But the name, that's the thing. Her mother was Susan Jane Smith, the woman with the most boring name on the face of the earth, and she married Hilton Falls just because his name was unusual, it wasn't anything like the boring name she'd been stuck with her whole life. And when the kids came along, California first and Bridal Veil, little BeeVee, later on, it was decided they'd have interesting names, too. But mainly, she was California Falls because that had been her mother's main obsession. Predicting exactly where and when this would happen, when all the theories would come true and the golden state would collapse into the Pacific. So eight months into the pregnancy, when Hilton got tired of her whining and announced, "Why don't you just go sit in the corner and worry about it?" she knew right then that would be the baby's name, and it was.

I don't know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know one thing, because my dad hammered it into my head, over and over and over when I was growing up, after Mom ran off with my uncle. "Look at the mother," he'd say. "Look at the mother, plus ten years, you got the daughter. Without fail. Mother, plus ten. Is that what you want?" Meaning, I guess, if the mother was an old cow you'd better be real fond of old cows. Or, if the mother was nuts, you probably didn't even have to wait the ten, you just assumed the daughter was a couple sandwiches short of a full picnic basket, too. Or would be. Never failed, Dad said. Mom's mom, Grandma Herriot, had left three kids and a perfectly good husband to go work in a casino in Vegas. A man couldn't be too careful. There were ladies to have fun with, he'd said, and ladies to bring home to Sunday dinner. They usually weren't the same person.

California, Cal as she was called growing up, wrote stories. A lot of them got published, too, in small press stuff you'd never see if you didn't subscribe to it, but published nonetheless, and the only problem was she usually wrote about her family. Told all the secrets, she said, in terms the masses could relate to, which meant that she published pretty regular but on any given day, at least two members of her immediate family were peeved at her. But writing was her love. For the moment, anyway. So that if you asked her what she did, she'd say she wrote. Like it was the only thing she did. Like it paid the rent, and it didn't, in reality, even come close. That's just about all she did, and it's interesting because she just about flunked out of high school and never went to college. But you'd never have guessed that, because she read enough books and knew enough big words that people just naturally thought she was well educated, maybe got sidetracked by an early marriage or something and so never got around to going to college. Which wasn't so far from the truth, really. You'd have to really get to talking with California to trip her up , and it was usually on some pretty small point. Like the houses of Congress was how I caught her, and she had no idea what they were. She thought the House of Representatives was something completely different from the government, some kind of political action group that got started down south by all those people who left Mexico for jobs and didn't have anything else to do. Then you knew. And it was sad, in a way. Sad that anybody as beautiful as California Falls just didn't have the education to get along in the every day world. But she typed ninety seven words a minute and was once a damned efficient secretary, although she usually couldn't find her car keys five minutes after she got home from the office and put her purse down. Organizing other people was more her long suit.

She had very few faults, like I said. You wouldn't find a bigger hearted person, that's the truth. You know those people who buy upwards of fifty boxes of Girl Scout cookies every year because they can't say no to the next kid who comes to the door? That's California. She's still got cookies in her freezer, she said, ten years old and hard as rocks, she's just waiting for Christmas or something to thaw them out and give them away. She's got so many, she's got them organized in layers and every year, she's got to move a layer down a little further up. Otherwise, she'd be looking at 1989 when what she really needed to see, for freshness purposes, was 1998.

But 1989 was pretty momentous on its own, she said. That's the year her mother really did get to go through an earthquake. The big one that hit the bay area. I'm just nodding while she's telling me this, because I remember that one. I was in the bar at Happy Hour, with some guys from work, and we were celebrating, you know, having that night off, and there on the big screen, I see part of a bridge just hanging there. And it takes maybe four or five minutes for my mind to make this connection that it's the bay bridge, and right then the drama kicks in that's always fueled by Budweiser and I'm out of there, and on my way home, glued to the newscasts for the rest of the night because my family lives in California. And me, just like Cal, I'm like, "What if it falls? What if that piece of the bridge just falls?" where I guess, if I'd been Cal's mom, I'd have been more concerned with the whole state falling in.

We're sitting there in Starbucks and there's a strange lull for just a minute, and she sticks her pinky into the corner of her lip, it makes a neat little soft little irresistible dent there and just for a minute I'm thinking about what it's going to be like to kiss her again, because she's a really fantastic kisser, only I'm sure that I'll never know because I didn't bring her here to kiss her, I brought her here to dump her.

