I call and get a recording: If you’re calling about shelter, press three. Another recording: The shelter is full at this time. Leave your name after the beep and you’ll be put on a waiting list. If a space opens, someone will call you.

Hello, I’m the benefits advocate at Fresh Start, I say, talking as if there is a real person on the other end. I have a client who needs a bed.

I pause, pretend to be listening.

Will do, I say after a moment. Thanks for your time.

I hang up.

They won’t know if they’ll have a bed until later. I’ll call back.

I hold out hope, wanting her to see me making an effort. A nice man trying to help. Earn her appreciation. Wear her down with the waiting, the calls, the worry. Increase her dependency.

Thank you, she says.

I worked it the same way with the man and his wife. He got in line for the shelter and she prepared to leave for Randolph House. She and her husband looked at each other. They held hands and stood for a long time facing each other. Then she let go of his fingers and walked out of the drop-in looking very small. I watched her go, entered two shelter referrals on the stat form in my computer and clicked save.

I waited about ten minutes to give her time to reach Market and Van Ness. Then I grabbed a red marker, locked my office, and got in my car. Prostitutes lingered outside. I sized them up but wanted nothing to do with them. I drove down Larkin to Market and hung a right until I reached Van Ness. I saw her standing off to one side from a huddle of people beneath a bus shelter, her back turned against a hard-blowing, damp wind. I beeped and beeped again until she looked up. She looked confused and then she recognized me and hurried over. I rolled down the passenger door window and was about to say, I got off early. I’m headed home and live that way. Let me give you a ride, but she opened the door without question and got in.

I hope it’s that easy with this woman here. As she waits to leave for Randolph House, I bide my time by collecting loose pens and markers on my desk, gathering them in a bunch, and brushing them in a drawer.

Housekeeping, I tell her.

I consider the drawer and decide to take a blue marker with me. The color of her headscarf. I will draw a line on my bedroom door, a notch of sorts to indicate I had her. I used a red marker for the husband’s wife, red to remind me of her full mouth.

I watch a bus drone past my office window. An old man sits in the doorway of a closed thrift store across the street. Fog stretches across the top of the store, thick fingers of it breaking and twisting.

Hey, you got any bus tokens? Katie asks me, poking her head through my door. I got a guy I need to send to General.

She notices the woman and drags a finger over the woman’s swollen chin. The woman pulls away. Her eyes tear up.

You all right, honey? Katie asks the woman.

Here, I say, giving Katie a token.

She takes it and gives a slight jerk of her head toward the door. I get up and follow her out. The woman turns slightly in her chair to make room for me to pass her and my hand brushes against her shoulder. She flinches.

Where’re you going?

To get more bus tokens, I tell her.

I let my fingers linger against her shirt. She stiffens but doesn’t move. I close the door behind me.

What are you doing for her? Katie asks.

Shelter.

Looks like she needs more than shelter.

That’s all she asked for.

Look at her, Katie says. Those aren’t birthmarks on her face. If a man did that to her, she’s not going to talk to you.

I don’t appreciate her tone. A little pushy. A little forgetting herself.

I’m just saying you might need some help on this one, Katie says. She might not open up to you.

She will. She has.

Katie shakes her head. I watch her walk away and go back into my office.

Sorry to keep you waiting.

It’s OK.

I sit back at my desk.

Let’s try Randolph House again.

She taps her foot against the floor as I dial.

It’ll be fine, I tell her in a voice I know sounds soothing, calm.

She nods, says nothing.

They get that way after a while, get quiet. The uncertainty. What’s there to say? The man’s wife had been quiet in my car after she got in, and I didn’t speak, so that she would know I was comfortable with her silence. I parked across the street from Randolph House and walked her inside to the reception desk. The sound of dozens of women’s voices rushed us in a rising chorus of shouts and demands. Dirty blankets filled a cart, smelling of the women who had used them. Steam rolled across the ceiling from a shower room and the weight of it pressed against my face. A woman wrapped only in a towel ran past us, grabbed another woman by her hair, and screamed at her for taking her shampoo. Her towel fell away and they fought naked, rolling on the floor, pale wet flesh flopping and slapping the tiles. The receptionist tried to break it up but slipped on the towel and fell cursing.

The wife reached for my hand.

I can’t stay here, she said.

I had not expected this level of chaos. I had presumed we’d make it to the desk and the receptionist would turn us away. Sorry, we’re full. I would have pushed back, said that I was the benefits advocate for Fresh Start, that I had called and been promised a bed for my client. I would have put up a good fight all for show, of course, and then walked out with her. But this was better. Fewer theatrics. On my end, anyway.

She followed me to my car and got in. I looked at my watch. Her husband had probably been assigned a cot by now. I turned the ignition key and flipped on my headlights and drove through the fog to Lincoln Way. The trees in Golden Gate Park loomed in the mist. I turned onto Twelfth Avenue, drove three blocks and parked. She did not ask where we were going.

I live there, I said and pointed.

She looked out her window at the peeling yellow paint of my apartment building and then turned to me, and I stared back at her and kissed her on the mouth, my eyes open. She didn’t move, didn’t close her eyes either. I looked hard at her, pulled away, and continued looking at her. She shook her head, opened her mouth. Her hands fluttered on either side of her face and words caught in her throat as if she was trying to say something that was beyond her abilities of speech. She glanced up and down the empty street, at the quiet houses. She didn’t move. She looked at me once more, eyes red. I worried she might ask for her husband, but she didn’t. Her husband was equally helpless, equally alone and desperate and far away. Lost and tired, I thought. Lost and tired.

The thinking necessary to bring her to this point had entertained me, kept my mind in motion, every second belonging to itself and whatever occurred within it either informed the next or did not, but now she was broken, defeated. I had only to finish a game that had already ended. I felt bored. I watched her open her door, get out, and wait. I felt for the red marker in my pocket. I opened my door. Neither of us spoke as we walked up the steps, our silence a pact so solitary in its understanding of her limited options that we both knew there was nothing more to be said.

Now I am involved with another woman, another game. I anticipate a similar ending. I call Randolph House and get the same recording.

If you’re . . .

Hello, yes, I called earlier from Fresh Start about a bed for my client. You have a bed?

. . . press three.