apples and apricots, the string of sleepy, pleasant communities—Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino—melted together into something that, viewed from above, resembled an etched transistor. On the east side of the valley was Highway 101, the main artery along the bay, forty miles of noise barriers and auto body shops.
I whizzed along without much problem. The commute had reversed its direction during the tech revolution, which to me was something like water flowing uphill. The heavy morning traffic now headed south from San Francisco to what were once suburbs.
Whizzed was a relative term for the Scout. I kept to the rightmost lane. The car was in a good mood and had started right up this morning. Some day I’d get to the bottom of what made it sulk in the moisture. Jenny said I was just stubborn. She didn’t understand how much the Scout had gotten me through.
The jeep had loomed mighty in my mind as a child. I insisted on being the one to turn the hub locks on the front wheels, and savored the sound when my father ground the secondary gearshift into four-wheel drive. When I was in high school, after my parents split up, the Scout came into my hands. I couldn’t imagine turning it over to some stranger, even as the paint faded and I had to replace one original part after another. It was an anchor for me through the high-tech whirlwind. Some people understood its charm, but most saw it the way Jenny did: a prehistoric box whose bucket seats were about as comfortable as a school bus and whose truck suspension allowed you to feel every pebble on the road. While new cars were designed to look slippery as a suppository, the Scout was all straight lines. The windshield was a flat piece of glass. The original black license plate with yellow letters, now beaten and bent, was still fixed to the bumper.
I was on my way to a meeting with Rita. Jenny had wanted me to stay another day with her in Palo Alto, but Rita and I had to prep for the Kumar shoot, which began on Monday.
Last night, after LifeScience, Jenny and I had ended up at a pizza joint for dinner. She could barely stand the thought of food, much less cooking, and just picked at her slice. She couldn’t stop imagining Sheila’s last minutes. I didn’t want to tell her the details of what I’d learned about anaphylaxis.
Sheila probably first felt it as a tingle in her teeth, an itch on the roof of her mouth. Not suspecting food caused it, she might have blamed it on the cat. As the antigen was absorbed into her stomach, Sheila’s immune system would have misidentified it as a threat. Mast cells were dispatched from various locations in her body, in search of the antigen. Histamine exploded like grenades out of the mast cells as they degranulated. Her stomach cramped. Capillaries enlarged and filled with fluid, which leaked into other tissues. Her gut, throat, hands, and feet swelled. Her skin started to feel hot and prickly. Welts spread over it. Her blood pressure dropped and she became dizzy from the onset of hypotensive shock. By now she must have known what was happening. A sense of doom overcame her. She tried the adrenaline injection in the bathroom, or maybe in her car. It should have relieved the other dangerous effect of the histamine, which was to cause her muscles to constrict, especially muscles in her bronchial tubes. But the solution was spoiled. Slowly her breathing apparatus closed up. She fought for oxygen. It could get neither in nor out. She suffocated with two hyperinflated lungs, like balloons full of air.
I got off 280 at San Jose Avenue and went straight to Rita’s. She lived in a backyard bungalow, built around 1910, in the Mission. She’d bought it in the early nineties, when prices were low. Low for San Francisco, that is: at the time, her down payment seemed a small fortune. Rita had been smart in all the ways I hadn’t. She’d stuck with filmmaking. A steady income from industrials had allowed her to make one
I whizzed along without much problem. The commute had reversed its direction during the tech revolution, which to me was something like water flowing uphill. The heavy morning traffic now headed south from San Francisco to what were once suburbs.
Whizzed was a relative term for the Scout. I kept to the rightmost lane. The car was in a good mood and had started right up this morning. Some day I’d get to the bottom of what made it sulk in the moisture. Jenny said I was just stubborn. She didn’t understand how much the Scout had gotten me through.
The jeep had loomed mighty in my mind as a child. I insisted on being the one to turn the hub locks on the front wheels, and savored the sound when my father ground the secondary gearshift into four-wheel drive. When I was in high school, after my parents split up, the Scout came into my hands. I couldn’t imagine turning it over to some stranger, even as the paint faded and I had to replace one original part after another. It was an anchor for me through the high-tech whirlwind. Some people understood its charm, but most saw it the way Jenny did: a prehistoric box whose bucket seats were about as comfortable as a school bus and whose truck suspension allowed you to feel every pebble on the road. While new cars were designed to look slippery as a suppository, the Scout was all straight lines. The windshield was a flat piece of glass. The original black license plate with yellow letters, now beaten and bent, was still fixed to the bumper.
I was on my way to a meeting with Rita. Jenny had wanted me to stay another day with her in Palo Alto, but Rita and I had to prep for the Kumar shoot, which began on Monday.
Last night, after LifeScience, Jenny and I had ended up at a pizza joint for dinner. She could barely stand the thought of food, much less cooking, and just picked at her slice. She couldn’t stop imagining Sheila’s last minutes. I didn’t want to tell her the details of what I’d learned about anaphylaxis.
Sheila probably first felt it as a tingle in her teeth, an itch on the roof of her mouth. Not suspecting food caused it, she might have blamed it on the cat. As the antigen was absorbed into her stomach, Sheila’s immune system would have misidentified it as a threat. Mast cells were dispatched from various locations in her body, in search of the antigen. Histamine exploded like grenades out of the mast cells as they degranulated. Her stomach cramped. Capillaries enlarged and filled with fluid, which leaked into other tissues. Her gut, throat, hands, and feet swelled. Her skin started to feel hot and prickly. Welts spread over it. Her blood pressure dropped and she became dizzy from the onset of hypotensive shock. By now she must have known what was happening. A sense of doom overcame her. She tried the adrenaline injection in the bathroom, or maybe in her car. It should have relieved the other dangerous effect of the histamine, which was to cause her muscles to constrict, especially muscles in her bronchial tubes. But the solution was spoiled. Slowly her breathing apparatus closed up. She fought for oxygen. It could get neither in nor out. She suffocated with two hyperinflated lungs, like balloons full of air.
I got off 280 at San Jose Avenue and went straight to Rita’s. She lived in a backyard bungalow, built around 1910, in the Mission. She’d bought it in the early nineties, when prices were low. Low for San Francisco, that is: at the time, her down payment seemed a small fortune. Rita had been smart in all the ways I hadn’t. She’d stuck with filmmaking. A steady income from industrials had allowed her to make one
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