Heart
We ran into a friend named Tom...Tim? A friend, he had a great big scar across his nose and a beautiful jacket, his wife’s a painter, her studio’s across the road.
While we were chatting with T*, another friend who’s first name I can’t remember pulled over, I believe his last name is Lutz or Lotz, I think it’s Lutz. Not to be confused with Lurtz, the Uruk-Hai captain Lurtz. He’s a Volvo mechanic and he pulled over in the beautiful monstrosity pictured above. We chatted for a while like we were all old friends even though only a few of us were really old friends.
Then we went to the library. The Saturday librarian was very beautiful and there was a grandfather and granddaughter reading something aloud to one another in the corner. I heard the words “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” I don’t know if that means they were reading Shelley or Moore, either one is impressive.
Then we got some snacks at a market around the corner, I had an orange and a cookie, but we got a bottle of sake for Ikuzi, Jeanne’s husband. She said she’d pay us back for it, but that would have been silly, he gave us the butter bell I had been begging for for years that morning. Far more valuable than a bottle of sake, that.
We walked around the school and talked and then all but ran back to the car, it was the sort of cold that hurt our faces, and when it’s Roby’s face that’s hurting, well, you run.
To our right, up the hill, there was a house fire blurring smoke the color of a paper bag into the blue sky, they shut down a few roads with fire trucks which were polite enough not to blare their horns past us.
We drove home and heard about two boys from Chelsea who drove to Dartmouth and murdered two professors in hopes of stealing $10,000 in order to run off to Australia. We went to Hanover the next day for Abby to do a repair. Roby and I walked around and listened to someone play the church organ for us and his in-laws, an audience of four.