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Frequently, when I was in the City, I met him for lunch or a ride back to Petaluma . Only once did I get beyond the lobby of the building where he worked. In the elevator that day, surrounded by buffed chrome and edgy suits, I expected at every floor to be grabbed by security guards. The doors eventually opened onto his floor, a vast, fluorescent-lit room crawling with more suits. I couldn’t have been more conspicuous if I had been naked. “Hey! There’s a hippie over there!” lit up face behind face down the rows of desks to the back of the room. Dan was thirty feet from the elevator when he saw me and nodded and then slowly disengaged from a conversation. He got into the elevator, the doors closed over gawks and smirks, and he and I immediately fell into conversation. That he had off-handedly invited me up there on the phone, when he thought he would be delayed, showed his indifference to our uniforms. But even more, he showed no awareness at all of the reaction of his colleagues surrounding us in the elevator or in the office. This probably confirmed some suspicions about him. He never worked past midday and for three years in a row had turned down the top sales prize of a Caribbean cruise.
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