note books

She emailed and I found her in San Francisco at her sister’s apartment on Twenty-First and Dolores near The Mission. I parked the Benz halfway down the block on a steep hill turning the tires into the curb as one does on those steep San Franciscan hills. The sun was hot and orange in the late aftenoon but the air was clean and nice. I walked under the shade of the Fichus trees. I rang the bell and waited. The heavy wooden door swung open and she skipped down the steps, she radiated and threw her arms around me and her hair was still wet and curled against my face. Sitting upstairs in the cool wood paneled apartment, pale beige with large old varnished wood-framed windows, books and magazines scattered on the chairs and the dusk light settling on her face and her ocean eyes and cheek bones, she seemed to run from her natural beauty. I hear the train whistle in Oakland tonight, the mournful wail across the warm and steaming night. She’s sitting on the bed and I’m crawling in, pulling m...