This is a summary of a conversation we had last Saturday at our local coffee connection. It is long, it ës probably boring ñ it is what it is. I sent the nearly finished draft to busy Adam for edits. He helped with punctuation, dialogue, and he added an ending. He was reluctant to spend too much time because, “There are two people who might read it to the end, and even Rakkity won’t finish until the summer.”

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“Why are you laughing?” Adam asked as he stepped out of his BMW.

I pulled out my wallet. Adam and I had arrived at the Continental Cafe at the same time, and all I had was change in my pocket. I didn’t say a thing, just kept walking, but with my billfold open, empty. I have this reputation that I believe is undeserved. Of always showing up in a beggar’s position.

Adam grinned, “I borrowed money from Tricia before I left.”

“I meant to ask Diane, but I was late. I posted to the blog and ran out the door. You make faces when I’m late, and here I am five minutes away and not on time. And no money.”

We walked up the sweatshirt grey wood steps and through the glass and wooden doors. New artwork adorned the walls, and we stopped at a wide, oil landscape of a Montana sunset which jolted both of us, but for different reasons. I needed mountains, Adam needed the red to resemble more the color of a sunset and not a prairie fire. We continued into the room and saw that half the tables were taken, including the one next to the the black leather sofa. Too bad.

“Can I help you?” asked the young dark-haired girl behind the glass counter.

“You’ve got a lot of good stuff today.” The Saturday before Valentines Day, and in addition to bagels, muffins and scones, there were pink heart-shaped pastries and lots of chocolate covered things. Emma would’a ordered by sight, not taste.

“If you don’t like the table you can pick another one,” Adam offered as I looked to see the one he had staked out.

“That’s the one I had my eye on.”

Adam paid for our food and we sat down. Mark Queijo stayed home and Mark Schreiber was in Dedham playing tennis, which would be followed by Greek lessons. Call it house buying prep. Dan was on his way.

“We went to the Colonial Inn last night. Took Bob and Mary. You really ought to join us sometime.”

“I want to… .”

“But you have to babysit…”

“Only the nights you call us. Keep trying.”

ëI will. I think it would be fun to get a group to go. The Working Man’s Jazz Band was playing. Most of the same people, but this time with a different drummer. I don’t understand why there isn’t a fixed group.”

“Hey Dan… .”

Dan, dressed in dark pants and a coffee-brown shirt approached the table with his usual happy-to-see-you smile. He sat down to my right and laid his shiny blue travel mug on the table.

“What’s this? You can’t bring coffee into a coffee shop.”

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

Dan deflected my comment and looked at Adam, “Did you tell him?”

I knew by the tone, the conspiratorial grin, what Dan was alluding to.

“He encouraged me,” Adam replied.

“Heeeee diddddd?!”

Adam is a Mac Man from way, way back, but one who has worked in offices, including, now, his own, with PC’s, and he had just bought a new computer to replace his G4. A Dell. Dan and I have had, for years now, antagonistic discussions about the demerits of both. I don’t know why. He bought me (since reimbursed) my second Mac; Susan sold us our very first. We driveled off into a long discussion about: the Mini Mac, the cost of software, the phone-home nature of all things Microsoft, networking Macs, transferring files, and that eventually I will buy Adam’s old G4 to replace one of our computers.

“Speaking of new, I need something new and exciting. I’m bored.”

“What about the blog?” Dan asked.

“The blog is killing me. I need regular contributors. Five hundred entries… I should have stopped at one hundred. I have this idea: if Matt’s friends, like Hil, posted a not finished research paper, we could all critique it. Think of the brains focused on that one paper! Matt wouldn’t do it because he’s too private.”

“What about those of us who have trouble reading even one paragraph?” Adam raised a hairy eyebrow in Dan’s direction. Adam has his own blog standards he expects others to live up to.

Piling on, I added, “You mean those who think linking a photo is “hiding it?”

“Why didn’t you post the couch potato photo on the main page? And that was Karen, not Bonnie… ?”

“Yeah, Karen. I post so many photos. When I don’t have anything to say, I post a picture. I was striving for a text only page.”

“And what about aliases? I hate not knowing who is who.” Dan said.

“Do you think Jennifer thinks she is anonymous?” Adam is the master (okay, one of them) of pseudonyms.

“Using a made up name, but her own email address? Speaking of, didn’t you love the police blotter parking lot car-door poor-mother one yesterday? And Jennifer’s mother/daughter comment?”