Dump is a harsh word and I want to take it back even though I didn't say it out loud. Dump is too strong, too final, too much forever and forever isn't what I have in mind with this woman. I don't want to dump her from my life, with her wide golden eyes with the little green flecks scattered like shattered glass all the way through them, and her crazy hazel hair cut like Joan Jett was still the hottest thing going. Dump is a lousy word any time, but more so on a Friday afternoon, when the whole weekend yawns before you, beckoning like a lawn that needs mowed or a book that needs read, or the frazzled, gorgeous, smells like vanilla but basically crazy woman sitting across from me that makes the only thing I can think that stupid, trite, and oh so true, "Let's just be friends" float right through my head and out of my lips and land, with a dull thud, right there between our Lattes and we're both sitting there, stupid, looking at it.

"What?"

"I think we should just be friends." I did say that out loud. Got it past the lump in my throat, you know, said it again, just to be sure the first time didn't get lonely, sort of hanging there like it was.

"As opposed to -"

"As opposed to - well, getting involved, Cal. I just don't think we should get involved," and I would've said more, but she waved her hand at me and then dropped it to mine. It was warm, and her grip was strong and that surprised me, but not as much as what she said next. That just about knocked my socks off and I wasn't even wearing any, sitting there in my Birkenstocks and my navy blue Dockers.

"Oh for God's sake," she said. "How serious could we get? I'm married."

The ramifications of this settled in over my latte, drifting around in the steam, their heat and common sense rising up to soothe me. This worked. California being married. I didn't need complications. Things had to fit together, you had to be able to put them together and expect they'd hold up, they'd last. Durability: As necessary in relationships as in furniture. Parts had to fit. Well, we wouldn't. That's for sure, I knew right then. There were ladies to have fun with, and ladies to bring home to dinner. They weren't usually the same person.

"How long?" Was she any less married if it hadn't been a long time?

"Fifteen years. Since I was twenty."

"Your husband - does he know about - I mean, do you have some sort of arrangement?" Is he going to mind that you know my top sheet doesn't match the bottom one, is what I'm thinking. Is this going to change anything between us. And how big is this guy, and is he coming after me.

"Charlie? Arrangement?" As if she wasn't sure, all of a sudden, what either word meant. Who was who. What was what. Then she shook her head, rattling the short crop of curls around her face, a hairdo that truly worked only on California Falls and Meg Ryan. "We can't have an arrangement. Charlie's dead."

"But you said you were married -" Wow, a widow. That's almost better, you know. That sort of makes it OK. What we did. What we're doing. Except it makes me feel worse for dumping her. Dumping a woman is one thing, a single woman who will no doubt land on her feet with her friends rallying around her to say, "You go, girl," until she gets over the whole thing. Until she gets over me.

"I am married," she said. "I was never divorced."

"But -"

"Charlie's dead," she said simply, and shrugged. "But he's waiting for me, once this whole thing is over. I mean, this incarnation. I really believe that, you know. That you're with the person you choose, forever. Eternity, until it's all over."

When California falls into the ocean is what I thought then, but I didn't say anything, I just stared into my latte and then stared down at the floor, at this crazy zigzag green and gold tile there, then finally up into her eyes, into the crazy shattered green flecks of whatever the hell was floating there.

"Cal, I don't think we should see each other any more," is what I said, or maybe I didn't, I just thought it too loud because somehow she got the message and when I looked away from her eyes and down at the tile again then back up to where here eyes had been, the only thing there was a latte. Steaming into the empty space where she'd been just a minute before.

So maybe I made the whole thing up.

That should have been the end of us, right? Maybe a month goes by, a month of office furniture, how many shipments did the night crew get out, how big was my bonus going to be, that's pretty much how I measured my life. By real stuff that you can see, feel, use, and sit on. Stuff that would last, like the leather Broyhill recliner I got when the bonus was really good. The navy blue comfort chair I was picking up at Eastside Furniture Warehouse when I saw her again.

She was working in Home Accessories, straightening a bunch of imitation antique wall clocks, the kind with the little phony bird that pops out every hour or so, and I had to look twice to make sure it was her. Her hair was all slicked back like she'd dropped a bucket of Vaseline on it, but when she turned sideways, squinting up at this one particular clock like she'd finally got it positioned just right, I knew it was her. I don't think another person on this earth could look that intently at a clock. I don't think anybody else would care, but Cal probably thought if she didn't hang the thing just right, her whole next life would get screwed up because of it.

"I've been thinking you," is what she said to me, and that was weird but it seemed natural coming from her, as right as a simple "hello" would from anybody else. She stepped closer and a wave of vanilla hit me. I reached one hand down to stroke the head of a big carved tiger, some living room decoration I couldn't imagine anybody actually putting in their living room, but it bought me time. A minute or maybe a half a minute, before I had to look in her eyes.

