AZOTUSLAND Chapter Eighty-Three

That Saturday night as Maugham's flight left the pad for Seattle, Jim sat down with Ian and Matisse at a Chinese Restaurant in Fairfax. Ian had just purchased a 96 Mustang in near perfect condition for a song so he drove.

Ian was quiet like his father but there was a lot going on under the surface. The two of them did not talk often, but when they did it was generally deep and there was much mutual respect. Jim admired the young man like a man he would meet and admire instead of just being a son.

The young man was very good with his young sister. She adored him and in some ways he was almost a second father to him as often happens after divorce. They sat on the same side of the table and Matisse purred when her sizzling rice soup came and Ian made sure to foil Jim's attempts to get a potsticker with his own chopsticks on several occasions.

When the waiter brought out the ginger oysters and the sweet and sour prawns Jim turned a little serious with Ian and said "I'd like you to consider running an Azotus in Santa Cruz."

Ian was taken aback and smiled quietly. He had not expected this but it wasn't foreign to him.

"Do I get to hire some of my friends?" he asked.

"Of course...the hard-working ones," Jim smirked. "And we are talking about next year, not this one. In the meantime I'd like to see you start to do some lectures in the library on things you care about and also do some movie nights. Are you open to that?"

"Love to," Ian said smiling. "Bout time you asked."

**********

Maugham arrived in Seattle and found his way through the strange terminal and picked up a Lincoln Continental at the rental agency. Pushing up I-5 toward the city he decided it best to get the lay of the land before checking into The Edgewater.

Seattle fascinated Maugham. When Jim had decided to do an Azotus one of the places they had traveled to was Seattle to look at locations. They decided after doing the "Starbucks Game" (where you leave one and walk to the next one visible and see how long you can go) that Seattle was impossible. They would have to be more subversive and Jim had "treated Maugham to a long lecture on the nature of the word "subversive" about sub-texts and alternate version of perception. Maugham, who rarely drank, had order a third beer by the time Jim finished.

Still, after looking at several old decaying buildings and abandoned factories, they had walked the waterfront, stopped in at Elliott's for a drink and two plates of oysters.

The oysters were good, flavorful and fresh and went down nicely with the Bloody Mary's which were spicy and well peppered. They talked about the city and what could be done. Then Jim changed the conversation to the oysters.

Maugham started to laugh. "I suppose you are going to give me a lecture on oysters now," he said.

"I'll try and not," Jim said taking a drink and then slipping down another cool and silvery treasure from Puget Sound.

"But note," he said "how small they are." and Maugham just wagged his head.

Jim had gone on about the kumamoto oysters that had become extinct off the southern most island of Japan, but still thrived in Humboldt Bay because some visionaries had seen clear to transplant millions of seed to the colder bay a few decades before pollution in Japan would kill off the indigenous first family.

Maugham was bored but perked up when Jim mentioned the unusually plump, large and flavorful oysters of Pt. Reyes. Maugham had grown up in the Bay Area and had always loved the coastline there. Jim explained that the original owner of the local oyster company in Pt. Reyes had devised a new way of seeding them that took full advantage of the protected and clean waters of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The oysters where stacked in racks in the Estero above the mud and sand and in the pristine waters they grew in size and health.

"Until they are shucked and eaten," Maugham said.

"Yes, well, there is that," Jim said.

"When we get back why don't we take a road trip to Inverness?" Maugham said.

And that is how, eventually, Azotus came to reside first in San Anselmo, just 25 minutes from Inverness, Bolinas and Pt. Reyes to the West and the same to San Francisco to the South.