Finally, after a week of heat and storms and blackouts, we got our ottering in. It was worth the wait, a perfect Pure Michigan day. The water was cool but refreshing, the sky a fathomless blue and there was a fairly craptastic band playing at the microbrewery across the street from the park. They were wheezing through “Live With Me” as we arrived; what makes a cover band think they can handle the Rolling Stones, anyway?

But in the river we couldn’t hear anything but the wavelets hitting the seawall and one another’s voices, catching up and taking the news of the day apart like a rotisserie chicken. It was a good time.

Then we had a couple beers at the microbrewery, just as the band was getting into “Dance to the Music,” and if there’s any band other than the Stones that a cover band shouldn’t attempt, it’s Sly & the Family Stone.

But enough about that.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. A trillion dollars and in a week or so it’ll be like we weren’t there at all, except for all the weapons and vehicles and god knows what else is left behind. What a goddamn failure.

And what a way to start the week. I’m enjoying your comments in the last thread about all of this, if “enjoying” is the right word for it. It’s a grim moment. The dumbest people on my timelines are all Biden-Biden-Biden, but even their hearts don’t appear to be all the way in it. The truly dumb ones have a mendacity and cynicism that’s nearly breathtaking.

Meanwhile, in Covid news, conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, who “expressed skepticism” about social distancing, vaccines and masks, now has the bug himself and is on a ventilator. The lord moves in mysterious ways.

Time to start Monday.

Why do the weekends go so fast? It seems like 10 minutes ago I’d dragged Alan to a Delray dive for some tacos and Modelos, and 30 seconds ago I was ordering a pizza instead of cooking on a Sunday night. In between, lots of heat and humidity, a storm, errands, blah to the blah. But weekends are never blah, at least not when you’re out under the sun and in a pool and otherwise enjoying summer.

So into August we gallop. Five weeks until France. I’m staring to feel like Rhoda Morganstern when she’s offered a snack: “No thanks. I have to lose 10 pounds by 8:30.”

Saturdays are generally my favorite part of the weekend: Farm market, solitary breakfast at the coney island, food prep, vague hopeful anticipation at what’s ahead over the next 48 hours. And even though it turns out to be some book time and some looking-at-the-thunderstorm time and a little bathroom-cleaning, it’s still a weekend, and it’s great.

But now it’s Monday. Going ottering with Bill later this afternoon, as it’s going to be a scorcher. It’ll be nice to catch up and maybe watch a freighter go by. The Canadian border opened today, so if for some reason we end up there, it’ll be somewhat less illegal than it was last week. The Canadian-side customs workers staged a slowdown Friday, and the lines to cross the Ambassador Bridge were insane. We drove around picturesque Delray for a while before we left, but nearly got ensnared in it. Definitely pee-in-a-bottle time for a lot of truckers.

The pleasant days leave me less time to think about hell-yes autocrats hanging out in Hungary, listening to Tucker Carlson say, and I wish I were kidding:

Tucker: “I love America, I think my country is the best in the world. But don’t tell me America is more free than Hungary.”

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) August 7, 2021

Rod Dreher is, of course, one of the leading “intellectuals” pushing this idea, that Hungary does autocracy right because it keeps out Muslims and represses gays. I’ve been reading this guy for years, and early on it became clear what his animating force is: Fear. He’s afraid of everything, so it figures he’d be right at home in a place where Big Daddy is always looking out for you.

Later that day, Brother Rod tweeted an article by John Derbyshire (who he calls “Derb”) in VDARE, the explicitly racist and white-supremacist publication. When he was immediately called on it, he spent hours calling all his critics crazy because he didn’t know anything about VDARE, he just thought the piece was good. Hours and hours later, he finally deleted it. How is it possible that I, a shlub in Detroit, know what VDARE is, and not a leading intellectual of conservative America? It is to puzzle.

The incident did give me a reason to poke around the explicitly racist conservative mediasphere for a while. Steve Sailer wrote a piece on racial differences vis-a-vis athletic achievement, linking it to the Olympics and with the headline, “Arguing With the Inarguable.” This is well-trod ground – I guess that’s why it’s “inarguable” – and it’s the sort of thing that might be interesting in the hands of a non-racist, but there you are.

Some people on Twitter are asking why this story isn’t making a bigger splash, and I don’t have an answer other than TSF, i.e. Trump Scandal Fatigue:

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews.

Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday.

The investigations were opened after a New York Times article that detailed efforts by Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results. That prompted Mr. Trump to consider ousting Mr. Rosen and installing Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan.

Whatever happens, I hope the full weight of the Justice Department’s internal affairs division (whatever it’s called) falls on Jeffrey Clark’s head like a ton of shit.

And with that, I suggest we get Monday under way. But first, breakfast.

Another E-day in the books. This was my third, and I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. There was lots of time to read the manual between voters yesterday; turnout was pathetic. The city clerk is estimating 11 percent. In the no-shows’ defense, it was a pretty lackluster slate. The mayor faced no serious opposition, the council candidates were…council candidates, and the city charter revision was at the city-governance-nerd level, an unlikely demographic in the precinct I worked, which draws from a pretty low-income part of the city. People arrived before and after work hours in health-care scrubs and the sort of uniforms that suggested employment other than in the C-suite.

But that they showed up at all was something of a miracle — walkers, canes, unsteady gaits — and as always, I think of how we can make voting easier, encourage more people to participate, make them understand how important it is, even in lackluster cycles. In other words, to do the work that the entire GOP, top to bottom, is trying to thwart.

It’s already reasonably accommodating. Proposal 3 of 2018 brought in a lot of election reforms here in Michigan, and as a lowly poll worker, I’m always struck by what is the overarching principle of elections and the ten million rules around our procedures, i.e., the right to vote is hard-won and shouldn’t be stripped away lightly. This is why my ass gets chapped when the brain-dead among us post snarky, recycled social media memes that ask why you need to show an ID to get on a plane, but not to vote. To which I reply, first, you do have to show ID to vote in Michigan, but sometimes people lose IDs, or just don’t have them for whatever reason. Should they be denied the most fundamental right of democracy because they misplaced their wallet? (Republicans: Yes! They’re irresponsible, except when it happens to me, in which case it’s just a misfortune!) So we have the affidavit system, etc. Also, getting on a plane isn’t the same as voting, so just shut up about that.

Anyway, I hope we followed all the procedures correctly and there won’t be the usual spate of pearl-clutching around the inevitable mistakes. (There won’t be, because this was a Detroit city election, and the pearl-clutchers don’t care about Detroit.)

My co-workers this time were lots of fun. The chairman for my precinct was, I learned in a series of revelations spread out through the 16-hour day, a sailor-mouth coffee drinker who used to ride motorcycles and sometimes will live for a couple days on healthy snacks rather than actual meals, and has been divorced twice. He also digs classic rock and subscribes to the Nation, which at the end was maybe the funniest of the day. He read the latest issue off and on, then pressed it on one of the other workers with a hearty endorsement. When the men’s-room door was unexpectedly locked, he speculated almost instantly that maybe a junkie had gone in there, locked the door for privacy to shoot up, and had OD’d and died within. Interesting conclusion! But it turns out it was just an accident. Before the custodian came to remedy the situation, he used the ladies’, which he said “smelled much nicer” and was also “pretty.”

So that was E-Day III for me, and I hope I have a few more. I leave you with this helpful illustration from the operations manual. Recall that one of the more ignorant complaints about the November fiasco at the TCF Center in Detroit is that GOP poll challengers were “locked out” of the room where the absentee counting boards were working. They were not, of course; there were at least a couple hundred already inside when the room reached capacity and security prevented any more from entering. But the people screaming outside and pounding on the windows were not trained challengers; I guess they’d qualify as poll watchers, but my point here is that as in most other election-related practices, there was a procedure in place and they did not respect it. Happy Wednesday, all.

Tomorrow is Election Day in Detroit, and I’m working it, so… you know what that means. Yes, excuses! My own suburb isn’t deciding anything tomorrow, but there’s a lot on the table in Detroit — control of city council, some other elected positions, and a revision of the city charter that is too complicated to explain here, but trust me, it’s complicated.

So I must soon get my black pants and white shirt laid out on the bed in the other room and prepare to sit on my butt for the better part of 14 hours. God, another election. Didn’t we just have one? Seems like it, and yet — here we are.

Fresh thread for any comments, but sorry, I feel just a little bit tapped out right now. Back on Wednesday, and maybe with more material.

