NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
The scent of cigar smoke catches my attention walking along the Hadron Shopping Center arcade. Steve Strether is sitting at one of the outdoor tables set up outside the French patisserie and bistro, Chez Roger since COVID restricted indoor seating.
His head emerges from a small cloud thinning and tumbling gently out of his pensive mood towards the parking lot. His newspaper is folded on the table and his phone is silent beside his empty paper plate. He adjusts his new gray beret.
“Nice had gear, Steve!”
“Thanks, a gift from bel. Riot attacked my navy Parisian one. “
“Who?”
“The stray cat we adopted.”
“Oh, bel calls it Josephine, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, big mistake, in my opinion.”
“Took it for a wooly bird?”
“Another mystery of the feline mind!”
“Their brains are only pea-size, you know.”
“I don’t have much idea of their cranial capacity.”
“To be fair, they do have a lot of neurons packed in there. More than dogs, which have bigger brains.”
“That high density must be what makes them so enigmatic.”
“What grounds do you have for that assertion?”
“The tradition of whimsey associated with cats!”
Steve blows another leisurely cloud of scented smoke. His Dutch Master is still young and long in his fingers as he takes it from his lips to speak.
“Have you got time to sit down?”
Steve pushes a chair out from the table with his foot. It scrapes across the pavement and a rear leg jams in a crack causing it to pivot away from me.
“Roger is serving, Cannelés, Financiers, and my favorites with coffee, Madeleines.
“How about Croissant?”
“Sold out buddy.”
“Everybody knows what they are!”
“You might mistake a Financier for some kind of Capitalist.”
“And his girl, Madeleine must be, tres chic!”
Steve watches a sparrow slowly approaching a crumb by his foot, one hop at a time.
“Is Bel with you?”
“Yes, she dropped by the Safeway.”
The sparrow takes off.
“Well, hi there!”
“I didn’t see you walking over.”
Bel puts her shopping bag on the chair, now facing her.
“I couldn’t see you for smoke!”
“Did they have any olive bread?”
“Sure did.”
“That was quick, honey.”
I pull up another chair and sit down.
“You going to join us?”
Bel makes no move to sit down.
“Yes, I am going to sit down, and you are going to, “Curd and Grape” over there.”
She points out the store further down the arcade.
“Get us some wine for Thanksgiving.”
“Okay, what kind would you like?”
“Red, rich, and nothing fizzy.”
Steve stands slowly and ponders his cigar. Its smoke rising above our heads
before dispersing in a sunbeam breaking through a gap between the tall apartment buildings opposite. He puts it out against a trash can outside the vacant store next door.
“You can leave that thing here, honey.”
Bell points out the empty plate and some foil that held his Madeleines.
“Here, don’t let them clear it away. It’s a Dutch Master.”
Bel, nods and Steve strolls over to the wine shop. She settles into Steve’s vacant chair.
“Do you remember what used to be there?”
She is pointing towards the store, closed after a recent fire.
“Wasn’t it an Indian restaurant?”
“No, The Emperor Babur is still open. See? on the other side of the parking lot.”
“Okay.”
“That place was Ab and Cheek Fitness Center.”
“Right and there was also a sub shop.”
“Yes, what was it called?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Daisy had a year’s membership at the “Cheek.”
“Now she will have to drive into DC.”
“Well Fred, she told me she hasn’t been since they closed.”
A West Highland Terrier trots past on a red leash and pulls toward our table.
“Those Westies always remind me of my school days. The headmistress had one called Gordon which used to hang out in her office.”
“Like a school mascot.”
“An unofficial one. It had a regimental blanket to sleep on in the unused fireplace.”
“So that’s why you got Lambert!”
“Partly but he was a rescue. We weren’t looking for a dog when Steve’s nephew
was assigned overseas and had to leave the dog here. When I saw it was a Westie, I told Steve we have to take him.”
The Westie swivels its ears and moves on busily sniffing the ground stained by a spill.
“That one is enjoying her constitutional.”
“Why doesn’t Daisy just walk on her own, instead of paying for a gym.”
“Makes sense to me. I didn’t like games, at school and still don’t exercise enough.”
“What did you play?”
“I played hockey without much enthusiasm.”
“So, you weren’t athletic.”
“No, I was what they called a ‘Swat’.”
“No flies on you!”
“It is a term for study, you know.”
“I get it. You were a good student.”
“Yeah, I did alright. ‘Games’ is a general term for Phys Ed. at British Schools, like one I went to in New Zealand, back in the day.”
“You mean your parents left their only daughter in one of those places?”
“They were convinced it would give me what they called, ‘a good start in life’”.
“Did it?”
“Dad wasn’t comfortable after a while, with what he called my, ‘Bleached Anglicization’.”
“Well yes, kind of like a foreign culture.”
“He wanted me to go to Howard.”
Bel unzips a small compartment in her handbag. Finding her phone, she shows me the scan of an old photo of herself in school uniform. She has a yellow sash across her blue blazer trimmed with purple.
“Fred, can you imagine that, at Howard?”
“Ah, no! but…”
“No, buts thank you. Dad and I had a tussle before Mom brokered a deal and I went to Bard.”
“What about the yellow sash?”
“We were organized into ‘houses’ and I was in Yellow house. Thinking back, they
were kind of like tribes!”
“Good grief! did you have mystical rights with ceremonial flutes?”
“No, but we had mottos and competed in sports and academic contests.”
“How long were you a border?”
“Five years, every day began with assembly where all the pupils gathered in the school hall for prayers, hymns, and announcements.”
“So, it was a church school!”
“Very Church of England, loyal British subjects and all that.”
“Seems very nineteenth century.”
“Well, yes. Who was it said, ‘History isn’t even past’?”
“Ah, was it Hemingway? or Faulkner maybe?”
“Bill! It was him. You got it. Right now, people are living in the 13th century, and others here in the States dwell in the nineteenth and yet others in the mid-twentieth; and that is only a bit of it.”
“While some of us struggle into the digital twenty-first.”
Steve returns and puts a bag on the table with two bottles in it. Bel looks in and
reads out;
“’La Lecciaia Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva’ A Brunello!”
“Yeah, Grape and Curd recommend it.”
“At a price, no doubt!
“No comment.”
Steve pulls up another chair and bell pushes the plate with foil-wrapped stogey in front of him.
“The other is a Zin and there’s some stinky cheese wrapped up in there too.”
“Not Limburger again?”
“Sure, remember, Harper Nightingale used to bring it over?”
“Yeah, and I never took to the Brevibacterium linens!”
“Sounds infectious!”
“Fred, that’s what makes it armpit stinky.”
“I got to know Harper Nightingale over Limburger and Stella Artois.”
“When was that, Steve?”
“Back when we first moved here. He and Lark were having problems.”
Bel is nodding.
“Which, he occasionally shared with me.”
“Sounds like heavy going.”
“Yes, in a way, but I find people interesting, especially their problems with each other.”
“You have been ‘Fauxmont’s ear’ ever since I got here!”
“You know Fred, that is often all people want.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone to take an interest.”
“Doesn’t it get tiresome?”
“Oh, yes it can!”
Steve relights his cigar.
“It seems to me he never got past his glorious college years and still thinks of life in those terms.”
“Well, Harper is an academic.”
“Sure, and that is fine.”
“So, what have you got in mind?”
“Dr. Nightingale always found some reason to mention his two master’s degrees and his doctorate from Chicago, the topic of his dissertation, etc., etc., etc.”
Bel laughs at Steve, who puffs out another scented cloud of Corona Deluxe.
