We had double-booked the last evening of summer. A third, surprise engagement cut through the dilemma.
The original plan had been to go hear the third evening of Bob Priest's Marzena contemporary concerts — the first had been magnificent, the second we couldn't make, and the third was one we'd long looked forward to:
Fear No Music doing Messiaen (the whole weekend was devoted to the maestro on the occasion of his
centième anniversaire.)
Owing to a calendar mishap, we subsequently hatched a plan with Chuck and
Lois, and then had to do some juggling. It was all going to work, sort of.
This second plan had been to wring out the last of our lovely late summer in one final garden soirée. But Portland's fever broke, finally, and the place returned suddenly to its clammy self (said with a glass-half-empty shudder). So inside we went, into that dark night. But not quietly.
In defiance of the impending equinox (quarter to eight the next morning) Anna designed an optimistic, summery menu of dates with walnuts and chèvre, a caprese-ish salad, light tomato soup, and bruschetta. I concocted a watermelon sangria, which was also an homage to Inés, our dear intrepid Fear No Music violinist. She had introduced us to watermelon juice, referring to the fruit not as a
sandía but as
la patilla in her Venezuelan lilt. In fact, the watermelon I used had been her gift from way back, way back in summer proper.
What you do — you simply purée the watermelon flesh. No straining, no pain.
Riquissimo. To boost the voltage, I mixed the following, all to taste, in approximate order of quantity:
Sangría de Patilla — Watermelon Sangria• juice of one smallish watermelon
• half-bottle of dry rosé
• apple cider
• brandy
• triple sec
• lemon juice
• bitters
Plus one diced orange (could have used more fruit, but that's what we had), some ice, and the willing suspension of disbelief. It was a hit, and in fact forestalled the bleakness, as today — the first of autumn — is bright again, if cloudy and tentative. (Chuck observed that I'll have to keep mixing up watermelon sangria all winter to keep the weather fair. I'm game.)
The third plan was not a plan, but a bug. Anna wasn't feeling well. We thought it was just a bad headache tied to the routine exhaustion of our overextended lives. That threw Plan 1 into doubt, and indeed at the decisive moment it was clear she wasn't going anywhere. Nor would I. We regretfully forwent Messiaen, but happily continued our summer resistance party, Anna somehow finding the stoic resolve to enjoy herself, dammit.
We rounded out the meal with strawberries and cream (no sugar) and, excepting Anna, a demi of Château Loupiac-Gaudiet 2003, the poor man's Sauternes (from across the river where they don't have the same branding). Never mind the foie gras — it was beautiful with the tart strawberries. Beautiful and summery. Late, late summery.
When Chuck and Lois took their leave they declined our offer of dry socks (another summer protest!) before biking off into the equinox night. I did the dishes while Anna jarred a passel of roasted red peppers. At three a.m. Anna awoke feverish, sweating like a monsoon. She took her temperature and some aspirin, and texted for a sub for an early morning obligation. I slept right through it. (There was nothing I could have done anyway, she told me this morning. Still, now I have a case of the bad husbandness.)
What a way to usher in the fall. What a strange mix of warmth and chill, of sweetness and tartness, of regret and contentment, absence and presence. Transitions come in these conflicted constellations. They have to, I guess. But this was particular.
I remembered this morning what will ever remain with me as a luminous moment — one of those gentle Fellini poignancies, with Nino Rota at his sweetest. Marlene Dietrich emerged from our music mix, singing "Give Me the Man". Spontaneously, and as if we do this kind of thing anymore, Chuck invited Lois to dance. Then Anna and I were dancing. There was no self-consciousness, no reflection, not a touch of meta-anything. Just dancing. 3 minutes 9 seconds of 1931. A troubled time (there's another kind?) but of troubles now patinated. Damn the provinciality of saying so, but global warming, dying oceans — even the A-bomb — weren't part of the mix. Not in 1931, and not for those three minutes of late, late summer last night.
This morning, what I particularly remembered — what was particularly, sweetly salient — was that I don't remember the end of the dance. Not a thing of it. I remember Marlene coming on, Chuck getting up, he and Lois dancing, Anna and I dancing, and that's it. Just dancing.
I know, because things apparently happen in sequence, that the song ended, that we sat down, that 2008 continued its oblate roll into obscurity. But the way I remember it, the way it felt, is something like looking over the receding curve of a Möbius strip at another Möbius strip abutted against it. As if that song played infinitely on into a singularity. And here, across that event horizon, the rest of the timeline picked up where it was expected to.
C'est la vie, comme qui dirait.
