Holly and Me in the Winds of San Francisco

You didn't think you would leave San Francisco without seeing me, she said, and afterward I thought how impossible that would have been. Not seeing this brilliant writer and photographer and fearless adventurer, not braving the wind with her. We could have had tea, or hot chocolate, or something sweet. She chose, instead, to invite me into the Grace Cathedral, high on the hill, where the voices of four cantors filled the stone hollow, and where there were candles to be lit, for those we loved. The candles were our prayer, she said. They were our bridge, our friendship.

Later, we posed like the Beatles in the street. We posed like kick-line dancers on the wide walk of a hill, just ahead of its steep.