“I thought I must just be out of the loop, that the story must concern someone we know,” Adam said. “I took the format as ënames-have-been-omitted-to-protect-the-berated’ and assumed the non-sequitur of the wholly unfathomable ëbad mother’ epithet would be explained. But yeah, Jennifer’s drive-to-Roche’s comment was hilarious.”

“An elaborate, plausible concoction, but one which worries me. Dan’s constant complaint — well, one of them — is how obtuse I am. That I don’t explain enough. And if you don’t get it, then he’s more than right.”

“Yes, but I like that. I enjoy wondering, hunting for clues. And speaking of clues, why did you ask about plasma TV’s earlier?”

More snapping synapses like much of this conversation. I should have ignored that one. “You know I bought Deliverance for Matthew, and I want to watch it with him. John and Karen offered their big screen, then I thought if one of you all had one, we could watch it together. But maybe I’m making too big a deal of it. I know I am.”

“I saw Deliverance when it first came out, and then fifteen years later. I guess I could tolerate it every fifteen years. But how about we all get together to watch our favorite movies? That could be the next new thing. Like a book club. No prep work, but some of the socialization of the blog.”

“A movie club.” Dan jumped in.

The number cruncher, Adam continued, “If there are eight, maybe even ten of us meeting once a month, each offering our top ten favorite movies, that would keep Mike from being bored for up to five years.”

The conversation had morphed into my own personal horror movie. Assemble all that creativity in one room and then put it to sleep for two hours. Great.

“But I guess your next new thing would have to involve participation with people.” Adam said.

“I guess so. That is my history. I’d take another writing class at the high school if they had a different teacher. I suppose I have to travel somewhere.”

“Have you heard what Linda and I are talking about?” Subjects change quickly and it was Dan’s turn. He had a this-is-big look on his face and he turned to me and asked, “Do you know what it is?” I always know what it is, and for some reason, this bugs Dan. This time, however, I was clueless.

“Yes,” I lied.

“How do you know?”

“Linda told me.” I lied again.

“When did you talk to Linda?”

“The middle of the week.”

Dan pivoted back to Adam and told him he and Linda were thinking about buying into the house on Kythira, in Greece, with Mark and Ginger. Mark has been obsessed with this house for the last month or so and explained it all in detail at Adam’s brunch. He had a local who was interested in sharing it , but who backed out. That’s when Linda said… .

“Dan, like Linda told him, Mark should just buy it.” I said “He has the money.”

“We think differently about his bank account than he does.” Adam said, and he began out loud to project the math, figuring in his own impression of Mark’s yearly salary with his benefits and stock dividends, and the number of years he’ll continue to work. He subtracted Molly’s tuition, incidental luxury items like movies and camping trips to Maine, Ginger’s alternative, holistic, woo-woo activities and came up with a figure the house in Greece wouldn’t dent. Or at least, it seems to me maybe he mentioned moneyÖÖ

“The cons for me,” Dan went on, “are the distance, the language and the weather. The latitude is about the same as it is here, so they have winters — not our winters, but colder weather. I told Mark, and he came back at me with a lawyerly bullet-pointed list as long as the Dead Sea scrolls. It included the Greek words for winter, but the bottom line is, winter means forty-five or fifty degrees.”

“Stop for a second. Is anyone else hungry?” I asked, “ I’ll buy if you give me the money.”

Adam laid his last three dollars on the table.

“What woud you like?”

“You choose.”

Dan waved me off, but contributed a dollar anyway.

I went back to the goodie-laden counter and returned with one ginger scone. It cost $1.72, $2.00 with tip. I brushed the crumbs off one of our used paper plates and onto the floor, just as I do at home.I broke the scone into multiple pieces and ate all of it but for a wedge or two. Dan listed the pros, why it was to their advantage to own a house in Greece: a foreign culture that would force them to learn new things, perfect weather in the summer, the blue seas, a place to retreat to. Adam listened but with a distant, wheels-turning look. Dan was oblivious to it, but I knew what Adam was thinking.

“That was a four dollar scone?”

“What’s a few bucks to you? You who are signing a contract to light a seven hundred thousand square foot health care facility. And Dan, whose company did two point two mil in biz last year.”

“But that was last year,” Dan frowned.

“And I haven’t signed the contract yet,” Adam added.

“How come I have more faith in the two of you than you do in yourselves?”

Dan and Adam exchanged a quick look and pounced. Oblivious to the screams of the patrons in line awaiting their own goodie selections, they lifted me bodily, manhandling me past the bystanders and the protesting teenage girls behind the counter. I had “shared” their food, then stolen their money. Maybe attacking their insecurities was too big a stick for this hornets nest. I could see floating things in the standing water of the sink full of dirty dishes as they drove me towards it headfirst.