THE INCIDENT IN THE LOFT

“I guess the whole town knows about that already,” says Shawnda the morning after Robert threw out his back and had to be hoisted out of my loft by the Fire Department.

“Well, I certainly didn’t tell anyone,” I object, “except you and you don’t even live here, and of course Arliss because her house is attached to mine and with the Fire Department showing up in her driveway, she could hardly miss it.”

“And Daphne too, didn’t you tell her.”

“Well, Daphne, of course; She knew Robert knew when we all lived in Berkeley. I couldn’t not tell her.”

“Well, I heard it from my friend Sylvia and she doesn’t live there either, but she heard it from her friend Mavis.”

“The poet?”

“Yes, and so you know that Joanne has heard it and every other poet and probably the ladies at the Post Office.”

“Oh, they know everything.”

“There you are.”

“Sylvia told you even before I did?” It is only 10 AM the next morning and how can word travel that fast?

“Yes, Mavis' husband is a volunteer firefighter.”

“Oh, those guys are not supposed to talk.”

I can hear Shawnda rolling her eyes over the phone.

Robert and I hadn’t lived together for almost a year. In fact, I had taken to calling him Ex-Robert, but not to his face. 

The night he got stuck in the loft was the first time we had been together since we split up. He was now living in his own second unit behind the house of the people who had the little orchestra he played in. 

Robert was a classical oboist. He taught music at the small school in town and had recently started playing with a small orchestra put together by Mr. Coyle, whose house he lived in back of. The Coyles had moved here from Mill Valley, so practices were often held at one of the other members’ homes “over the hill.” This was a big deal, especially if it was raining, or foggy on the mountain and sometimes you couldn’t see any more than one reflector in the middle of the road at a time. 

Robert had been at a practice on one of those foggy nights the night he stopped by my refurbished garage. Arliss had done the remodeling herself, after being trained by Art Carpenter in the Women’s Carpentry Class a couple of years back, just before Robert and I moved from Berkeley to Benson, a small coastal town, off the map. Literally.

Robert was the very definition of long-suffering. I was not the perfect girlfriend. I had the occasional fling, when we lived in Berkeley, and later when I went with Arliss or Anabelle to Kingfisher’s after Water Board meetings because that was what you did for entertainment in those days.

Arliss was contemplating her own run and we had to check things out with her. No one wanted their very good friend and in my case landlady to make a big mistake.

So I drank and flirted and once or twice took a detour on my way home to visit a good looking author  or painter who invited me in for a nightcap we both knew wasn’t exactly what either of us had in mind.

Mostly I was a bad girlfriend because I kissed and told.

Finally, I decided it wasn’t fair to either Robert or me to go on as we were, so I moved out and he moved on.

We remained cordial when meeting in the street, or at one of the events held by the town; his orchestra played a few times at the community center and I always attended and clapped very loudly for him.

One night he knocks on my door at about 11 PM, having just returned from driving the harrowing narrow mountain road in a dense fog from a rehearsal in Mill Valley. Usually he rode with Mr. Coyle, but the Coyles were staying overnight to do some Hanukah shopping which meant he had to drive his own car, the clunker he brought from Berkeley. That he and the car had both made it in one piece apparently left him feeling grateful and that led to nostalgia which led to me.

For a nightcap.

Robert didn’t drink, but that wasn’t the point.

So I have wine, and he has sparkling cider and we both climb up the narrow ladder into my loft, with its mattress on the floor. Robert was and still is a substantial man. He huffs and puffs a little on his way up the ladder, and when it is time to go home some few hours later, he never even makes it off the mattress.

“My back!” he half-moans, half-screams. “My back just went out.”

“Well, don’t panic. Maybe just lie there a little while. I’ll get you some water.”

“Water? What for? I’m not thirsty. I’m in pain.”

“I’ll get an aspirin with the water.”

I scurry down the ladder to get the water and the aspirin. When I get back up there, Robert has turned on the light and looks pale.  

“You look pale,” I sat, unhelpfully.