Maybe that's what I shouldn't have done, you know. Looked in her eyes. Because once I did, I got caught up in all that flying shattered green glass shrapnel and I swear to God a big hunk of it went right into my chest because it hurt there, all of a sudden. Tightened up and a little grunt broke out of my lips, a grunt of pain and I was thinking, I miss this woman. I miss this woman a lot.

"Did you know," she said then, "that the earth is really a living thing? An organism, you know. And I think," she went on, adjusting the clock just so before folding her arms across her chest, "with all this El Nino stuff and the earthquakes and all these weird germs coming out of the rain forests? It's just the earth saying, 'ouch', you know? Hey, don't hurt me, or I'm gonna get peeved, and who knows what's going to happen. I'm just trying to warn you here. It's like the earth has the same Bible we do, and that part where it says, 'if they right eye offends thee, pluck it off, and cast it from thee', well, that's what's happening. California is the right eye, I think. It just takes a long time to pluck it off. I've been thinking my mom was right. I don't know why, but you know, ever since we - well, since we had coffee last, that's what I haven't been able to get out of my head."

Nodding, because what could I say to that? What could I do?

"Maybe we should have more coffee," I offered. "So you could get clear on that." And then I bought a clock.

Six months is all I gave it. Six months with this woman who hoarded Girl Scout cookies and thought she was still married to someone named Charlie, and was convinced that in her lifetime, California would fall into the ocean. Six months, and I can't tell you how many newscasts we'd be watching and she'd shoot straight up off the couch and clap, do a little dance sort of, there in front of the television, whenever the newscaster announced another mudslide or earthquake in California. Six months and I was going to get tired of it. Tired of her sweet vanilla smell and the way her thighs tightened, silky rock hard sinew around my waist when we made love and her lips sort of melted into the crook of my neck, her breath there warmer and more comforting than any electric blanket could ever be. Six months of listening to her stories, and her story ideas. Six months of living with a woman who was someone new every time I came home, and I'd get tired of it, I'd say, "I don't think we should see each other any more, " and I'd mean it, I'd even go off and fall in love with someone regular, and predictable, with straight hair and matching furniture, just to prove my point. I wanted to settle down, eventually. Get married and have kids, maybe get on the day shift, and it wouldn't work with this woman. Life was supposed to be a certain way, you weren't supposed to believe the earth was alive, and assume that belching volcanoes were simply warnings to stop digging around in her rain forests and building freeways across her chest.

Six months.

Seven months, we're still having coffee.

Eight months, she's got this crazy jogging suit, this little pink nylon running number, hanging in my closet because it gives her something comfy to wear on Saturday mornings if she forgets to go home and falls asleep here. Which happens a lot.

Nine months. She's promoted out of Accessories into Main Floor items and for a while, all she can talk about is the benefit of leather vs. any other material furniture has ever been covered with. I buy a sofa.

A year and a half, and I've decided OK, this is fine, this is good, but this just isn't going anywhere. It's not like we're getting married or anything, it's not like we're settling down, only I try and explain this and she just looks at me, pushing her index finger into her lower lip again, making that little dent in it before drawing it back into her lap and sipping at her latte, while I go on explaining why this doesn't work, why maybe we ought to see other people, why maybe Cal ought to take her little pink running suit and be on her way. "You can't enjoy anything, can you?" she asks finally, and I can't tell if she's talking about us or about how I've pushed my latte to the side of the table and I'm basically ignoring it, wasting two seventy-five and some coffee beans. Then she smiles, and leans over the table to brush her lips against mine, then bring them back and hold them there in a way that just kills me. "It's all falling into the ocean anyway," she whispers, her forehead locked with mine. "So it really doesn't matter."

She's gone again then. To the ladies room but she never comes back, and I'm sitting there and I don't know how long before I finally reach for my latte and finish it, lukewarm, in three swallows. It'd be just like her to be gone for good this time, I'm thinking as I'm driving home. It's be just like her to evaporate, and wouldn't that be wonderful and wouldn't that be great and wouldn't that possibly be just the worst thing that's ever happened to me is what I'm thinking as I pull up to the apartment and I don't have to look up to see the window is dark. There's nobody home. But I'm putting the key in the lock anyway, going inside, turning the lamp on, waiting.

She'll be back.

I know she'll be back. Because she's nuts and she's crazy and she's absolutely wrong for me and this is never going to work but maybe, just maybe, if California is really going to fall anyway, if we're all on borrowed time here, little gnats on the back of a living thing we thought was just a planet, and a living thing that's kind of pissed off at all of us by the way, she's absolutely perfect and right and what's supposed to be happening to me right now.

There are ladies to have fun with, and maybe, just maybe, if you brought them home to Sunday dinner it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I mean, it could all be falling into the ocean anyway, right?