On Friday, I saw the sun rise…

…and set:

Both times over water, so you know it was a good day. The sunset came with a group:

I haven’t been kayaking in forever, so it was a good evening. We came for the moonrise, but clouds obscured the view. Even when you miss it, though, there’s something about paddling for home down the Detroit River at night that feels pretty great and makes up for everything.

On Saturday we went to the Detroit Golden Gloves tournament with my trainer and his wife. This bout was called a draw early on, when the guy on the right got a bloody nose:

And I include this pic for the ref’s mullet, which was amazing:

We came out into a heavy rain, which only got heavier. Our fave pizza place down the block was closed, the alternative had a one-hour wait, the second alternative was closed and by then, it was raining so hard I was worried about getting home. No way was I taking the freeway, not after seeing what happened the last time. So we headed back on surface streets, with the visibility almost nil — that’s how hard it was coming down. I couldn’t see where the deep spots were, but there was a car in front of me, so I just watched his tail lights. Of course — of course! — these people were undeterred:

They cannot be stopped. They are the cockroaches of the party scene, and will survive when every other place in town closes. I call them the Woo People, because every time you see them, the people onboard are saying WOOOO. On the water Friday night, there were the aquatic version, i.e. floating tiki huts with a small outboard motor, the most ridiculous things you ever saw, but they seem popular. There were also two larger ones, pontoon boats with free-spinning, non-functional “paddle wheels” on the back, along with flashing LED lights. Just ridiculous. As the rain continued to come down harder and harder last night, we passed one of the pedal pubs with its isenglass curtains rolled down, because cuz, there’d been a big change in the weather.

Everybody who’s spent time in the Midwest knows these storms; sometimes you have to pull off the freeway under an underpass to wait it out. They rarely last longer than a few minutes, but this one went for half an hour, easy.

When we got home, the basement was dry. As Aretha says, don’t know what I’m doing, but I must be living right.

So the plan to squeeze all the juice out of summer is going well. I just wish this rain would give us a break. Our butterfly bush is dying, and Alan says it’s from being drowned. I don’t doubt it.

A little bloggage? Sure.

J.D. Vance continues to devolve into an ever-more-horrible p.o.s. To wit:

Vance also took aim at the Democratic Party, saying that it had “become controlled by people who don’t have children.” He also claimed that politicians running the country do not have a “personal indirect stake” in improving it because they do not have children.

“And why is this just a normal fact of American life, that the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal indirect stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children and grandchildren,” Vance asked, noting that he was not referring to people who are unable to have children.

Joe Biden has children. Nancy Pelosi has children. People all over the Democratic caucus have children, children, children. Vance’s principle principal sugar daddy, Peter Thiel, has no children. Fuck this guy.

Meanwhile, you think it’s bad here? This is the U.K. Do note the Trump flag in the crowd:

I can’t believe I’m tweeting this. As an ICU doctor who has given everything they have trying to save lives this makes me want to cry.

“Get their names, email them to me. At the Nuremberg trial the doctors and nurses stood trial, and they hung”. pic.twitter.com/9tZeqru1Vk

— Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden 💙 (@sbattrawden) July 24, 2021

And with that, I have to clean a bathroom and finish overhauling a closet. Happy Sunday/Monday, all.

Looks like national humiliation hasn’t curbed Tim Goeglein’s thirst to be A Writer. The Journal-Gazette carried another of his contributions over the weekend; hat tip to Alex for passing it along. Ahem:

What gives Fort Wayne its distinct sense of place and definition? What makes it a unique locale?

What about any city could never be part of a franchise of any other time or era?

Monuments and memorials of surpassing beauty certainly cohere that sense of place. So do beautiful buildings of distinction and proportion. A city’s cultural institutions play a large role in the composition of a city’s personality, tempo and style.

There are other works of art not normally put into a category of high achievement but which seem to live with us as things elegant but easily taken for granted or overlooked like a strand of pearls or a fine-cut stone or a filigreed lamppost on a shady, quiet city street.

Oh, god. Do we have to do this again? Monuments and memorials are close enough to being synonyms that you can drop one. Certainly, like most adverbs, is disposable. The second graf seems to be what he’s getting at — to put it more simply, let’s make a fuss over the little things. So where are we going, Tim?

In Fort Wayne, there are two neighborhoods, one south and one north, that deserve our celebration and further attention – as if they are great paintings or meaningful poems. They are probably irreplaceable and certainly matchlessly noble, grand and even lush.

