Friday night was the Shabbas for the Jewish Film Festival.

It’s always held at the house of wealthy patrons who live just two blocks away from H&C. With this in mind, I dressed for work in my usual black party garb and carried my nice black boots in a plastic bag, since I didn’t trust their heels to survive the long walk to Cow Hollow. I ended up staying late at H&C anyway, (with Addie shadowing me and occasionally threatening me with health benefits and paid vacations.) At 7:00 I walked to the address on the invitation Michael had handed me that morning.

Fancy even by Cow Hollow standards, the house is on a huge corner lot, a pale square of a mansion fronted by a gate and edged with rosebushes and fountains. Two darkhaired, exuqisitely dressed women arrived at the same time I did, one of them delicately pretty, the other round-faced and jovial. The three of us wandered around the garden, too intimidated to penetrate that wealthy facade. I was embarrassed by the plastic bag I carried holding my ratty black high-tops, and kept thinking of an expression I’d heard once about a bad poker hand. “Like a shiksa’s wardrobe. Nothing matches.” When I pointed out a strawberry growing on a bush near one of the paths, the round-faced woman picked it up and popped it in her mouth. Her apblomb made me feel better.

At last someone poked their head out and invited us in. We walked past a strange pair of life-sized fabric dolls set in the marbelly, white-walled foyer, at the base of a stairway blocked off with a white silk cord, as if we were in a museum. The dolls looked like an elderly lady in a flapper outfit and an elderly man with a moustache, dressed in a tuxedo and yamulke. They were placed as if they were greeting newcomers.

There were a few other guests adrift in airy, perfecctly decorated rooms, a bar covered with a crystal regiment of glasses filled with white wine, occasional islands of bread, crackers and brie, clear plastic cannisters filled with jelliebellies and gummy worms. The main room for the party was next to the open kitchen, with windows looking out onto a balcony with a view of the Bay. Overhead was a ridge that indicated where a movie screen could be lowered. Larry, who always handles the catering for the Shabbas came over to say hello, complimenting me on the fact tht my hair is no longer dyed a shade of red that changed with every hairdresser appointment.

I wasn’t conscious of the number of people streaming in until talking and holding a drink had become difficult. Michael arrived, but got snagged on some folks somwhere near the entrance.

There were the usual rites. The challa was passed around and everyone introduced themselves. We ate salmon and salad, and Michael talked with an Israeli filmmaker, Eitan Wetzler, who’d known Michael back in Chicago when they both worked for an Israeli bank and Michael had been a young executive, Eitan a security guard.

What I mainly remember about that night are those fabric dolls, which were familiar from previous shabbas’ but always surprised me.