covid notes 45

Yesterday it was my friend H’s birthday, one of the NYC friends I saw on my last-prelockdown-trip-outta-town, and as I hadn’t been in touch at all since then, and as he was turning 82, I picked up the damn phone and called, and he answered. It was great to talk with him, although times are awful, and he says many people in his neighborhood are now on the street with nowhere to go and no way to VOTE—which led to my comment that I had just picked up a couple of linoleum-block posters created by my farmer/artist/neighbor friend Laurie, the message vote while you still can, and I sent him a photo, and he wanted one, asked if he could copy it from the photo, but I had an extra and said I would mail it if I could find a tube. I found a tube and one of Laurie’s previous posters, a feminist theme, rolled them up and sent them to Washington Heights. I let him know they were coming and that I had repurposed the tube sent to me from one of my authors in England, Fred, who died a few years ago. H texted back that he and Fred had been good friends, and did I know the story of Fred and his second wife? I knew I’d heard the story, but I’d forgotten it, and wasn’t it a little risqué? Whereupon H called me to tell it. I had heard it before, but I don’t want to forget again. So here it is: Fred had been seeing two women and very much enjoyed the company of each. One day he invited them both to tea and announced that he would like to marry one of them, and, if either or both were interested, they should work out whom it would be. And so they did.