I knew exactly which ones he was going to single out — Old Mill Road and Forest Park Boulevard — immediately, and why? Because they are constantly celebrated and paid attention to, “like great paintings or meaningful poems,” etc. etc. They are two neighborhoods with no shortage of blah-blah written about them, so of course those are the ones Tim singles out:

In summer, these inviting and lovely neighborhoods offer leafy coolness against the background of their shaded homes. Their canopies of trees, well-clipped lawns and beautiful old stonework seem to offer us a welcome respite and refreshment on otherwise molten days.

In fall, their autumnal and kaleidoscopic colors are inviting and form a tapestry of reds, yellows, oranges and golden hues.

If you order an ice cream sundae at Tim’s soda fountain, it will come with syrup, sprinkles, nuts, a cherry and I dunno, maybe a bow and a hat. It would be inviting and lovely, leafy and shaded, with canopies of trees and “well-clipped lawns,” whatever that means.

It goes on at some length. I am done making fun of it. Although I will say this: Rarely has a prose style so suited the human being from which it comes. The first time I saw a video of Tim speaking, and this was well after the incident here, I was shocked. As our dear lost Coozledad said, “That guy makes Fred Rogers look like Dick Butkus.”

Well, I am sure he’s happy. He certainly landed on his feet.

So, Wednesday nearly upon us. Our trip to France grows closer. Starting to check the weather reports, look at local listings. Downloaded the Paris Metro app. Thinking about maybe taking a cooking class. It’s gonna be great.

Of course, I hope it actually happens, too. Delta could shut everything down, but fingers are crossed. Certainly I don’t want to only travel within the borders of this batshit country for another year:

I guess we’ll see. In today’s news: Another billionaire in almost-space, riding in a penis-shaped rocket. Covid stirs anew. Rand Paul got his ass kicked by Dr. Fauci (again). In other words, just another day in late-stage, climate-meltdown capitalism. How’s your week going?

I wish getting too much sun wasn’t so bad for you — I’d do it every available weekend. Getting too much sun is one of those uniquely summer pleasures, especially when you don’t get burned, just mildly/somewhat irradiated. Kinda glow-y. Tired.

It finally stopped raining midday on Saturday, but before that there was another deluge, and another flood. Our basement stayed dry, and for the life of me I don’t know why. Maybe we sacrificed a chicken or something, but we were fortunate again, while people in Grosse Pointe Park had poop water in their basements, some for the second time in three weeks, some for the third. I can’t imagine how terrible that was. Boy did it come down Friday — another inch-plus downpour. We’d planned a staff get-together on the roof of our editor’s apartment building, but it was washed out, so we relocated to his place. We did go up at the end of the night, when it was down to a drizzle and we could enjoy the view:

That’s the DIA at bottom left, the library at bottom right. Between them, Woodward Avenue. On the far horizon at left, the RenCen. Far horizon right, Motor City Casino, Wayne State’s Old Main and the Ambassador Bridge twinkling off in the distance. Rural landscapes are pretty, but I love a sparkling city, even one (especially one) as messy as Detroit. In between, we lit the shabbos candles and told stories about the newspaper business when it was fun. It sure isn’t fun now. On the other hand, I have one foot out and will have the other one out sooner rather than later. I’m not happy to be aging, but the timing, in this case, isn’t terrible.

Alan’s sister came up Saturday, and we had another smallish dinner party, including Kate and some other friends. Today: Sailing, capped off with some pool time under a hazy sun. I could have skipped my Vitamin D this morning. Hence the irradiated feeling.

So another good weekend in the books, a reminder that time is precious and one should spend it well.

Meanwhile, more hair-whitening news on the ol’ teletype machine. Dateline Pittsburgh: A woman who’d been abducted two months ago managed to leave a detailed note in a public bathroom, giving the address of her captive prison and promising it was no joke. But when police arrived…

Scott police officers went to the apartment address listed in the note on the day the first note was discovered, a criminal complaint said, but no one answered. The officers said that they could hear furniture moving inside the apartment toward the front door, but because they did not have a warrant, they could not force their way inside.

They later called a cell phone connected to the man who was holding her. He refused to let them speak to her privately, insisting the call be on speaker. She told police she was fine, no problem, on vacation, even. Then the next day, a second note was found:

The second note said that the writer had heard police at the door of the apartment July 8 and added that the abuse had not stopped.