“I can’t move,” he says back, grimacing.

“Drink this,” I offer him the aspirin and water. “You have to hold up your head,” I explain as if to a simpleton.

“I am holding up my head,” he retorts.

“Well not very far. Let me help you.” So I hold my hand under his head and hand him the aspirin and the water. Most of it goes everywhere but in his mouth. “You have to open your mouth.”

“It’s open,” he says between clenched teeth. Then, “I think I might be sick.”

Down the ladder I scurry again for a pot, just in case. He is now flat on his back, moaning and kind of wiggling.

“Maybe you need to lie still for a few minutes.”

“I am lying still.”

“No, you are wiggling.”

“I’m spasming.”

At least he isn’t heaving. 

“Has this ever happened before?”

“Once, a couple of months ago. It took a couple of days to get better. Then I had acupuncture.”

“You should have told me this could happen.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. I wasn’t even planning to come here.”

Robert is now sweating and looking a little green under the pale.   “I think we better call someone to get you out of here.”

“Who?”

“I dunno, the fire department?”

He groans. Back down the ladder I go. The fire department’s number is in the Benson directory, under Services. It rings at the chief’s house.

“Hello,” a sleepy deep voice answers on only the second ring.

“Sorry to wake you up; I have someone stuck in a loft, who maybe needs to be lifted out. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” he says not sounding surprised. “I’ll send some of my guys. Where are you?”

I tell him and go back to check on Robert who has stopped wiggling.

“Robert, are you still alive?”

“I think so.”

“They’re coming; Chief Sanchez is sending some of his guys.”

No moans anymore. I hope they come soon. Can you die from throwing out your back? And how did he throw it out? I don’t think we had been that energetic.

When the fire department comes with lights but no sirens thank goodness, Arliss is already out of bed and standing in her nightgown and flapping robe, squinting at the sight. Her young son Gus is there too, wide eyed. Arliss is squinting because she won’t wear her eyeglasses when anyone except immediate family is around. I must count as family, because I’ve seen her in the thick lensed blue plastic jobbies many times. Without them she is blind as the proverbial bat, and usually wears contact lenses. Tonight she clearly has not had time to put them in. Her vanity does not extend to her dress however, and the shapeless nightgown and robe are not flattering to her thin frame.

“What’s going on,” she asks, looking toward my garage unit, and sniffing, obviously trying not to panic.

“There’s no fire, nothing like that; sorry to get you out of bed. Robert got stuck in the loft.”

“Stuck?”

“His back went out, he can’t move.”

“Robert was in your loft?”

The firemen are carrying in a backboard now.

“How will they get him out? What was he doing here?”

I shrug; the vertical ladder from the concrete floor to the loft will not make it easy. Maybe they can hand him down, in an upright position.

Arliss and I go in to watch the progress. She pulls out her glasses from the pocket of her robe; this is too good to miss. Besides what if there’s a terrible mishap and she’s liable as the owner of the house, and the building of the lot, without benefit of permits?

Two of the men are rolling Robert onto the backboard now, I can tell by their heaving bodies visible from below and the grunts from Robert who is not.

Finally, they attach a sort of pulley mechanism to the board and secure it over one of the exposed beams. 

“Good thing you didn’t finish the ceiling,” I say to Arliss.

Now they are lowering the board with Robert secured to it down slowly to the waiting team below. Everyone is holding their breath, even Gus, who has gone slackjawed at the sight.

When they get him down without mishap, we breathe; Robert looks relieved; I pat his hand as they slide the backboard into the back of a waiting ambulance we hadn’t heard drive up behind the firetruck. 

“Are you taking him to the hospital?” I ask one of the paramedics.

“I think it’s a good idea; he probably should have xrays.”

“I just need some rest,” Robert protests from the back of the ambulance, still unable to raise his head.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I say still to the paramedics. “Robert, do you want me to come?

The hospital is “over the hill” a long bumpy ride back over the same foggy mountain road Robert had driven only a few hours earlier.

