A quarter of a century ago and change, the spousette worked for a law firm in Southern California, in the course of which she befriended another raw recruit in the legal profession—they were both of them at the bottom of the food chain there—chronologically about a dozen years her junior. This young woman moved to Northern California about a year after Lina did, and actually couch-surfed with us for a couple of months in 1997, following which she relocated to the “gold country,” and we gradually lost track of her.

Recently something brought her to mind, and I went looking for online traces. Boy-howdy! Disbarred about fourteen or fifteen years ago, for reasons I haven’t been able to ascertain. Employed on the county road maintenance crew by 2013 (and the recipient of a handshake and a plaque from the Board of Supervisors that year). Arrested and convicted for methamphetamine possession the following year; sentenced to ninety days in stir and a year of probation.

We liked her. Intelligent and funny (and she had a great cat, a “Devon Rex”), and a considerate houseguest. Lina wondered aloud a while back what had become of her since we lost touch, which figured into my firing up the search engine. I related my findings. “Should we try to get in touch?” She shuddered. “With a tweaker? God, no.”

Reflecting on her apparently poor life choices, I recall that in 1971 my own course was turning on a hinge, and that I might quite effortlessly have been by the following year a burnt-out case living on the street: an implausible series of lucky breaks spared me the destiny that certainly appeared my likely lot. I cannot, accordingly, bring myself to censure our former friend, while understanding L’s take on her.

cordially,