I’m 2 1/2 miles from the water tower and l’ve gained 1500 feet. I can see sagebrush sand and rocks, green and pink hued mountains. The sun is warm, not hot and though I drink a lot I’m not thirsty.

Silence? Not as much as you think as sounds reverberate from the city below. Although since there’s no one here to talk to I have to generate my own noise. I feel like an old refrigerator.There’s this whirring noise and then long periods of silence.

As I look out over the desert I don’t see Peter nearby. I know, I sound like Irene the psychic, but I just think he’s closer to home. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but that’s the only way Peter’s going to be found. There are neither hunters nor hikers or mountain bikers to stumble upon the man.

I have a heavy heart for Ken. Hard enough to be present with your parents when they die, but you have to face the hurt to process your own changes, to grow as a person. What would you do if your father just disappeared?

I love the sound of your voice, Hilary, you’ve always been one of the blogs biggest cheerleaders.

I found a Mylar balloon caught in a cactus, a plastic bag or two and some horse crap, but otherwise not much evidence of other humans. I guess that’s a good thing.

Views down to the water tower and up to the mountains.

This seems like a nice place for all of us to work together. I’m posting photos of cairns because John Barnnard suggested that I look for them.That’s because outside of Peter’s house, on the perimeter, are cairns. Right now I’m about a half a mile above the water tower walking up a stream bed.

By the way I am posting from my phone using an application that works with WordPress so go easy on me. You know punctuation,literacy, all that stuff

“I need you to help me pick up a lady’s leg,” my friend Chip says to me on the phone. “We can take the hearse.” Chip’s family owns the oldest funeral home in town. He and I often run errands for them, but never anything like this. Chip could easily go by himself but I guess he wants company. He picks me up at my house and we head to the Funeral home.

“Some people want their limbs buried with their body,” Chip says.

“We don’t have to touch it, do we?”

“I don’t think so. We have to pick up a case at the funeral home and go to Mercy Hospital.”

Chip and I have been best friends since third grade. After school we would hang out in his basement, building model cars. When we discovered firecrackers, we blew up the cars one by one. Chip and I loved to build tree forts. We’d sneak into construction sites after hours and steal wood and nails and drag them into the woods. We’d spend hours on beautiful summer days up in the trees, reading Spider Man comic books, and later Playboy magazines. Chip’s parents were pretty well off and bought him plenty of cool things. Chip was the first kid in the neighborhood to get a minibike. We drove up and down the street, annoying the neighbors, listening to them yell “are you kids old enough to be driving a motorcycle.” When Chip told his parents he wanted learn to play the drums, they immediately went out and bought him a set. A couple of days of Chip pounding out Wipe Out made them wish they had bought him a piano or violin. In eigth grade, when we had our first girlfriends, and we’d tell each other about trying to feel them up.

Chip never did well in school. He wasn’t dumb, and he tried hard enough, but it was like he knew from early on he was destined for something else. Something besides college, a degree, a normal career. I suppose he knew he could always take over the funeral business. So in grade school, I would help him study. Memorizing the events that led up to the American Revolution, teaching him to do long division, helping him with a science paper on photosynthesis. But I would get the B’s and he would get D’s – if he was lucky.

In high school, we saw less of each other in class. I was taking the academic load, preparing to get into college. Chip took the minimum, mostly English and history, filling up the extra with art and music classes and spending increasing amounts of time smoking pot at lunch and blowing off school altogether. It’s amazing that Chip even graduated. But the teachers were under pressure to move kids along, and those were the days before MCAS tests. 2

So during the week I studied and did homework, and didn’t see Chip. But we still hung out on weekends, driving around drinking beer, smoking pot. June of Senior year, we double dated to the prom. Before we picked up our dates, we loaded up the trunk with two cases of beer and several bottles of Boone’s Farm. This was before the days of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. If you were pulled over by the police, and could even say your name, they’d just as likely tell you to be careful and move along home.