“No,” he says, ”maybe you can drive me back home tomorrow.” He has given in. He doesn’t have much choice. Arliss and I wave goodbye as the firefighters pack up their gear and drive the firetruck off to the station, lights dimmed.

It is very quiet in the wee hours of the morning. Frogs can be heard in the sewer ponds; a late night motorcycle whines home from Kingfisher’s, up Table Road and down Scenic toward a house where someone may be waiting with anxious questions, or just as likely an cold empty bachelor cabin that will not be heated until the motorcycle driver rolls out of bed at noon and lights a fire in the wood stove.

 “So all’s well that ends well,” says Shawnda two days later, the hospital opting to do a few more tests which showed nothing but a spasming back. They ever recommended acupuncture. I am meeting her for lunch at her sunny Mill Valley house driving Robert’s car, and will pick him up in a few hours, well before darkness and fog again reclaim the mountain.

 “I’m glad it all worked out and Robert’s not seriously hurt, but you will never live this one down in Kingfisher’s.”

I laugh, because in the day and a half since the “incident in the loft,” as the town wags have taken to calling it, I have learned that Shawnda is right that people will talk and news in small towns moves at the speed of light. But I have also learned that small town gossips can be very forgiving. After all hasn’t this same fire crew made quite a few late night calls around town where even the foggiest streets hold no secrets?       

“It won’t be a problem,” I say, helping myself to another helping of her homemade chili on this cold but bright day in early December.

Sanctuary!

May 21, 1968, I am blithely walking down Newbury Street or one of those streets frequented by Crazy Jane where the rich people shop, when I see an unusual sight. A group of scruffy dressed young people (that is not the unusual part) are playing recorders, beating drums, and falling down on the sidewalk. (That's the unusual part). Street Theater!.

For the past several months, I'd been part of a rag tag theater company who rehearsed in a church basement and we were in the middle of readying a production of Brecht's The House of Bernarda Alba. This was sometime after my disastrous experiment in conjugal living with Rick the actor in Dorchester, where we pretended to be a young married couple. The landlady was so sweet, I hated to abandon her after only a week, when I realized all of Rick's charms were skin deep. ( know this is so unfair. I'm sure he is a truly kind and humanitarian, loving man, but in those days, it was true passion and radical inspiration I was after).

So things at the Theater Company were decidedly frosty. Rick had even left for a few days himself to go back to Florida and see if his former girlfriend wanted to marry him.  She didn't.

I was playing one of the three sisters. I was, you might say, integral to the performance, not because of my stellar acting abilities. A turnip could probably have delivered the lines more convincingly, but because we were a tiny troupe with no one to spare.

But the street theater people intrigued me. so I followed them, as they drummed and fifed and fell down and got up, and finally ended up at a church around the corner. the Arlington Street Church on the corner of Arlington and Boylston Street.

At the top of the stairs two men, flanked by many others. One is in military uniform. Someone has a megaphone and is telling the gathering crowd that they are taking sanctuary in the Church, an ages old custom of providing a safe haven for the persecuted. This was a moment in history.

They are Bill Chase and Robert Talmanson,  Bill a civilian resistor, Tally, as Talmanson was know, AWOL from an unjust war.

The guerrilla theater performers are there in aid of them, of drawing attention to them and their cause. I approach the leader, a woman named Susan. I offer to join their troupe. How can she say no? Volunteers are always welcome, acting talent is optional. I have found the Movement I have been looking for. Direct action, not letter writing, report writing, making phone calls in aid of getting others to go to far off Washington for demonstrations. Right here at home.

And a theater troupe to boot.

Now I must tell Rosemary, the director of our church basement acting group. I can no longer pose as a sister in a Bertolt Brecht play when the real world is beckoning. I am relieved, no more Rick the actor, casting moon eyes at me. But terrified, The wrath of Rosemary is well known. Guilty, as I am leaving them all in the lurch. Can they find a replacement.

As predicted Rosemary is pissed; calls me a prima dona. "But it's for the Movement!" I cry. I am called; I must answer.

