A SAN FRANCISCO STORY

When I tried to explain my brief fling with Carol Richards to my cat Mikki I realized it was a typical San Francisco story.   New girl comes to town---attractive, smart, sexy---young man of modest achievement, that’s me, gets to her first and they become a couple.    Young man starts thinking of more permanent connection but she has more ambitious plans.

I was a New Yorker who’d come to California, had been in San Francisco for a year, had a reasonably good job as a media buyer in an ad agency, also had a car and an apartment (the modest achievements).   I also had a cat, Mikki, who a girl at the agency I was interested in at the time had persuaded me to take as a kitten.   The girl had since left  but Mikki had stayed.

I met Carol Richards when I visited a  friend at the guest house he was staying.   At that time, in the 1950’s, guest houses, a fancier name for what used to be called boarding houses,  were very popular with young people in San Francisco.    You got a room and two meals a day at a fairly reasonably rate and stayed there until you were able to get your own place.

My friend had invited me for dinner.   Afterwards, a bunch of us went to a nearby bar for some drinks, the kind of bar with sawdust on the floor, beer in pitchers and peanuts to go with them.   I saw at once that Carol was the most attractive girl there and contrived to sit next to her.   She’d been in the city for only a month and was working as a secretary in, what else, an ad agency.    So we had something in common right away.   I’d been to Europe while in the Army.    She’d gone to Europe as a graduation present.   Something else, almost, in common.   I asked her out to dinner; she accepted.     The story had begun.

I’ll skip over the next couple of months, which were a lot of fun as I, by now a veteran San Franciscan, was able to show her all over the place:  Golden Gate Park, the Marina, Sausalito, the Buena Vista, Sam’s in Tiburon.   The only cautionary note was that, when Carol stayed over at my place, Mikki was neutral to her.   Maybe I should have been put on alert but the first real warning came when we went to one of those Friday-night-the- workweek, thank God, is- over parties that everyone went to in those days.

This particular party was big, about a hundred people crammed into a not very large apartment, noisy and smoky, and after a couple of hours, when people started getting drunk, I was ready to leave.    I spotted Carol in a corner  talking intimately with a large red-faced fellow wearing not only a suit but a vest.   I pushed my way through my way through to her and said, “What a mob.   I’m ready to go.”

“Oh, no,” she said.   “We were just having this fascinating conversation.”    She introduced me to the Vest, whose name I promptly forgot.   The Vest held a drink and a cigarette in one hand and was swaying back and forth.  

“What’s so fascinating?”

“He’s an account executive in my agency.   He just got divorced.      He was telling me about his ex- wife.   She used to throw things at him.”

“Definitely fascinating, but I can hardly breathe in here.   Why don’t we get some fresh air?”

“Oh, don’t be a party pooper.”   Carol’s color was high, as it always was when she was drinking, and her words were a little slurred.   Just then the Vest settled the matter by muttering something incomprehensible and passing out onto a nearby couch.   It was too late to save his drink, which spilled, but I put out the still burning cigarette.   “Ready to go now?” I asked.

Carol looked a little surprised.   “Yes, I suppose so.”   In the car, she said, “He was the first divorced man I ever met.   I thought he was interesting.”

 “Maybe he was, while he was conscious.”   I reached over and kissed her.    That was the end of the quarrel but not of the uneasy feeling I was getting.

Another few weeks went past, then Carol called  to say she couldn’t see me that weekend, she wasn’t feeling well.   “I’ll come over,” I said, picturing her pale-faced in her bed.

“No, I feel lousy and I look lousy.   Don’t come.   I’ll call you.”

I put down the phone and looked at Mikki.   “Well, people do get sick.”

When Carol   called, it was to tell me that she was going away the next week to visit some friends in Monterey.   “It’ll give me a chance to rest,” she said.  “I’ll call you when I get back.   Oh, did I tell you about my promotion?   I’m not a secretary any more.   I’m going to be an executive assistant.”

I didn’t know exactly what that was but congratulated her anyway.   “I’ll buy you dinner when you get back,” I promised.   I also wondered whether the executive she’d assist was the Vest.   I’d ask her at dinner when she returned.

But when Caol returned, she and two other girls from the guest house decided to move into their own apartment.   I helped them move, along with at least a dozen other guys.    We made a party of it, with beer and pizza, which was fine, but I could never find a chance to talk to Carol.   Then the next two weekends she was busy fixing up the new apartment.   

About that time we had a crisis at my ad agency.   A big account was threatening to leave, a periodic event in the ad business, and everyone had to work late nights and over weekends     I called Carol a few times during this period  and she told me that she too was terribly busy.   Since her  promotion the work kept piling up.    By now even I suspected that the thing with Carol was ending, if not over, and I told Mikki as much.   But I still wanted to see her, even if it was for the last time.   I suppose I just wanted to make sure.

Finally, I had a night off and Carol was free so we arranged to meet after work and I’d buy her that celebratory dinner.   When I got to the restaurant, she was at the bar with another girl from her agency and, it seemed, two men, also from her agency.    She introduced me to them.   They were both beefy and shiny-faced, as if covered in oil, vice presidents no less, from the Los Angeles office.  

One of them ordered a round of drinks for everyone.   Carol, I saw, wore a business suit.    Her color was high and she talked rapidly, explaining that the VPs, Tom and Jerry or whatever their names were, were in  San Francisco on a business trip and had offered to take us all out to dinner.   Somehow this was not the evening I’d envisaged.   “I thought I was taking you out to dinner,” I said.

“Tom and Jerry don’t have anywhere else to go tonight and I’d like to show them the town.”

“Sure,” I said.   Suddenly I felt incredibly tired, as if I’d boxed ten or twenty rounds.   Maybe working all those late nights had caught up with me.    The restaurant was warm and I felt a little dizzy.   I’d wanted to talk to Carol but spending the night with Tom and Jerry was out of the question.    “Excuse me for a minute,” I said.   “I have to make a phone call.”   I walked out to the restaurant lobby, then past the phone booth, then out the door into the blessed cold air, then kept on going up Sutter Street to my apartment.