“What you have been doing, I haven’t heard from you in the while,” I say to Chip.

“The band’s been getting lot’s of gigs. We’re starting to make good money. The other night we split a $1200 door at Rizzoli’s. Some weeks we play three or four times a week. And the women, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s like every night there’s somebody else.”

Chip put together his first band in seventh grade. They started playing parties and school dances. In high school, he joined or put together other bands, often with older, more experienced musicians. But Chip was always the organizer, the leader. By senior year, his band was playing bars and nightclubs. Chip not old enough to drink, but playing drums in the bar until two in the morning. Sometimes I helped out when they played a gig, especially if it was at a bar like Rizzoli’s. Setting up the equipment, working the PA and lights, sometimes playing congas on a Santana song. We drank free all night and the other roadie and I got our share of female attention.

“Hey, why did the lady lose her leg?” I say to Chip.

“I don’t know. Diabetes or something, my mother says. Some Catholics really believe in keeping their body parts together. So they’ll bury her leg in the cemetery, right next to where her body will go.”

We arrive at the funeral home. It’s one of those big three story houses with a porch all around. Probably owned by one of the rich families in town a hundred years ago. Chip’s mother rents the second and third story to tenants to make extra money. I could never imagine living upstairs, with all those corpses below. Over the years, Chip’s mother hired me to do odd jobs. Mostly cut the lawn, trim the hedges or shovel snow. Sometimes pick up flowers for a funeral.

Chip’s mother is on the porch and she sees us. “Go in the casket room boys and get one of the cases in the back.” Chip and I go through the back door into a room. In the middle is a table that looks like the one you’d see in an operating room. In the corner are all kinds of bottles and tubes. Long ago I learned this is where they embalmed the bodies. We go back into the casket room. Several bronze shiny caskets are on display, each with silky material inside, open for people to see. Most funeral homes don’t sell their own caskets. But Chip’s family does enough funeral business to offer this service themselves.

Chip goes over to the wall and picks up a long suitcase with a handle. “Come on, we’ll bring it back in this,” he says. We go out in the parking lot and Chip’s mother hands him 3

a set of keys. “I want you boys to take the hearse. It’s more respectable and they won’t give you a hard time at the hospital. And come right back.”

Chip’s dad inherited the funeral business when Chip’s grandfather died, but he personally doesn’t do too much anymore. Mostly show up at the wake and shake hands. Chip’s mother does all the work, except for the actual embalming. For that, you have to go to school and get licensed, so she uses a subcontractor. But she works her tail off, always running down there to do something. And she talks about it in such an off-hand way. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift to cut the lawn, I’m going down to do a lady’s hair.” Or “I have to go give a guy a bath and a shave, help me put some flower pots in the station wagon.”

Chip and I head off for Mercy Hospital. Whenever we’re driving around in the hearse, people always look at us. Once in a while, we’ll spot one of our friends and yell out the window to them.

“Hey, do you know where you’re going to college yet?” Chip asks.

“I think Penn State. I got into some other schools, but Penn State’s about all my dad can afford. And it’s a pretty good school. Big time partying too, I hear. What are you going to do?”

“I was thinking of maybe going to the community college. I’m not sure what I would major in, though. My parents want me to take over the business. I’d have to get an associates degree and then go to undertaker school for a year. I don’t know, the funeral home is a gold mine, but I don’t think I could do all that embalming stuff. Besides, the band is doing great. I make more than anybody my age.”

We pull into Mercy Hospital and drive around back to the service entrance like Chip’s mom told us to. We park the hearse, Chip gets the case out of the back, and we tell the guy inside we’re there to pick up a leg. At first he looks at us with a smirk, but then points down the hall. We find a door that says Morgue. We stand there for a while, afraid to walk in, and finally Chip knocks. A skinny man wearing a stained lab coat opens the door. He’s holding a half eaten sandwich and asks if he can help us.

“We’re here to pick up Mrs. Kovaleski’s leg’” Chip says.

