Email from an Ex by Richard Natale

Theo spent the morning procrastinating.

His new assignment for Hot Digs was due the following day and he was fast running out of ways to avoid writing it. He’d completed all the daily crosswords he could lay his hands on and played three kinds of solitaire on the computer until his wrist ached. Then, suddenly, his toenails demanded immediate trimming, and while he was at it, perhaps a little manscaping – though really, to what end? Since he and Jack-o decided to put the relationship on hold to assess whether they were both in it for the long haul (actually Jack decided and Theo capitulated), he’d had neither the will nor the opportunity to get his freak-on with anyone else.

Strange, considering how he’d once lived for the hunt and the proud bagging of prey: he loved the scent of musk in the morning. Now the idea of getting naked in front of a perfect stranger made him antsy. After indulging in the comforts of serial monogamy with Glenn (four years) and now Jack (two years, not counting the past month and a half separation), the idea of jumping back into the availability pool made his teeth chatter.

It didn’t help that, in his absence, all the hook-up rules had changed. The web had transformed the mating game into as joyless a task as a job hunt. Both required the posting of a résumé: age, weight, prominent physical characteristics (everyone on line is endowed and blessed with a bubble butt, fancy that!), and preferences (remember when versatile meant being able to sing and dance and play a musical instrument?).

Then you had to choose what kind of site to display your evasions, distortions and downright lies, including that one great picture taken of you eons ago you’ve been saving for your obituary. There were the pseudo-hetero-dot-coms whose ads featured two socioeconomically similar white guys with perfect teeth, one boyish, the other with a touch of gray at the temples, grinning smugly at the camera and reeking financial security.

Ostensibly, these sites were designed to take the randomness out of dating. And perhaps they did, if your heart’s desire was a vanilla WASP boytoy or daddy/older brother-type whose leisurely pursuits consisted of going to the theater, dining in fine restaurants and taking long walks on the beach. How unimaginative. Oh, for some specificity: I enjoy bird watching and can identify hundreds of species on sight; I’m an avid crime-novel reader – Walter Mosley, Ruth Rendell and Scott Turow give me wood; I live for ESPN, so if you’re not into all-sports-all-the-time, you need not apply; looking for someone who is self-aware, not too needy and can laugh at his own shortcomings. (Oh, that’s right, he already had that in Jack-o. Ouch!).

At the other end of the spectrum (with not much in between) were the down-’n-dirty sites, which were positively too specific. Is it possible for one person to be tall and smooth and in good shape and hung and into bondage and cuddling? Surely there must be some wiggle room. Isn’t four out of six enough? And they call the Tea Party rigid!

As he ventured with a safety razor into his fertile crescent, Theo finally gave into the workday and sketched out the long-delayed assignment in his head, along with ways to dumb it down. It’s not as if he was writing an op-ed piece on the Sudan, merely a 1,500-word pufferoo about a noted TV producer husband-and-wife team’s pigpen (his derisive term for the pricey, overdesigned celebrity homes he wrote about for two bucks a word), nestled in the wilds of Brentwood above Sunset.

Jack, who was also the west coast editor of Hot Digs, referred to their profession as “entertainment journalism” (always with air quotes) and to shelter glossies as “consumer porn”. “If people stacked real, honest to goodness smut on their coffee tables and casually flipped through them on a lazy afternoon, they’d be considered sad pervs,” he once remarked. “But what’s the more natural impulse, to copulate or to decorate?”

One night as they were getting ready for bed, Jack delivered a bulletin from his boss, Althea Grant-Cumberland, Hot Digs’ editor-in-chief. AGC (her nickname on Page 6) had taken Jack aside at the annual editorial retreat in Maui (nice work if you can get it) and Theo’s name came up. “Now don’t get me wrong, I looove Theo’s contributions,” she began her damn-with-faint-praise. “His piece on the Medavoys was exquisite, the writing elegant. But tell him to have more fun with it. People don’t want to keep a dictionary beside them when they’re reading our book.”

As Theo and Jack were well aware, Hot Digs subscribers rarely, if ever, read anything except the photo captions. So what if he dipped his pen in purple sometimes? A sly turn of phrase, a deft pun or an oblique double entendre entertained him, kept him from feeling like such a bloody whore. Why were only food and wine writers (oh, and most critics, especially art critics) allowed the monopoly on overheated prose? Wasn’t it enough that he adhered to the basic ground rules for shelter mags – that every word be positive and uplifting? No digs at the interviewee’s digs, physical appearance or sometimes insufferable airs. Keep it all on the surface. And he was keeping it on the goddamn surface; he was merely tossing some verbal glitter on it.

