°°°°°°°°°

It was christmas eve, 1982. Raining late afternoon. Downtown streets empty. Meryl and I crouched together in the doorway of 44 Montgomery under a short awning waiting for a radio call on our walkie talkies. The rain poured down in front of us in thick opaque sheets. Our radios were silent. No deliveries to be made. The rain was the only sound. Unusual in this typically bustling financial district. Everyone had gone home to family and dinner and holiday plans. It was peaceful. Almost surreal. And I felt this euphoric wave vibrate through my body. One of those brief ecstatic flashes.

Then I heard the music. A lone trumpet. Like ribbons of longing, music moved slowly down Montgomery. The lonely sound of christmas on these drenched and deserted streets. First Meryl then I got a radio call from Sal. As I pedaled slowly in the wrong direction up the one way street towards 'triple-five Cal' I saw the trumpeter standing in the B of A doorway out of the rain playing his heart out to no one. His pitiful wool hat sat a few feet away on the sidewalk empty of tips. I nodded to him as I pedaled past, my head ducked into the blowing rain.

Three-quarters of an hour later I met up with Meryl under the same awning on Montgomery. We sat silently smoking Djarums and watching the rain fall and bounce off the grey sidewalk until Sal finally told us to come on back in for the night.

Later, riding out Townsend towards home, we saw a scrawny christmas tree abandoned in a muddy pot hole. We stopped to hoist it up onto Meryl's front basket. She lived in a communal lesbian household out on Guerrero and thought a tree would be a hoot. We rode side by side so I could hold one end of the tree. It was awkward. We were cold, wet and tired. We dropped the tree several times, laughing in the rain.