The Solace of Bay Leaves

into an electric grinder, one that never touches a coffee bean. Pulsed a few times, lifted the lid, and savored the earthy combo of toasted cumin, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and celery seed. Threw them into the soup, then gave the mixture a quick puree with the whizzy-uppy thing, a.k.a. the immersion blender.
Naturally, the whirring and grinding brought my brain to Lovely Rita. Officer Clark. I had to admit, it was a shock to discover she’d joined the police department. Had she and Tag gotten back together? I didn’t know, and I shouldn’t care. It had been three years. I’d left him. He was free to move on, though as far as I knew, he’d had no serious relationships since our divorce. He’d tried hard to win me back, and I had briefly wavered last winter. Instead, we’d settled on being friends.
And I loved the turns my life had taken since then.
When the soup was ready, I poured a couple of servings into a glass bowl, found the lid, and cut a wedge of focaccia. Carried my offering out to the landing and rapped on Glenn’s door. The Grateful Dead was playing in the background. With him, you never know what the soundtrack will be—Pink Floyd or Wagner, Jimi or Emmy Lou.
“A thank you for keeping Arf Friday night,” I said when he opened the door.
“Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime. You know that.” He took the dish and stepped back. “Come in. We got the final plans for the remodel—come see.”
Glenn’s loft is the same size as mine and we’d both kept the industrial feel, but the layouts were completely different. And while my design sense is generously described as rustic eclectic, Glenn’s is midcentury modern. Eames chairs, white leather chaises, walls the colors of a Rubik’s cube.
“How’s your Nate?” I asked. “And his mother?” A year ago, Glenn married a lovely man named Nate Webster who’d left his journalism job to marry a city councilman and start the long-dreamed of novel. Then Nate’s mother’s health took a turn and he went back East to help her. When I started seeing Nate Seward, Glenn’s and my conversations had become a tangle of references to “your Nate” and “my Nate.”
Glenn sighed. “It won’t be long, I’m afraid. Though we’ve been saying that for months.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded, then turned to the roll of blueprints on the sleek teak dining table. “Floor plans, detail drawings, materials lists. We’re actually going to do this.”
“So exciting,” I said. The unit below Glenn’s had been sold a couple of times since the century-old warehouse was converted to housing a few years ago, but it had never been finished. He and his Nate bought it to combine with their existing one-bedroom and make a two-story haven.
Now he unrolled the prints and pointed out the main features. The steps would be located near the entry. His office would move from a corner of the living room into the current bedroom. Downstairs, they planned a luxurious master suite, including a bath any spa aficionado would envy. Writing space for his Nate and a relaxing family slash media room would fill the remaining square footage.
“No guest room?” I asked.
“Nope. When I’m home, I want to be home, not running a makeshift B&B.” Though serving on the city council was demanding, and occasionally frustrating, Glenn planned to run for another term. He had my vote.
“That reminds me.” I told him about the young couple I’d met earlier—I admit, I called them “kids.” “Are short-term rentals allowed? Is this one legal? Not that I want to create a problem, but . . .”
“If it’s put you on edge, it already is a problem. I’ve never had any trouble with that door. You?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t heard any complaints, either, but while my neighbors and I exchange greetings, take in the mail when someone is away, and occasionally walk a dog or feed a cat, we weren’t close. When my mother announced last summer that she and my father wanted to return to Seattle for part of the year, she’d enlisted me as her house-hunting partner. We’d toured half a dozen cohousing collectives and condo complexes, and even a tiny-house village up north. What she wanted above all was community. Though I have great personal friends and tons of friends in the Market, a city within the city, Glenn was my only real friend in the building. And that might have been because our doors were four feet apart and our verandas were conjoined twins.
But now, I wondered. With only eight units, one never occupied, shouldn’t we all be better friends? Shouldn’t we have known what our downstairs neighbor was planning?
“I don’t mean to put you in a tough spot. City councilman pointing a finger at a neighbor . . .”
“No, no.” He held up a hand. “I’ve got the covenants handy, so I’ll check. If it looks like there’s a violation, you can invite everyone in the building over for wine and a chat.”
That, I could do. Convene an informal meeting of the HOA. The original docs set one up, but we’d only met twice in my time here, once to make sure everyone knew the city’s plans for removing the viaduct outside our windows, and a few weeks ago, to review and approve Glenn’s proposal to consolidate the two units. It would be a good excuse to socialize with my neighbors.
Back in my own cozy space, I sat at my picnic table with a bowl of soup, a plate of bread and butter, and a glass of a classic, unoaked Chardonnay. This building started life as a warehouse for nearby canneries, and later for other goods—some legal, some not. It stood empty for years. Now, with the demolition of the viaduct that ran along Alaskan Way and the relocation of the elevated