Sunday may have been poundingly wet, Monday morning miserable and Tuesday morning grim, but Monday afternoon was sunny and fair, and Tuesday afternoon was nothing less than glorious. At about four, I walked toward the sun for twenty-five minutes, then I turned around, and it took half an hour to get back where I came from. The waves were breaking a little farther out than on Monday, and when one of them rumbled my footing a bit, I decided that I had better get out while I could. (I used to love being tossed in the surf, but now it’s quite terrifying.) Kevin and I went into town for an early dinner, and this was our view (above).

After dinner, I received a note from Ray Soleil describing some work that he had done for us at the apartment. He got through the worst of a big, messy project (repainting the balcony door, which had been so neglected over the years that paint was falling off in big chips that Will happened to find interesting), and I wrote back to congratulate him. Shortly thereafter, a tumbler fell. I remembered Kathleen’s telling me that she had left her cell phone at home (she was at the office at the time). So I couldn’t alert her, in the conventional way, to the possibility that Ray might have locked the apartment door a bit differently. (He hadn’t, of course, but I couldn’t confirm this.) My first thought was to have someone at the restaurant where I knew she was having dinner slip her a note, but this sounded fussy. After many other less satisfactory thoughts, however, that’s exactly what I did, only the headwaiter interrupted my tale and summoned Kathleen to the telephone. She was frightened, of course, to hear that her husband was calling — had something happened to her brother? — but when she found out the reason for my call, she was grateful as well as relieved. 

In the old days, of course, I’d have called the doormen at our apartment building, and one of them would have tipped her off when she came in; but, under new management, you can’t do that anymore. The headwaiter must have thought that we live in a tree.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 8:00 am.