Contact

Thanks to an airlines’ pilots’ strike, I had eighteen hours to kill in the city of transit. I checked into a hotel; went online, found five contacts in that city; picked a guy, my old school our common feature.

He replied instantly.

“Of course, let’s meet,” he wrote.

“Lunch…?” I asked.

He hesitated.

“My treat,” I clarified.

“Of course,” he paused before adding on the next line, “Can I bring my wife?”

“No problem…” I wrote.

We met at the restaurant.

“We had a great gang in school, didn’t we?” he exclaimed.

Between anecdotes of that era, he fitted in his wife. It’s tough when people sing paeans of their spouse, much worse when they ridicule. Her inefficient ways, her easy life, her bad cooking, he went on and on.

Between courses, when he went to the restroom, his wife asked me, “You don’t remember him, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

We let him talk. She and I had time to waste.