I was halfway down the street when I got a phone call.

“Dad, you’re wearing your slippers!”

I looked down. “So I am!”

I laughed.

Kristina said, “I looked out the window and saw the big truck that said “Soil and Stone.” They were off-loading flagstones, and a man was standing there watching them. He looked a lot like he might be you, except that his shoes were brown. Yours are black. They’re by your chair in the living room.”

“I’d better come back and change.”

“Yes, you’d better, because your slippers weren’t made for walking outside, and you’d wear them out.”

“I’m wearing them out right now,” I said, trying to make a joke with wear out and wear outside.

I laughed again. It didn’t stop being funny.

Back home, changed shoes, off again. “I didn’t think to look down, my feet were so comfortable.”

Down the hill to Sunset (not the street in Hollywood that I knew so well for years), turn right to the cemetery.

Sign said: “No skateboards. Speed limit in the cemetery, 15 mph. That includes bicycles.”

It didn’t apply to me. I was walking.

I went through the gap by the gate, and walked by the rows. Neat little plaques a few inches apart. They really pack ‘em in. I wondered if they were doing the space-saver, stacking the coffins.

Sign said Golden Gate Mausoleum and Columbaria, with an arrow to the left.

I didn’t know what a Columbaria was, though I had my suspicions. Later, looked it up, as you always do when you don’t know something: Columbaria – a dedicated structure or wall with small compartments used to store funeral urns containing cremated remains.

That’s what I thought it was, just didn’t know the name.

I went up the steps. Sign said, “Use the handrail.”

So of course I did.

The doors were locked.

Sign said, “Open at 11:00.” It was after 12:00.

“You lie!” I said. “Like all graveyards! And you expect me to lie here too?”

The answer was silence.

I looked inside through the glass doors. It looked like a big train station, high ceiling, hallways right and left and straight ahead to a reception desk.

“The one in Altadena is bigger and fancier,” I said to no one. “Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum. Really grand. Tile. Frescoes (?). Marble walls.”

I’ve never been inside our own Altadena Mausoleum, though I’ve had many opportunities. They hold concerts there because of the acoustics, host events, even weddings, and do Halloween so lavishly they charge admission to help defray expenses. I had a student whose family owned the cemetery and the mausoleum and offered to show me around. I didn’t take her up on the offer, postponed it, she graduated, and the family sold it and moved on.

Life is full of missed opportunities, and I have a list.

I can imagine me coming for a tour. The tour guide says, “We can find a place for you.” In the mausoleum, which I guess is a Columbaria, he pulls out a drawer like a file cabinet in the library where they used to keep the card catalog, but now it’s all computers. He looks at me, sizes me up professionally, and shows how the little drawer has a slider for short people.

As you know, Shirley’s ashes are in a cardboard box on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. Kristina paid for a beautiful burlwood box — which now sits alongside — as part of the contract for Shirley’s remains, but I haven’t had the heart to complete the procedure. I’ve left instructions that when I’m ashes, my ashes should be mixed with hers. What they do with me after that, I don’t care because I won’t be there any more than memory. I hope it isn’t soon.

I walked further down the cemetery, on the street path, avoiding the grass with graves. I could see that the graceful turns would make the perfect skateboard path, which explained why the sign.

On my right, a woman in a long coat was standing alone under a tree. She was looking across the lawn, down, over, and across the bay.

I set my mind back a hundred yards and saw us as a painting from an earlier time.

I walked a little further, stopped, looked back. She was still standing there alone. She had not moved.

So I walked through the cemetery and approached the gate.

There was a little two-tier waterfall implanted into the hill to show the place had class.

Then the main entrance, which I knew from the street, the building with a tall pointed roof like a tiki hut, and a two-tier fountain with a little channel fall on either side that said wordlessly, “If you’re thinking of dying, you’ve come to the right place.”

Then I was on the street and turned right at the corner where FatApple’s has the restaurant, and the little parking lot where Kristina and I waited for Chaz’s bus which dropped him off every day because at that time he was still working in San Francisco and rode to the office.

So I kept walking along down the street, trying not to be tired. I was thirsty, but the cemetery, which had faucets everywhere to water the ubiquitous lawn, had a sign that said, “Don’t drink the water. It will kill you.” I remembered Germany, and the famous sign that said, “Kein Trinkwasser!”

Then I got to the outskirts of the High School Athletic Field down below on the left, and a big building that must be the gym, and a sign that said, “No entry. Visitors go to the entrance at Building A.”

I was on the backside of the campus and had turned right one block too soon.

I was getting tired and slowing down. I tried not to stop. It was hot, I was sweating, but at least I was wearing my hat.

Now there were houses on both sides, and I thought, “This is the neighborhood around the school. People live here. Our house up the hill is in a fancier neighborhood, as you would expect from being higher up.”

