In fact, it didn't actually happen that way at all. And although Alex Matsumura may be in many ways a whole lot like the person I was at age twenty-five (although even at that age, I was never Japanese), I didn't meet Brenda until about twenty years later, by which time I was a very different person.

I might also add that I found making friends with Brenda a whole lot harder than Alex did. I was only in San Francisco for a year, after all, and for a while I was afraid that that might not be long enough.

LIFE BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT

Lee Lady

She made the voyage heavily medicated on Xanax and Klonopin for her agoraphobia, although she had never had any problems traveling on planes -- only buses. At her psychiatrist's insistence, she also took along a supply of lithium in case her manic-depression got out of hand, but she had no intention of taking any since she knew for certain that lithium would shut down the artistic receptors in her brain.

The graffiti Yolanda left in the mens room all started with the phrase ``Yolanda sez:'' and continued with such pithy sayings as ``You don't know how good it is // until you've had it with Yolanda'' and ``I'm so exhausted that sex and a bicycle ride // would knock me out for a month.'' By the time Yolanda returned to North Beach, numerous urinal journalists had added a great deal to the graffiti, much of it far ruder, ranging from a mere ``For a good time call Yolanda'' to, at the extreme, ``What doesn't Yolanda swallow?'' and ``Yolanda fucked dog + cat.''

On her return, the regulars at the Saloon were curious to see what Yolanda's reaction to the additions would be, but after spending considerable time in the men's room, she merely commented that obviously she had been remembered in her absence. Quite likely she had decided that when it came to swallowing, the issue was not so much what as as it was from whom and how many? And it was certainly no secret that in her day she had had intercourse with a variety of different partners, not all of them terribly savory, and that if this range did not include a dog or cat it was undoubtedly because none had ever made her an attractive offer. Or at least such is what some of the Saloon regulars would have had you believe.

In any case, the graffiti became a permanent part of the Saloon's decor, just as Yolanda herself became again a part of the social decor that keeps North Beach unique among the City's neighborhoods. By the time that Alex Matsumura arrived in North Beach, loaded down with three suitcases and an electronic typewriter, the Yolanda graffiti in the Saloon's bathroom was already almost two years old and had become, at least for some tourists, an item of as great historical interest as the Condor, the Cafe Trieste, and City Lights bookstore.

It was almost another two months before Alex ever got a look at it, since the Saloon, with its usual complement of scruffy-looking drunks, did not seem at all the sort of place he had come to North Beach for. Instead, for the first few weeks Alex did most of his drinking in Vesuvio's, the only surviving bar from the North Beach of the Fifties. At Vesuvio's, Alex made a point of letting bartenders, waitresses, regulars, and tourists know that he was writing a novel and had decided that this could be most satisfactorily accomplished here in the milieu once frequented by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti. Several tourists responded by buying him drinks and telling him that he seemed like a young man of great vision and that they were sure that he was on the road to one day becoming one of America's great writers. The North Beach regulars, one the other hand, simply said ``That's nice,'' or some such thing and made a point of avoiding his company. If he hadn't seemed like such a total idiot, they could have introduced him to a few surviving saloon keepers from the North Beach of the late Fifties who had known Jack-fucking-Kerouac all too well and had in fact eighty-sixed him on numerous occasions and would be quite happy to repeat the honor for him and his ghost if he ever showed up again.

Alex did not have a lot of previous experience with bars. He was twenty-three years old (``old enough to know better,'' as Diane Ferrari at the Lost and Found Saloon commented) and hadn't yet learned to like drinking all that much. He found the taste of beer in particular quite obnoxious and could barely force it down his throat.

But since his understanding was that drinking and bars were an integral part of the writer's life, during his first few weeks in North Beach he engaged at a valiant voyage of discovery through the liquor selections at various bars. He obviously had to try the North Beach Special at Vesuvio's, as well as the Jack Kerouac (a concoction that Jack himself would never have let pass his lips). Later he branched out to such things as strawberry daquiris, sloe gin fizzes, grasshoppers, and Brandy Alexanders. He was probably the only customer in the fifty-year history of Vesuvio's to ever order a vermouth straight up.

