Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

San Francisco Days …

One more phone call to make, one more errand, one more thing to run down, a couple more tasks to complete at work. My life was a mess, a never-ending stream of bad-hair days. I mean literally, my appointment with the hairdresser was overdue, and I needed to find a good salon quickly. Mitra, that’s me. Messed-up Mitra. Sumitra Reddy on my passport, though I haven’t used a passport in ages.

I’d just moved to the Bay Area a week ago. Missed Baltimore already. Bay Area was really nice - I could see why people wouldn’t want to move once they came here. I’d heard about all the downsides – high rents, traffic, and all that. Even the “too many desis there” line - this from a nose-in-the-air wanna-be-debutante I used to know in Baltimore. But I really didn’t care. The sunshine was good .. it was good to see water everywhere. It seemed like you couldn’t go very far without having to cross one bridge or the other across the San Francisco Bay. And on a nice summer day like this, you could see hundreds of sailboats out on the bay. All the same, I missed the small-town-ish and intimate culture of Baltimore and the tree-filled campus of Johns Hopkins. A shadow moved across, and I looked up & smiled at the tourist with the camera around his neck - he was oblivious to everything else but the view of the bridge.

I’d taken this drive out to the Marin headlands, following up on a tip from someone at work. I liked it here… sunny, windy, the ocean down to my right, and the bay on my left. Well, things were coming together. Sort of. The new job was OK, the boss seemed on top of things, and the co-workers appeared to be a nice bunch of folks. My car was on its way, along with the rest of my meager possessions - the shippers had promised to be here in a couple of days. I’d just signed a lease on a cute little studio in the hills. Not too bad a commute to work, but a bit more expensive than I’d budgeted. But I liked the neighborhood, and there was a state park right next door. Plus easy driving distance from the city.

And a mess - that’s what I’d left behind in Baltimore as well. The thing with Navin hadn’t been going anywhere for a few months. Needy would be a strong word to use, but the truth about how I felt about him wasn’t too far from that. Things were at a blind end on the intimacy-side as well, especially since I’d been so confused about the whole relationship in the first place. I didn’t want yet another complication in my already jumbled life. Anyway, a clean break was, I guess, what was called for… and a clean break was what I got when I picked up this job offer from a Palo Alto-based startup. Navin said he’d try to come to SF during the Thanksgiving break, but I guess he could see it in my eyes - that I wasn’t leaving just Baltimore behind. He was just trying to be nice. Maybe he’ll find someone .. just not me. So I was glad I’d settled that. And yet, I missed his easy companionship too.

I looked at my watch … time to head back home. I got up, brushed myself, and walked back to the car.

San Francisco Nights …

The sun was going down, and I was still stuck in traffic trying to get home in one piece. I fiddled with the radio in the car, the local news station had something on a “jack-knifed big rig 2nd lane from the left…all lanes blocked .. CHP on the scene ..blah blah”. I got off the freeway at the next exit, cursing myself. I should have taken 280. Damn.

It had been a few months now, since I came to the Bay Area. And I still wasn’t as familiar with the roads as I should be, especially on days like this. Especially today when I was expecting Erica for dinner. She was going to drive up from Santa Cruz, crash in my place, and we were going to go together to San Francisco the next day for the Fleet Week celebrations.

I was settling in at work, and it was going well. Life outside work was OK. I didn’t have too many friends in the area, and frankly, I liked it that way. I had some time to just live on my own. I’d started doing a few things I’d always wanted to, things I’d kept putting off while in Baltimore. Now I had all the time in the world and no excuses. I enrolled in a writing workshop in a community college near work. I saw tons of movies at home. My older sister lived in Reston, just outside Washington DC, and she was constantly on the phone with me. Mum & Dad, who lived near my sister, were OK too. They missed me, and they missed being just a 2-hour drive away from me. They asked about Navin - I had taken him home once for Thanksgiving. And they had got along well. But I didn’t want to bother them with explanations … in any case, I was pretty confused myself. If they had asked me why I wasn’t interested in Navin, I doubt if I could’ve given them a coherent answer. Just that I wasn’t comfortable continuing something that I was losing interest in.

Erica was new to the area too. She’d started work a couple of weeks after I joined the company. And her office was 2 doors down the hallway from mine. We’d just said hi a couple of times while passing each other. Till Erica came by one day - “Hi, I’m Erica. I’ve seen you around and just thought I’d say hi. And see if you wanted to get some lunch”. We decided to walk a couple of blocks & grab a sandwich. She told me she had a long commute too - in the other direction. She was house-sitting an uncle’s home in Santa Cruz. She said her parents were originally from Santa Cruz, but they’d moved away when Erica was still a toddler.

We went out for lunch often after that. We exchanged CDs, books. Went for a couple of concerts together. Exchanged stories. Navin. Erica’s failed first marriage. Parents. Siblings. She had a motorbike, and sometimes, the days she brought her bike in to work, we’d go all the way to Half Moon Bay for lunch. I loved the ride, sitting behind Erica, the wind in our faces while leaning into the curves on the twisty road. It was fun being with Erica - she lived life full-throttle.

Finally reached home, after taking the city streets to avoid the parking lot on the freeway. 6:10. Erica had said she’d try to make it by 7. And “please don’t cook, Mitra, let’s just go out & grab something”. But I thought I’d make some dinner and surprise her.

Erica called around 6:45 and said she’d probably get to my place in 20 minutes. I’d almost finished the pasta when the doorbell rang. She’d stopped along the way to pick up some pastries from that French bakery in the Stanford mall, and she’d brought some wine too. We grabbed our jackets to go pick up a movie from a nearby video store, just in case we felt up to it after dinner.

Dinner was done. Dishes put away. We got bored after watching the movie for a few minutes. We made some coffee, dimmed the lights in the room, and went out to the patio. It was beautiful. Lots of twinkling lights & wisps of fog - the houses in the cities downhill from us all the way down to the bay, now an inky blackness. The wind had picked up, but it wasn’t uncomfortable yet. We were quiet for a while. I glanced sideways.. and Erica was looking at me. With a little smile. She reached out and took my hand. I looked away, my heart beating so fast I was almost dizzy…and then turned back . She was still holding my hand. She was still looking at me, still smiling.

The sun had come up, and was shining thru the window. I looked at the clock beside my bed. 9:35. And I looked at the still sleeping mass of red hair next to my pillow. A new day. New beginnings.