Then a few people passed me on the sidewalk. They looked like they might be students, let out early.

Down below, the field again. Four boys were walking around the track, and then another guy not trying to catch up. They were in no hurry. P.E. afternoon.

Then I managed to reach the corner and turned left. All down hill from here, I hoped they had a bathroom. I felt the signs and picked up the pace.

Long fence, gates locked. A few students inside, hanging around, one door open in a building. Sign: No entry. Check in at Building A.

A guy was standing in a basketball court, looking like a custodian. I asked him if there was an entrance and a bathroom. He gestured ahead.

Then there was a driveway with a gate. The gate was locked. The sign said, “Go to Building A.”

I got to the corner, turned left, and groaned. A big building on the left with a kind of roundish tower like a cupola, and way further on another building with an entrance and an open door. Aha! That must be Building A! 

I noticed how much I had slowed down, but kept going, as if I was gritting my teeth, which I admit I was.

Then the building on my left had steps and an open door, I climbed up and went in.

“Can you tell me if that building over there is Building A?”

“This is Building A.”

“Oh thank God!”

“How can I help you?”

I fumbled for my card, and looked through the cards in a holder on the desk, selecting two.

But first, “Do you have a restroom available? I’m feeling the urgency.”

There were several women, girls, young women, however you call them nowadays, behind the desk, they conferred, and my interlocutor got a key and said, “Follow me.”

She opened the gate that said, “No students beyond this point without authorization.”

I’m not a student, but “Follow me” was my authorization. 

We went down a short corridor past an open door that said “Treasurer,” and I could see a tall standing safe against the wall. I thought, “That’s obvious.”

The little corridor ended in a cross going right and left. I said, “Left?”

She said, “Yes,” and we did.

I said, “I’ve been in a lot of schools, and the hallways all look alike.”

She said, “Yes,” and unlocked a door on the left and I went in and locked after me. An adequate restroom, toilet, sink. I made my liquid contribution, looked at the card of the person I thought would be the one to see, put the card down on the ledge, washed and dried my hands, and left.

I suddenly remembered the card on the ledge, but the door had locked automatically and I couldn’t get back in.

I thought, “I’ll just get another one from the rack on the desk,” went out through the no entry gate, and was back at the entrance. I took another card.

I said, “I think I want to see ____, Academic Counselor, or maybe probably even better yet, ____, Assistant Principal, who can pass me on to the Chairman of the English Department, who can pass me on to a teacher, hopefully of Senior English which is probably World Lit, hopefully Honors or AP, which I taught for years in Pasadena. I want to shake hands collegially and see if there’s something I can do, volunteer, maybe tutor, maybe read some of my poetry as a guest author, maybe help a student with essays, anything.

I did the usual spiel, “After 40 years in the classroom second grade to college, mostly high school, retired for 24 years, I still want to do something to help because, as you know, we’re in an educational crisis…I walked down from Arlington Avenue in Kensington through the graveyard, (I showed my walking poles) but I’m getting a bus pass is a few days and I see that the bus stops in front of the school at the corner…”

“We don’t have a Department Chair, and all the teachers are in class, but leave your card (I did) and we’ll get back to you. ____ just left, and ____ is in a meeting.”

So I sat in a chair at the side to rest a bit, and linger just in case.

I looked up at the wall. There were rows of photographs in vivid color. Probably administrators. I couldn’t read the names, not even with my glasses, and even if I could, I still wouldn’t know who they were, except by guesswork from pride of placement.

All the faces were smiling. Some people smile so much in pictures that they show their teeth and, by juxtaposition, you get a row of teeth. Not here. They were all arranged to look happy and welcoming.

I wondered idly why public portrait photos are always smiling. I decided that it’s a way to pacify the public, make them comfortable that things are going well and they’re in the right place. And the photographer always says, “Smile!” and snaps the picture. I do know that Hollywood sometimes posts pictures that pout to show their stars can act.

I cobbled an incident which I may have just made up or may have been real. I can’t always tell. It goes like this: “I’ve only noticed once, when the photographer said, “Smile!” and then immediately said, “Don’t smile!”

That’s a joke, and I may have told it before to someone, or maybe not. It’s too late now to take it back.

Then I stood to stretch my legs so they wouldn’t cramp like a charley horse (Who is Charley? And what’s his horse got to do with it?) and walked over closer to the desk.

I think I said something like, “People sure keep you busy,” and she said, “It never ends.” She was effortlessly and seamlessly competent, and later I said so.

Then I noticed a youngish girl looking like high school standing in the doorway waiting, and I motioned to her, “Go ahead.”

She said, “I’m not in line, I’m waiting for somebody.”

