The Sourdough Wars

parking.”
    “But suppose someone established a foundation for the theater, and the foundation paid you a salary? I mean, someone who knew about the plight of the theater and wanted to save it—someone, say, who’d make a great artistic director. We’re gonna need one when Anton leaves. You’d be great.”
    “I’ve applied for the job. The only thing is, there’s probably not going to be a job. The theater’s not going to last long and you might as well get used to it, Alan.”
    “So why don’t you save it?”
    “I don’t have any money.” Peter turned out his pockets. “What does it take to make you believe me?”
    “What I mean is, why don’t you auction off your starter?” We were on our second drink by that time, and no one was thinking too fast. Everyone was silent for a moment.
    Peter spoke, finally. “No one but my sister ever wanted to buy it, and I’d sell it to Russia first.”
    “No one knows how valuable it is, so we’ve gotta tell ’em. See, here’s what we do. We make it a media event. We get Rob to write a story about you and how you’re trying to save the theater. You announce publicly that you’re going to auction off your starter, and Rob writes some purple stuff about how great the Martinelli bread was. And you invite people to bid.”
    We stared at him.
    “They’ll come running.”
    “I think it’s a great idea,” said Rob. “I love that old sourdough stuff. I could write about it day and night.”
    “Then when we get the money,” said Kruzick, “we’ll build this great new theater—and we’ll have guest artists and everything, plus our own company, in original plays by local playwrights.”
    “You get to be the star of every play,” said Mickey. “Because it was your idea.” Like I said, we were on our second drink. So it went on that way for a while. We had a high old time planning rosy futures for Alan and Peter, but no one took it seriously. Chris and Peter hardly listened. They just kept touching each other whenever they made conversational points. If you ask me, they had only one thing on their minds.

Chapter Two
    “Chris, listen,” I said. “Forget this auction idea. The moon was full last night. You’re just feeling a little funny, that’s all. It’ll go away in a day or two.”
    “Think about it, Rebecca. What’s wrong with it? Pick holes in it. Really try.”
    I thought about it. I really tried. And I couldn’t come up with any objections. “I guess,” I said, “the worst that could happen is it might not work. I mean, maybe no one will want to bid.”
    “Exactly! And what harm would that do? None. Listen, Peter wants us to set it up. He’s our client.”
    “He doesn’t need a law firm. He needs a business manager or a financial consultant. Something like that.”
    “He wants us.”
    “He wants you.”
    She patted her hair. “The things I do to get clients.”
    “Oh, stop. He’s really serious about our setting it up?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I guess we’ll have to consult a consultant.” I picked up the phone and dialed a friend who was one and who owed me a favor. He told me exactly how to do it, and I told Chris. Then I called Rob to see if he still wanted to do the story. He said he’d get back to me, and he did, in five minutes.
    “The city editor loves it,” he said. “Thinks it’s the greatest
Chronicle
yarn since sliced muffins.”
    “Don’t you mean sliced bread?”
    “Rebecca,” he said, “your brain’s going. Don’t you remember the sliced-muffin story?”
    “Can’t say that I do.”
    “It was in 1967.”
    “I was a little young at the time. Possibly not even born. Refresh my memory.”
    “There’s nothing worse than a sliced English muffin, you know what I mean? You’ve got to tear them apart, so you get a nice uneven surface with big craters for butter to drip into.”
    “So?”
    “So the local English-muffin makers started slicing the goods. We ran it on the front page for a week. In the end, they went back to the good old way. Hottest story since ‘A Great City Forced to Drink Swill!’ ”
    I did remember that one—or at least I remembered hearing about it. I was a tyke at the time. The
Chronicle
had exposed the fact that city restaurants were serving terrible coffee. That was it—the whole story. It was the greatest little circulation booster of the decade. That was the kind of city San Francisco was and the kind of morning paper it had. So of course the city editor went bonkers