Reading: The Hundred Years War

Moving: two short walks in high humidity

Watching: Cowboy Junkies live

Listening: Cowboy Junkies live, Miles From Our Home, Imperial Bedroom, Godspell

16 June 2001: Saturday

When I talked to CLH on Friday, I asked how early she'd be up and wanting my fawning attention on Saturday, because if she slept late I would like to go see Jessie.
"Who's Jessie?"
"The one you met in December at Davio's. Tact for Dummies."
"With the pink hair."
"Well, yes."
"No, that'd be fine, because I have [a huge list of stuff] to do."
I have this New Thing about being Assertive with my sister, and assertiveness meant asking if it would be all right if I did this on what was slated to be Our Time Together. Courtesy meant making sure. "You're not being polite? It's really okay?"
"I can't believe you'd think I would be polite."
This is true. I am among the last people on the planet she expends her courtesy on.

So I called Jessie and Golden Boy. "I got dispensation," I told Jessie. With dispensation and directions, I was all set, or so I assumed. I hadn't counted on no sleep and I'd kind of forgotten the humidity. I told Jessie that I'd probably wake up extra early, having the time change to my advantage. She gently set me straight; it's hardly the first time she's corrected my math deviance.

My body hates me: even though I should have woken at 8:00 feeling like it was 6:00, instead I woke at 5:00 after falling asleep after 1:00. Wheeee. When I staggered out the door at 8:30, the humidity smacked me upside the head. Hello. The journey took over an hour on two T lines and by foot at the end, and then I was there.

Folks, when Jessie says she's working on her house, she means it. I recall summing it up as "I'm impressed, appalled, and aghast." I like the word aghast, but seldom do I have such a fitting occasion for it. They fed me breakfast (waffles), and unlike the time I fed them breakfast they had furniture. Also they had lovely solid wood doors with plywood panels over them, and unspeakable wallpaper, and aluminum siding since it keeps a house so cool, and no closets, and almost all of their books packed up. But the potential! They will, one day, have a smashing house. I don't quite mean that they might smash it up rather than scrape off another particle of calcimine, but nearly. I, myself, would.

When RDC and I were looking at houses, we saw another bungalow with an alleged mountain view (it was snowing that day, 2 April 2000) in Platte Park, quite close to the lightrail station and ideal in many ways except for the actual house. I don't know anything about how to tackle the huge projects Jessie and Golden Boy are cheerfully, or at least determinedly, planning; I leave all suchlike in their capable hands.

So. Back on the T, on the green line, a fellow asked whether Arlington was near the Public Gardens. Yes. And could he get to the Hatchshell from there? Yes. I was pleased to be taken for someone who knew her way around, because I hadn't brought anything to read. People read a lot more on public transit here than in Denver, and the titles are more likely to be unfamiliar to me. CLH's place was a hellhole because she was cooking; after I opened my trap to our father that we were going home, somehow a picnic got planned for which my sister did all the cooking--someone else would bring meat and someone else disposable dishes but CLH did a pasta salad, strawberry shortcake, and a tossed salad. My contribution was to run out and get more Bisquick. It was a Bisquick kind of trip.

I tried to nap a bit Saturday afternoon, and eventually we headed out to Charles Street. Because of a concert at the Shell, cars were parked on Storrow, which is about the last road on earth I would leave a car, and all over the Charles Street neighborhood, but nonetheless the parking gods were smiling at us. Someone pulled out of a spot just as we pulled up to an intersection, and I hopped out of the car and stood in the spot until the light changed. And it was the last spot on the block--the light changed, and she turned the car right into the spot, so it didn't even require parallel parking, which is a very good thing because both of us suck at that.

We wandered up and down Charles Street (we didn't get to the bookshop illustrated in Make Way for Ducklings though) and she introduced me to Black Ink. This is my new favorite store because of all its Tintin paraphernalia. I got a Snowy keychain. And antique stores and housewares stores that made me wish I had brought my camera with me--the batteries did eventually charge. (I plugged in the charger before going to bed at 1:00, and then, frustrated and still half-asleep at 5:00, removed the not-yet-charged batteries like a doofus. But they finished before we left at 3:00.

Friends of hers have a restaurant on Charles, and that's where we repaired for supper. We were treated with two flutes of champagne, two salmon tartare appetizers, and a sorbet bowl and a chocolate mousse for dessert. In between, CLH had an Asian pork soup whose broth was just succulent and some duck, and I had lamb because I love lamb and this trip was hardly going to be about healthful eating. Everything was delicious.

Over dinner I found out something I had never known nor suspected about my sister. She loves Henry James. I think it must be the exclusively sick and twisted love affairs that Jamesian characters have.

Afterward, we headed for the concert. CLH had just seen U2 at the Fleet Center, which is the made-over Boston Gardens where I saw U2 (1992) and the Grateful Dead (1994). I was kind of wondering if the Junkies were much bigger in Boston than in Denver to engage the same arena where U2 had played the week before and Northeastern had its graduation that morning (the inbound green train was packed at 8:30 am). We discovered her mistake when we parked, easily and freely, went in, and learned that there's a difference between Fleet Center and Fleet Pavilions. We found that out from a guard, and as we left the guard called after us with a man who'd made the same mistake. CLH offered him a ride and I quailed. He was really nice about the fact I assumed he could be a serial axe murderer, and CLH gave him the specific address to give to a cabbie, and she wasn't mad at me for contradicting her. So that was good.

