"You're him!"

Yesterday I delayed going over to the other house until rather late in the afternoon. With little light remaining, I put the tall ladder in place to rip out the rest of the black cables snaking their way up the side and onto the roof. They’d once terminated where the unsightly satellite dishes had been, but those were now gone—smashed and ruined on the ground. Good riddance. I snipped at the little plastic ties that held the cables in place, took care not to topple off the high ladder, and threw the scraps into the box where I’d been collecting the castoff and unwelcome material. It will go to the salvage yard at some point—these wires containing a bit of copper in the middle that can be reclaimed.

Inside the house I looked again at the stripped-down bathroom, bereft of tub, toilet, sink, radiator, walls and ceiling. I’d had it in mind to cut away the floor entirely, put sturdy plywood in place as a subfloor, but wasn’t so sure of this approach anymore. Once I reexamined the space, I reassured myself that this was the proper approach; there seemed to be enough room to cut away the old and splintered pine boards and allow for my new flooring material to fit properly.

Earlier in the day I’d wanted to get started on chipping away the last remaining bits of wallboard still stuck to the framework of the bathroom. I’d mostly done a rough job of it up to this point, simply ripping large sections of drywall away and getting the big pieces smashed into smaller ones and discarded. Now I had to make sure the rest of it was done away with; there would be no rebuilding of walls without first getting the studs cleaned up of all nails and remaining drywall. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.

I was getting myself in the mood to start on this cleanup work when the phone rang. It was my elderly French friends who live nearby. The husband was on the phone, sick and gasping, telling me he needed to go get some medication, get some blood drawn as well. He sounded worried, and in the background I could hear his wife yelling contradictory things, saying it wasn’t really necessary that I come over, they could take care of it. I told him I would be over in a few minutes. I felt that the rest of the day could potentially be spent dealing with this, but actually welcomed an excuse not to go mucking around with the powdery and dusty drywall.

I arrived in my little convertible to see them already out front and getting into their car. I told them I would drive, took the keys and got underway. I had a general idea of where they were going, the wife having told me that the Kaiser Permanente medical facility was in a nearby suburb of Baltimore. But I didn’t know the exact address, so I had to rely on their often conflicting directions, yelled in more and more excited tones as I wheeled the car through the afternoon traffic.
“At the second light go left.”
“NO!” (this was the wife) “It’s the THIRD light!”
“Make a right here.”
“Go straight! Go straight!”
The wife, who was seated up front with me, seemed to know where she was going, so I ended up mostly following her directions. Occasionally Jacques, who was in the back, would yell something that sounded plausible, so I would sometimes do as he instructed. We ended up getting there without incident.

At the clinic we got the prescriptions filled, the pharmacist explaining that one of the medicines had already been topped-up just a week or so ago. There should be plenty, she said. I explained this to my friends, who didn’t really understand what was going on. With limited English, they are often at a loss to figure out what others are saying. They accepted that it was quite possible they had already filled the prescription, didn’t seem too worried about it, actually. Upstairs the phlebotomist drew the blood required to determine correct dosages for one of the blood-thinning medicines, and we were on our way pretty quickly. I commented to Jacques, who was breathing much easier, that he seemed to be doing better.
“L’air frais me fait du bien,” he said.
Apparently he thought that getting out and about helped a little, allowing the bright sun and cool autumn air to soothe and calm in a way that medicines couldn’t. I took an alternate route home, following the surface roads instead of the beltway, and prolonging the trip a little. They both seemed to enjoy the ride.

Later I drove over to pick up some bags for the markets. In the huge warehouse of fifty-thousand square feet or more, the forklifts were busy filling orders for mega-businesses, the large chains of restaurants, eateries, and the like that consume napkins, paper towels, hand-soap, all manner of things related to carry-outs, eat-ins, and everything in between. I’d placed my order earlier in the day, wanted to get there before it was too late on this Friday. With a grand total of only around sixty-two dollars, my business barely registered as a blip on their radar. I wrote a check to the man at the front counter, the person who takes my orders over the phone. He is a dead ringer for a supporting actor on one of my favorite television sitcoms—“King of Queens.” His counterpart plays Danny, the cousin of the show’s star—named Doug in the series. I don’t know his real name. I first met him Doug’s cousin on the show) there at the huge paper goods warehouse. I was speechless, my mouth hanging open.
“You’re him!” I said.
“King of Queens?” he asked.
“You’re Doug’s cousin, Danny! He’s hilarious! I mean—you’re hilarious!”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said.
“Well, you do a great job on the show—I only wish we saw more of you. Can you talk to the producers about that—you know, try to get them to maybe write you into more of the shows?”
“I don’t really have much input, but I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
I thanked him for the bags, got underway, and headed home.

Later I missed a photo exhibit that a friend was showing her work in. I thought for some reason that it was going to be held on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon I checked the date and time, found that it had actually been held Friday evening, between seven and nine. I’d missed it, and it was something I was looking forward to. I will drive out and see it on my own some other day.