teller.
Author: Jinx
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Rumors of more food downsairs sent us into the lower level, very dark, very crowded, and noisy with a drum machine. Costumed performers on stilts, decked out in neon moved stiffly in time to the “music.” We found quite a srpead of food from Mediteranee. At one point, the Old Flame brushed past and I called his name, but he either didn’t hear or pretended not to hear and continued on his moody moony way.
We returned to the surface. Michael went out to talk to someone on the patio, but the wind was cold that night, and my leather jacket just not enough, so I retreated indoors. Michael and our friends returned bearing truffles. A lot of chocolate was at that reception. Ghiradelli squares were passed out in handfuls, cardboard-thin little bars with mushy chopped almonds in them. The Joseph Schmidt truffles were much better, but really, they can’t be appreciated at a party. They should be worshipped in solitude with a glass of port and a good book.
Two different people approached me asking to be introduced to Michael. One was a cameraman who works with the Spanish language network. The other was a funny looking fellow with narrow glasses, a receding harline, and a vaguely aerodynamic look. He was a filmmaker. Both seemed certain Michael has influence that could help them, and unconvinced by his assurances that this is untrue. The filmmaker, who is working on a feature, gave Michael his card.
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This was on the last day of summer school. It was a store-front school with mostly Chinese or Chinese-American students, and classes typically dwindled to only a few kids by tne end of the summer.
My high school English class that day had only three students, two regulars and one more, a boy I’d never seen before, apparently a friend of one of the other’s who had just kind of wandered in. I asked him why he was there, and that was his answer.
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Shirt-sleeve weather – unusual in this area. It was unthinkable for us to spend the day inside so after some discussion, we decided to ride down to Napa, something we’d been talking about doing for months. We needed some maps because ours had vanished after someone rummaged through the car last night. We decided to go out to lunch and pick up some on the way.
We walked down to the Rand McNally store on Market.
An enormous revolving globe about five feet high turned slowly in the window as a clerk ran a brightly colored duster over it. Maps and globes were everywhere, but they lack the comforting thickness of books, so the inside felt pale and skimpy to me. There were a few travel books, including a beautiful picture book of Bali. Tim mentioned that once his product is released he wants to take some time off and visit New Orleans. I may have trouble getting time off unless it’s between issues, but I would love to see New Orleans again in the spring.
Perhaps inspired by the store, we went looking for a restaurant called Globus that was mentioned in The Thrifty Gourmet. We found it on the corner of Bush and Grant, just inside the Chinatown Gate, a shabby little place but with a nice atmosphere. Our table near the window looked out onto a high rise across the street, which included a palmist where a blonde woman sat in the window talking on the phone.
The waitress barely spoke English, but she got our orders right and the food was delicious. Tim had unagi-don and I had the sesame chicken. We were the only people there because, the cook told us, most of their business came from office workers and they got little custom on weekends. He was young with a ponytail, very informed and friendly.
This was the 1980s, so the woman talking on the phone in the window would have been using a landline, IOW, a stationary phone hooked up near wherever she was sitting. She was likely the palmist herself.
The Rand McNally bookstore with its enormous revolving globe in the window was a sort of landmark on Market back then. Globus, which was good but no landmark, barely even noticable in fact, is long gone.
Our plans for what we would do when “the product comes in” was Gold Rush talk. As an 80s-era software engineer, Tim was constantly working on what he and his boss hoped would be the next important product that would make tons and tons of money. Most of the time, this never panned out. Like I said — Gold Rush talk.
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Daily writing promptYou’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
And it would be wonderful if it were a passenger train as passenger trains used to be, with sleeping berths, a dining car, etc. Airplanes are too claustrophobic, and while I do enjoy a good car trip, I’m prone to car-sickness — which completely rules out travelling by bus.
As for bikes — I’ve gotten a bit old for that strenuous a trip. Comfort is more important to me than it used to be.