She is not impressed. But history is happening on Arlington Street. Surely they can find a stand in for my poor performance, even on short notice. I leave one church basement rehearsal space and head for another church's nave and sanctuary.

Harvard Square - 1967

Let me tell you about Harvard Square, the Harvard Square that was.

The Men of Harvard Square.

First there were the men of that spring and Summer of 1967. I don't remember all of it, the names of all the men. There was David and J.R. There was the guy who sold marijuana to the kids at Holyoke Center; there was the guy I met at the Cinemateque in Boston and we pretended we were in our own private Andy Warhol movie.

There was Vernon. Vernon was a tall man, lanky, maybe he had a beard. He was married to a woman who was bent at the middle; half her body went to the side, as if she had no waist, just a hinge. And not much of a torso between her hips and her head, long hair hanging down. I don't remember her name. I don't remember how I met them.

The funny thing about all these people I met, spent time with, in Harvard Square, in their apartments, on the streets, down by the river, smoking dope down by the river, in the park, the funny thing none of them knew each other. I even went back and asked (via Facebook, how else?) the ones i could find, David and J.R. if they had known each other then. They had not, or if they did, they did not remember either.

David was a bear of a man, who lived in a spacious airy Harvard Square apartment with his mom and Dad.  And his mom was Maggie of Maggie and the Beautiful Machine - an exercise program on public tv. She was gorgeous and fit; she was friends with the likes of the Chambers Brothers, and when they were in town, playing the Club 47, she held before and after parties in the spacious Harvard Square digs.

David's father was an M.I.T. professor; also a big bear of a man.  Maggie did her own thing, and I could not imagine anyone in the circles I had left behind, Methuen, the church, the Greeks, having a mother anything like her.

J.R. was small. His father was said to have been a colleague of Timothy Leary at Harvard working on L.S.D.

None of these men were romantic interests. Except I did have a little thing for Vernon. I told someone in the Vernon crowd that, "I have a thing for Vernon." They said, "Not good. Vernon is in love with his wife."

Ok, that was that for romance.

Besides I was too busy fantasizing about my "beautiful man" of the Coop, he of the mellifluous voice ordering books over the phone.

The buildings of Harvard Square. 

The Coop of course, go in the front door where they sold the clothes with the Harvard insignia on them, and ordinary clothes too, mostly of the preppy variety. Then you could go out the back door across Church Street and re-enter the store there, upstairs to textbooks where Jane and I and Mr. Lister held sway, up through the record department to get there, the escalator, with never ending theme of "A Man and a Woman" playing below and me in my little information box with my phone above.

Holyoke Center, the modern building on Mass Ave. where the kids from the suburbs hung out and bought dope from the guy who sold dope and sometimes snuck behind a pillar to smoke and sometimes asked for "spare change."

Brigham's and Bailey's (which Jane declared had the better sundaes) and of course Dunkin' Donuts.

Elsie's the delicatessen, and the hofbrau where Billy and I took the folk singers, Sandy And Jeannie Darlington, in high school, and some other famous sandwich shop.  Around the corner, Brattle St, with the Brattle Theater which always showed Casablanca or so it seemed, and even now shows Casablanca, downstairs the scented candle shop and everything smelling of scented candles, a warren of little shops and the Casablanca bar and other exotic seeming shops. Design Research with modern designs and, I guess, research, and Merimekko, with their bright simple designs, which Jane always wore. Hers were mostly in a purple or mauve tone.

The Cambridge Adult School where I took creative writing in the evenings and my teacher whose name was Ken thought I was a pretty bad writer, and maybe I was. (I wrote pretty much the same way then that I do now. More about that later.) A pharmacy, and down the street the Old Burying Ground where people have been buried since forever, many Revolutionary soldiers, local luminaries and of course Harvard Presidents.

And the Out of Town Ticket Agency, that used to be in the middle of the street, then they ruined Harvard Square. Then the ticket agency closed.
 

Harvard Yard.

