In the Still of Night

     The Excelsior District of San Francisco is piled high. It is loaded with cars, it is loaded with trash, it is loaded with dogs, it is loaded with people. People are sometimes passed out on the street. Sometimes they are dead. Sometimes they have been murdered. Competition is fierce, for parking, for space, and, more than anything, for quiet, which it can never perfectly produce.

     But in a city where it is difficult to own a home, being able to rent a place that a whole family can live in requires making some sacrifices, and the biggest and most important sacrifice is being thrown on the pile of things and dogs and people.

     This morning, when Rafael walked to his car, there was an eerie calm of cold night. The steady hum of the freeway not far off and thunk thunk even at a distance of car after car going over the joining piece between the overpass and the regular roadway. He closed and locked the door behind him, thinking of his wife and two small girls left by themselves in the morning and the crackheads sure to be prowling just behind and under the veneer of suburban-style calm.

     But work required leaving that world behind, and hoping things could survive until morning, or that his son could protect them if someone came to their door.

     And then, as he drove down Alemany to 19th Ave, the dense compacted neighborhoods fell away and were replaced by Parkside and the Sunset, with their nicely spaced streets and quiet homes. Some homeless people slept in parks or ambled down the street on their way back into Golden Gate Park, but they lacked the menace of their Excelsior counterparts. They were out, but they were not dangerous.

     Just then the dawn started to break and the perfect calm of morning in the Richmond District was at hand, with its deep chill in the shadows and intense warmness of sun.

     He walked briskly from parking to the market, where a truck was unloading already and Santos was standing in front with Mr. Drummel, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

     "Good morning," he said cheerfully.

     "Rafael," Santos said gruffly. "How are you today?"

     He walked in the back door and up the stairs to the office, where he punched his time card and threw on the green apron and grabbed a handtruck.

     What a wonderful little ritual they had crafted together, of coming to that serene calm of morning and having a mountain of things to go through to make a perfect little store.