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When Michael came in at about 6:00, he asked me why I wasn’t dressed to go out to the Opera House and I had to break it to him that we weren’t going. Disappointed but resigned, he suggested we go to a restaurant that had been recommended to him, out on Crown Street in Surrey Hills. This turned out to be closed for a private party, so we ended up wandering up and down a uninspiring section of Oxford Street, low, rather flat and dark and undecoratived.
That was where we found The Falconer.
The Falconer is the opposite of the restaurant we visited the night before. It’s in an easygoing neighborhood place, entered through an odd sliding glass door. Dim, but not completely dark, with wooden tables, young, casually dressed smiling staff. Staff and diners seemed to be friends with the place, to have come there not just to eat but to be comfortable. At one table, a large, battered-looking man talked earnestly to a slim, smiling, pretty woman, at another a crowd of twenty-somethings, some leaning back, some resting their elbows on the table, one girl nestled in the arms of her boyfriend. Everyone looked like they belonged, and not because they’d made an effort to belong.
A young, blonde, bearded aussie who was either in charge for the night or actually owned the place, very thin and hippyish, led us to a table near the front, and got us our menus. We were quite close to a window with a view of the flat, dark street. The shelf next to the table had some interesting things tucked into it — a yellow manual typewriter, magazines, a coffee table book on design. I had white wine, Michael had red. I had a delicious cappellini with tomatos and basil and chunks of warm ricotta. Michael had eggplant parmesan. The food came in huge bowls, garnished with thick slices of toasted bread that tasted faintly of salt and garlic.
All that was left to make the evening complete was gelato, which we got on Victoria Street, (very lively for a Wednesday night.) I carried away a dulce de leche in a cup, and Michael a cone of the passionfruit.
Even after we returned home, I remembered the Falconer, missed it, followed it on Facebook. It seemed like such a lovely, friendly place, and the comments I read were all not only enthusiastic about the food, service and ambiannce, but affectionate. This was plainly a loved neighborhood restaurant.
Not so long after we’d returned to the US, tragedy struck. During renovations, water had been left on upstairs. A flood. A floor collapse. Dismayed comments from lovers of the Falconer, sending their good wishes, asking when the place would reopen. From afar, I checked daily, hoping to see good news, but at last, after a couple of weeks, all those voices faded, and it was announced that the Falconer was no more. I still feel sad when I think about it.
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That’s the only person whose confidence I can accurately gauge.
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We’re in for another procession of gray days. No real sun until Tuesday, the weatherman says.
Yesterday I could not get up to the roof or exercise on my bike. When I wasn’t conferring with people via zoom or phone, I was up to my elbows updating and/or correcting the website. By 6:00 pm, I longed for mindlessness. For our dinner I made tomato bruschetta and unwrapped a brie.
My evening indulgence a couple of times a week since the quarantine began is a glass of port, sipped from a 2-ounce, Bristol-blue cobalt port glass that’s part of a set I inherited from one grandparent or another. A glass of port at the end of the night seems to have been a tradition in the early-to-mid 20th century, since both sides of my family did it. I can remember my dad’s father, Dick, (The nouveau-riche Texas/Alabama side) having a beautiful crystal decanter of Sandeman’s tawny port on his sideboard. My mom’s mother, Mollie, (The oldveau-riche Tennessee side) would, with great ceremony, be handed a glass of port by my grandfather every evening after dinner. Last night after I poured my own glass I saw Mollie looking back at me from the sideboard mirror, and I raised it to my/her reflection.
Neither Michael nor I are big drinkers, but we do have a couple of unopened boutique bottles we bought last autumn from the Lost Spirit’s distillery in Los Angeles — Abomination malt whiskey, and Carousel brandy. We agree they’ll be opened in celebration of something, but whether that will be the lifting of the quarantine or the results of the next election is still up for debate. It would be great to actually share them with friends, as in tapping glasses in the living room.