Selling yourself for three thousand bucks a crack wasn’t as lucrative as screenwriting or penning self-help books, but it added up to a rent-paying living. That novel Theo was committed to finishing was sitting faithfully in a rarely visited folder while he cheated on the side with an ever-growing number of redundant and highly stylized periodicals. If enough editors liked you, you worked constantly, since they flitted from one rag to another helping pollinate newsstand sales. In order to remain in their good graces, however, you had to do as you were told – in this case stifle your inner Puck.

When Jack discussed his conversation with AGC, Theo, predictably, bristled and had to be gently talked off his self-righteous ledge. “Just promise me you’ll think about it,” Jack said as he turned out the light. Then, to keep Theo from fuming and tossing and turning half the night, he slipped under the covers for an exploratory.

Magically – and predictably – by mid-afternoon, after a thirty-minute sweat on the treadmill and a quick shower – oh, and about fifteen minutes of “Oprah” – Theo stitched together his latest opus in the space of an hour. He spent another hour polishing and taking out the gourmet four-dollar words, substituting generic monosyllables. Then he formatted it into the magazine’s “style” and clicked it off to Jack-o.

Jack was one of those rare editors who read material right away and didn’t wait until the very last minute to barrage you with arbitrary changes. It’s one of the reasons Theo fell for him, that and his coy smile and the amusing way he pretended that their meetings in Jack’s 17^th floor office with an unobstructed view of the Pacific were to discuss how Theo could contribute to the magazine on a more regular basis. The first six sessions, four of which were followed by drinks at a Santa Monica pub, were mostly business and chit-chat. Then Theo was summoned late on a Friday afternoon in summer, when the 17^th floor was a ghost town. “I’m sorry it’s the only time I can see squeeze you in,” Jack apologized, and locking the door behind him, threw Theo on the desk and buggered him. The setting sun over the Pacific never looked more inviting than from that post-coital vantage point.

Not fifteen minutes after he sent off the piece, Jack’s name popped up on his cell. “Heyo, Jacko, that was fast,” Theo said.

“Oh I haven’t had time to read your piece yet. I’m really backed up. I’m calling about something else.”

Theo hoped his next words would be “life sucks without you” or, at the very least, “I miss your smell.”

“Do you know anyone by the name of Elgin Taylor?”

He did not answer at first. “I did,” Theo said through clenched jaw.

“Well, he saw your byline and asked if you were the same person he knew in Boston. You went to school in Boston, right? Anyway, he wants to get in touch with you. Should I send him your address?”

Again Theo was, uncharacteristically, stumped for an answer. He let out a long sigh like a tire leaking air. “Gee, I don’t know if I want him to have my e-mail. Would you mind terribly if he wrote to you and then you can forward it to me?”

“Okay. Get back to you when I’ve read the piece.”

Without so much as an adios, he was gone and Theo began to wonder if Jack-o was seeing someone else or, worse, that he’d misjudged him. Maybe he was just a cold-hearted prick and he was lucky to be rid of him. But that didn’t square with the past two years.

True, for the most part, Jack was the model of sobriety. Pour a couple of martinis in him, though, and he turned wonderfully daffy, breaking into song (Elmer Fudd performing Springsteen’s “The River”, a bit he stole from Robin Williams) or peppering him with the wackiest politically incorrect propositions (“Come on G.I., me love you long time” or “Hey little boy, would you like to earn a candy bar?”). At times he could also be downright romantic. Nothing obvious or corny, just the way he cast his eyes on Theo when he didn’t think he was looking or clutched his hand in the middle of a movie for no particular reason. Or how, unprompted, he’d say “Gee you’re swell.” (Okay, maybe that is a little corny. No matter, Theo fell for it every time.) But since the split, not a single tenderness had passed his lips. Theo had given him ample opportunity, implying he was depressed, out of sorts, hoping it would lead to a hint of solicitousness. But Jack was all business. No chink in the armor, no second thoughts.