Alex saw bars as a place where one might expect to find Life, the grist for fiction. Alex badly needed grist. As week after week went by, he still hadn't found a subject for his novel. Which is not to say that he no idea at all of what to write about. He knew in fact quite definitely that his novel would be about the struggle to confront life in a truly authentic way and to live the life of the artist in a world dominated by corporate culture where commercial entertainment has usurped the place of art. That was Alex's central vision, his guiding light, and he knew that it could be the basis of a great novel. But it remained to work out the details -- character, plot, and the like -- and despite the strength of Alex's central vision, this part of the writing was proving to be stubbornly elusive.

And despite being here where so many literary greats had found inspiration, Alex was finding that Life was damned hard to find. Conversation in Vesuvio's (and in the other bars that Alex eventually branched out to) turned out to be discouragingly mundane, and in fact often downright boring. In North Beach bars, people expressed petty concerns about jobs and material possessions and a desire for more money. Nothing that could provide material for a novel.

Alex often wished he could find a time machine that would take him back a few decades to the time when people here cared about Art and Ideas.

When Alex finally added the Saloon to his repetoire of bars, he was disgusted with the graffiti in the bathroom not so much because of the crude sexual implications but because of what he considered its juvenile, high-schoolish quality. A careful search of the bathroom walls one afternoon failed to turn up a single item with any literary or artistic merit.

Admittedly, other bathrooms in North Beach were little better, but this one was truly remarkable in its single-minded fixation on a single notorious easy girl. One could only conclude that she must have been to bed with every male regular (and apparently at least some of the females as well) in North Beach.

For a while, Alex made a game of looking closely at every disreputable-looking street woman he passed and every conspicuous drunk in the bars and wondering ``Could that be Yolanda?''

The idea came to him that he might one day write a novel about this woman: ``Yolanda, A Girl of the Streets.'' That was just a working title, of course, because of Stephen Crane's prior claim. Alex imagined this novel developing the idea that even a woman like Yolanda could be rescued by a man offering the right combination of love and firmness. (He did not, however, envision himself in the role. He believed that, especially in the beginning, a writer's art is too jealous a mistress to leave anything to spare for rescuing a fallen woman.)

What Alex did not realize was that the woman in question was one who had already drawn his attention before he ever entered the Saloon's men room. He had seen her as a scruffy overgrown teenager (although probably actually a little older than himself, Alex imagined -- little suspecting that she was in fact thirty-four years old) with a flannel shirt, jeans, sandals and a crooked smile. She fit into Alex's strategy for choosing women to be interested in: he saw her as a woman who was not conspicuously attractive and therefore one he might have a reasonable chance at without a lot of competition. Besides, something about her energy kept drawing his attention.

Alex had no idea how to approach her, but was hoping that if he waited long enough some fortunate accident would bring them together.

February 29, 1992 was a bad day for Yolanda. It was an anniversary, the date chosen 16 years ago by her and her ex-husband for their wedding so that they would have anniversaries only every four years. The divorce came three years later, but a year after that Yolanda and her ex had decided to get together to celebrate their first anniversary despite the sundering of the relationship.

(The celebration had not been a great success. In fact, it had turned into a brawl with Yolanda's ex ending up with a nasty gash down the side of his left arm inflicted by a beer bottle yielded by her new old man.)

This morning, she woke up and knew she was alone in the apartment. There was a momentary sense of disorientation about that and then she looked over at the bedside table, where she had prominently placed the keys she had forced Blake to return last night. This evidence was in fact unnecessary, since she vividly remembered him throwing the keys down hard to the floor, just before throwing Yolanda herself down equally hard.

Okay, so it was up to her now to organize the morning. She was trembling violently and her mind was a total jumble, but she knew from many similar times in the past that that was okay. What was important now was pills, then nicotine, then beer. After that, the rest would begin to sort itself out. Blake would have made eggs, but cold cereal for breakfast was the least of her problems.

After a while she was ready to inventory feelings from her body. She realized then that her face was hurting fairly badly. There would be bruises. Probably on the neck too since at one point last night he'd been choking her. That one would be harder to make excuses for.

Probably Blake's story would be that Yolanda had had a psychotic episode and had to be restrained from jumping out the window or something. Or that she had attacked him. The thing was, Blake was likeable enough and a lot of people wanted to believe him.

When he'd stormed out, he yelled, as he always did on such occasions, ``You'll take me back, bitch, just like you always do. Because you can't get along without me.''

