"What Do You Do in San Francisco?" (1967)

One of the interesting points about this story by Raymond Carver is that it's hard to say who it is about. The first-person narrator, a mailman, declares up-front, "This has nothing to do with me." He tells us all about himself. Then there is the couple he's formally concerned with, the Marstons, whom he refers to as beatniks. The narrator's name is Henry Robinson. He's divorced and hasn't, he mentions, seen his children in 20 years. The Marstons have moved to the small town of Arcata in Northern California, and Robinson, their mailman, spends the story trying to figure them out. They are young, apparently unemployed (Robinson presses suggestions for work, but they ignore him), and they have three young kids, two girls and a boy. Robinson decides almost right away he doesn't like the woman, and in fact, as the story goes along (and it's not that long), he soon has a very strong dislike of her. Which approximately mirrors our dislike of him. He's clearly a dick even though he tries to act like an easygoing sort of happy regular fellow. The most glaring questions here are about Robinson's former life, just as his are about the Marstons'—not so much his divorce as why he hasn't seen his own children in so long. My sense is he's just kind of an emotional deadbeat who can't live up to his responsibilities, even as he judges the Marstons. He casually washes his hands of any responsibility he doesn't care to acknowledge. It's possible he's precluded from seeing his kids for some legal reason, but he's also the kind of guy who would bring that up as excuse in his own defense. Anyway, he tracks the lives of the Marstons as much as a mailman can (which turns out to be a fair amount) and reports the details in this story. Eventually, in his telling, Robinson's hunch about the Marston woman is right, as she runs away with another man, leaving the children behind. The story has Carver's abrupt tone and shifts in focus, as if coming from a place of constant distraction, a remarkable sketch of the modern mind coping with confusion. The pseudo-spying aspect is entertaining and the revelations are often startling, almost but not quite adding up to something in a way that feels like typical life. The strange sloppiness of the title may be speaking to that turmoil of distraction. The question that occurs in the story (emphasis mine) is "What did you do in San Francisco?"—a passing remark in a casual conversation. Small talk. Why is it the title and why is it changed? I don't know, but I like a lot of things about this one.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)