Four voice messages. No return calls.
And I thought Mayor Charlotte and I had made a connection.
I simply want to understand why I, the head of the tourism bureau for crying out loud, am not part of the door-to-door meetings. Tell me the sense in that.
I suppose it may have been somewhat fortuitous, given today’s events. One of my assistants, Melanie, who’d been calling out sick quite a lot, reported in and promptly quit. She’d found a full-time job doing media relations with a museum two towns down. While I wasn’t fond of her tactics while going about this potential transition, I had to hand it to her – she is a catch. Beautiful, whip-smart, and a history major. She gave two weeks’ notice, very professional, but I told her she could go today.
Of course, she did, and, since Lord knows I didn’t have anywhere else to go, here I am.
My point is that had I been out on that go-round with the mayor and Bernie, well, the office would have been closed.
Instead, I stand behind this display case, manning the register, watching walk-in tourists browse the brochure aisle and debate about when and where to eat.
“Oh Frank, the Inn on the Waterfront. How charming! What do you think?”
“Let’s check with the rest … I’ll text them now.”
The woman turned in my direction.
“We decided – spur of the moment – to take a drive upstate,” she said. “Our pickleball friends will be joining us … so I’d love your thoughts on a good place for lunch for five. … You know, our dear friend, Marci, lost her husband last year, poor thing. I just want to be mindful of her.”
Retirees with money and time and no cares.
I kicked into auto-pilot reciting a list of restaurants within a 10-mile radius, and five minutes later they were gone.
That should be Stu and me. We were on our way there.
We should be the ones taking day trips, touring wineries up north, then sipping for a spell, cool breeze at our backs. We should be the ones toasting our lives together, enjoying the kids and peace.
He was a kind man and, thanks to his family’s fortune, our family wanted for nothing. By the time we came back to Middle Valley, the kids and I had backpacked through Europe twice, taken a cruise to Alaska, and driven across the southern part of the United States.
At the time, I had built up a collection of decorative toilet seats – even had a Google Alert set for “toilet seat.” Well, the very day I got the alert that pointed me to the Barney Smith Toilet Seat Museum in San Antonio, Texas (they had updated the web site with the news that Barney, himself, had turned 92) … that was the day we started planning an itinerary.
The man, a former plumber it turned out, had thousands of them! When we arrived on his doorstep unannounced, he was most gracious … allowed us to wander around his garage and a nearby shed. Each seat had a hand-written label that explained its manufacturing origins, the date it became part of his collection … even stories about famous people who may have used it or historical events that had taken place in its presence. (I had the kids take a picture of me next to one Barney said came from MGM Studios. I mean, think of how many Hollywood butts sat on that piece of porcelain. Jeesh.)
Stu never took part in our travels, and, of course, now I know why. By that time, his addiction had taken control. I had never even seen his checkbook, let alone seen how quickly it had been draining. As the kids and I followed our route, we’d talk to him every few days, the kids relating what sorts of strange things we were seeing and me asking him whether and what he was eating. Every day, he’d send $2,000 to my account with the same memo on the deposit: “GAS MONEY. YOURS, STU.”
A month later, everything changed. Stu was gone, I learned how to write a check (and his net worth, which was still surprisingly considerable though I told no one, not even the kids). Now, instead of being one of these people spending their “golden years” wandering around in some sort of untethered sepia-toned bliss, I’m standing here waiting on those doing just that, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for that call that suggests that I am actually relevant in all of this statue fundraising pish-posh. I’m waiting to hear that my opinion matters.
Because if, dear reader, it turns out that it doesn’t … well, I know where many of the bodies around here are buried.
Not literally, of course. Never. No!
Just a figure of speech!