The phone rings.

 The phone rings. 

This was Wednesday. Evening.

     The phone rang. Roz went to get it. She was gone awhile, but she came back with popcorn.

     “Who was on the phone?” she asked as if I had answered and made the popcorn. Which was good even though I only had water to drink with it because after supper I can only drink water for some reason.

     “It was the Secretary of State of Nebraska,” I said.

     “Why was she calling?”

     “He,” I said.

     “Oh.”

     “John Gale.”

     “Oh. . . . Why was he calling?”

     “Something about your Hastings transcript,” I said. “I didn’t get exactly what. I told him to call back when you were here.”

The popcorn was very good, even with only water to drink.

     Roz said, “Do you know a woman named Isabel Monk?”

     I didn’t know, so I said, “I may.”

     “She said you wrote about her - and you misspelled her name.”

     “ . . . . ”

     “She said you spelled b-e-l, short for Isabel, b-e-l-l-e, the French for ‘beautiful’; and you spelled m-o-n-k, as in Thelonious, m-a-n-q-u-e, suggesting ‘lack.’ She thought you were commenting on her paintings.”

     “Nobody reads what I write,” I said.

“Was she upset?” I asked.

     “I would have been,” Roz said.

     “It was an honest mistake,” I said. “It’s what I heard.”

     “Oh,” Roz said. Or maybe she just shook her head.

Gene Harris by m ball

“She said it had been almost a year, and she apologized,” Roz said. “She should have done this before now.”

     I waited.

     “She had asked Axel - and he could - and so she was asking you - and me - to a musical evening on Friday. I said we would come. Then, something about Gene Harris - did I know him? I said I didn’t. She said to ask you.”

     “A little,” I said - that he toured for a while with Ray Brown, Jr, who had been married to Ella Fitzgerald; but I didn’t say that.

Yesterday morning (Friday),

     Roz said at breakfast, “Should we bring a bottle of wine or something?”

     I wasn’t sure what she meant, but she said, “I think so. We should.” And she told me to get one.

We brought it that evening.

     I thought we were early and wanted to walk around the block before we went up to Bel Monk’s apartment. Roz shook her head, and she was right because Axel was already there - and Nils,* who answered the door.

     “This is Axel’s brother,” I told Roz.

     “Axel and Bel are in the kitchen,” Nils said, pointing; and Roz took the wine there. I waited just inside the door, too close to the door because Nils put his hand on my shoulder and cleared his throat so I would shift and he could close it.

to be continued

01.27.18

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 * Axel’s brother: See here. And here.