Well, living alone again would just be a matter of organization and being willing to tap into her network of friends for support during periods when she was totally dysfunctional. At least she'd never been dependent on Blake or anyone else for money. (Well, she was dependent on Uncle Sam for her SSI, of course, and on the state of California for medicaid, and on her father for his usual monthly supplement. But she'd never been dependent on lovers.)

After finishing half a can of beer, she was on the phone to Annie. ``Wish me happy anniversary. I kicked the bastard out again last night. It seemed like having him gone this morning would be a good way to celebrate.... No, that's okay, I've taken my meds and everything's under control. Or as much as it ever is, anyway. I've got some bruises, though, so start spreading the word that April's dog knocked me down the stairs again. I don't think anybody's still buying into that one, but at this point it's not so important any more. This time I'm not taking him back. I feel really certain about that. I'll see you at the Saloon in an hour or so.''

At seven that evening Yolanda was sitting at the bar in the Lost and Found with Margot and Annie, drinking tequila and Miller Genuine Draft. She had been drinking beer since one-thirty this afternoon (not counting the can at breakfast), which in itself was pretty standard and not a problem. However the effects of the tequila were predictably less benign. At least she had been pacing herself, unlike Annie, who had reached the total blithering idiot stage and was doing her best to come on to Norton, the big black bike messenger who also worked as a bouncer at Vesuvio's Friday and Saturday nights. Annie had her hands all over him and was trying to plant a kiss on his averted face. Yolanda was hoping that Norton would give in and take Annie if not to bed then at least somewhere other than here. Norton would at least keep her out of any real trouble. Annie's old man Frank, who was working behind the bar with Diane, was looking at the two as if he was hoping for the same thing, although feeling sorry for anyone who got stuck with Annie, in bed or otherwise, until she sobered up.

Yolanda was still upset because when she'd come back to her apartment this afternoon she'd found out that the manager of her building had let Jeffrey (``Captain Midnight'') into her apartment to fix her shower. And when she'd checked the bathroom she'd found a little plastic cap in the sink which was an unmistakable sign that Jeffrey had been shooting up there.

It was seven years now since the days when Yolanda herself had relied on self-medication with heroin and uppers to deal with her various disorders. She still had the little case holding a syringe and a dozen vials (all long since empty) which she opened up at least once a month to remind herself of the person she no longer was.

And the fact that somebody had been shooting up in her apartment, her sanctuary, seemed like a threat to her continued security. It went without saying, of course, that Jeffrey wouldn't have left any behind, but Yolanda felt compelled to make a thorough search nonetheless.

At least the shower was working now.

Yeah, like you, Miss Bimbo-brain? Yolanda was thinking. And thanks for broadcasting my age to the whole Lost and Found.

Margot felt that she had the right to lecture Yolanda because she was the present old lady of Yolanda's former old man Gregory. She resented the still continuing friendship between Gregory and Yolanda.

But as usual, Yolanda didn't deign to give Margot the satisfaction of arguing. She didn't say anything about having acted as promoter for one of the hottest rock bands in San Francisco before she was twenty years old, about having managed the G-Clef for two years, about having survived three months in Europe even after she, Andrew and Kat had all their money stolen in Antwerp, and having been the one who had argued back their freedom when they were arrested in Spain. She didn't say anything about her artworks, which filled her apartment and for one of which she'd had an an offer from none other than Henri Lenoir. (Yolanda had turned the offer down, as she turned down all such offers.)

And what the hell had Margot accomplished in her lifetime, anyway?

Then Blake came in with his ex-Marine friend Stew and sat at the other end of the bar but close enough so that they could make loud comments that Yolanda couldn't avoid hearing. Stew was a reasonably nice guy when sober but capable of being an even bigger asshole than Blake when drunk.

Blake and Stew started off fairly calmly making remarks about women in general but gradually moved on to comments about former druggies (a topic on which Stew should have been an expert) and mental instability.

Yolanda realized with a sinking feeling that two different contradictory things were happening inside her. On the one hand, she was seeing Blake at his worst and fully realizing how big an asshole he could be. And simultaneously, she knew that there was a lot of truth to what he had said last night, that she really would have a lot of trouble managing without him and that if she didn't find some resource within herself that she wasn't sure she had, she'd be taking him back in within a week.

And yet everything was still cool. She was handling it. If it had been just Blake, she would have managed, but then Stew said, loudly, ``After all, she was the one who landed Gregory in the psych ward at SF General, because she was sleeping around behind his back.''

