The Sourdough Wars

the others, and also a lot of books and a terrific painting of kachinas by a Hopi artist. When you turn off the lights and light a couple of candles, it’s quite a cozy place for dinner. If you also open the curtains, it’s one of the wonders of the world.
    We had a nice Chardonnay with our dinner, and after coffee I felt a lot like curling up on the fake leather sofa, maybe watching the lights for an hour or two. I am not what you call a night person.
    Rob, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t go to bed at all if he could find anyone who’d stay up and keep him company. He gets his second wind after dinner and then wants to dance the night away. I planned to put my foot down tonight. It was going to be a quiet evening or he was going to spend the rest of it alone.
    He reached over and tweaked my chin. “Wake up there.”
    I closed my eyes and let my shoulders sag. “Uh-uh. Not on your life.”
    “Uh-huh. Absolutely. We’ve got places to go and things to see.”
    “Rob, honey, I just don’t feel like—”
    “Yes, you do. This you’ll like, I promise you. We’re going to a secret hiding place.”
    My eyes came open. He was already up and putting on his coat. “Beg your pardon? Did you say secret hiding place?”
    “I did. We’re going to have an adventure.” He held out my new charcoal-gray suede jacket, which I’d gotten half price for $150 and which I loved so much I put it on automatically.
    “I thought only kids had secret hiding places.”
    He turned out the lights and held the door open. “Kids and some grown-ups.”
    We were in the elevator before I thought to ask, “Why do we need to hide?”
    “We don’t. At least I don’t think so.”
    “Then why are we going there?”
    “I told you. To have an adventure. It’s somewhere neither of us has ever been before.”
    “Don’t be too sure. I’m a Bay Area native.”
    “Here’s a hint: It’s near China Basin.”
    In that case, he was almost certainly right about my not having been there—it’s not the sort of place a lady lawyer goes unless she’s lunching at Blanche’s, an eccentric but much-favored restaurant in the warehouse district. Which is what the area around the China Basin is. All of a sudden I had it: “It’s where the second starter is.”
    He tapped his nose. “On the schnoz.”
    “How’d you find out?”
    He shrugged. “Sources.”
    “Come on. What sources?”
    “Well, actually, I just kept asking around until I found someone who had a friend who works at Fail-Safe. One of the copy boys.”
    “And?”
    “And it turns out it’s no big-deal secret at all—they have two warehouses, and some things are stored in one, some in another. If the control starter wasn’t in the main building—which it wouldn’t have been, because then it wouldn’t have been a control—it had to be in the other. The company’s just being tight-lipped because they figure they’ve got a security problem.”
    I thought about that for a moment. “Something tells me,” I said, “that I didn’t get a full and complete answer to one of my previous questions. So I repeat: Why are we going there?”
    “Well, I’m doing a little story about cryogenics—sort of a sidebar to run with the ongoing sourdough saga—and I thought I’d like to see what the place looks like.”
    “Why don’t you just ask for a tour?”
    “I did. No dice.”
    “So you’re going to describe it from the outside—‘in a rundown warehouse near China Basin’ sort of thing?”
    “If that’s all we get, sure. I thought we might check out the security, maybe—who knows? At least we can see what’s around it and I can describe that.”
    “Are you going to publish the address?”
    He didn’t answer for a while. When he spoke, it was in kind of a clipped way, designed to discourage further probing: “I haven’t decided yet.”
    I wasn’t sufficiently discouraged. “What purpose would it serve?”
    He sighed with the air of a person who has explained a thing to a child a hundred times. “Credibility, Rebecca. If I give the address, I really saw
it
, not just any rundown warehouse in China Basin.”
    “But maybe the thief will see it and get the control. Or maybe he’ll try and some innocent guard will interfere and get killed.”
    “That’s not a journalistic problem.” He spoke in the same clipped tone, and I wanted to shake him. Reporters never seem to care what kind of chaos is unleashed as a result of their handiwork; every day they