Egad. Only about $275 in the checking account. At least we know the rent check went through.

Charlie’s plum tree is beginning to bloom. Last year he had a party to celebrate it but I’m not sure he will this year. Since they built the house next door and spoiled his view, bitterness has filled his soul. He keeps the drapes on that side of his house closed, and last week I saw him leaning on the rail of his porch and staring gloomily down at the construction. It’s a big, handsome house, painted gray with white trim, and it’s pretty seen through the branches of the plum tree.

Still, it’s a pity. When I was still doing paste-up, I used to watch for deer, which would walk into the empty lot where the house is now standing and look for windfall plums. I will miss them.

When I began at Locus in 1986, we were still using old-fashioned paste-up, and I worked mainly at a table in the living room, against the broad picture windows looking out onto the deck and the plum tree and the woodsy East Bay Hills. Charlie would sit at his desk against the same window on the other side of the room, usually on the phone. There was a tone he used when he said people’s first name to notify anyone listening he was speaking to someone important. “Bob!” said in a certain way was not any old “Bob” but Robert Silverberg.

“Poul!” (Anderson) “Greg!” (Benford), “Pat!” (Murphy) , ” Chip!” (Delaney), and I could swear, on one amazing occasion, “Stephen!”

My own table typically had a paste-up board, a hot roller and wax, carefully cropped word-processed paragraphs I’d typed up and run out in the back office, red tape for where photos went, and an open magazine (usually VOGUE) to use as a base when waxing the little paragraphs before affixing them to the board. I enjoyed my job. If Charlie wasn’t conversing with someone interesting on the phone — or better yet, in person — he played good music on his stereo, and the view from the window into the plum tree was relaxing. I remember watching several deer, three does and two fawns, browsing below in the shade, nuzzling the grass for fallen fruit. If you walked out onto the deck they would not run away, but look up with interest and move forward hopefully, in case you dropped something edible.

By this entry, we had abandoned paste-up for Aldus Pagemaker, I was permanently at the computer in the back office, and Shelly was at my old desk by the window.