You cannot "Pahk Youh Cah in Hahvahd Yahd."  You have to park in the street and walk. Harvard is everywhere, and it's also a big enclosed area, with administration buildings, classrooms and dorms. A Library, a museum. Harvard Yard.

And then there is Radcliffe.

Scavanging in Louisburg Square

Soon after my short foray into drug dealing, the bathroom ceiling caved in on the Beacon Hill pad, sending Jane and I scratching like fiends down the Hill to Mass General, sure we had contracted crabs from the incident. Assured there were no cooties on us, we had to find a new place to live.  She moved into her own North Beach pad, and just moseyed across the street with a girl called Amy and her roommate Cheryl who needed a third to share a tiny two bedroom apartment.. The way this place worked was two girls shared one room; each getting one single bed. Amy had the former walk in closet in the room.  We all coveted that closet from the day we moved in. Amy signed the lease. It was her apartment and she got the coveted closet room.   

Cheryl soon left for greener pastures, and a lively blond named Rosalie moved in. Rosie and I hit off immediately.  We would get that closet one of these days, and when we did, we'd share it, that is, we knew without saying so, that the closet would become the boyfriend room.

For the time being Rosie slept over at her boyfriend Allen's house more than she did in our apartment.  Jane came over frequently. Amy did not approve, and when she didn't approve and she couldn't move things to her liking just by her mere royal presence (like the termite queen), and believe me, she was no match for the Contessa of Cool that Crazy Jane could be, Amy just went into ther closet and closed the door.  Betty was on the large size herself, and when she plopped in the very middle of the couch in her bright Merimekko print moo moo, Amy oozed away defeated, slamming the closet door behind her.  Betty would smile her sly Betty smile and  we'd plot the evenings activity.

If it was Wednesday, we'd be on the prowl for treasures. Wednesday was trash night, and the rich people on the other side of Beacon Hill, always had the best trash. Antique chairs, in need of upholstery; whole loveseats with a loose leg, dressers that only needed some WD-40.

It was on trash night in Louisburg Square that we met Gilly. Naturally, he and Betty bonded instantly over an armoire the size of a baby elephant.Well, there was going to be hauling that into either of our apartments, so we graciously accepted Gilly's offer of a glass of wine in exchange for helping him get it to his street level flat on the not quite upscale but definitely on the "right" side of Beacon Hill Pinckney Street.

This soon became a routine, until Gilly's apartment was fashionably furnished, Jane had a few lighter pieces in her pad, and various other scavengers we met along the route scored big.  I never mined missing out because I couldn't see dragging anything up the four flights of stairs and  could nver get Rosalie to join in, as she was planning to move out West sometime soon with her beau, and Amy, well, Amy had enough already, so she wasn't invited.

Besides, there was always Gilly's to drop in on. He was gracious to a fault, cut crystal and dim lighting.  Decent wine; anyway it wasn't Annie Green Springs or Boone Farm Apple Wine, which the rest of us drank on those rare occasions we were buying.  Naturally, as was my way in those days, I soon developed a crush on Gilly. It took me awhile to figure out that Gilly wasn't into girls.

Selling Marijuana to the Christians

I returned from San Francisco by way of Kalamazoo, where I thought to reconnect with my childhood friends.  The first one I called was Anita Grintals.  She was in secretarial school and neither she nor her mother, the imposing Anastasia seemed pleased to see me.  I was full of my hippy tales of Haight Ashbury and the Straight Theater and the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll phenomenon.  Looking back, it was truly a "what was I thinking?" moment.

They put me up on the couch for one night, and one night only. It was clear, childhood friendships were not going to be rekindled. I never even bothered calling Nancy Boers.

Instead I called the Riddles, those friends of my dad's, who lived near the outskirts of town, and who, although she looked down on them for lack of formal education and so forth, my mother always called "the salt of the earth."

This salt of the earth family took me in with no questions asked. It was my goal to see my father and to ask him for a birthday present for my sister.  In my mind, that seemed as good an excuse as any for making contact.  The Riddles could tell me how and where to find him.