“Oh yeah, it’s right over there in the corner.” He opens the door for us and points into the back corner of the room. And there it is. A leg. Wrapped in what looks like wax paper. Standing upright in the corner against the wall.

“Ahhhhhhh, would you mind putting it in this case. We don’t really want to touch it’” Chip says.

The man laughs. “Sure, why not.” He takes the case, walks over to the leg, puts it in and snaps it shut. 4

“Here you go, guys.” Chip takes the case and we leave.

It’s a beautiful summer day. We’re driving back to the funeral home.

Chip says “Hey, let’s drive through the park.”

“What, don’t we have to get right back?”

“We have time. I could tell my mother we had to wait at the hospital.”

The park is located at one end of the city. It has a public swimming pool, a small natural history museum and acres of wooded grounds and gardens. For years, families have been going there to swim, picnic and visit the museum. In the early seventies, when Vietnam was at its height, the park became a haven for kids to hang out. The city would put on rock concerts in an outdoor theater every weekend. We all went there to meet our friends, score some dope, drink some beer. The cops would drive through once in a while, but rarely bothered anybody, probably because there was never any trouble.

Chip and I cruise up the road that runs through the park. People are looking over at us, wondering if it’s a funeral procession.

“Hey, there’s Stork,” Chip says. And then he yells out the window.

“Hey Stork, what’s going on?”

Stork has a fat belly, hair to his waist, and skinny as hell legs. We met him at the Park the previous summer. Never really learned too much about where he came from. Didn’t seem to go to school,or work. We think he’s about seventeen or eighteen but he looks twenty-five, so he’s the guy we send into the liquor store for beer.

Stork comes walking over with his pigeon-toed waddle.

“What are you guys doing in this thing?”

Chip says “We borrowed it from the funeral home. Just cruising around.” I wonder why Chip doesn’t mention the leg. “Hey Stork, want to get some beer?”

“Sure.” Stork hops in next to me and surprisingly, doesn’t look in the back.

We drive to the liquor store that doesn’t often check ID. After giving Stork $8, he goes in and comes out a minute later with two six packs of Schlitz. He hasn’t been carded yet. We drive back to the park, pull over at the duck pond, get out and sit by the water.

Stork tells us he’s got Rolling Stones tickets for Philly. Goes on about how he loves the Stones. Says he likes the violence of their music. Can’t wait to hear Street Fighting 5

Man. Stork is always bragging about something, but in a way that makes you feel sorry for him. I wonder if his parents are alive. He never talks about stuff like that.

Chip interrupts Stork and says, “Hey Stork, I bet you can’t guess what we go in the back of the hearse.”

“What? I didn’t see no casket back there. What is it?”

Chip says “Come on, take a look.” Chip and I stand up and go to the back of the Hearse. Chip opens the door, pulls the case back and says “Go ahead, open it.”

Stork says “No fucking way man. You open it.”

“OK, OK.” And then Chip opens the case. And there it is. With the sun, you can see right through the wax paper.

The three of us stare at the leg for a long time.

“Is that real?” Stork says.

“Sure is. We just picked it up at the hospital. Some lady had it amputated and wants it buried. We’re taking it back to the funeral home.”

“Wow.” Nobody says anything else, we stare at it for a while longer and then Chip says, “Hey, we gotta get going.” Then he closes the case and shuts the door.

We say goodbye to Stork and leave. In the car, Chip and I laugh like we haven’t done in a long time. I see Chip a few more times that summer before I leave for college in the fall.

*

Thirty years later, I read that Chip’s latest band is playing in South Boston at a benefit for 9/11 families. I haven’t seen him since going off to college. I decide to stop by. It’s at an outdoor arena, with a bar in the center. It’s a balmy summer evening with a salt scented breeze blowing off Boston Harbor. I walk to where the band is set up. I see Chip, walk over to him. He looks up, a big smile on his face, we shake, we hug. He buys me a beers, I listen to his band, we talk during the breaks. I need to get up early for work so I need to leave. Before I go, I say to Chip “Do you remember that day we went to pick up the lady’s leg?” Chip smiles again and says, “Yeah, it was standing up in the corner.”

