The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman Page B

to Leon. “We’ve got noise ordinances, and we’ve got more than one complaint.” She couldn’t hear Leon’s reply, but she saw that he was perfectly calm and quiet. “Generally speaking, if we have a smoke alarm on top of a noise situation …,” the officer continued loudly and laboriously. “When alcohol is served …” She couldn’t catch all the words, but did hear inebriation mentioned and underage .
    Leon interrupted here, objecting.
    “Let’s put it this way: There are students on and off campus; there have been incidents on and off campus. You think you’ve got a friendly gathering…. In the morning you may find yourself with a situation. By situation, I mean someone dead. This has happened in the past. I don’t like to spell it out for you, but that’s my job—to spell it out for you.”
    Through the lit windows of the house, Jess glimpsed the firemen tramping through the rooms. What would they find there? She didn’t see Noah in the crowd.
    “Okay, let’s go,” someone ordered Jess. Her breath caught. Irrationally, she thought, They’ve come looking for me too. Then she recognized Daisy, small, fierce, humorless. “I’m taking you home. You have everything you need?”
    Jess fumbled in her jacket pocket for her wallet and her keys. She felt like a child as she followed Daisy out the back gate. Did Leon think she was a child?
    Chafing at the errand, Daisy didn’t speak as they walked to the car, nor did she move the stacks of leaflets from the passenger seat. Jess heaved the bundles into the backseat. “Does this happen a lot?” she ventured.
    Daisy glanced at her for a moment, and for a moment she looked amused. “Yes,” she said, “this happens all the time.”

8
    J ess did not tell Emily that she spent the next day playing with Leon instead of packing, wandering in Muir Woods instead of catching up on laundry. Nor could she say exactly why she almost missed the early-morning flight to Boston. That she had stayed up all night talking to Leon at the Tree House, that they had sat on the window seat, looking out at the garden and talking trees and politics, redwoods at risk and those protected, and some in secret groves, unknown to all but a few climbers and scientists. Trees like living castles in the mist. Leon told Jess, “When you see them you …”
    “You what?” Jess asked him.
    “You feel blessed.”
    They talked about actions against Pacific Lumber Company. Tree sitting, roadblocking, human chains, using webcams and blogs and Listservs for publicity. “Old technology destroyed the environment,” said Leon. “Wouldn’t it be cool if new technology restored it?”
    And Jess leaned against him, imagining a wireless world, a place without telephone poles, those poor denuded trees turned into sticks, a world where you could see the loggers make their kills online, and click to donate and do something about it. A world of webs and nets instead of boxes, logs, and … no, she couldn’t quite give up on books.
    “I don’t think I could stop using paper,” she told Leon.
    He rubbed her shoulders and his hands slipped underneath her shirt. “People gave up on clay tablets,” he pointed out. “They gave up typesetting, and eventually, they’ll give up paper too.”
    “I like to turn the pages,” she said.
    He laughed softly. “It’s all I can do not to turn you.”
    “All you can do? Really?” She turned to face him, and all at once she saw his delight and his surprise and the sun rising through the window. “Oh, God, I have to get to the airport!”
    Leon rushed her home to the apartment for her suitcase, and they sped to the airport in his imported hybrid car, so that she dashed to the gate with just minutes to spare.
    “I was worried about you!” Emily exclaimed as they boarded their plane. “I couldn’t reach you! I thought something had happened to you! You’re getting a cell phone.”
    “Okay, okay.” Jess sank into her window seat. “You could