I love you more than you know.

I've been on this kick of reading personal essays lately, and last week it was I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames, which I was finishing at the gallery in order to pass on to my co-worker Ellyn. One of my bosses had propped open the door (we have an annunciator, one of those things that discreetly beepbeeps when someone opens the door) but I was keeping, or trying to keep, vague attention on who was coming in. I must have gotten engrossed since I heard a rap on the glass counter in front of me.

I look up, and there is Mr. Alcoholic Rock Star. I stared at him blankly for a moment with that dreamy, just-waked look and feel one gets when intense reading has been interrupted. I forget that he does this every so often, drop by my work. He always seems smaller and out of place there.

"Oh."

"Hi." He's uncomfortable, unsurprisingly for the way we left things last. He's always a little uncomfortable anyway when he's sober, and since it's the middle of the day and he's presumably on his way back from class he's sober.

"How are things?"

"Things? Fine. Busy. The theater opens in a couple of weeks."

He gets his derisive look when I mention my work, or maybe it's my imagination.

"How's class?"

"Good. Fine. Look, I still want to write music for you. For your plays. I just need to know how long they are. How long it needs to be."

I don't even bother getting into how that doesn't work in live theater. Another battle, another time.

"Yeah, okay."

"I have to go catch a ferry."

He hugs me and is off, like that. I briefly note that he doesn't smell like liquor. A few days later at the gallery I'm still reading the Ames when a small, slight woman in her fifties comes in on a rainy day and wanders around. She mentions that she works across the street in the Pioneer Building.

"Oh, do you work in that antique place?"

"No, I'm lawyer."

I'm embarrassed at having presumed based on her adorable graying presence that she was not some kind of professional woman, but I suppress it, wondering if I should apologize. I don't and she seems not to notice, being perfectly happy to browse. We chat and it comes out that she's a defense attorney.

"One of my friends used to be a pretty well-known musician in the area --" she brightens with interest; everyone loves a celebrity, even a minor one "-- but he's in his third year at the U-Dub now to go into defense. In fact, he used to work in the Public Defender's office."

"Really? What's his name? I worked there a few years ago."

I tell her and she thinks it's familiar. "I can't place a face, though...but he must be pretty good to be at the U."

"He's one of the smartest men I've ever met." I get sad when I admit that.

And then she's gone, and I go back to my book, and I finish it that day.