Susan’s plane arrived right on time – 2:16 P M – and from Logan Susan publicly transported her way to the West Concord T stop, which is but feet from Concord Park. Maybe thirty seconds into her visit, Flo assaulted her with complaints about “The Hole. “ The glop they serve, the atrocious bingo, the lack of a bathtub (“I can’t live another month without a tub.”) and the people. However, she did say she liked the coffee. And we thought Flo was a CP convert.

Sadly, our plans to scurry to La Cantina for cheese quesadillas and, most importantly, margaritas with rocks and salt (they make the best) were scuttled. The town suspended the Cantina’s liquor license. We settled for near undrinkable margaritas (too sweet) at Scupper Jacks.

“Just heard Terry Gross do her 1990 interview with Paul? Brown, who died last week at 53 of a heart-attack. He was the fireman who became a writer. I actually mentioned him to you, as the result of an NPR broadcast in a late nineties that featured his life and work.

I thought you could publish your life on the internet, and, low and
behold, that’s pretty much what happened. The Blog appeared. Now you’re being discovered: by your self, your family, not mention an endearingly wide circle of friends. Maybe that’s where it ends, happily, without the wide world looking in, and the heart attack looking out.

When I thought I would write you about this story, I suddenly remembered how I had been reading the obituaries since I was ten. Not formally, but I’d always notice in the succeeding years how I’d fixate on the death of some kid slightly younger than me. My reflex would be …Well, I made it past him.

Funny how I hardly ever think about those thoughts, yet they were a regular fixture in my thinking for years and years, only to be replaced, for some time, by the feeling that I would be shot in the back on a dark city street, or in restaurant, which is why I hated sitting with my back to the door, and why dark city streets make my neck hairs stand on end. And why, I suppose, my dream would deal with that anxiety by featuring a dark urban night, where I suddenly faced a circle of figures with clubs, to which I responded, “Oh, I get it, this is a stickup.” And so it goes. There’s the fireman, dead. You, writing about deaths and your near-death experiences, and there’s me, still in my childhood factory of apocalypses, ringed by a good humor zone. ”