At Ray’s suggestion, I drop my car off at Dave’s to check the rear wheels.

Dave called this morning and said “its just your tires…that noise is from your tires wearing unevenly. They’ve got scalloped edges.”

A few bubbles broke the surface of the water, then the body came up. For the past several weeks, the body sat at the bottom, tissue, bones and fluid, denser than the freezing water. As Spring approached and the water warmed, internal decay sped up and created gases inside the body. Finally, on this warm April day, the body’s buoyancy increased and it floated to the top. Ricky sat with Scotty and Gerard on the wall at the water’s edge, throwing stones, enjoying the early spring sunshine at the town Reservoir. The water along the wall was thirty feet deep. Ricky noticed the bubbles, didn’t think anything about it and stirred the water absent-mindedly with a stick. The body came to the top, immediately tipped forward and lay floating head down.

The boys jumped to their feet. “Holy shit, what’s that,” said Ricky. He stared at the odd shaped brown and green mass in the water and said “It looks a like a barrel.” Scotty said “I think it’s a body. That looks like a head.” Despite being four feet from where the body came up, it wasn’t obvious at first what the object was. After being underwater for over two months, a combination of decay, algae, leaves and mud disguised the body to where it looked like something foreign, something wet and wooden, perhaps a round piece of furniture. “Aren’t those legs?” said Gerard. “Yeah, that’s definitely a body.”

Ricky wondered what the dead guy’s face looked like. The only other dead person he saw was his grandfather at the funeral. He remembered seeing people, one by one, kneel down at the casket, say a prayer and touch his grandfather’s hand, which was wrapped in a rosary. When it was Ricky’s turn, he knelt down, said his Our Father, but could not bring himself to touch his grandfather. Afterward, he asked his mother how it felt. “It felt kind of cold and dry, honey. It’s OK that you didn’t touch him.” After that, Ricky would often wonder what the hand felt like.

*************************************************

The man of Polish descent grew up in the town with the reservoir. He went to school in the town, got by but did not excel, and used his size and strength to do well at sports. After high school, he went off to fight in the Second World War. He fought well and won a medal of valor for holding off a platoon of Germans for two days until reinforcements arrived. After the war, he returned to the town with the reservoir. He took a job at the munitions factory where he made the big shells that were used on battleships. He neither liked nor disliked his job. He met a woman at Church, dated and got married. Their life was good. They went out to movies, out to dinner, sometimes bowling and every summer vacationed in the poconos. They used the money from the munitions job to buy a two bedroom house in a good neighborhood. They tried to get pregnant but had one miscarriage after another. Eventually the pregnancy took and they had a boy, their only child.

As the boy grew, he brought great joy to the man and his wife. The man went to the boy’s little league games and his wife made cookies for the boy and his friends after school. The boy was smart, got good grades and had lots of friends. Every Sunday they went to Church and the boy stood between his parents, wearing the clip-on tie the man bought for him at Sears. The man was always shy and had never before sung the hymns or said the prayers, but did so now because he felt it was important for the boy. The boy went to high school and was on the football team. The man sat in the stands and cheered for his son. The boy was an offensive blocker so he rarely did more than protect his quarterback. One fall afternoon the quarterback fumbled the ball. The boy picked it up and ran for a touchdown that tied the game, giving their team the chance to win in overtime. That night the father celebrated by grilling hamburgers for the boy and his teammates at their home. The man drank cold Rolling Rock beers and let each of the boys have one to celebrate their victory.