As we drove, with her saying "I have no idea where it is, though I know where it used to be," through the piers and harbors, I realized that here, at Anthony's Pier 4, and not at Davio's, I went to my first real restaurant, and I was in eighth grade, not freshling year of college. I said this aloud to CLH, who said that that wasn't saying much. I remember it being very swank, I who was accustomed to Friendly's, but she was right: it is a dump.

The occasion was my sister and mother and friends of my sister's going to England. CLH's friend was going with her parents and asked CLH, and somehow my mother was invited too. My grandparents drove us to Boston and friends of the other family's drove them, and we all had supper here before delivering the travelers to Logan. They planned this trip in January; in February Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer got engaged and set their date during the trip, so that my family and friends already had reservations in London when suddenly the whole world would be there.

We found the place easily (it looked easy to me; she didn't make any wrong turns) and she kept thanking me for not stressing at her about missing part of the show. I might have if I hadn't already seen them twice this year. Or if, in fact, we had missed any of the Junkies' show, which we did not, just most of the opening act. This last was Sarah Harmer, if I recall correctly, and I liked her.

Dragging Hooks
Come Calling
Ring on the Sill
Upon Still Waters
This Street, That Man, This Life
Bread and Wine
I'm So Open
Hard to Explain
Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park
River Waltz
Something More
Lay It Down
Thirty Summers~~>
I Saw Your Shoes
Anniversary Song
--
Thunder Road
Horse in the Country

Introducing the third song, Margo said that this song is about holding onto love when you know it's hopeless, and I nodded and said "Ring on the Sill," and then Margo said, "This is 'Ring on the Sill,'" and CLH turned to me and said, "You're really nauseating, aren't you?"

Yes. But that's one of CLH's fave Junkies songs, so I'm glad they played it.

And Margo messed up, of course. She said she's been asked which is her favorite album, and that she thinks that's Caution Horses, and that this next was her favorite song from that album, and they started "This Street...." Which is from Black-Eyed Man. And they did two songs from Rarities, "Waltz" and "Shoes," and I still can't find that disc, even though I never lose discs and am anal about putting them away alphabetically by artist and then chronologically by release date.

Also she said that a fantastically wealthy person asked them to play at his wedding, which they didn't understand since they don't have wedding-type songs. She told us this just before singing "Bread and Wine," which is about adultery. Of course, "Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park" is much more appropriate wedding music: "Mrs. Annabel Evans found with throat cut after dark." Or perhaps "Horse in the Country": "it's not that I don't love him anymore, it's just that when I heard coming through the front door my heart doesn't race like it did once before." And "Dragging Hooks" is about lost loves drowned in a river.

At some point she began talking about shower curtains, and how she doesn't understand why some behave and why some tangle around your feet, especially the ones in cheap hotels where you really don't want them touching your skin. This, I told my sister, is why I love Margo: she'll just ramble about whatever pops into her head. We're obviously soulmates. When I was pageing at Phoebe, a man sitting at a table with a magazine gave a shout; if he'd been Greek he'd've said, "Eureka!" because he was reading Scientific American or some such similar thing and in it was an article about air currents and shower curtain behavior. So not only did she ramble about whatever popped into her head at that instant, like someone else I know, the topic was something I had remembered from years back from Phoebe. Perhaps SA archives itself online and I could find the article and send it to her. Soulmates, I say.

When Margo sang the first lines of the first encore, something about a screen door slamming, I had no idea what was going on. Whether I can find Rarities or not, that wasn't a Junkies song, I knew, so why were people cheering? The chorus has the words "Thunder Road," so finally I understood. Whatever. I think one of the reasons Whites Off Earth Now has little appeal for me is the cover of "State Trooper," which is also a Springsteen song.

On the way home, we started out listening to Miles from Our Home, but as it got to be past midnight and we were listening to "The Summer of Discontent," CLH announced the Junkies weren't keeping her awake. So I put in Godspell, to which we sang, loudly, badly, and enthusiastically, until just before the Connecticut border. During "All for the Best," I asked if she would like to be John the Baptist so I could be Jesus, or vice versa, and she said no, we'd both sing both parts just as always. We sang lead, backup, harmony, and chorus, combining John's and Jesus's lines, swapping up and down octaves however it was most convenient for us--in all the songs, not just that duet-- and no, we cannot sing at all. We skipped the Finale, though, since it always makes me sad, so we sang "Day by Day (Reprise)" and then both of us wanted to hear Imperial Bedroom.

"Beyond Belief" is one of the all-time top 20 best songs. Ever. CLH didn't remember that I couldn't puzzle out the name of the album, which on the cover is thus: IbMePdErRoIoAmL. I also reminded her that "Long Honeymoon" was among the first songs she ever had me analyze, and how profoundly I was shocked that this told a story, and what it Meant that "her friend's phone [kept] on ringing." Elvis lasted until we were on Boston Post in Old Lyme, and then we were home.