The Sourdough Wars

got any proof?” she asked.
    “No. I just made the accusation and he confirmed it.”
    “Then it’s really your word against his.”
    “If he denied it, yes.”
    “That starter won’t do Anita any good now.”
    “But if he hadn’t taken it, Sally might not have been killed.”
    “You don’t know that. I don’t really think anything could have stopped what happened. Why don’t you just let it be?”
    That went against my legal-eagle grain, but I didn’t honestly think Tony was a criminal at heart. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to think he’d gotten away with something. I decided to let it go, on the condition that he sign a full confession, which I would lock in a safe-deposit box. I told him it would stay there till I died, with instructions that it be destroyed if I did, unless I found out he’d been involved in further criminal activity. Of course the statute of limitations on the burglary would run out soon, but the confession could embarrass Tony any time it came to light. He signed it gladly. I think he was genuinely penitent and happy to have it as a reminder to stay clean.
    Clayton Thompson went back to New York, told his wife he wanted a divorce, quit Conglomerate Foods, and moved to San Francisco to start a bakery—one that does not specialize in sourdough. From all reports, he and Ricky are very happy, once again proving what they say about ill winds.
    Since it turned out Clayton never knew Peter before the auction, and since we know that Peter was killed by his ex-girlfriend rather than a gay lover, I think it’s safe to say that Peter wasn’t bisexual. He was attracted, in his way, both to Sally and Chris, so I guess you’d say he was heterosexual in a limited way. As Chris put it the day he died, he was distant—distant from all his fellow human beings. I’ve known other people like him—New Englanders, mostly, and one, a roommate I had in college, who was English. He didn’t gossip, he didn’t volunteer information, and he liked knowing things that other people didn’t know, I think; he was just a very private person. If he had a passion, I believe it was maintaining his separateness from the rest of us.
    The week after Peter’s death, Chris went home to Virginia for a few days. She said something about it being the season for the dogwoods and the redbuds, but I think once she’d found Peter’s killer, she simply needed a mourning period.
    When she got back, Bob Tosi, who’d been phoning every day, was finally able to ask her to lunch. To my surprise, she accepted. They’ve been dating ever since, and Bob is getting smarter every day. He even joined a men’s group, the kind where guys sit around and discuss how insensitive they’ve been to the needs of women. I thought that was a bit much, but at least it showed sincerity. Eventually, Tony and Bob made up, too.
    I think Anita was right when she said she and Sally were a lot alike, but in a way she and Tony were, too. They’d always suffered from the feeling that they weren’t as good as their siblings. It’s too late for Anita, but I think Tony has a good chance of getting over it.
    As for me, I’m more confused than ever. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what philosophers call the nature of reality, though really it’s the nature of illusion that has my attention. I had just watched a bunch of people turn a frozen doughball into a reason for committing burglary and murder. But the crime they were really guilty of was fraud. Clayton Thompson had wanted to defraud people into believing he was just like everyone else in his circle. Sally, Anita, and Tony had wanted to defraud themselves into believing they were different, they were special, they were better. Or anyway, just as good. They probably
were
just as good, or at least capable of being just as good, but they’d hung their value on a doughball. When you thought about it, it was nuts. Then there’s Rob—to him, a story feels like real life. I don’t think it’ll always be that way, but that’s the way it is now.
    And of course there’s Rebecca. Does
she
kid herself? Why does she think she’s too good to spend a night in jail? Why shouldn’t a Jewish feminist lawyer, as she’s so fond of calling herself, have to bear all the hardships anyone else has to face? Why is Today’s Action Woman always bursting into tears like a scared little kid?
    I think about these things as I go about my business, trying to catch up on all the work