AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Katie and Ido our own little Easter thing, and it’s not quite the celebration I’d planned, but it suffices. Next year I’ll do better, invite more people over, but it was a start.
Monday I’m back at work, and Kid Fest is coming up. Just six days away. It’s my project, and I’m beginning to feel the heat. It’s a high-profile event—lots of media folks cosponsor this one—and Olivia keeps asking if I’m sure I have everything handled. And I think I’m sure, until she asks yet again, implying failure. But I don’t fail; I’m not a failure. And as I leaf through my paperwork again, make last-minute calls, I know I couldn’t be any more organized than I am.
Sunday, Birch Museum at the Presidio, ten A.M. to two P.M.
Carnival theme replete with clowns, face painters, balloon artists, magicians, a game alley, and fun food (corn dogs, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, popcorn, cotton candy, snow cones, and more).
There’ll be music. Free T-shirts and treat bags for all the kids to take home, plus the requisite photographers and minor San Francisco celebrities. It’s an event. A proper event, and I’m a little stressed but mostly satisfied.
I’m still tidying up my desk when Josh stops by and invites me to join him and Tessa and a couple other people from the office for happy hour. I’m definitely in, and quickly finish putting away the Kid Fest files and shutting down my computer.
Tessa has a craving for sushi, so we head to her favorite place in the Marina called Mas Sake. Mas Sake is on Fillmore and Lombard Streets, Lombard dividing Cow Hollow from the Marina. Tonight Josh drives, and we circle the block several times with everyone shouting in his ear, giving parking pointers, before he secures a spot several blocks over.
We’re all in a good mood. It’s late April, and spring has definitely sprung; it’s staying light later, and the sky has that lovely hazy violet-blue color with tinges of pink on the horizon.
Mas Sake on weekends is a zoo, and when Josh pushes open the glass door, revealing the yellow interior with dark red beams, it’s loud. Very loud. All music, clinking glasses, and shouting voices.
The bar is packed for Mas Sake’s famous happy hour, featuring dollar wine, beer, and sake, and all-you-can-eat sushi for twenty dollars, which is what brought Tessa here tonight.
I’d like to wait for one of the booths lining the side of the narrow restaurant, but Tessa, the intrepid New Yorker, elbows through the crowd and plunks herself down at the long table running the length of the middle of the restaurant and starts commandeering spare chairs, squeezing them in next to her to create room for the rest of us.
“There,” she says, “sit.” And we do.
We order drinks next: wine, beer, and Mas Sake’s own cocktail, the sake-rita. Tessa wants sushi, but I study the appetizer menu, skirting the traditional and nontraditional sushi choices, for chicken satay. What can I say? I’m a Valley girl, landlocked, aggie based. I like meat: steak, chicken—absurdly nonthreatening, but that’s me.
We’re on our second round of drinks when my cell phone rings. I peek into my purse, look at the number. It’s Olivia. I frown, wondering if I have to answer it. It’s Friday, after six o’clock, and the workweek has officially ended. She may be my immediate supervisor, but she doesn’t own me. I snap my purse shut without answering. Olivia can leave a message. I’ll call her back later.
We hang out at Mas Sake for another hour, and then, when the other girls go and Josh and Tessa talk about heading next door to La Barca because Josh is now hungry and craving Mexican food, it’s my cue to leave. I say good night and go home and spend the rest of the evening quite comfortable in front of my TV.
But as I climb into bed, I remember that Olivia phoned, and I retrieve my cell phone from my purse, but there’s no message. Good. I didn’t want to talk to her anyway. Yawning, I stretch, snuggle contentedly into my covers, and drift off to sleep.
*
I’m up earlyon Sunday for Kid Fest, go for a quick run and an even quicker shower before changing into dark charcoal slacks, a tailored periwinkle blue blouse, and low-heeled but still stylish shoes. I’m going to be on my feet all day, and I’m going to need to be comfortable.
That’s when the good day ends and the bad day begins.
To put it bluntly, Kid Fest is a disaster.
Sunday, 10:45 A.M., the sun’s up, the morning fog has burned off, and I stand in the Birch Museum’s parking lot, watching hostile social workers and foster parents reloading even more hostile kids into cars.
I arrived at the Birch at nine, an hour before the event was to start, only to discover the science and technology museum dark and locked up tight, the parking lot empty except for my lone car. I couldn’t even find a security guard around.
I immediately got on the phone, but who would I even call regarding the museum? And never mind the dark museum—where was everyone else?
My caterers? My balloon artists? My clowns and magicians?
Where was my party?
And even as I was struggling to get answers, the first bus pulled up, jam-packed with kids and staff from the South San Francisco Boys and Girls Club. The guests had begun to arrive, and soon vans and cars were, filling the parking lot, emptying out parents, sponsors, and kids, and there we gathered in the parking lot in the April morning sunshine.
Before I knew it, I was under siege. A crowd gathered around me. Children started crying. Adult voices were raised.
“What the hell is going on?”
“How did this happen?”
“Where is your boss?”