I spent about a week with them, seeing my father only once, in a diner, where he handed over $5 for me to get a puppy for my sister. He figured $5 would buy a dog from the pound.

The rest of the time I spent at the local college, Western Michigan University, in search of the "heads." In those days, you could tell who smoked dope and who didn't. Long hair, quiet demeanors, a gentleness, guitar cases.  I discovered Sam and Lee in a corner of the student union.  It was as if we had known each other for years. Sam was a student there and Lee was in between life decisions.  She was also headed to Boston for an abortion.  Now, this was before Roe v. Wade and from my experience with Crazy Jane, I understood abortions were still illegal in Boston.  Did she have an underground connection? Or was she stopping off on her way to New York, one of the few states in the Union, if not the only one in 1967, where abortion was legal.

I don't remember that part, only that in a few days we were off together on a plane for Boston.  I said goodbye to her in the airport and headed for the Beacon Hill digs I still shared with Crazy Jane.  This was before the bathroom ceiling caved in, and sent us screaming down the hill to Mass General, convinced we had contracted lice from whatever lurked beneath the ceiling tiles (asbestos fibers probably). I never saw or heard from Lee again.

Soon, I found myself with a puppy in a 3rd floor walk-up.  To accommodate the pup's needs, I got some kind of pen and covered it in newspaper.  Between my job at Filene's basement and the assortment of junkies and burnouts Jane and I had somehow inherited from Tommy Abbott, I didn't get around to cleaning out the dog's pen very often.

One day I got a call from the boys from Gordon College.  How had they found me? They wanted to know if I could get them some pot.  They were coming to Boston and they heard I had connections.

Wow, gone from the school for three months and I had a reputation as someone with connections!

Before I knew it the Christian boys were knocking on my door.

I was embarrassed by the dog poo in the middle of the kitchen, contained though it was, but they were wayward youth looking for drugs.  I did in fact have the necessary connections and made the transaction.  In some ways I felt oh so self righteous. At least I was no hypocrite. I always wondered what happened to those boys from the church.  I have looked, but I could never find mention even of my old boyfriend, who married the minister's daughter down the hall, and rumor has it, became a minister himself.

Finally, the puppy got to my sister, was named Gretchen, and grew fat and spoiled, but that was not the last I was to see of her.  It was the last, however, of my marijuana dealing days. 

Blue Eyed Poet Number 2

This was in the days of living on the coast, drinking in the afternoons, selling organic veggies and longing for the writer's life.

Bouncing with the Blue Eyed Poet -  a memory

Bouncing with the blue eyed poet, she wears other people’s cast offs. She knows she looks good, tube top, purple cotton jacket, black slinky synthetic skirt.  All turning this caterpillar into a butterfly.  They bounce together to the loud music in the gym.

Her hair is curly and her teeth are white. The blue eyed poet is suave, sexy, smiling. Bouncing together, they enchant the crowd. “What is this dance called” she shouts over the music, one hand grasping, pulling up the tube top. The blue eyed poet mimics. He is a chameleon; his eyes a mirror. His smile a cipher, slight, oh so sexy, buck teeth.

“Who knows,” he bounces her out into the street, the cool night air, September on the coast. He kisses her on the chin. He is always doing things like that. “What is it you want of me,” she asks, hugging thin cotton jacket close. He looks perplexed. Troubled. “Want?” He shrugs.

“To play. To bounce. To kiss your cheeks.  Nothing.”

She knows this then is the end before there was even a beginning. Coffee, and poetry, and gossip, and walks along the mesa bluffs. All less than a beginning. This dance, this bounce, this moonless walk toward his not new, but well-kept car.  

There is meaning in the movement.

His wife is returning and his harmless flirtation is over.

She sticks out her hand. “Well, then, goodbye,” she says, her eyes dark, submerged. He shrugs again.

“I don’t believe in goodbyes.” He smiles his cryptic smile, walking away. She goes back to the gym, but the bounce is over, the band disassembling their equipment.