***************************************************** 2

Ricky looked at the body floating in front of him. The reservoir was the town’s source of drinking water. The public utility company owned it and the thousands of acres of surrounding watershed. A small paved maintenance road surrounded the reservoir and every weekend when the weather was nice, people would arrive to stroll the three-mile circumference. At the main entrance to the reservoir stood a large stone and mortar structure called the lookout. It was about forty feet high and had steps leading up to a platform that extended out over the water. People climbed to the top to get a good view of the reservoir and the surrounding mountains. Ricky often climbed up, hung way too far over the railing, ignored his mother’s protests, and stared into the water below, trying to imagine how deep it was. He remembered his mother telling him the reservoir was fifty feet deep at the edge and several hundred feet in the middle. Ricky and his two friends stood at the bottom right side of the lookout.

“We should go tell somebody, maybe the police,” Ricky said.

Scotty looked at the body and said, “Boy, I wonder how he got there. It doesn’t even look like a person. I wonder when he fell in?”

The three boys ran to the parking lot shouting “there’s a body in the water, somebody call the police.” A man walked over to meet the boys and then some more people and quickly they were surrounded, the center of attention, as they told their story and pointed to where the body was. Two men walked down to where Ricky pointed. Other people decided they’d rather not see a dead body, if indeed there was one. More people continued to come over to Ricky and his friends and ask what happened. A few minutes later two police cars and a van pulled into the parking lot. Behind the van was a small boat on a trailer.

The boys went back to the water. The body had drifted and was now about fifty feet from the stone wall. It looked like a piece of wood and if somebody saw it for the first time at this distance, they wouldn’t think twice. Just an old log floating in the water. Ricky looked at the shape and wondered if it really was a body. Suppose they bring it in and it’s just a log? Will we get in trouble? A man with a tie approached the boys and told them he was a policeman, could he ask them a few questions. He wrote down notes on a little pad while the three boys told him what happened. The policeman wanted to know exactly where the body came up and Ricky walked over and pointed to the place in the water. The policeman also wrote down each boy’s name and age. When he was done writing, they all walked back to the parking lot.

******************************************************

The munitions factory worker went to his son’s high school graduation. The boy received his diploma, turned and saw his parents in the audience. Tears fell from the man’s eyes and he held up his hand to wave to the boy. The Vietnam War was a few years old and after graduation the boy joined the army. The man knew it was the right thing to do and gave the boy his blessing. The boy spent four months in Maryland in basic training. He wrote to his parents every week and told them about the pushups and the twenty-mile hikes. The man was proud of his son.

By fall the boy was sent to Vietnam. When he got off the plane in Saigon he had never felt such heat. Within two weeks he was going on patrols in the jungle. He was afraid, but he knew it was his duty and tried never to show his fear. He continued to write to his parents every week. The man and his wife would read his letters over and over. The woman worried and the man felt proud. The couple went to Church every week. The man still sang the hymns and said the prayers.

The boy’s platoon was out on patrol. They had just finished searching a village and were getting ready to leave. The boy was resting with his buddy near a hut when a Vietnamese girl came running out of the jungle. She ran right by the boy and dropped something near his leg. The boy saw something green and metal and then there was an explosion of light. The boy died instantly.

A few mornings later two uniformed soldiers knocked on the door of the two-bedroom house. The woman answered and immediately broke down crying – she knew. The man was drinking his morning coffee and came to the door. “I’m sorry to inform you, your son was killed in action. We’re very sorry. The army will take care of all the arrangements. His body should arrive at the local base in two days. Your son was 3

very brave. If there’s anything we can do, please call.” The woman was hysterical. The man did not cry. He tried to comfort his wife. They had a funeral. Their son was given full military honors with a twenty-one-gun salute. After the funeral, the man went back to work at the munitions factory. The couple continued to go to church, but the man no longer sang the hymns or said the prayers.

One night in February, while his wife was out visiting a friend, the man called a cab to the house. When he heard the horn, he went out and told the driver to take him to the reservoir. The driver asked if he was meeting somebody. The man said no, he just liked going there, could he drop him off and wait a few minutes. The cab pulled up to the reservoir. The man got out, told the driver to wait and walked towards the lookout.