So we talked about this and that, education, the young (de)generation, the election coming up. 

“Are you old enough to vote?”

“Next year.”

“But at least you can participate by talking with friends, family, neighbors, so your voice is heard, making sure they’re all registered, maybe offering to drive them to the polls, discussing the issues which you young people often understand better than your elders, yada yada yada…”

She said, “Yes.”

A woman standing in the doorway, apparently waiting in line, was listening to our conversation and joined in. She gestured to my new friend and said, “I’m her mother. She’s waiting for me to pick her up.”

I may have said, “She comes from a good family.”

I’m always saying nice things about people, not flattery, but because I mean it and they don’t seem to mind.

Anyway, the two left together and were walking down the hall into the entrails of the building.

When will I ever learn, when and when not to, and let people get on with their lives, and yada yada yada.

Apparently never.

I turned to the woman managing the office and said something like, as I mentioned before, ”I’ve seen a lot of office managers, and you’re in the top tier,” and she said something like, “You didn’t have to say that, but thank you.” And I said, “I hope you didn’t mind that I watched you while you worked because my estimation is based on evidence…” and she probably said, “No problem,” and reached for the phone.

I sometimes think, if I think about it, that I sometimes (too often) make an impression so people will open the door when they see me coming and not close and lock it. Then I imagine a voice saying, “Good luck with that,” and “How’s that going for you?”

So I said whatever usual parting words seemed appropriate, like “See you later,” and headed for the door.

She said, “We’ll call you. I’ll give ____ your card,” and she held it up to show me.

So the visit was, though not unqualified, a qualified success.

And out the door, I said in passing to the door guard who must be school security and heavy enough to carry the weight of the world, how happy I am to see a public institution so successful where everyone professionally does their job and is happy about it, and I must have made an impression, because he said, “See you later,” so he’s a visionary and can read the future.

Then I walked down the street past the endless school toward the end of the block that I couldn’t see because it was so far away.

There was a cluster of students on the sidewalk in front of the next building, cars and vans parked with opened doors, and a woman with a clipboard.

Another woman standing by an open car door, she was either a teacher or a parent, chatted, as I do, and told me the students were assembling to be shuttled to a track meet, so I got out of their way, wished them good luck, and continued down the endless street. I had already told her how I had walked down through the graveyard, and she said, “That’s the way I usually come down on a walk. The cemetery is like a walk in the park, and it’s shorter, more direct than the street.” I agreed.

If memory serves, I think I actually crossed over to the other side of the street to get a better view on my way to the FatApple’s corner. Then I discovered to my horror that it was not the FatApple’s corner, I was one block too short and would have to climb the hill where I could just see the entrance to the cemetery I had become experienced with earlier from the inside out.

There was a guy straddling a bike, waiting for the light to change, as I walked up and waited for the same thing in the same direction, uphill.

I may have said something like, “I miscalculated and I’m one block too short for FatApple’s.”

He may have been friendly enough to be loquacious and said, “Yeah.”

He looked like a local, too old to be a current student, but young enough to have been one almost recently. The light changed and he started pedaling uphill.

I crossed in the crosswalk and started my upward hobble, passing storefronts with names and signs and slogans which I read and extrapolated into jokes and whimsy which I now forget, but could recover or reconstruct when and if I come this way again, which I certainly will.

Then, nearing the top of the end of the block, a row of windows on my left, people inside sitting at tables and eating happily, the street side of FatApple’s, and I hurried toward the door where I could enter, sit down without collapsing, and order food and drink because I was hungry and thirsty.

My hopes were dashed, or, rather, postponed, because the sign with an arrow said, “Entrance around the corner.” I thought of the search for Building A.

I hoisted myself to the last few steps, anticipation superseded agony, and I entered.

I must have forgotten how extensive and sufficiently adequate the interior is. On the right, an aisle between a row of chairs and the display cases for the offerings, especially pastries and pies from their bakery for which they are justly famous, to which I can attest.

Front and left, a bar with seats, the usual display of stainless steel, levers for drawing beer, coffee pots perched, everything you would expect in a bar pub, even from my limited experience, and to the left, the main room, tables and chairs, some along the windows occupied with happy eating people I had witnessed through the window coming up from the other side.

I hovered, waiting to see the protocol. Do I sit or wait to be seated? I asked the woman behind the bar, “Do I wait to be seated, or…?”

She said, “Anywhere you like, over there, or here at the bar, or at any open table.” She gestured expansively.

So I sat down in a chair at a table just out of reach of the front door and a waiter came over.

“What can I get you?”

I said, again trying to be clever but running the risk of trying his patience, “If Arnold Palmer is in the house, I’d like him to come over in a big glass because I’m really thirsty.”

He had dealt with people like me. He was a professional.

