"Distance between two people is inconsequential when their souls are united.”
-
Matshona Dhliwayo
Another night pecking out a post because I have to get up at 5 am to pick up my notes and drive to Crestview for a day-long session prepping witnesses ahead of several days of depositions around the corner. And of course they have to be in person. It's the Panhandle. Of course.
I think I've drawn the ire of the lovely P for not calling before 9:15 eastern tonight, but for once it's not my fault. I dunno. You tell me.
I have a huge filing due tomorrow in a case in which I've been getting my teeth knocked out by a phalanx of lawyers, fresh off getting my teeth knocked out by a less talented group of lawyers but the judge is a solid C student in the law, if that. I worked a little late tonight, until 7:15, on our response, figuring I could still make the chamber of commerce reception that began at 6:30. Surely they won't be done by then.
My first hint that my math might have been a little off came when my friend Chuck, the county tax collector, sidled by as he was leaving and shook my hand, asking how life was going. He knew he knew me, but obviously couldn't remember my name.
Well, as it happened the reception was on central time and not eastern, as was the calendar on my phone, and so there was no point in ascending the stairs to schmooze with the late-innings hangers-on one encounters at a chamber function on a weekday.
So I got back in my truck and rode home through the horde of humanity that now crowds St. Andrews looking for food and booze and love. I remember when this side of town was pretty quiet. This is better (???).
Pulling into the parking lot at the condo, I'd driven past maybe a dozen folks assembling themselves along the seawall on Beach Drive for a sunset that promised to be pretty extraordinary. It was only 7:30. I'd get to call P and not wake her up in the next time zone. Hooray!
Except. Except.
As I crawled out of the truck I heard "Hey Mike!" and turned around to the official SEC sorority wave. It was an old-ish friend, my office landlord in fact, freshly divorced with a sort of gritty gentleman in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt and some serious whole-leg varicose issues. I tend to go with jeans at this age, for a reason.
My office landlord has a condo here on the "7 column", another corner unit looking out over the bay a couple floors below our residence at 407. She expressed to her beau her unschooled opinion that we had the most cool unit in the building (which, of course, we do).
"Do you all want to come up and have a look?"
This, friends, was a mistake. They took me up on my offer, of course. I then compounded the error by offering a drink. She helped me with the spoiling bottle of white wine in the fridge, for which I'll be eternally grateful. After the tour I let her take the place of honor in my leather chair, the only thing to survive the storm from what was left of my old house on Massalina Drive, but soon she'd plopped down on the rug in front of not-so-young Roland and me. They're engaged! That's wonderful, you two. How long have you known each other? Eight days, and engaged for five of those!? Of course. Of course. Have another toddy, and tell me how in the hell this happens.
[Okay, I just thought that last part but didn't say it. You get the idea].
While I was conversing with them about the brilliance of Peg's decorator-eye as manifested in the aesthetics of this place, knowing in fact that she to her credit had as much to do with the palette of this place as I did with the furniture in the Sky Club in the D concourse at Hartsfield, thunderstorms flashed outside and the glory of real aesthetic majesty loomed just to the north. I tried to flatter my guests by suggesting there's something lovely and romantic about two realtors with open houses down the street from each other deciding within a day or two of meeting that they were getting married, but soon figured out there's no way to credibly ingratiate myself with the law firm's landlord and maybe get a break on the rent. Triple net is triple net.
Besides, who am I to judge the oddball courtship story?
About a half hour into this amusing encounter P sent me a text, admonishing me against drinking and driving, her way of conveying that she figured I was out swinging from a chandelier. But I wasn't, don't want to, have started building a plan for a life in which I never have to wake up and look over at an empty pillow where P should be. Chandelier swinging isn't conducive to that sort of thing.
So yeah, I'm writing this mostly to P, but you all are reading too.
I texted P back a few seconds after shooing my guests out the door at 8:30, but got no response. Too late, I guess.
Lonely as this week has been, I love all these eccentric characters here in Panama City--I ran into my old Kiwanis friend Brian at Tom's Hot Dogs over lunch as I was picking up a culinary delight the only person who really loves me won't let me eat (chili pie all the way with dog, onion, and jalapeno--and yes I'm pretty ill tonight). Brian kept talking about how grateful he was every day we can characterize as "normal" going on four years after the storm. My landlord started crying there on the floor of our condo when I, with a smile on my face, talked about the horribleness of that day. If you're not here, you don't get it. I only halfway get it. The sense of loss, the fractured relationships amidst the devastation. I've never seen anything quite like it.
Rambling now. P, please forgive me. This time it was not my fault for calling late. They raved about your good taste in this space we created, each in our own way. Even if our roles in creating this place were only peripheral, they were right.
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