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.
We are in Steve’s car driving along Maxwell Ave, to visit his friend, Beatle. Traffic is slow.
“Time passes much quicker in the morning than any other.”
“That’s probably because you take Ossi out first thing.”
“I put out the breakfast dishes first then take him out between seven and eight.”
“It’s barely light at that time.”
“Yes, terriers are crepuscular, you know.”
“That’s a good hour’s runaround!”
“It is. While we are out, bel prepares our fruit and oatmeal, tea for me, and coffee for her. I put down Ossi’s chow when I get back.”
“Doesn’t bel feed him at all?”
“She doesn’t do that much in the mornings since we lost Josephine.”
“bel was deeply attached to that cat.”
“So true, Fred. She feeds Ossi in the evenings, with a little pumpkin for dessert.”
“Enjoys his veg does he?”
“It keeps him regular, and he never leaves an atom in the dish.”
“Dogs have highly efficient tongues.”
“I am more active in the mornings. Emptying the dehumidifiers, taking trash out, and so on, and that is where some of the time goes. But time races by while we read the papers.”
“I imagine you read the New York Times, which is way too long for me.”
“Yup, and the Washington Post and Financial Times.”
“That lot could take all day and all night!”
“bel reads the FT, and I like the Times and we both read different parts of the Post.”
We stop beside a white Tesla in the left turn lane. A golden retriever looks back at us from the open passenger’s side window.
“That dog looks like it wants to chat.”
Steve opens his window, and the dog pulls back and looks away.
“Only with other dogs!”
We move forward a few car lengths.
“It is nothing but red lights along here!”
“They are always red if you are in a hurry!”
“Yes, are we running late?”
“Beatle doesn’t take much notice of the time.”
“You can’t be too careful. People are running lights more and more often.”
“I had someone go around me to run this light up here.”
Traffic is backing up in the oncoming lane behind a bus letting off passengers.
“That guy looks like he is going to make a run for it!”
“Stay there, buddy!”
We move a few more car lengths and stop at the next red light.
“It would be fun to hear some of the Beatle’s old hits.”
“No, it is not the band, he was always tinkering with his VW.”
“You don’t see many of those old Bugs now.”
“He has a really old one with the split rear window.”
“From the fifties?”
“He would know.”
“You’ve made no mention of a wife or partner. Is he married?”
“Yes, three times and none of them could stand him for long.”
“So, he is by himself now.”
“Yeah, pretty much. His second wife, Natalya comes by, once in a while.”
“What about number three?”
“No way, that third marriage ended in violence after less than a year!”
“How ghastly, did he hurt her badly?”
“No, she gave him a concussion and cracked a couple of ribs with a sock full of ball bearings.”
“Interesting weapon!”
“Beatle keeps it under his pillow in case of an intruder.”
The white VW Atlas ahead turns right through a yellow light.
“An turn signal would have been nice!”
“Probably on the phone.”
“Okay, we take the next one.”
The light has turned red at the intersection of Maxwell Ave. and a broken street sign indicating Beatle’s unreadable address.
“So, what is your history with this ‘Beatle’?”
“We are in a Listening Group.”
“What is that?”
“Comparing and contrasting different recordings.”
“Oh, are you all musicians?”
“There are only three of us, now. The other two are musicians, I am not, as you know.”
Steve parks in front of a small square bungalow with white shutters at the windows. Next door are to two long narrow townhouses in the last stages of construction.
“Look at those two identical twins, Steve!”
“They call it, ‘infill’. It provides more housing.”
“Yes, and each house will add at least two more vehicles to the streets.”
“Not just vehicles, huge late-model SUVs.”
We get out of the car and look around.
“There are always a few midsized electric cars like that Prius over there.”
“Steve, this area is nearly gridlocked already!”
“That’s growth for you!”
“Look at those new places down there. The neighborhood is getting horribly gentrified.”
“That’s prosperity for you!”
“Why do they have to ruin our nice old community with all this?”
“Don’t be a NIMBY, Fred.”
