5: Cicero sees where Pangloss was coming from

In an effort to increase the degree of sympathy felt towards humble Cicero, and to avoid getting bogged down in the laborious weeds of the past, the narrator of this most esteemed history has withheld some important truths regarding his life; but now that he is living with our beloved pair of protagonists, all these will shortly come to light.

The first truth: in addition to being a disappointment to his namesakes, (a reality which has already been explored through the harsh words of the singular Gabriel Galilei), he was also a disappointment to his parents. His parents could be accurately described as the sort of couple to meet at Berkeley, have a single son, name him Cicero, and provide him “a childhood in which every day was thought out, yet from which no story emerged”, as one rival couple from the land beyond the Caldecott Tunnel put it upon gleefully learning that Cicero—unlike their sterling daughter—had failed to gain admission to his parent’s alma mater. Hence the disappointment. Had they heard this remark, they would have taken offense to it. They were masters of the art of taking offense at truths.

The second truth: the aforementioned sterling daughter was named Catalina, and Cicero loved her. He had begun loving her in a familiar way: in the curves of everyday conversation, in a high school classroom. And she had fatefully begun loving him back. Three months before their separation she had staked claim to the deepest recesses of his soul by telling him, “I like the sound of your voice.”Unfortunately, unlike most loves, his love for her enjoyed such a lack of friction that for a decade, by way of inertia, it had simply never stopped.

And so it was that by the time he moved into the resolute Victorian, for Cicero the world of love had been reduced to women on the one hand and Catalina on the other. At night when his room was cold he would pull his comforter past his head and tuck it behind his head, and as he waited for his body-heat to warm the air between the comforter and his skin he wold embrace his extra pillow and pretend that it was her and practice little flirtatious conversations with her.

One day, arriving home stressed and from work, he decided to talk a long run through Golden Gate Park. He crossed Stanyan and was waiting at the median between Kezar and JFK when he heard the swell of her voice, like distant waves crashing.

“Cicero?”

He turned and saw her in all of her coastal splendor, blonde over blue: Catalina! An angel in a white blouse—and now her blue eyes swelled up like the tide. The light turned green, he crossed, and her sweet voice sounded again as she waved:

“Cicero? Hi! My god, how have you been!”

“Catalina?” was all he could muster.

“Yes!”

She gave him a hug. It had been four years since he had seen her, briefly, at a Christmas party. They chatted for a minute or two about nothing that he could remember, because he was focused only on the warm summer night feeling of talking to her.

“Well, I don’t want to interrupt your run. But we need to catch up! Maybe we grab drinks sometime soon?”

“Yes, yes!”

“I’ll text you.”

She smiled and continued on her way, and he continued on his, and the world was filled with purpose. At last he understood the words of Pangloss! He ran down to Blue Heron Lake, where, overwhelmed with happiness and incapable of wiping the smile off of his face for long enough to breathe properly, he sat down on a bench and took in the scene. A pair of ducks were bobbing in front of him. Staring at the ripples on the water, he received the revelation that everything was perfectly in its place. All was quaint, so utterly particular to this time and place.

He laughed out loud at his luck, and a great boulder began to rumble down the mountain of his mind. Catalina had seen him and said hello. And she wanted to get drinks! And drinks were a date, surely, what else could they be? And why would she ask him on a date if she did not love him, like he loved her? with her now! And, well, Catalina Augustine—didn’t it sound swell? Who could deny that it rolled gracefully off the tongue? Oh, what a wonderful world!

He stood up and took a deep yoga-breath. Heading home, he felt that he could embrace any passerby on the street. As he came back through the Panhandle he saw that the peeling yellow paint of the grand Victorian was transfigured into an amber honey. And stepping inside, he was quite certain that there was nothing in the wide and wonderful world which could disrupt his pleasant state of mind.