I still think about Cora Sadosky wanting to borrow "Mornings in Mexico." The musky cloth-covered boards the color of a ripe lemon—the three faded green words centered—seemed, already, to deliver the freshness and Latin sensuality of its title. It was a pretty, old book, lying on its back on a table as she walked through to a dinner of perch and cooked spinach, and it caught her eye.
On this morning, the shades are pulled and the fans are going but there is still a bit of fresh air at 7:00, and I don't mind my hot coffee. For a few precious moments I don't feel guilty about my dog, living his life incarcerated under the kitchen table.
Going outside makes him too nervous. I am apt to agree with his philosophy of the world beyond one's dooryard. Hell is other people, Rob Kleinstuber said once at a book club dinner, high above Dupont Circle in their living room decorated with Oriental reproductions from Sears. Rob and I had almost identical thoughts. He had the same attitude about that canto of "In Memoriam"—Dark house, by which once more I stand—and our scary similarity made us so much more than strangers. We never spoke.
I wonder if he is dead, too.
I have found myself around a table with many different people, almost all of them extraordinary, like Cora—the daughter of Argentina's premier female mathematician. I am profusely ordinary, and I could never follow the conversations. I was uncurious about politics and books. Dinner talk always seemed to proceed like a racquetball game; I ducked for safety.
This will be a hot summer. The Windsor chair kisses my naked back. The cat elongates herself across the doorway like a fox collar.
At times, life has been like two birches rubbing together in the wind, their speech a cat's cry: high pitched, arbitrary, musical—wholly accidental. There was never a plan, only indulgence. So much to enjoy!
I have never been to Mexico.
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