fact that someone I was once very close to, and loved, is dead. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s been over thirty years since I saw him. It doesn’t seem to matter that I can’t remember the last time he even entered my mind. What’s making me so sad is he never even knew that I loved him.
    I cross the street and go into a restaurant that’s holding happy hour. A handsome host asks if I’ll be