It was surprisingly easy to crash the party, because the person at the door was in deep conversation with someone nearby and others were milling around the large room. We were greeted by a few party-attendees like they thought we belonged there. Is it really possible to be so unsophisticated that others think it’s an act? Apparently it is.

I’ve never had Beef Wellington. I love it! 

We were driving back from the party, and Ava was gushing about the experience in general. We’d stayed later than planned. I guess that’s not unusual if you’re with Ava at  a party; but since we’d not been invited in the first place, I thought we’d spent longer than necessary. In my world, making a discreet list of who was there and who was talking to whom would take all of less than thirty minutes. In Ava’s world, chatting with party-goers was part and parcel of the evening. I shouldn’t complain. We were the first to leave.

I wish they would’ve been bigger.

But then there wouldn’t have been room on the trays for the quiches, petite fours and cheeseca . . . WATCH OUT!!!

I swerved to miss a semi that crossed the center line. Maybe he was sleepy.

We managed to get back home without any further trouble, although my heart was still hiccupping from the semi incident.

After a cup of lemon balm tea at Ava’s to settle my nerves, and back in my own familiar apartment, I crawled under my covers and fell asleep, though not without the coffee shop, party, and the drive home playing over a few times like a movie in my mind’s eye. My drowsy thoughts wandered back to the person who had been at the entrance, and I suddenly realized the identity of the person he was conversing with: it was the man who had jingled the door at the coffee shop. He cleaned up nicely, but what triggered my memory was the scent of cigarette smoke that still hung lightly around him.

The following day, Ava came over for scrambled eggs and bacon and that pastry – oh, you know the one – the Danish Kringle from Racine, Wisconsin. Funny how you remember trivial details if you give yourself a minute. I recalled the town because the grocery clerk had told me she knew a gal who lived in the town the pastry was made in, and since I’d gone to college with someone from that very town, it stayed with me, I guess.

After we ate (She had two helpings. Who could blame her? I’m no slouch when it comes to making scrambled eggs. It’s because I add a little nutmeg, like the French do.), Ava was all business. She pulled out notes she’d made from the party and we scoured them, adding details as well as we could. When I told her I recalled the man with the cigarette in the coffee shop parking lot was talking to the guy at the door, she dropped her pen. She hadn’t noticed. That led to a twelve minute conversation about whether or not he was on the side that Birch and Aldo were on. They had pretty well convinced us their request was a simple one that could help a lot of people. I began to wonder if the word help was always good the way I thought it was.

No, Ava hadn’t noticed the details of the conversation as we entered, but it appeared she had noticed everything else, including not only who was talking with whom, but who appeared to be more than platonically involved with whom. Ava was one for recognizing those types of things. Not me. A couple could be newlyweds, and I would mistake them for two people on the same church softball team – or maybe opposing ones. Not that they couldn’t be that, too; but you know what I mean. A person sees what they want to see, I guess. Delete that. It’s not a guess. It’s as true as the blue in a July sky.

to be continued . . .

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