This time they came back with a warrant, arrested the guy and found the woman. She told them:

During interviews with police, the woman described months of abuse; Mr. Brewer had allegedly punched and stabbed her and cut off clumps of her hair, the complaint said.

Mr. Brewer had also attempted to strangle her on multiple occasions, she said, and he had raped her. According to the complaint, police saw red marks, cuts and bruises on the woman and said that her hair was cut unevenly.

So of course he had to stand before a judge at his arraignment:

On Monday, Mr. Brewer was released after posting 10 percent of the $5,000 bail set by North Side Magisterial District Judge Robert Ravenstahl Jr.

We can all do the math on what 10 percent of $5,000 is. Five hundred bucks to be free on pending charges of sexual assault, strangulation, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats, unlawful restraint and simple assault. I wonder what it would have been if he’d killed her. Probably at least $600.

I look forward to hearing more about this one.

And I look forward to a good week. With no more rain.

Guess I’ve been scarce around here. Guess my calendar is all messed up. What day is it? Why is it 90 degrees outside? Why haven’t I been outside all day? (Because it’s 90 degrees.) And so on.

Also, there was a party, and too many drinks and snacks and birthday cake. I’m in the mood for a week of eggs, lean meats, leafy greens and nothing more exciting than ice-cold Topo Chico. Also, somewhat cooler temperatures. Friday was perfect, though, and a friend and I went over to Ann Arbor to welcome a mutual back to Michigan. It was nice to see the ol’ town again, especially without those annoying students. But I need to rest up before Shadow Show’s first show since March 2020, which is coming this weekend. Looking forward to that, oh yes I am.

So far, the summer has been pretty much exactly what I wanted — social, outdoorsy, and the hell with the housework, although I did clean the bathrooms today because I HAVE STANDARDS. But it’s more important to see people again, so that’s what I’m doing. And it’s great.

I’m so tired. How about the weekend in pictures? Here’s Friday’s view from the pool deck:

Less boxing this summer, more swimming.

Sunday I took a bike ride to my friend’s new eight-lot planned farmette in the city. It’s slow going, but in a year, it’ll be aces:

We should buy that old corner store, open an after-hours venue. Perfect neighborhood for it.

Met this dog at the Sunday party. I wanted to steal her. Look at that eye patch:

Any bloggage? Let’s see…ah, that greasy little shit J.D. Vance is falling in line nicely. I guess that’s enough irritation to get us into Tuesday.

The pools open for early-morning swimming late here, because schools run until mid-June and until they dismiss for the year, lifeguards are in short supply. They finally did this week, and I finally showed up this morning, Thursday. My beloved 80-year-old coach Tim was sitting as lifeguard, and didn’t change a bit in the year-plus since I saw him last.

“I got fat, then I got thinner, now I’m going the other way again,” he said. Story of all our lives. The morning was lovely and the pool, crystalline, but the workout was kinda subdued. I haven’t been in the water since January, but it all came back. Tim called out a few position tweaks, and I did 45 easy minutes. It was good to be back. If it’s not raining when I wake up, I’ll do it again tomorrow. I love to swim.

(Nov. 7, the day the cable networks called the election for Biden, was a Saturday, and it was warm and sunny here, unseasonably so. A friend and I played a couple rounds of miniature golf, then dropped by the Schvitz for some reason, I forget why. It was closed, but some people were out on the patio, and we drank some beers. A woman told me, “You have an amazing body,” and I goggled in amazement. “It’s your shoulders.” I thought: Can this day get any better? I don’t think so! Swimming, it does good things.)

Anyway, June is drawing to a close, and so far, it’s been a pretty good summer. It’s going to be hot and rainy soon, but that’s fine. I read the new Laura Lippman book, “Dream Girl,” in three days, and it is fantastic. I highly recommend it. It’s a little bit “Misery,” the first Stephen King book that knocked me over, and a lot of bits and pieces of other books and movies, and just a lot of fun to read. You might consider picking it up.

A few other things to read:

Stephen Rodrick’s obit for John McAfee is excellent, and the tone is just right.

Look on these photos, ye mighty, and despair.

Those are bad news stories, but hey, let’s not go out on a note of misery: Rudy’s lost his law license for a while! Things are looking up.

Have a great weekend, all.