That was a total lie on both counts, and that was when the various chemical imbalances in Yolanda's brain totally destabilized and before she or anyone else knew what was happening, she was standing behind Blake with her hands on his shoulders (although it should have been Stew's) and the next moment he was off his barstool and on the floor.

In an instant, Diane was around from behind the bar and with the help of Frank and one of the customers, Blake, Stew, and Yolanda were all quickly shoved out the door.

Standing on the street outside, Blake's hands were gripping Yolanda's two arms and shaking her violently and he was yelling, ``You're a fucking menace, Yolanda. You've totally lost it. You need to be committed before you kill somebody, the way you tried to kill me several times.''

Yolanda was riding it out. It would all have been over in a minute if that idiot Japanese kid who'd been looking at Yolanda for weeks with puppy-dog eyes hadn't chosen that moment to walk out of the Grant and Green next door.

All he did was walk quietly up to Blake, put one hand on his shoulder (the same one Yolanda had grabbed a few minutes ago) and say calmly ``I don't care what your problem is with this lady, she deserves a little respect from you.''

And Blake just turned and rammed his fist into the Jap kid's stomach and then delivered a rabbit punch to the back of the neck.

As Blake and Stew stormed off down Grant Avenue, Yolanda was left to pick the kid off the sidewalk. At that moment, she was cold sober and all her neurotransmitters were back at the proper levels.

Diane would have called 911, of course, that went without saying. Yolanda would have no problem playing the role of the good citizen who's been involved in a misunderstanding when the cops arrived, but she preferred leaving the scene and avoiding that conversation.

The kid looked like he might start crying any minute and Yolanda thought if he did she might hit him herself. ``You fucking idiot, what the hell are you doing out after dark without your mama?''

The kid got up to stagger off, but Yolanda grabbed him hard. ``Answer me when I talk to you. What the hell did you think you were trying to accomplish?'' Alex just wanted to be left alone. ``I was only trying to help you out.'' ``Well, you did that all right.'' ``I'm sorry. Next time I'll just walk on by.''

But as he turned away, Yolanda grabbed him by the arm again. ``Oh no, you don't desert me now. I'm Yolanda and nobody walks away from me. You may be on the feeble-minded side but you're the only company I've got. What happens next is that we get some dinner. You pay. Don't worry, it will only be $3.78 with tax. Plus whatever you decide to eat.'' ``I've got money.''

Later, eating a cheeseburger and fries at Carl's Jr. she said, ``Actually, you did help out back there, in your own idiotic way. Blake still had two more punches he needed to deliver, and after all I've been through today I'm just as glad they were thrown in your direction instead of mine. And I'm sorry if that sounds cruel but you needed the lesson and I didn't.''

She laid a hand lightly across his arm. ``By the way, you should feel honored to be my dinner companion one of those rare occasions when I eat in public. And I'm eating red meat, at that. Put that in your novel.''

Alex knew he was over his head in this conversation. Her friendliness now seemed as excessive as her hostility had earlier. ``I guess you've heard I'm a writer then. Did you say your name is Yolanda?'' ``I probably did. What's it to you? Have you been reading about me?''

Alex couldn't figure out how to answer this. He was embarrassed to admit that he'd read the grafitti in the Saloon's bathroom and didn't know whether she was referring to that or to something else.

Yolanda threw a playful punch at his shoulder and was amused when he flinched. ``Immortalized on the shithouse wall, that's me. My kind of literature, designated for a very specific audience and enduring only until the Saloon gets its next paint job, which probably won't be for another decade.''

``Doesn't it bother you?''

``You bother me. Blake bothers me. He's the guy who punched you in the stomach. My ex-roommate, lover, POSSLQ, up until last night. Annie bothers me when she gets too blotto to care what guy she's coming on to or to have any consideration for her husband. It bothers me that the city has just closed a half dozen libraries and that whole families sit in doorways begging. Lots of things bother me. Do you have a name, by the way?''

``Alex Matsumura. I'm afraid I'm not famous like you.''

``I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not take that as sarcasm. Let me give you some advice, Hemingway. If you're going to be a writer, don't pull your punches. If you expected Yolanda to look like a slut, just say so. At least it's a compliment that I'm apparently not living up to your expectations. `Tramp' and `whore' are also good words.''

Alex couldn't think of anything to say to this.

