A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins

oysters on the half shell.”
    She looks at me. We both make saucers of our eyes and let out a deep breath, laughing
     at our nervousness.
    “It’ll be my treat,” I say.
    She shakes her head. “I guess cute isn’t so bad.”
    •   •   •
    T HE CAB TAKES US through the dark top of Valencia, where the Mission peters out into grimy Market Street,
     the grand thoroughfare forever hovering at two o’clock on the city’s dial. We pass
     the antique shops and mattress shops and the big Honda dealership that many years
     ago was the Fillmore Ballroom. At Van Ness, the usual strays putter around the All
     Star Cafe in their wheelchairs, or plunge through the crosswalk, rattling a baby carriage
     full of cans.
    “At least it’s warm out,” Rachel says. She means, in comparison to the night we met.
    We get a glimpse of City Hall, which is lit up green tonight. Earth Day? Ramadan?
     Then it’s gone and we’re zipping past Seventh and Sixth, where the tired masses of
     the Tenderloin pour out like a delta into the plaza, shouting to each other in code,
     sitting along the fountain. The big shopping mall is next. The big Gap. The Apple
     Store. The great downtown shrines to buying shit. I love this little patch of skyscrapers,
     bristling with modest ambition. I don’t know why—in fact, my keenest memory here is
     a bad one, of trailing Erin through these streets like a sleuth, trying to figure
     out why she didn’t want to marry me. That was a bad week. She’d hatched a cockamamie,
     secret plan to get an ESL certificate and move to Latin America. She was so desperate
     for escape. That day, I followed her in and out of stores—careful at first, then brazen—and
     then down into the MUNI, where I spied on her while she read pamphlets. She was completely
     inside herself, and I realized I’d never seen her that way—unknowable and unknown.
     Exactly the way I felt. It seemed confirmation we were made for each other, however
     painfully.
    This turned out to be the wrong interpretation. Still, there are places in the city
     I’ll never go again—the top of Bernal Hill—but that sad day never transferred its
     sadness here. How much sorrow can you feel staring at a Cheesecake Factory?
    At a little table in the Ferry Building, Rachel rolls an oyster shell on the tips
     of her fingers, the overhead lights reflected in the gleam. The oysters are beautiful
     specimens from Point Reyes, silvery and plump. She rotates the shell toward me and
     then toward her, making strange faces, determining—it seems—the exact orientation
     for docking it in the mother ship.
    “You’ve had oysters before?” I say. I have to raise my voice. The restaurant is as
     crowded as a stock exchange.
    “I forgot how to do it.”
    “What kind of oysters did you have the last time?”
    “I don’t know. Like these. Maybe with some cheese on them.”
    “You’re sure you’re not thinking of nachos?”
    Her expression tightens, becomes prim. She sets the shell down, unwraps a knife from
     the napkin, and tries to cut the oyster freehanded. It slides up to the left lip of
     the shell and then to the right, like a skateboarder in a half-pipe. Then the shell
     tips and in a great clanking of utensils on bare plate she chases the oyster off the
     plate and onto the table. A bright red blush spreads from her shoulders to her hairline.
    “That was like a Marx Brothers movie.” She doesn’t look up, slouched like a scolded
     schoolgirl. “Hey.” I lean in to avoid shouting. “Look around. Nobody knows you.”
    “I know.” Her gaze remains pointed down.
    “There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”
    She’s still as a lizard while her color returns to normal. Then she looks up with
     a confident smile.
    “Guess I’ll try that again,” she says.
    “Take that little fork. Make sure the oyster is loose in its shell, then pour the
     whole thing into your mouth.”
    “No sauce?”
    “Your first oyster should be a pure