I met a modern-day Gatsby in San Francisco in the mid-1980s. His friendly wife was a receptionist in the giant office in the Financial District where I worked as a clerk, and she introduced us. She had giant blue eyes, clear pale skin and dark long hair – our office Elizabeth Taylor.

She wore a giant diamond on her ring-finger, the biggest I’ve ever seen. She called it “our retirement.” Other ladies at work whispered about the ring, saying it was too showy, inappropriate for work, other people couldn’t afford jewelry like that.

The wife was indiscreet, and told me probably too much, but I’m scrupulous about names and dates and locations so it was OK.

One day she asked me to dog-sit while her family traveled, and she invited me over to their condo to meet the dog. I also met the husband and her son, from a previous. The Gatsby character had adopted him – the boy kind of looked like the new dad.

My Gatsby was boyish with soft blond hair and wide-open blue eyes, a friendly, direct manner, natural and warm smile. He was a guy you’d meet at the golf course clubhouse and enjoy a drink with, casual and at ease, relaxing to be with.

The little family lived in a large if unostentatious condo on the sunny west side of lower Russian Hill, just above Van Ness Avenue. That’s where my Gatsby differed from the fictional Gatsby. There was no conspicuous consumption, no wild parties.

He was a real estate investor. The wife told me at work that they’d moved from south Florida. He’d made a lot of money in cocaine in the 1970s. They fled for the West Coast just when things were getting heavy – they were smart and got out while they could. The big rock she wore on her finger, their “retirement,” was a conversion of gains from the Trade.

My Gatsby’s uncle was a real estate developer in San Francisco, and he plowed most of his earnings into the uncle’s business. The wife pointed out a newish condo complex, very nice, on a good part of Van Ness near Opera Plaza. The uncle had developed it partly with the Miami money. The family was doing well when I dog-sat, happy, established.

The receptionist left the company – didn’t really need to go to work, I guess – and I lost contact. A co-worker ran into her and said she’d “gotten really weird.” I did bump into her out shopping one day, and she’d bleached her hair platinum blonde. It was yellow and stiff like straw and didn’t suit her. She’d split from the Gatsby character, too. We had nothing to talk about.

I pulled the Gatsby guy’s name out of my memory as I was writing this – I began without knowing his name, but thinking about him helped and it popped out. So I googled him, and there on the Internet was a fresh mug shot. I’m pretty disappointed – his arrest was for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, in a bleak farm state in the Midwest.