We can see a red, white, and blue Macadamia sign on the grass behind the rail fence across Beatle’s front yard.”
“Look at that, Fred!”
“It is one of those LED signs.”
“I didn’t know they made garden variety electronic signs.”
“Isn’t that a small version of that program of images at the Hadron Shopping Center?”
“Sure, looks like it.”
“There’s Macadamia dancing to The Village People’s YMCA!”
“I wonder if he knows that was a gay group?”
Several broken rails have fallen at odd angles to their posts. One end is attached crudely to a gate post with baling wire. A large white oak branch has fallen near Beatle’s black VW, parked in the driveway. Twigs full of dead leaves are scattered over the car. We walk up the short leaf-strewn front path to the portico.
“He has been in this house more than thirty years.”
“It looks like he needs to get a paint job.”
White paint peels off the door frame.
Steve turns the doorknob, and we go into the small living room filled with a baby grand piano. An easy chair in the corner is piled with sheet music.
“Beatle!”
Steve looks around. There is no sign of him.
“This room feels kind of bare. No carpet, nothing on the walls, no curtains.”
“I know, Fred. He is all ears in here.”
“Beatle, it’s Steve. I have brought my neighbor, Fred.”
“Down here. Come on down here!”
It is a faint sound.
“Oh, he is in the listening room.”
Steve leads the way through the kitchen with one old percolator coffee pot on each side of the sink, which is full of unwashed mugs.
“Help yourself to coffee from the pot on the right.”
“Thanks, Beatle, we are all coffeed out.”
“The milk in the fridge is sour.”
We go down to the basement by steep stairs made narrow by the stair lift. The path to Beatle’s chair is warn deep into the light brown shag carpet.
“Beatle! How are you?”
He is a short barrel-shaped man with a graying ginger beard and thin hair. He doesn’t look up, adjusting the controls on his stereo preamp. He waves his headphones held in his right hand.
“Hi Steve, Hi Steve’s friend.’
“This is Fred.”
“Fred, pull up a seat anywhere you can find one.”
The far wall supports shelves loaded with LPs from floor to ceiling. There’s a row of old steel ammunition boxes on the floor in front. The wall behind him holds books, with more piled up on the floor in front of it. Looks like a small window has been blocked with a warped unpainted plywood rectangle, fastened with peeling gray duct tape.
Beatle backs up and sits slowly in his corduroy recliner. His headphones now hang off one wrist stretched out over the arm of his chair.
We step carefully around Beatle’s feet on the extended recliner to take identical brown leather barrel chairs, facing him. They are badly torn along the sides. The cushions are timeworn with faded hollows in the seat.
He notices me looking at the ragged chairs.
“My first wife’s cat tore that up. I told her the cat’s got to go. So, the bitch left with her cat the next day!”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t waste your sorrow on me, Fred!”
“Fine, I am abstemious by nature!”
Beatle puts his headphones around his neck and picks up an iPad from a small round table beside him, knocking his coffee mug on the floor.
“Has that damn thing spilled?”
“No, Beatle, it is empty.”
“Alright, Steve, I’ll get another mug when Boyd gets here.”
“Would that be Boyd Nightingale?”
“Yeah, you know him, Fred?”
“Not well, but yes.”
“He’s a sweet kid. I am educating him in classical music and the dangers of female entanglements.”
Beatle taps his iPad.
“Did you load all your recorded music on that iPad?”
“No, Fred, this is the controller. The music is on a separate hard drive downloaded from my CDs in those ammo boxes and online.”
I get up to get his coffee mug.
“Leave it. Get it later.”
“What were we listening to, Steve?”
“Oh! Is this going to be a listening session?”
“What else is there to do, Fred? Argue about politics?”
“Anything but that!”
“Let’s do the Brahms string sextet that was interrupted last time?”
“Okay Steve, that’s number two in G, opus 36. Played by Harriet Krijgh & Friends.”
Beatle taps his iPad and the opening floats out of his old Klipsch horn speakers standing to the left of his stereo.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVKwCjZ_zUQ)