``Not very quick on the reparté, are you? Now we're going to Gino and Carlo's so I can play pinball. What I need from you is only two things. First of all, stick with me whatever happens. I'm not going to abandon you but I won't necessarily be able to nursemaid you every single minute.''

``I don't need a nursemaid. Since you think I'm so stupid, I'd prefer to go off by myself. Thanks for dinner, you're welcome.''

``Like hell, you will. I don't think you're stupid, just an idiot. I don't know whether the condition is terminal or whether it will respond to the right treatment. And I guess finding out is turning out to be my job, the way most things always do.

``Besides, if people see you with me they may get the idea that we're sort of friends and give you a little bit of a break. And if I can teach you a few things about how to get along in the Beach, maybe a little bit of a break will be enough. Now the second rule is, do whatever I tell you to without worrying about whether it makes any sense or not.''

``I can take care of myself.''

``Not if you're outnumbered three to one by guys bigger than you. And that's the choice you have. You can either let me teach you a few basics about North Beach survival or have three of my tough friends to beat you up in an alley tomorrow night after the bars close, because I figure it's going to happen sooner or later anyway and it will be less grief all around if we just get that over with right now.''

At Gino and Carlo's, Yolanda played the pinball machine and Alex stood and watched, becoming more and more bored. When were they going to start meeting people? But when he started wandering off, Yolanda grabbed his arm, pinching it hard. ``Rule number three: don't get into any conversations with anybody until you can follow my lead.''

``I've been getting along fine up till now.''

``Yeah, right. And rule number four: Stop telling everybody you're a writer. Because every bartender and swamper here in the Beach has got a drawer full of rejection slips and they're not impressed. Besides, in your case it's a lie because you're the kind of writer that never actually writes anything. No, don't give me that look because I've been around a long time and I know the signs.''

``And don't you dare put anything I've told you into the book you're writing or you're dead meat.''

Alex was beginning to get the hang of Yolanda's conversation. According to her, he wasn't ever going to write a book but he should remember everything people said to put in it, but Yolanda was the only one who talked and if he wrote about anything she said she'd kill him.

They had talked to fewer than a dozen people all evening, two of them guys trying to put the make on Yolanda, and none of them writers, musicians, or artists. Yolanda hadn't let Alex drink anything except beer and at this point each swallow made him gag. It didn't help at all that the Irish bartender at Specs insisted on saying ``A pint of piss'' whenever anyone ordered a draft beer.

Yolanda had taken it for granted that he would pay for everything, and he had now spent his last dollar (except for the $20 bill for emergencies stuffed in the inside pocket of his jacket).

When last call was announced, Yolanda jumped up and pulled Alex by the arm. ``We've got to hurry.''

As they joined the people crowded into the liquor store on Broadway to buy liquor before closing, she explained, ``We've got to get beer for tomorrow morning. Unless you'd enjoy being sent out for it at six A.M.''

So that meant he was spending the night with her? Alex had given up asking questions. When they got up to the check-out counter with their six pack, Yolanda just gave him a look and he dug out the twenty from his jacket pocket.

``Have you been hiding that from me all evening? I ought to turn you back over to Blake. You'll never get laid if you insist on being a cheap bastard.''

At Yolanda's apartment building, she handed him her keys and had him unlock the door. As they came into her apartment, Alex put his arm around her waist, accidentally touching a breast.

In an instant, Yolanda had grabbed him fiercely by the sides of his open jacket. ``You keep your fucking hands to yourself. I can break your neck so fast you won't even see me coming.''

For a moment, the terror was worse than when Alex had been hit earlier in the evening. ``I think I'd better go now. It's really too late, I have to get up early. Thanks for all your help.''

Yolanda grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him away from the door farther into the apartment. ``You don't walk out on me. Not after I devoted my whole evening to you. I'm Yolanda. Just get the fuck inside and try and pretend you're a human being.''

A few minutes later, they'd taken off their jackets and Yolanda was showing him the newts -- Giorgio and Bettina -- in the aquarium. Standing beside him, she slipped an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. Alex stiffened, afraid to respond. He was thinking that maybe if she went to the bathroom he'd grab his jacket and leave. And yet he was afraid that that might turn out to be an even more dangerous thing to do, unless he got out of San Francisco altogether somewhere out of Yolanda's reach.

He'd certainly got himself into one hell of a situation. This was Life, he guessed. He was just hoping it didn't turn into Death instead.

