9/24/00

Shannon pulled the blanket around her closer and we talked about the fog.

"It will burn off in the morning," I said. She nodded. "So what do you do?" I asked her. It was the fog talking. The fog was not going to lift.

"I work at Yahoo."

"Right. The portal."

"Yeah. I’m in promotions. It’s exciting. Those banners you see on the front page."

"Neat. I like Yahoo. I go there when I am searching for something on the internet."

"Yes. It’s really getting big. We’re experiencing growing pains. When I started there were 1,600 employees. Now there must be double that."

I nodded my head. It was my own fault. I was the one who had brought up the fog. Shannon seemed like a nice enough girl, though in the apartment I could see she was wearing a dress that was trying to force her body into a shape it didn’t naturally have. But that wasn’t really the issue.

I told Shannon that I was a writer and I was interested in getting involved in prison reform. This was mostly true. What went unsaid was that I had come into $40,000 and that enabled me to take time off and not work and pretend to be a concerned citizen and an artist.

There was a girl with me at the party, Hanni. Hanni is my friend’s niece. She just moved to San Francisco from Iowa to attend a fashion school. People were nice to Hanni but Hanni is young, only 19. Everyone at the party was at least 27. I’m 28 myself. A few hours in Hanni and I were good and drunk and Hanni suggested we take a drive.

Bernal Heights border the southern end of the Mission District. We drove past the old hospital and then turned to go up the hill.

"Do you know where we’re going?" she asked me.

"Of course."

The road spiraled and turned and soon we were at the top. We walked around the radio tower to the front face and saw God.

The Mission lay below us, a valley about a mile and a half square. To the right the lights of downtown flickered and blinked at us. They were spectacular against the darkness. Even the bay bridge stretching into Oakland was spectacular. On top we could really see the fog coming through the hills to the west. A thread had succeeded in working through the northern valley and hung over the Haight and Hayes Valley. Fingers of smoke lingered behind the buildings downtown, ready to clench up like a fist and come down into the mission, if the wind would just change, or the pressure drop.

"See. We live in the clearest area of the city," I told Hanni. "The rest of the city is covered in fog. It’s around their knees."

"I didn’t realize how important fog is to San Francisco." She pulled the hood up on her jacket and pushed her hands into the pockets.

"It is. It’s the most important thing."

"Where’s the Golden Gate Bridge?"

I pointed Northwest. "Just there. You can’t see it now. It’s there, beyond Pacific Heights."

"The Presidio?"

"The same. A huge area. Cliffs and rocks jutting out of the ocean."

We stood on the face of the hill. We were drunk. Below us was a trail that joggers could run during the day. They would run up the hill and near the top they would start doing laps on the dirt trail dug into the side. San Francisco despite all of its hills is easy to run in because the city is so beautiful, so singularly spectacular. It is hard not to want to move through it, to devour it with your eyes.

"I could push you and you would fall down the hill and die," Hanni said. I looked down. I didn’t think so. It wasn’t steep enough. We decided it was too cold and got back in her car and drove home.