And if more, then more what? Pain, that's what Mel must have thought, driving up here, stopping at every wildflower patch on the ugly flat north-south freeway, taking two days for a seven-hour trip. Hell, oh, hell.

So we'll talk about Berkeley. Do I know a lot of people here? he inquires neutrally. The town is pretty, he suggests. Land mines, even these innocent forays. It's too early for him to ask, these friends, are they good friends, were you happy with them; was it OK for you here until just before the end?

Pause. Turn a corner. "So, hey," he says, "you're looking really good."

I've chosen the restaurant because of nostalgic association. Maisie's specializes in crab-cakes and flaunts a carefully vulgarian motto, MAISIE'S HAS CRABS. During our three years of marriage we lived in Baltimore and in Washington. And Baltimore is famous for its crab-cakes. We heard a lot about crab-cakes; not that we ate them much ourselves, we were too poor for that, but we knew all about them.

We settle down at the restaurant's best table, secluded in a nook with a view of a terrace. "Tell me about your magazine," I say. While I've spent my life teaching and writing, Mel has been publishing his magazine, a trade journal.

He shrugs. "I started it in my backyard garage; it supported my family. I had to be my own boss; I was blacklisted, y'know?"

Yes, I know. We're silent for a minute, remembering. I think at him, "You never got arrested nor summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. And neither did I. I remembered you during that time, Mel. I wrote poems about the two of us. I even put you in my novel."

"I want to talk about Mikey," Mel says.

Mikey. He used to call him that. How strange. Mikey, Diana and Mel, the trio. Yes, I, too, want to talk about Mikey, our son, so sweet and gentle, with too many talents.

I ask for stories about the rest of Mel's family. He has a beautiful daughter, he says, she's a reformer; a nice son, also a reformer. "Those genes get passed on, maybe, huh?" He looks pleased. I talk about my youngest, Andrew, a writer, a reformer, a newspaperman.

I'm feeling something I can't express, that as we talk about the children they begin to seem real; they're us and verge on being joint property.

I'm the first one to act out the impulse. I raise my glass with the tag-end of my wine in it; then together we lift almost empty glasses. "A toast to our kids," I say. The sun makes a path across the uneven bricks of the terrace and hits the window in a bright assaulting splash.

"I'm drunk," I tell him on the way out. "I'm out of practice for drinking; let me hang on to you, don't go away now."

"Right. Count on me."

He doesn't mean it, of course; it's just something you say; he'd offer that to any lady who was wobbly and needed help. "Just count on me now." And yet, I tell myself, he does mean it, in a way. We're climbing into his convertible now; he says, "Thanks for the crab-cake dinner." "It was a good dinner." I lean back against the padded leather headrest. Summer is still with us and darkness will come late; we'll drive back to Kensington through this elegant bright Berkeley sunset.

Real life is more convoluted than its outline, and it takes us six months of exploration, conversation, recollection ("I dreamed about us last night -- you know, that Labor Day picnic?") before we make our decision. It happens at the top of a small mountain peak outside Los Angeles. (We've been taking turns commuting between Los Angeles and Kensington.)

At the summit, 35 Girl Scouts are squealing, pushing, giggling and eating baloney sandwiches, but we circumvent them and scramble around the hill, where we hunker down over supermarket beer poured into plastic glasses.

We raise the glasses, touch, and stare solemnly. "Shall we?" And we agree that, yes, we will.

That was 13 years ago, and we're still together. We have hope, taste, interest, enthusiasm in common. And we're in love. We think we always were.

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