Roommate Trouble in San Francisco
I moved to San Francisco just after the 1989 earthquake. I found an apartment in Noe Valley with 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a backyard with blackberry bushes. My roommates were two longtime SF denizens. Susan was an aspiring romance novelist from Maryland. John taught photography at San Francisco State.
We all became friends, cooking dinner together most nights. Then Susan told us she was moving back east for a teaching job. John and I placed an ad for a new roommate and conducted interviews. Most of the applicants were shifty and malodorous. We settled on a woman from Alabama named Addison. She told us she worked as a cruise director making her appealing. This meant she’d be gone for months at a time and could afford her share of the rent.
Six weeks after Addison moved in, I was awoken early on a Tuesday morning by horrific shrieks. I ran to the living room to find Addison in a fetal position on the floor. She was cradling the phone and sobbing, her makeup dribbling down her cheeks. She told me her mother and little brother had been killed by a drunk driver in Huntsville.
My heart opened to her and I held her as her body convulsed with grief. John awoke from a cannabis slumber and joined us in a group hug. Not knowing how to deal with tragedy, we took her to the Copper Penny restaurant on Geary Boulevard. Between tears, she devoured…
