The woman who lives with her husband up Filbert on Marie is having a garage sale. They're both in their late 40s, he's Asian, quiet and nice, and she's a big bosomed redhead, all teeth.
For the last 10 years, the couple has lived in their apartment in Sausalito — she calls this the banana belt. They've lived in San Rafael, and before coming to Sausalito to live, they lived in Point Richmond, across the Richardson Bay or North Bay.
"I thought we'd hate it here," she says. "We used to look over here and see it. But we like it, there's hardly ever any fog."
The items at the garage sale aren't just odds and ends. You'd think the couple was moving again. Artwork, picture frames, candlesticks, cutlery, pillows, an entire DVD collection, paperback books, and safari themed house wares that include elephant everything, zebra engravings, and leopard prints are neatly displayed in their dugout garage.
"We've gone modern," she says. "Redid the entire apartment.
"You find it weird deciding which of your things to get rid of. But where are we going to put it? We have no storage."
A car drives past the open garage, which is underneath the couple's two-story, wood-paneled apartment, and suddenly a deer crosses the road below — Filbert — and diverts its course as the car approaches.
"They come right up these stairs," the woman says of the deer. "We haven't seen them in a while, though, I wonder where they've been."
From their bedroom window, she says they can see the yard of the church next door often filled with deer — the church doesn't use the yard much, she says. Mothers and their young will walk right over into their yard. They come for little red berries that grow on the bushes back there.
The deer is the size of a large American motorcycle, its antlers are as long as a man's forearm. Right now it's hiding out in the ivy-heavy property, out of site, and below the deck where an elderly woman sits at a table. You can see heads inside the car that stopped, turned to the left, looking at where the deer must be.
"DVDs are a dollar," the woman says. Her husband says nothing the entire time and could be mistaken for a looker, two of which are passing by at the moment.
There's a shuffle in the ivy and a dog barks in that direction. The car, as if dog's bark was its ignition, continues down the hill.
"What is it?" the elderly woman from the deck calls down to us in the garage.
"It's a deer," the redheaded woman says.
Her husband puts his thumbs to his temples and wiggles his fingers to show the woman on the deck he's a deer. Then he drops his arms, looks at us, smiles and shrugs.