by Peter Pogany

Created on: July 17, 2010

Dante: “Remember tonight . . . for it is the beginning of always.”

In this age of weather satellites and Internet they should have known better. Predictions of overcast skies and slight rain for late June were as clear as noon-day. Yet they decided to spend a week on the shores of this sparsely visited, silent lake in the foothills of the Berkshires. But we cannot see into the minds of others. How could we when so often we don’t even know what’s going on in our own.

He sat in the small hotel lobby - waiting for her to finish her morning beautification - listening to a grey-haired man noodling Cole Porter’s “I love Paris” on an out-of-tune antique upright, meant, no doubt, for decoration only.   

Finally . . . a slow tap-tap of heels announces her arrival as she carefully negotiates the winding, squeaky wooden stairs - Oh, no! She starts to sing:  

“I love Paree' in the winter, when it drizzles . . .”

The tone-deaf lady wears a tight-fitting, blue-striped summer dress that unfortunately emphasizes her slim feminine endowments. The red coral necklace barely balances the overall negative effect.

He suppresses his disapproving cynicism (“Come on now, she always does what you want!”) and displays admiration.

No less artfulness in her cheerful, “ready-for-any-adventure” demeanor. “There he is, the man of my dreams,” her teeming neurons murmur behind a steep forehead, partially covered by precisely distributed bangs of thin brown hair, “the arithmetic average between the Terminator and the hunchback of Notre Dame. Backup plan! Carry on! OK, with that receding hairline - backup for the backup.”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes.”

They eat; drink several cups of coffee while reading the paper, exchanging sections. 

What to do on this last rainy day? Swimming or canoeing is out of question. Having brought her easel, brushes, and paints, she could “create” on the covered terrace or in their room. But if she gave in to her passion as she did a few days ago, he would become restless again, dragging around books that evidently failed to capture his interest.  

They decide to drive back to the small town a couple of miles away. This will be the third visit but what the heck! Living in New York City made both of them fond of quaint, clean, polite stores with incredibly low prices.

She was a statistician at the New York

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>