“Give it time. Sex isn’t everything, pal.”

“I think I’m in love with her,” he said.

“Eb…”

“Don’t say it. I know what you’re gonna say.”

“All right, I won’t say it.”

“I’m not rushing into anything, believe me. But I think about her all the time. I never felt this way about anybody else, not even Dana. I mean that.”

“Eb, you heard how she feels about marriage-”

“Who said anything about marriage? I told you, I haven’t even been to bed with her.”

That struck me funny and I burst out laughing. He let me have a displeased glower. “Damn hyena,” he said, and gave his attention to the lights rippling on the water until the women came back.

There was some discussion about prolonging the evening-a drive, drinks in the city somewhere-but Eberhardt seemed to want to get back to his place. Maybe he had firmed up his resolve, as it were, and intended to pop the bed question to Bobbie Jean; or maybe he just wanted to be alone with her for platonic reasons. At any rate she didn’t seem averse to the idea and so we headed straight back across the Bay Bridge, bound for Noe Valley.

When we came through the bridge’s Yerba Buena tunnel, the lights of the city struck me as having a kind of magical quality tonight-towering skyward in squares and angles in the Financial District, strung out over the hills and down along the Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf, outlining the familiar symmetrical shape of the Golden Gate Bridge to the north. Everything looked new and clean and bright, real and yet not real, as if this were a mock-up for a Disney realm called San Francisco Land. Fanciful notion, but that was the sort of mood I was in. I reached for Kerry’s hand, held it as I drove. It was a good night to be with someone you cared about, a good night to be alive.

It was almost ten-thirty when we dropped off Eberhardt and Bobbie Jean. We said our good nights in the car. Eb allowed as how he’d see me at the office in the morning, forgetting that tomorrow was Saturday and he never went to the office on Saturdays except in an emergency. I didn’t correct him; he had things on his mind, poor bastard.