He came back with a place setting, a paper mat serving as menu, a knife fork and spoon rolled up in a napkin, and Arnold Palmer in a big glass so heavy it took two hands to lift.

I had looked over the menu and said something like, “I’ll pamper myself with lunch because I’m hungry, and later someone is coming by to pick me up and take me home.”

He misunderstood, and set another place at the table.

So I put my straw into Arnold and reacquainted myself. I drained him to the dregs, then dismantled the ice to the last drop.

I saw a few people come in, be seated, order, then a little later, food and happy eating at their table.

My table was empty of food. A waiter passed by and nodded. I nodded back.

I saw a waiter down the right behind the counter at the cash register giving a receipt to a customer who took it and left.

I stood uncertainly. The man, who had seated me earlier, came over. I said, “Do I order over there at the register, or…?”

He said, “You haven’t been served yet?” and called the waiter over. He was the one who brought me Arnold. He apologized, “I thought you were waiting for your friend for lunch.”

I did not chastise, because I already liked him for being friendly and laughing at my jokes. I ordered officially. “I’ll spoil myself and have the bratwurst with sauerkraut and homemade spaetzle. I assume you make it at home and bring it to the restaurant.” (Ha Ha.)(He was patient). I continued, “I notice the ad for October beer, in honor of Oktoberfest.”

“Yes,” he said, “We’re in the last week of September, but we started early. It’s already on tap.”

“So I noticed,” I said, because I had seen a glass being pulled and filled behind the bar. An extensive frothy head, a few seconds to settle, then a little more to top it off. “I saw it carried across the room to the table over there. Looks so good, I’ll have to bring the family.”

“Anytime,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “maybe not anytime. Probably not after midnight.”

He knew I was trying to make a joke, and laughed patiently. “No,” he said, “We’ll be closed.”

We both laughed. We understood each other.

I complimented the German elements of the menu. “You can’t get that everywhere.”

“No,” he said, “but here, yes.”

The food was what it should be. The sauerkraut was neither bland (some restaurants are afraid to let it be itself) nor astringent (some overemphasize “sour”), and had visible bits of bacon, which always makes me happy and makes most food better. The spaetzle was wonderfully cheesed, and the bratwurst was adequately cooked. There are few things worse than undercooked sausage, and I’m not speaking metaphorically.

So I finished my meal. “How was it?” Some waiters joke, pointing to the empty plate, “I see you didn’t like it.”

I said, “I restrained myself, and didn’t lick the plate.”

“So you wouldn’t offend the others.” He gestured at the neighbor tables.

We understood each other so well that I considered giving him my card so he could swell the number of viewers, but I did not because I knew I’ll be baaaack, like that other Arnold. (Schwarzenegger, another German).

I paid by credit card, and left a tip slightly beyond the printed suggestion.

I had already called home to let them know, relayed a bit of my adventures, and Kristina said, “I’m sweaty from working hard but I’ll come to pick you up, or maybe Chaz will, again, call us when you’re ready. There’s a bench where you can sit.”

I had called and I was ready.

I went outside, through the little parking lot that had a one-way entrance and a one-way exit, and went over to the bench where Kristina had suggested I could sit and wait.

But the bench is at the bus stop, and I didn’t want to stop the bus just for me, because I wasn’t, and if no one else was getting on or off, it shouldn’t.

So I stood aside a little way, tried to lean against a pole to support my back, nope too far, so I climbed up on the little border, stood close enough to lean, and the bus rounded the corner, pulled up, and stopped.

A few got off and on. I think one woman had sat on the bench I hadn’t vacated because I never occupied it, and she got on the bus.

I waved the driver on, trying to mime, “Go,” as “Don’t stop for me, I’m not.”

I already knew the driver wouldn’t recognize me as a frequenter, because it was Chaz who was the frequent daily passenger, the off-getter at this very stop when he was still working in the Big City, San Francisco Across the Bay which you could get to by bridge or ferry or BART tunnel underpass, so the same driver would/might remember him at the same time daily, but they wouldn’t remember me standing in the parking lot because I waited in the car.

So after the bus drove away, I got down off the little ledge perch and was going to sit on the vacated bench because it was now safe, just as Chaz drove up, stopped in the red where the bus had been, long enough for me to get in the car and say, “I saved you a space,” and we drove home for dinner which I might join them lightly at the edges of the meal so I could take my pills, which I didn’t earlier when I could have and should have for the bratwurst platter, but I hadn’t brought my pills because I hadn’t thought ahead enough to the Fat Apple possibility that became probability and then digestible fact. I had been seduced by food.

So I bent Chaz’s ear with highlights of my day’s adventures, got home, and told Kristina all the rest.

I hope the school calls me soon. I’m ready.