It rained, off and on, all day Saturday. Skies were supposed to clear around 5 p.m., but there were sprinkles until 7, when guests started to arrive. We’d already made the call to go rain-or-shine, but 10 people can’t sit around my dining room table, so having our party outdoors, in the driveway, was really the only way we’d avoid the kids-table or strolling-supper solution. How tense! How will Mrs. Dalloway solve THIS problem?!?

It stopped sprinkling. Alan set up a full bar on a card table. I rented another table for the buffet, along with 10 chairs. A nice lady loaned me her 3-by-6 table, and we put a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood on top of it, with a tablecloth over. I set the plywood with a mix of our plates and a yard-sale set I picked up on a local swap group. On the buffet, some of my formal serving pieces, some sterling, some crap. Nothing matched. I scattered tea lights and random candles around the table, along with grocery-store flowers. And it all went just swimmingly.

The guest list, I learned for the 900th time, is the only thing that really matters. I ask you: Would you rather split a six-pack and a pizza with the Springsteens and the Obamas in the living room of your scrofulous college apartment, or attend a black-tie function at Mar-a-Lago with the Trumps and Kardashians?

And the guests were everything. Everything, it turned out, was just about getting out on a warm night, eating some imperfectly but enthusiastically prepared food, and opening a million bottles of wine, along with pitchers of mojitos and negronis. Not that it was a drunkfest, although one of the guests made a French exit without her purse or her shoes. Everyone got home safely. We’re all starved for a little fun with fun people. And we all had fun.

I took some pictures with my film camera, and it’ll be months before we see those. For now, two taken with the phone. Dessert:

And after dessert:

If you want to make the cake, here’s the recipe. The sponge is simple, but as always with egg whites, a bit of a nail-biter. It turned out fine, though.

Everything turned out fine. I have a mild hangover. I’m treating it with ice cream, a grilled cheese sandwich and ignoring my watch chirping at me to close my rings.

Hope your weekend went as well.

My hangover was ameliorated somewhat by putting on a sleep mask after I got up to pee at 5 a.m. Was able to sleep clear until 8 a.m., at which point I went out to finish the cleanup. Before I did, though, I read this essay, published a few years ago. It’s a first-person account of working as a waiter for Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley; someone posted it on Twitter last night, and I can’t tell you who.

The Buckleys lived in a maisonette on Park Avenue. What is a maisonette, you may be wondering, as I did?

A maisonette, if you didn’t know, and I didn’t, is a house hidden inside the walls of an apartment building. The owners share services with the rest of the building but have their own door.

The rest of it is full of fantastic detail about how wealthy upper class Manhattan lives and parties, or did once. Money remakes Manhattan every generation or so, and I think a lot of this has gone away. I recall the first super-rich person I knew in New York, an heiress to two fortunes. She had a floor-through apartment in a Good Building on the upper east side, which means hers was the only apartment on the floor. The elevator opened onto her front door, which she kept unlocked and standing open much of the time, so the dog walker could collect the pooches for their morning constitutional without having to wake their slumbering mistress. As for the Buckleys:

I was introduced then to a kind older gentleman who, in my memory, ran their household. I don’t recall his precise title or his name, but if it had been a palace, I think he would have been the chamberlain. He impressed me instantly as one of the sweetest and most elegant men I had ever met, with a full head of white hair and a wry look in his eyes that stayed whether he was regarding a martini or a waiter. He was busy with showing the cooks around the kitchen. The waiters were brought upstairs to change in a small room that sat at the end of a hallway near the entrance to the back stairs, which led from the second floor to the kitchen. It contained a single bed made up with a torn coverlet, and a treadmill covered in wire hangers and books. Dusty sports trophies lined dusty bookshelves.

“Whose room is this?” I asked the captain.

“Mr. B’s,” he said.

I stared, waiting for him to laugh.

He said, “Oh, honey. Sure. She’s the one with all the money, after all. Canadian timber fortune, I think. Her friends call her Timberrr because of that and because she’s tall and when she’s drunk she falls over, because she won’t wear her shoes.” I thought of Madge Wildwood in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I laughed, he laughed, and then his face came over serious and flat and we both stopped laughing at the same time.

“Don’t you dare write about any of this,” he said. “Or I’ll have to hunt you down and kill you. With my bare hands. Because I love them dearly.”

OK, then, time to make some spaghetti carbonara and drink more water. The week begins!