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medical marijuana.
    When Nadia first converted her attic into the freestanding room that’s now my apartment, she did it to grow marijuana plants in the space. The Russian free spirit had come to San Francisco in the 1960s and never left. Her pot-growing business was quite successful, and she found herself most dedicated to medical marijuana. Nadia hated waste, so after she retired from the business she turned the space into an apartment.
    I drove around several side streets on the south side of the Berkeley campus before I squeezed the car into a semi-legal parking space right off Telegraph Avenue. I stopped to buy myself a double espresso and gave my change to a homeless man with a “Starvin’ Like Marvin” sign before I stepped onto the grounds of the sprawling campus.
    Walking through Sproul Plaza, I was reminded of one of my first childhood impressions of my new home in the United States. When I moved to Berkeley, Sproul Plaza was no longer the hotbed of political activity that it had been in the 1960s, but I remembered the plaza well because I learned to ride a bike there.
    I found Michael in his office, staring at his computer screen with his brows drawn together. He didn’t notice me until I knocked.
    “Jaya, is that you?” He pulled off his reading glasses and greeted me with a hug. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
    “It’s been a busy year. You know how it is when starting out as a first-year professor.”
    “Right,” he said, glancing back at his computer. “Yes, of course.”
    “I can tell you’re busy, and this isn’t actually a social visit. I need some help identifying a piece of old jewelry from India.”
    “Lane Peters.”
    “What?”
    “A graduate student here,” Michael said. “He’s the best person to talk to about Indian jewelry.”
    “I thought that you could take a quick look—”
    “Lane Peters is your man,” Michael said, cutting me off.
    “—at a photograph,” I finished. “It’ll just take a minute.”
    “If Lane can’t help you, why don’t you email this photo of yours to me?”
    Before I could give a proper answer or farewell, I found myself back in the hallway.
    It had been almost a year since I’d seen Michael. We attended an exhibit at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum shortly after I moved back to the Bay Area, and he dropped me off at home afterwards even though I lived well out of his way. At the time he’d been a really nice guy, an older version of the carefree young man I’d known when I was a kid. I heard he’d recently divorced. He must not have taken it well.
    I shook off the rejection and followed the labyrinthine hallway in the direction Michael had pointed. I found Lane’s office in the midst of a stark basement hallway of identical doors. They were all closed. Not the most social bunch.
    I knocked on the door and heard a squeaking chair and faint footsteps. The door swung in a few inches. A lanky man with a lit cigarette in his hand looked out at me through the slit. He watched me for a few moments as smoke curled up from the cigarette. It didn’t look as if the highly esteemed Lane Peters was going to say anything or invite me in.
    “Michael Wells sent me to you,” I said.
    “Ah.” He pulled open the door, revealing one of the smallest offices I’d ever seen. Once I stepped inside, he closed the door and expertly maneuvered the small space to return to the chair behind his desk. Piles of faded books filled the office. Most of them were stacked on the sole bookshelf, with the overflow on the desk as well as two stacks on the floor. A small plastic fan hummed from the edge of the desk, and a small folding chair rested against the wall.
    Lane Peters’ attire matched the office. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses, baggy cargo pants, and a similarly loose-fitting dress shirt. Silky hair between blond and brown obscured his eyes, which might have been hazel. I glanced up at the smoke detector not far above his head in the closet-sized