The Hunt Club

This is now…
5

U.S. Federal Judge George Palmer met Staci Rosalier when she took his drink order one day at MoMo's, a San Francisco restaurant across the street from SBC Park, where the Giants play baseball. It was a warm September lunchtime, and Judge Palmer, known on sight to half the clientele and most of the regular staff, was sitting alone outside, awaiting the arrival of his appointment.

Staci was in her first week there at the waitress job. When she took the great man's order-Hendrick's gin on the rocks-they exchanged the usual lighthearted, mildly flirtatious banter. In spite of the age difference, it struck neither of them as incongruous. Staci was an experienced and sophisticated waitress, used to dealing with the well-heeled and successful.

And for a man at any age, Palmer's physique was admirable, his face captivating, his smile genuine. He was also personable, witty, confident, well dressed. He exuded the power of his position. The job God wants, so the saying goes, is U.S. federal judge.

As the crowd began to arrive, Staci fell into a rhythm with the work, and Palmer pretty much left her consciousness. She was after all serving half of the sixteen tables on one side of the outer patio, waiting on, among others, one superior court judge, the mayor's chief assistant, a gaggle of high-powered attorneys, a table of four of the 49ers, a city supervisor.

MoMo's was a happening place and had what they called a big yoo-hoo factor.

Over the next month or so, Judge Palmer came in nearly every workday, always choosing a table in Staci's section, arriving early enough, often enough that they got time to extend their repartee. His tips began at a generous twenty percent and grew to reflect the pleasure he took in her company. He learned that she was single, without a steady boyfriend, that she lived alone in a rented studio apartment just north of Market above Castro. She went to school part-time at SFCC and hoped to finish at junior college and go to Berkeley in the next couple of years, but the mission now was simply to make a living, which wasn't that easy on tips, in spite of the judge's largesse-not everyone was as generous as he was. She confided to him that she was thinking about taking another waitress job at another place on her days off here. But then she might have to quit school altogether and didn't want to do that. You didn't have a future if you didn't finish school.

She in turn found out, not only from him, that the judge had been married to Jeannette for nearly forty years. He lived in a big house in Pacific Heights on Clay Street. He had three grown children. He worked at the federal courthouse and worked on appeals to the Ninth Circuit. "Fun stuff," he told her. He also was an avid fly fisherman and something of a wine nut, as she'd already guessed from what he usually ordered to drink after his gin on the rocks for lunch.

After a while, they began to see each other outside of MoMo's, at quiet places down the coast where the judge would not be recognized. One day, he had come in much later than usual, close to one thirty, timing it so he was getting up to leave at around three, as she was finishing her shift. They walked together down the Embarcadero for a hundred yards or so, making easy conversation as they usually did at the restaurant. He asked her if she'd like to go over and walk by the water, where it was more private. He told her he had a present for her, which he so hoped she'd accept.

It was a solitaire one-carat diamond necklace on a platinum-and-gold braided chain.