His office was on the second floor of a gray and white Victorian on the upward slope of Sacramento Street in Pacific Heights. I was fifteen minutes late to my appointment because I couldn't find street parking and the lot on Fillmore was full. I had to circle around the block a couple times because all the streets were one way, congested by crossing pedestrians and Muni buses backing up the midday traffic.
Though it was a sunny late summer afternoon, the towering marble facade of the flats across the street shadowed my walk to his office. There were a few short steps in front of the black grill gate of the building and an intercom to the right of the gate. I keyed in the code he had given me over the phone and waited for the light to turn green and the gate to buzz open. On the eave overhanging the gate, a pigeon cooed. I entered the front door to the hallway, where the carpet was a smooth burgundy, the walls and bannister were a soothing cream, and the smell of fresh paint wafted to the skylight. I walked upstairs to the waiting room, but since I was late, his door at the end of the hall was already open.
His office was masculine and cozy and smelled like the potted ferns in the two corners to either side of the bay window. The floor to ceiling mahogany bookshelves along the wall to my right were filled with leather bound medical texts, manuals and workbooks, a hardback of the DSM-IV, and the yellow paperback edition of
Feeling Good
, almost identical to the barely read copy I gave away to another patient in my last outpatient group therapy. There was a long leather couch along the wall to my left, a box of tissues on the end table, and a standing brass lamp next to the table. His dark mahogany desk was placed against the wall at a right angle to the couch, and his leather reclining chair was pulled away from the desk and facing the couch.