Then the phone rang. It rang twice and the answering machine picked up. ``Yolanda, if you're there I want to warn you that I think Blake's on his way over to your place. I don't think he'll cause trouble, but I thought you should know.''

Yolanda picked up the phone. ``How drunk is he?... What's he been doing?... No, that's fine, I'll deal with it.''

Alex moved toward the chair where he had thrown his jacket, but Yolanda slipped in front of him, put her hands on his shoulders.

``Just go into pause mode for a minute or two, I need to think.''

In a minute she started unbuttoning her shirt. ``Okay, I know what we need to do. Take off your clothes and get into bed,'' continuing to take off her shirt and then her jeans. ``Don't go soft on me now, learn to follow directions. This is not one of those times when you get to sit and think things over.''

She moved in close, started unbuttoning his shirt, rubbing her hand seductively across his chest. ``It's going to be okay, there's no danger. Not for you anyway, and not for me if you help me out. Please. Be a gentleman, be a friend, do what I tell you. Trust me. And remember tonight's rules -- shut up and let me do the talking.''

Since the bed was in the front room, it was in full view of Blake when Yolanda, with no clothes on, opened the door. Alex was under the sheets with his shirt off. He'd decided that if it came to fight or flight, he didn't want to be without his pants.

Blake was obviously taken aback. ``Christ, Yolanda, are you having an episode? You're naked, baby, is that the way you answer the door now? Put some clothes on, for Christ sake, I can't talk to you naked.''

Yolanda was standing close, with her hands on his shoulders, and was pushing him gently backwards. ``I can't talk to you now, Blake. Come back tomorrow.''

``Wait, Yolanda, I didn't come to beg to be taken back or cause trouble or anything. All I want is my sleeping bag.''

Then he realized that Yolanda was trying to keep him from seeing into the apartment. He stepped around her and pushed the door back. ``What the hell? Is that somebody in your bed? The little Jap kid who tried to kill me this evening? Boy, you sure didn't lose any time. Robbing the cradle, are we? See what happens when you don't have my guidance? You're turning into a child molester. Am I really supposed to believe he's my replacement?''

``Just wait out here and I'll get the sleeping bag.''

She closed the door and when she came back with the sleeping bag, she barely opened it and slipped out into the hall. Alex could hear every word from Blake.

``Good God, Yolanda, get back in the apartment. You can't stand out here in the hall naked. Christ, you're really losing it, baby.

``I get the picture now about the kid. You and he were getting it on already before today. Everything's starting to make sense. That's why he attacked me that way this evening when I was trying to have a conversation with you. The little creep was trying to kill me, it's a good thing I know how to defend myself. And that's why you kicked me out last night. Well that's fine, I was trying to figure out a way to ditch you anyhow. Don't worry, I'm never coming back to you. I'd rather become a fag than sleep with you again. You're a lousy lay, Yolanda.''

Then he shouted it to the whole building. ``YOLANDA'S A LOUSY LAY. SHE FUCKS LIKE A GRASSHOPPER.''

When Yolonda came back in, she said ``I'm going to get a letter from the management company because of the noise. They'd love to kick me out but they know my father would sue them. Rent control,'' she added.

``Okay, so you've already had a good look at me naked and now that you're in my bed it's going to be too big a hassle to get you out of it again.''

``It's all right. I'll leave.''

``Like hell. I'm Yolanda, remember? Can you fry eggs?''

``Yes.''

``Okay, so here are the rules. You don't touch me while I'm in bed. Especially not the taboo areas -- breasts, crotch, you don't need a geography lesson. And you don't leave before I wake up. But as soon as I'm fully awake, you disappear into the bathroom and the kitchen. I'm not going to be a pretty sight first thing, and I don't need you staring at my naked body tomorrow morning the way you are now.

``Eggs are over easy. Not sunny side up -- I don't want bright yellow yolks staring at me. If you break the yolks, scrape everything out and start over again. It's your choice whether you want to sleep all night with your pants on.''

When he woke up the second time it was already ten and he got out of bed and started looking around the apartment, not sure whether doing this was okay or not. He couldn't make much sense of the things it was crammed with. Things hung on the walls were obviously meant to be art, so probably a lot of the junk sitting on shelves and on the floor would be the same. There was a stack of New Yorkers three feet high and a stack of old newspapers almost as large. Looking at one about half way down, he saw that the date was 1983.