***********************************************

Ricky watched two policemen carry the boat to the ramp that was never used – boating and swimming were not allowed in the town’s water source. He looked out and saw the object floating, now at least two hundred feet from shore. It looked like a brown lump, maybe a clump of leaves. Two policemen got into the boat with a wire basket and a green tarp. They started the small motor and headed toward the object.

Nearby a woman was crying. Two other women were trying to comfort her.

By now Ricky and his friends’ parents had arrived and each boy was telling their story. Ricky noticed the woman crying. Ricky’s mother pulled him aside and spoke to him softly. She told him that two months ago a man jumped from the lookout. There was a thin layer of ice and he broke through. She said that they searched for his body for days but could never find it and had finally given up. They say he probably killed himself. She told Ricky she heard that the man’s wife had been coming to the reservoir every day.

The boat approached the body. The policemen reached into the water, dragged the body into the wire basket and pulled the green tarp over him. At the boat ramp, two other policemen helped lift the basket. Ricky was standing near the van and knew they would walk right by him. Part of him wanted to move far away but he couldn’t help but stay where he was. As the basket approached, Ricky could see a hand hanging out from under the tarp. It was swollen and green and kind of looked like the hand of The Mummy, Ricky thought. Then Ricky smelled it – the same as when he and his father found the dead dog wrapped in newspapers in the woods near their house. They put the basket with the tarp in back of the van, closed the doors and drove away.

The next day at school, everybody came up to Ricky and his friends and asked them about the body.

“We saw your names in the paper.”

“What did he look like?”

“I heard he had worms on him.”

“Did he smell?”

“My dad said he killed himself because his kid died in Vietnam.”

After a while, Ricky stopped hearing the questions and could only think of the man’s hand.

The poet says that it is good to grow younger towards your death. I think I am regressing. Evidence? Tonight. Sitting with in a Cambridge restaurant after a movie…I’m a bit bored. My tablemates are texting and talking techie stuff. Dinner is over and I’m waiting for the bill. Listening to overhead speakers rolling 80’s rock music. Not the best decade. Our pierced (eyebrows, lips, tongue and nose) and goth-like waiter has disappeared and the bill is too long in coming. I’m tired and ready for sleep.

Then the beat overhead is familiar and Madonna starts playing “Material Girl”. I drum the percussion part on the Formica tabletop. Beat picks up, I pound louder and start to sway and sing along. I know I’m sliding down that slippery slope towards inappropriate behavior….then, what the hell. Jump up and say “let’s dance”. Friends at the table laugh but look a bit dismayed. But our waiter suddenly appears! With our bill and a big smile. That surly creature, who was slow and bored with all of us….He suddenly appears at my side, shimmeys and sways. Graps my hand, twists and twirls. We dance and boggle in the aisle, ‘til the song ends with a sharp beat and our hands high-fivin’. Middle aged, 55 year old me and 23 (tops) tattooed dude find common ground.

“Matt, I had a physical today. I need a colonoscopy now, and every five years thanks to Peter, I’m gonna have that sleep study thing that you’ve been harping about,  and I had a preliminary hearing test today.”

“Deaf?”

“They use a laptop. Is there anything that’s done without a computer nowadays? You put headphones on and hold a buzzer in your hand that you press every time you hear a sound.”

“Deaf?”

“The nurse ended the test before I pressed the button.”

“Deaf.”

“Matt, I had a physical today. I need a colonoscopy now, and every five years thanks to Peter, I’m gonna have that sleep study thing that you’ve been harping about,  and I had a preliminary hearing test today.”

“Deaf?”

“They use a laptop. Is there anything that’s done without a computer nowadays? You put headphones on and hold a buzzer in your hand that you press every time you hear a sound.”

“Deaf?”

“The nurse ended the test before I pressed the button.”

“Deaf.”

Karen’s Superman. She’s a well mannered professional during the day, but take her to a club with a live band and her inner Faye Dunaway appears. I know; I’ve seen it. She’s thin, slippery and attractive and her moves draw attention not shunned but played with like matador and bull.