Last night, as we were folding the clothes he hauled up from the laundromat, Michael said he wanted to do another load of laundry today, and I put my foot down and said no. I’ll wash what needs washing myself here, in the apartment. I found some detailed instructions online about the best way to do this, and my current plan is to fill the bathtub with warm water and detergent, dump our jeans into it, and allow them to soak for awhile, occasionally swishing them around and squeezing. I remember a friend of mine in college putting her dirty clothes in a tub with detergent and hot water, and then taking off her sandals and prancing around on them to “When Electricity Came to Arkansas” like an old-fashioned wine-maker crushing grapes. She said she got the idea from Stephen King’s The Stand. Don’t know if I’ll go that far at my age.
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If I’m very angry — which doesn’t happen often — I go for a long walk. If I’m frightened or sad, I’ll take refuge in a book or a computer game, or I’ll write a story. My novel was begun shortly after my father was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him. It was a place for me to go.
One way I have of coping is playing The Sims. There’s something calming about the overview it offers, watching characters go from infant to child to adult. Sims offer context.
I’ve always made my Sims’ lives as realistic as possible. Some of them are pretty — most are not, or at least, they aren’t after they have hit adulthood, started having kids, gained weight, etc. Most just look ordinary, like the rest of us. (herewith, one of my favorite Sims — the formidable Laurette.)
Playing The Sims stimulates the part of the brain that tells stories. When I retire for the night, as I drift off, I can think of them instead of lying awake and pointlessly worrying about the state of the world.
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Rain, or rather, a perpetually falling mist. Everything is blurry. The Golden Gate Bridge is invisible, our street a white ribbon rising up and getting lost in the flat gray page of the sky behind Pacific Heights. It’s almost muggy, and the air is still, breeding insects. Last night, after the wind dropped and the temperature rose, I killed a mosquito, squashed into a red spot against the living room wall.
The closing night party for the Film Festival was on Thursday evening at the Masonic Center. We walked up the steps past an alfresco patio and bar, which I could not imagine anyone using on such a bitter night, and into the large foyer where a live jazz band played and a few tables were set up. Sticks of sate, (no sauce), a table of sushi where we were only allowed on piece each. Another table of Joseph Schmidt truffles, another with a selection of cheese. I stationed myself at the cheese table with a plate and loaded it with wheat thins smeared with supermarket brie. There, I fell into conversation with a stocky, gray haired man from Michael’s Film club, then made my way to another table, this one with handrolls. I helped myself to three, some peanut sauce, and a Calistoga. Then I wended back to Michael.
We bobbed around in the foyer as the crowd grew and the band seemed to get louder and louder. A guy I’d dated briefly before Michael appeared in the crowd with a thin long-haired girl and pretended not to see me. (If he hasn’t changed, I have no doubt that as soon as I was out of sight, he was frantically hissing at her that there was someone present he had to avoid.)
The Masonic Center can be spotted in the 1968 Steve McQueen film BULLITT, its facade with its faux-Egyptian carvings visible in a scene shot from across the street at Grace Cathedral. I’d passed it frequently, but this was my first time inside.
Film Festival parties were all about schmoozing and schnorring. Hungry filmmakers, writers, critics and other movie folk would descend upon the tables and gorge themselves (ourselves) on the free food, holding up paper plates, chewing, casting our eyes about to see what was offered, in what quantities and where it came from. Conversations were frequently interrupted by friends with bulletins about a table offering sushi/handrolls/sate/truffles/gelato/lavash/dolmades/jello shots in the other room.
The old flame I saw was a moody, good-looking Scorpio who , every time we went out, spotted some ex-girlfriend in the restaurant/movie theater. He’d spend part of the date with his head down, hiding his face with one hand like a mobster walking from a courthouse past reporters. I haven’t seen him in years, either because he’s moved from The City or because he finally cut such a wide swath through Bay Area women that he can no longer go out at all.
Pam Troy 