...
In a junktique shop just up from Ned's 'r Ted's but before you cross Bank Street toward the old theater. My mother was there, which of course screams the ever-problematic relative, but she was in a back room, an effigy of dour disapproval. I was in the showroom, but everything was in considerable disarray, and it was all half home and half business. I have this old green wooden ladder that I never take out of my house. It says, "DO NOT REMOVE FROM EQUIPMENT ROOM" down one leg. And, indeed, I never removed it from the equipment room. The equipment room was removed from it about thirty-five years ago. It was a minimum of thirty-five years old then, probably much older. That was from the Alaska Commercial building on Sansome Street in San Francisco. That ladder was with me.
I and a bunch of pillows and my comforter were slung across it face down. It was an extremely uncomfortable position, highly unlikely, and I was fine in it, just fine, but I wanted to be outside. I went outside, with the ladder, etc, and Sir Francis Drake Boulevard was a parking lot. I took up my strange posture on my ladder out there.
Then I came back in, but left my ladder and pillows and comforter out there. It was to do with a man. I was trying to be where I would catch sight of him, or he would be able to find me... something like that. He kept almost being there. I would glance to a stairwell that almost had him in it, and then look around to my mother who was still radiating don't-exist. I repeatedly registered her disinclination to be in my proximity, but it was not oppressing me, just continually noticeable.
Suddenly I felt I'd made a mistake by leaving my ladder and bedclothes out in the middle of the parking lot and left the shop again to get them. I got out there just in time to see some women making off with them. I started to hail them, stop them....
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