At The Lucky Dog in Worcester, watching “The Wretched Souls,” we sidled up to a pillar on the dance floor. I leaned against the left side and she the right. Following her face and figure, a young guy of modest build and dark hair walked behind her and pinched her left buttocks, the buttock nearest me. She turned, smiled, waved one finger and mouthed, “No, no.” Her lips, her shape and her dance floor moves said yes, only her finger said no. He grinned at her and pointed at me, as if it were I with the roaming hand, and minutes later touched her again. Again she smiled, wagged that finger and again he pointed at me.

At Sweet Bites, our friendly neighborhood coffee shop, Karen’s more complex. The smile that rarely says no attracted attention from a-soon-to-be newly acquired friend, John, who stopped at our table  to tell her how compelling a figure she presented, framed in the lattice work of the large window,  bathed by early morning sun.  Sipping coffee, black,  she’s the confessor with heart on her sleeve, the professional on her way to work, and the friend of many who easily swaps hugs. Then there is this other Karen.

“Karen, why are you so aggressive with those guys?”

“I’m not aggressive.”

“Okay mean.”

“I’m not mean.”

“Look, Ken and Ray sit down and ask you easygoing questions and you snap back at them.”

“ I do not.”

“Is your vocabulary limited to no and do not? I’m telling you you’re like a third grade teacher telling the fidgety boys in the first row to sit still. How come you’re so much more docile with me?

Karen: Because you’re not a guy.

I peer down between my legs to rebut her point, to reassure myself,  and to be funny. Ray, sitting next to me, follows my eyes and says,

“Mine is longer than yours.”

I look up, catch his eye and say,  “ No, mine is longer than yours.”

“Mine’s longer.”

“ I remember you talking about yours and I know mine is longer. Karen, who’s swims with me, can back me up.”

Karen, looking around at the crowded café and aware that for whatever reason our table is sometimes viewed as a sideshow, waves her cape.  She reaches over and tousles my hair believing this argument is staged and knowing the end. Surely, she thinks, they’re about  to compare the length of hair on their heads.  But she’s not totally confident because she knows I’ve been wandering the perimeter of civilized society for the last three years.

I’ll prove it to you. Mine is longer.

Whereupon we both stand up, not yet the absolute center of attention, but soon to be. Ray reaches for his belt, me for mine, and Karen begins waving her arms and yelling that we can’t possibly be about to do what it sure seems like we’re about to do. Her decibels have gone from slightly above normal conversation to Aretha Franklin’s restaurant  scene in Blues Brothers. “You better think (think) think about what you’re trying to do to me.”  She slows me down as I fumble for my belt, as Ray unbuckles his. Karen yells, “No, no, stop,” with her left arm outstretched, palm towards Ray and Me,  while hiding her eyes behind her other hand. Ray he’s smooth, real smooth. He yanks his belt out of his pant loops and  says, “See, mine is longer than yours.”

I am told I wear my heart on my sleeve. But this is ridiculous. Last night, 7Pm walking into Main Street café for dinner and some tunes.

Waitress: “Dinner?”

Me: “Yes, please. Can I sit here? (pointing to one of the many empty tables at the front)

Waitress: “No that’s probably taken.”

Me: (staring hard at all the empty tables now).” Probably? How about these?? Are they reserved?”

Waitress: “Well no. (pause) But they might be…..”

Me: (still confused… giving up)…”Ok. I’ll sit at the Bar.”

Waitress: “Oh no, why don’t you sit here?” (points to the long table at the back where a man is already sitting)

She pulls out the chair next to him…

Me:  “But the bar is fine. And he’s sitting here?”

Waitress: “It’s ok. He’s single and very nice.”

Me: “I’m just looking for dinner. Really. Nothing more.”

Guy:  “I’m married”.

Me:  “I’m embarrassed. How do you do?”