He had in fact slept with his pants on, but now he took them off. But after a while he was really not that comfortable wandering around in just his undershorts, so he said the hell with it and got dressed.

Yolanda showed no signs of waking up. He stepped out the front door of the apartment and stood outside in the hallway for a while. Logically, he knew that his best plan would be to leave now, but when he heard the sound of a door opening upstairs he went back into Yolanda's apartment.

When Yolanda finally woke up Alex was just sitting in the armchair on the other side of the room, thinking that this whole idea of living in San Francisco wasn't really working out very well. He wasn't getting any writing done and his money wasn't going to last nearly as long as he'd expected. When Yolanda sat up, he walked over to the bed.

She looked at him with a puzzled frown, almost instantly replaced by a slightly nervous smile. ``Hi. Where's Blake?''

``He hasn't been back since last night.'' Alex guessed that probably she didn't remember the night before, so he added ``He came by a few minutes last night before you went to bed, then he left again.''

``Oh, right. Have you been here all night?'' Then looking at the bed, she said, ``I guess so. You slept with me. Did we fuck? You have your clothes on.''

For some reason Alex felt a need to justify their not having had sex. ``It was very late. We were tired.''

``Right. Well, you missed your chance, Hemingway. You've got all your clothes on now.'' And as Alex moved his hands up to his shirt buttons uncertainly, she added, ``No, it's too late now. You've got to learn to commit yourself, Hemingway. Once you choose a direction you have to stick to it, otherwise you spend your life going around in circles. And the direction you chose to take this morning was to get put your clothes on.''

``My name is Alex.''

``Right. Well, if you're done staring at my tits, Alex, you're going to have to help me re-enter the real world, because we have things to do today.''

And then she went unconscious again for another half hour.

The first thing she said when she woke up the second time was, ``Are there three pills in the little white cup on the bedstand?'' Since there were no pills, she said, ``The bottles are in the drawer. I need one red and two striped ones. First you need to get water. And don't worry, they're legal. I have a script from my psychiatrist.''

By the time he came back with the pills and water, she was sitting naked on the side of the bed. ``Look, you've got to learn to be a gentleman, Hemingway. Alex. You sit beside me -- no, other side -- I'll hold the pills, you put one arm around my shoulder -- not any lower -- and use your other hand to steady the glass for me.''

She was in fact trembling violently. ``That's good, but gripping me hard won't stop the shaking. What's more important right now is nicotine. You have to light it for me. No, you have to put it in your mouth and draw. It's not a joint. You don't know anything about smoking, do you? Or about anything else, as far as I can tell. How did you ever get to be so clueless? Don't worry about passing a little saliva on. You don't have hepatitis, do you?''

While Yolanda was smoking her cigarette, she seemed to sink into a deeply meditative state. Or perhaps `comatose' was a better word, Alex thought. He decided that it was time for him to be in the kitchen.

``Where the hell do you think you're going?''

``I was going to make eggs.''

``Like hell. I can't deal with eggs right now, especially as bungled by some amateur. Didn't anybody ever teach you a minimum of chivalry? Don't go running off to do some macho egg thing while I'm still sitting here thinking about the great sex we didn't in fact have since you decided that getting dressed was more important.''

Alex sat down beside her again glumly. After a while Yolanda asked, ``Do you really know how to fry eggs, over easy?''

``I worked as a short-order cook once.''

She finished her cigarette. ``Where have you been staying? At a hotel?''

``The Golden Eagle.''

``Right. Well that's cheap enough but you still can't afford it if you're going to continue being a parasite, excuse me, writer. Sometime today we're going to have to go over and get your things. If you looked in the other room you'll have noticed there's a mat back there to sleep on. It's probably more comfortable than your bed at the Golden Eagle.''

Living in Yolanda's apartment would probably turn out to be more time consuming than a job, Alex thought. He'd never have time to get started on his novel.

``Oh, I guess that look means you're going to insist on sex. Just like every other man. Okay, I'm used to it. `Put out or get out,' that's the theme song of every woman's life.''

``You don't have to sleep with me.''

``Like hell.'' Yolanda turned to Alex, grabbed him by the hair and mashed his lips against hers, forcing her tongue deeply into his mouth, invading it with a tobacco taste. When she finally let him have some air again she said, ``You'll get sex and you'll like it and you'll say Thank You.

``Nobody turns me down. I'm Yolanda.''