Her friend Daphne waits for her. She says, “let’s go get a beer,” and the two friends cross the street to the Kingfisher Saloon, now in full post-dance boom.  

“No,” she says. “I want a grown up drink.”  They order martinis at the bar and sip until last call.

WINE WITH THE FUTURE FAMOUS WRITER

Ok, right off I have to say I don’t remember what year it was, never mind what month.  Sometime in the 70's because this was after Cambridge and Beacon Hill and even Berkeley, which is a whole nother story in itself. This was in a small coastal town called Benson, on a peninsula sticking out into the wide Pacific Ocean, where fog and mist and grayness defined the background for much of the action that filled our lives in those long-ago days. This is about one of them.

Daphne and I had been promising to visit the famous writer for months.  This was before she became a famous writer. She was cute and perky and young. She was clever. Even then, at the age of 23, she intimidated us older writers with her clever scribblings in the local rag, the Benson Bugler, which her friend Amy who ran off with the pharmacist edited. After she ran off with the pharmacist, I edited it, along with the Famous Poet and the astrologer. But that’s another story.

Daphne and I were poets. That’s what you did in the seventies in Benson. You scraped by on what you could get as a cleaning lady (and it wasn’t houses we were cleaning either) or selling organic veggies at the Co-op and you wrote poetry.

And you drank. A lot. You drank cheap white wine with friends in the afternoon on warm days at the beach. And you drank with everyone at night in the Kingfisher Saloon. Poets, fishermen, curmudgeonly old timers, hippies of every description met up at Kingfisher’s  for a game of pool and Bud or something stronger. No one drank wine in bars in those days.  It was sweet drinks like pina coladas or tequila sunrises or cheap beer.

Cocaine was appearing as an exotic new drug, and most nights you couldn’t squeeze in the ladies room at Kingfisher’s they were lined up three deep for the lines laid out on the back of the sink.

On this day, Daphne and I decided we would actually stop by the famous writer’s place and have that literary discussion we’d been avoiding. She was only 23 and she was writing a book. We were 29 and 39 respectively and we weren’t. We called her Randi in those days because that was her name and she wasn’t famous. Later she became Miranda and that’s how you know her.

In those days, people lived in all sorts of haphazard structures. Mine was a converted garage I rented by the month, with a loft and an oil drum wood stove.  Daphne lived down by the creek in one of several buildings owned by a family called Josephson and was known as Josephson’s Farm, but it wasn’t really a farm.  Randi lived in a small rented cabin on a corner of one of the main streets in town, behind a dense cypress hedge.  It was like a hobbit house in a different universe from the outside world of chainsaws, laughing children and barking dogs. Many of our little cobbled together homes had that otherworldy quality to them once you entered them leaving the outside world behind.  Or so it seemed during those unstructured times.

When we got to her cabin at the prearranged time, she was on the phone. Phones still had cords in those days, and hers was a long twisted one, getting more and more twisted as she hauled it around the cabin’s central room. We could tell it was a serious conversation because she wasn’t talking, just pacing and grunting and changing the phone from ear to ear, as she waved us inside.

We held out our bottle of wine and bag of Cheetos we’d picked up at the Liquor store, called Liquor’s (you never knew if it was purposeful, that apostrophe, maybe it used to belong to someone name Mr. Liquor) so we wouldn’t appear to be total freeloaders and she motioned us toward the table that served as dining and writing center. We pushed aside some papers as Randi cupped her hand around the phone and said to us “the corkscrew’s in that drawer. I’ll be right there,” then went back to grunting and pacing.

We opened the wine and found glasses in a cupboard. They didn’t match, but we didn’t care.  We tried to motion to her that maybe it wasn’t such a good time and we’d come back, but she kept shaking her head.  So we poured out three glasses of the cheap white and sat down to wait, looking over the spines on her bookshelf behind us.

We heard her hang up the phone, having never really said more than “uh huh” “Yeah” and “ok,” to whoever was on the other end.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she said, taking a seat and a glass of wine. “Thanks so much. Wow, I really need this.”

