Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [79]
Today the waterfront has lost most of its flavor. The tuna trade is all but extinct, due to the closing of the city’s two remaining canneries in the early eighties. Although some fish are still trucked up the coast to a cannery near L.A., very few seiners put into port at San Diego, and most commercial fishing is done by pole from smaller bait boats. The old tuna piers sit blocked off and decaying. The tattoo parlors and taverns have been razed to make way for steel-and-glass high-rises that dwarf the older structures. Ships containing museums—the Star of India and the steamer Berkeley—draw tourists; restaurants have proliferated. Farther south, Seaport Village offers theme-park dining and shopping.
Still, it’s a pretty harbor, one of the prettiest in the world, and after I parked and began strolling along the Embarcadero, I felt a pang of regret for having left my native city. I found that if I looked toward the bay, I could call up some of the feel of childhood. The smells were right—fish and creosote and brine—and so was the warmth of the sun and brush of sea air against my skin. I ignored the throng of other strollers, tuned out their voices, and for a moment pretended I could hear the lilting Portuguese and Italian of the fishermen as they bent over their nets. But then a kid with an ice-cream cone slammed into me, nearly leaving a slick of chocolate on my jeans, and I was right back in the present.
By then I’d reached the area known as Tuna Harbor. A huge restaurant complex and parking lot sat at the edge of the water, and then the land curved inward, sheltering what was left of the fleet—bait boats berthed in their slips. There were benches along the sidewalk, many of them occupied by derelicts. I slowed, looking around for Professor Haslett. When I spotted him on the southernmost bench, I felt something of a shock; he barely resembled the distinguished, impeccably attired gentleman I’d conversed with at the Christmas Eve gathering.
Today the professor looked like one of those eccentric characters you often see along waterfronts: white-bearded, his thick mane protected by a shabby seaman’s cap, wearing old khaki pants and a threadbare blue-and-white striped shirt. An old-fashioned black lunch box, like the one I remembered my uncle Ed carrying, sat open beside him, and he’d set out a little picnic: sandwich, chips, bottle of Guinness stout. His keen blue eyes surveyed the boats with a touch of bewilderment, as if he wondered how our tuna fleet had come to this.
I went up to him and said, “Professor Haslett, do you remember me? Sharon McCone. We met last Christmas Eve.”
He looked up, squinting into the sun. “Of course, you’re Kay McCone’s girl.”
“Yes.” It still sounded strange to hear my mother called Kay. When she met Melvin—while doing her wash in one of the self-service laundries he owned, of all things—she’d introduced herself by the diminutive of Kathryn that she favored, rather than as Katie, which was what my father had always called her. Most of the people in her new life knew her only as Kay, and sometimes hearing the new name made me feel—quite irrationally—that in choosing it she’d rejected everything that had gone before, including me and my siblings. Hearing the professor speak it now brought to my mind a fragment of an old song—something about being out of step, out of time—and in keeping with my resolve to let go of things past, I shook off the last