"Lady, I've lived in this city my whole life. Everybody looks like they play the accordion." He sat back. "I'll get it. Give me till one-thirty."
"What do you do?" she said, to change the subject, and because she found, somewhat to her annoyance, that she wanted to know what had made those calluses.
"I drive a cable car."
"Nobody drives a cable car."
His face lit up, the way a man's face lights up when someone has finally asked the right question at a party. "Thank you. Thank you. You'd be amazed how many people don't know that. You're exactly right. Nobody drives it. There's no engine. The engine's a mile away, down at Washington and Mason, in a brick building the size of a church, turning these big wheels fourteen feet across, and the wheels pull a steel cable under the street at nine and a half miles an hour, day and night, and the cable doesn't care about you. It doesn't stop. It never stops. All I do is reach down through a slot in the street with a big pair of iron jaws and grab it." He made a fist and drew it back toward his chest, a slow, strong motion that explained the calluses at once. "That's the grip. You take hold, you go. You let go, you coast. The whole art of it is knowing when to hold on and when to let go."
"That sounds like a metaphor."
"Everything sounds like a metaphor if you stand on a hill long enough." He picked up his fork, at last, and attacked the meatloaf. "I talk all day. That's the other half of the job. Some fellow from Ohio wants to know why it's called Nob Hill, I tell him. Lady from Osaka wants a picture with me holding the grip, she gets one. Kid wants to ring the bell, I let him ring the bell, if his mother says it's okay and his hands are clean. Eight hours, I don't shut up. So believe me, sitting here not bothering you is the most restful thing that's happened to me since Easter."
"You've talked continuously since you promised not to bother me."
"I'm not bothering you. I'm conversing. You asked me a question."
"I asked what you did. I didn't ask for the history of the San Francisco Municipal Railway."
"That was the short version." He grinned at her. It was a dangerous grin; it took up most of his face and seemed to assume that you were in on the joke. "The long version has a slide show."
Hettie brought the tuna melt and the iced tea and set them down with a significant look that Mina declined to receive. The jukebox moved on to INXS, and the men from Public Works stopped arguing about the Giants and started arguing about Dukakis.