Above the salt.

 Above the salt. 

Monday, when we were driving to my appointment with Dr. Feight - because I still see him twice a week, and Uncle Albert almost always goes with me:

Fall is finally sidling in, but cautiously - it fears bully summer’s return. But Monday it is cooler than it has been - outside; it is much too warm in the car: Uncle Albert fears the cold more than fall fears the heat, so I ran the heater on the way to pick him, and he's turned it up on his side. He says, “It smells like dill in here, or cumin.”

     “I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that dill doesn’t smell like cumin or cumin like dill.

     “It’s because you have the heat turned up too high,” I said.

seating chart on a bed of dill

“Do you believe what you said before?” Uncle Albert asked.

     “When?”

     “The other day. Friday,” he said.

     “What? What did I say?”

     “That atheism was a luxury and that not only were the rich different from you and me but that with regard to me and you they were purblind, obtuses, the French might say.”

     “Yes,” I said. “Purblind, purdeaf, unsmelling, unfeeling, tasteless. First class air. The business car - train. Doormen to keep the streets out of the building, lobbies to keep them away from the elevators, elevators to keep them from going upstairs, and maids to chase out anything that gets by the doormen and elevators. Also to change the sheets every morning and get the children off to their private school. Buy only the best gin and the best tonic and wear only cotton and wool.

     “They carry oranges, the meat taken out and stuffed with cloves, through the airport as Cardinal Wolsey did through London. As soon as the proles are seated on their flight, the attendant draws the curtain to keep us out of their bathrooms.

     “So what they think they understand about us is completely without objective evidence. It’s not in their ears or on their fingers or their tongues - it's all in their thinking. All in theory,” I said.

     “You really believe that?” Uncle Albert said.

     “Yes.”
 
“Roper, right?” Uncle Albert said after a minute or two. He meant my reference to Wolsey.
     “Yes,” I said.

10.17.18