“Thanks for having us over, but really if it’s not a good time, we can come back,” said Daphne.

“No no, I’m really glad you’re here. I’m sorry. I’m not being very hospitable. Do you want some cheese or something. Oh Cheetos. Maybe some chips.” She kept half jumping out of her chair, then remembering, “Wait, I don’t have any chips. I don’t think I have much here at all; maybe some old wheat thins.”

“No, that’s ok, have a Cheeto.”

“I’m really sorry guys, I’m sort of distracted. That was my brother on the phone. You know my dad’s been sick.”

I had heard about it. Her father was a famous artist who had run with the Beats, only was more mainstream. He sold fairly well and had respect in bourgeois circles. Now in his late sixties he had been battling cancer for some time.  We nodded.

“Well, it looks like this is it. We have to decide what to do, I mean, whether to pull the plug.  I can’t be there, so my brother is really stuck. And my dad is such a cool guy; he’s just so great, I know he’d want us to do it, but it’s so hard to say go ahead and do it, pull the plug, on someone, your father. You know?”

Of course, we didn’t know. We had unintentionally walked in on a very private moment. We were like ghouls at the bedside.   Should we stay, should we go? Would it be ruder to stay intruding on someone’s tragedy or to leave them alone with their crisis?

Just then the phone rang again.

“Sorry,” said Randi for maybe the fourth time, snatching it up.

Daphne and I were giving each other looks. Once she kicked me under the table and motioned with her head toward the door.  Uh, what’s the right thing to do? Would it more inconsiderate to get up and go or to stay. Inertia won out.

We heard more grunting, then a decisive, “Yes, yes, it’s ok. Let’s just do it. Do I have to sign something?”  Silence, then ,”Ok then, I’m really sorry I can’t be there. I’ll be right here by the phone. Call me; anytime, call me in an hour. Call me in ten minutes. Are you ok? I’m ok, really, I’m fine. You’re doing a really great job, Thanks, thanks so much.”

“OK, well, we did it.” She wiped her fist over her eyes looking much younger than 23, then sighed and took a long drink out of her glass.

“I’m really sorry, you guys. I’m glad you’re here, but now you have to listen to all this stuff.  It’s weird. Thanks so much for coming by.”

“We better go. You probably have things to do. I’m really sorry about your dad,” said Daphne getting up.

“Me too, I’m really sorry, can we um…do anything. Do you need a ride or anything?”

“No no, I have to stay here for my brother’s call. He’s only 18, and he has to be there actually doing it. I mean he doesn’t pull the plug; I don’t even know if there is a plug. I guess there is for the respirator, but the doctor pulls it. He just tells them, and I can’t get there, because I’m here and they’re in Connecticut. So can’t you please stay a little while longer? I’m sorry. I must be the worst hostess ever.”

She dumped the last of the Cheetos out of the bag and stuffed them into her mouth.  Daphne and I poured more wine for all.

“Oh, I don’t even like Cheetos,” she said, around a mouthful. “This is so gross. Do you want a napkin?”

She got up and pulled some paper towels off a roll, tearing them in places other than where the perforations were. She folded them as neatly as torn and mangled paper towels can be folded and put them on the table in the general area where we sat.  We smoothed them out just to have something to do. No one said anything at all for a while.

We spent the next few minutes trying to get orange goo off our hands.  Randi had it all over her white blouse; Daphne got some in her hair.  Randi noticed her struggling with some paper toweling and a strand of hair, looking crosseyed at the hair and pulling at it with the paper towel, now shredded.  She rolled her eyes and all three of us broke out into raucous laughter.  It seemed the right thing to do. We laughed and waved our orange fingers in the air until we were laughed out.  Randi said simply, “Thanks.”

Then the wine was gone and then Randi found some more in the back of the fridge. “Look, it hasn’t even been opened. Oh, it’s that really bad stuff from Liquor’s. I think they make it in the back room.”

Daphne was already pouring. We drank and waited for the phone to ring again.