The Postscript

“Wow!” one person after another says as they step into the courtyard and see thousands of suns climbing the walls, painted on the stairwells, filling the new restaurant area. Then, one after another, they get out their cameras and take a picture.

He was loopy. No question about it. He had retrieved a bowl from the kitchen and taken it to bed. It was large and green, and we used it to rinse fruit and vegetables. He planned to vomit in it, if the need arose. At the moment, this seemed very possible.

If anyone asked me for advice on how to write a book, I wouldn’t bother talk to them about grammar or plot. I’ll tell them they need a good place write, because it’s going to take a very long time. Sitting hunched up at the kitchen table where you have to pack up your stuff every time a meal is served is no good. It’s important to have a place to do one’s work—especially if the work you’re doing doesn’t really look like work much of the time.

Everything is the same and different at the same time. I talked with Oscar, a local artist, and he told me how he had fewer students, the restaurants were empty, the weather was unpredictable, and city politics were unstable.

The Robin seemed to have outlived its usefulness. It was lost on several occasions, only to be discovered months later in a pile of mail or under a bed. Finally, it disappeared for good. No one knew who had the final batch of letters in their possession. The Round Robin never resurfaced, and that was several years ago.

A man told me he was turning 90 later this year. When he heard a character in my book had a passionate romance at 86, he said he thought 86 was kind of young. I promised him that the next romance I wrote would involve mature adults.

There were very few cars on the road and a lot of deer. I drove slowly and counted five deer either crossing the road in front of me or standing, undecided, on the shoulder, looking like they might make a dash for it. Then I saw a giant furry rump heading off the road and into the ditch, and knew the only thing that big was a black bear.

I don’t believe that anything is fated to be. I think there are infinite ways our lives could go, and enormous changes happen as a result of very small and seemingly inconsequential actions.

Five adults, four of them over ninety, sat transfixed by this little caterpillar zooming overhead in circles.

We all put on life jackets and piled into the pontoon boat. I still wasn’t sure why I was getting on a boat. I couldn’t quite understand why a boat was necessary for a book club. I realized that I was feeling a little grumpy.