Point of View: Last Room at the Inn
This can’t continue much longer, it sucks: I’ve gotten stuck, I’ve struck a co-worker’s truck, and I’ve just told a cold-caller to “take a flying ——.”
You get the idea — one’s nerves begin to fray when beset by the cold, not to mention cold-callers.
I was beginning to think that all the reserves of joy that are to be found in mutual suffering had been spent when a wonderful couple bearing tea came to our aid, but more about them later.
On the morning of our latest snowstorm, I struck up an acquaintance with a neighbor shoveling his car out at the end of the street, having walked down to see if Copeces were clear.
I told him I was hell-bent on playing tennis that Sabbath morning, and while he advised against driving if it could be helped, relaying the forecast that the wind would pick up and the temperature would drop precipitously as the day wore on, he said that if I did play tennis he hoped I’d play well.
“I’ll play well!” I promised as I inched by soon after.
Mary’s company and tennis keep me going, as they do the rest of the year, but even more so now with winter having closed in. That said, as they say, I’ve always viewed February with a certain reverence given the fact that it is my natal month. But a birthday — even such a distinguished one as 75 — will only get you so far. Even Mary thought it was over the top when I began to sing “O holy night / The stars are brightly shining” on the eve of it.
She’s been itching (and has the eczema to prove it) to get out of here, if only for a week. One recent night she stayed up until 2 a.m., desperately seeking a rental or a hotel room in Naples, Fla., to no avail. It was like trying to get tickets to a Phish concert.
My mood was beginning to sour as well, but it lightened considerably, as did hers, when the aforementioned couple, who are part-time Neapolitans, had us over for tea and empathy. It was owing to their good offices that we finally landed a room at an inn for a week in early March, a Hamptons Inn, in Bonita Springs, north of Naples — a trolley ride, we’re told, from the beach, and not far from our saviors’ house. In reporting the news, Mary said, with great relief, that she’d found “the last room with a king-size bed in Naples.”
When Kathy heard where we were going, she said, sourly, “Florida is Centereach with palm trees . . . and it’s so corrupt it makes New York look like ‘Romper Room.’ ”
“And you can get sucked into sinkholes there,” I said, “but still we’re going. How much corruption can rub off in a week?”
“Just don’t read the papers.”
“I won’t, I won’t — I’m a journalist, for goodness’ sake.”