buyers’ remorse nightmare
I dreamed I was trying to buy a gift for my father. Salome and Jeremy and I went to 826 Valencia. It wasn’t the pirate store we have come to know and love, but a huge SF-MoMA-ish emporium on three floors, with mezzanines and shiny fittings and bleached blond wood floors and cabinets full of tiny expensive things.
Unfortunately they’d decided to pack the whole thing up and move it to New York. The workers were following us around emptying the store behind us, meaning that I had to decide instantly whether to buy a thing or not. I was deeply flustered.
“Why New York?” asked Salome.
“No one in San Francisco buys things like these,” said a staff member.
“Oh well,” I said, “at least we still have Cliff’s Hardware.”
We ended up at one of those pottery-painting stores, but the only white mugs they had were too girly and frilly for my Dad, with some tacky silver logo. They did have solid, well-formed mugs, but only in yellow and blue.
“How am I supposed to paint these?” I asked crossly.
Jeremy was looking out the window.
“Let’s go and sit in the garden,” he said. “There’s hummingbirds.”
