"Parking space in covered, private garage. $200/month. Call agent at:"

-- Sign seen in Laurel Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, October, 1998


"Shit!"

"What?"

"Wendy, cover for me, would you?"

"Why? What's wrong?" Wendy Mathers sat next to a picture window looking out onto Columbus Street, filling salt shakers before the lunch slam.

"Dave just left and I'm gonna take his parking space."

"God, Rick, itâs not even cold yet." She laughed the laugh of someone who rode Muni to work.

"It will be taken before you even get to your car."This from Sasha, a Russian woman who favored peroxide and blue eyeliner. "Why torment yourself?"

But Rick had already pulled off his apron and was headed upstairs to fish his keys out of his coat pocket. Blind with desire, he almost fell back downstairs, such was his haste to posses what his manager had cast away. He could see it now through the large picture window at the front of the restaurant; open and vulnerable, taunting him. An un-metered, totally legal parking space smack in front of Ciao-Ciaoâs Bar and Bistro of North Beach. Improbable. Audacious, even, like a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk in broad daylight.

Rick pounded down the street to his battered black Jetta, praying "please, please, please, please" under his breath as he fiddled with the lock and squeezed his girth in. It was always a high-risk proposition, this sort of jockeying. Every second he wasted starting his car and working it out of his own tight, (and metered) spot was ample time for somebody else, anybody else, to drive by and take his space. There were no doubt locals circling for parking at this very moment who would snap the spot up without a second thought, even though it was ten blocks down the hill from their own apartments. A patron could stumble upon it. A tourist even! Anyone at all! If this happened, Rick knew, then the Parking Gods were not happy with him, and he could bet money that by the time he circled the block he would find his old parking space gone as well, and heâd be screwed, left to circle a crowded North Beach shopping district minutes before the lunchtime crowds started lining up for their slices of goat cheese pizza. The thought made him nauseous.

He held his breath as he maneuvered his car out of its space, inching it backwards and forwards until he could poke his nose out into traffic. He cursed manual transmissions.

A wall of cars kept him where he was, and he felt sure that he had gambled and lost the farm.

"Asphalta!"He cried out his window in despair, "I am your most humble believer! I ask for nothing more than your favorable glance! Please!"

And the young men and women of North Beach, black clad and expensively shod, they who paid $2,300 a month for junior one bedrooms with a peek-a-boo view of the Bay, those with the tiniest of cell phones pressed to their ears and E-Trade portfolio valuation always accessible on their Palm Pilots, which they kept tucked discreetly into small leather holders, these people stared at the ragged-looking waiter in his pathetic old car and clucked and shook their heads. Drug addict. Hippie person. The days of his kind in San Francisco were over and the sooner they all moved to Oakland the better.

Ah, but Asphalta had heard him. And with his piety, she was greatly pleased. And in the end, she did provide.

And even as his cry hung heavy in the brisk January air, lo! The traffic in both directions did thin out. And Rick did wrest his humble vehicle from its inferior parking space. And he did cross the double yellow lines, and did so yet again as he circled back to the parking space. And indeed there were none to curse him, nor affront him with horns, nor lay him low with foul gestures,  nor molest him with a moving violation. And as he backed his vehicle into the promised parking space he sang praise to Asphalta in a voice most high and clear.

Minutes later Rick tripped triumphantly back into Ciao-Ciaoâs, to the applause of his co-workers. "That was amazing,"said Wendy.

"I've never seen a waiter get that spot before, added Stephan. "Somebody up there must like you."

"You should just leave it there for the week, on principle," said Wendy.

"Street cleaning's tomorrow,"said Sasha. "So you'll have to move it anyway."

"That still leaves tonight with no worries,"said Wendy. "Hey, how'd your hands get so dirty?"

Rick looked down and saw that his hands were covered in grime, like he'd just changed a tire. "Huh. Wonder how that happened?"

"Well hurry and wash them quickly,"said Sasha, tightening the apron around her thickening waist and nodding at the group of office workers arriving at the front door. "We're about to get slammed."

Chapter One