This led to an imaginary spat with Jack in his mind, the kind of altercation in which Theo was always prepared with the perfect comeback, while in real life he was usually tongue-tied and red-faced. Regardless, it kept him from focusing on Elgin Taylor, the guy who once used a pair of greasy pliers to yank out his heart, a shattering episode from which Theo had drawn all the wrong conclusions.

Unlike many of his friends, Theo claimed he didn’t have a type. His buddies liked them tall or short, blond or swarthy, older or younger, preppy or Latino, African-American, Asian. Theo regarded these distinctions as arbitrary and unadventurous, particularly at the age of 20 when you’re not even sure what kind of shampoo you like, much less what sets your pants on fire. Yet the moment he saw Elgin across that proverbial crowded room at a college gay mixer, he thought, Now that’s totally my type.

Though he was only two years older than Theo, Elgin had already shed every shred of boyishness. He was solidly built with thick legs and attractive without being even remotely handsome. A big bulbous nose sat in the middle of his round face, pitcher-handle ears sticking out from either side. There was a dimple in each cheek and another in his chin. His eyes were narrow and sleepy, industrial grey. But when he grinned, the eyes widened and he seemed to be letting you in on an amazing secret.

Theo took to Elgin instantaneously. Though he was the older of the two, Elgin seemed impressed by Theo’s opinions, of which he had many. (That should have been another clue. In all the time they dated, Elgin never expressed a single strong opinion. Not even a weak one, come to think of it.) Theo had yet to develop his inner proceed-with-caution signal telling him that the guy you’re talking to might devastate you just because he can.

He and Elgin were together almost every day until Elgin’s graduation. Theo stayed in Boston to audit a summer Russian literature course and prepare for his senior year. During June and July, Elgin drove down from his folks’ place in New Hampshire – steamy, hot, wet-sheet encounters. They made plans for Theo to join him in P-town at the end of August. He was renting a house with some close friends and wanted them to meet the man he was going to live with – his words. Theo melted. A more practiced individual might have questioned, “Is this happening too fast?” but at that age time is fungible.

Soon after Elgin announced his intentions, Theo’s doctor told him he’d contracted gonorrhea and did he have any idea who infected him. “I most certainly do,” Theo said. The bigger question was who had given it to Elgin, whose response when Theo confronted him was a nervous laugh and, eventually, a kind of apology. “I was horny one night. A stupid mistake,” he admitted. Theo accepted the tepid mea culpa because back then he still believed men could be counted on to tell the truth about anything, including their sex lives.

The same person who would later flip-off guys for the most minor infraction took his medicine and traipsed up to Provincetown. The reunion was all he’d hoped for. Elgin’s friends were gracious and welcoming and Theo immediately tucked all doubt into his back pocket.

After the first couple of days though, Elgin’s mood darkened. No, more than that; he turned snippy and hostile. Every single thing Theo did or said in front of his friends was critiqued. Yet when they were alone he continued to be affectionate and attentive. Theo’s response to Elgin’s inconsistent behavior was to kick his denial mechanism into high gear.

On Friday night, Elgin invited Theo out to dinner, just the two of them. Before the entrée was served, Elgin leaned over the table and casually delivered a swift-upper cut. It was over, he said. No real reason. It was just over. Shocked, alone and humiliated, Theo disintegrated. He started bawling and couldn’t stop. Elgin just sat there like a wax effigy. Afterwards, they crawled into bed and had the most tempestuous sex ever – a reaction Theo couldn’t explain until years later he learned about rage sex. In the middle of the night, he threw everything into his backpack and hopped the first train back to Boston. He and Elgin never saw or spoke to each other again.

***

“I’ve done a light edit on the piece. I’m sending it to you right now. Take a look and let me know if it works for you,” Jack-o said when he called back two days later. “Oh, and your buddy Elgin sent me another e-mail.”

“Did you read it? What did it say?”

“Pretty much that he’s still in love with you.”

“What are you talking about? The guy wiped the floor with me.”

“And apparently lived to regret it. I’m forwarding it now.”

Theo was too discombobulated to pick up the undercurrent of jealousy in Jack’s voice, even when he added, “And why have you never told me about this Elgin?”

“Because it’s ancient history. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over 20 years.”

“Hmm,” Jack said.

Theo was familiar with that ‘hmm’ and in no mood. “I can’t talk about this now,” he said. “Fayme’s new rap album was just messengered over. I have to listen to it so I can pretend to be a fan when I drop by her ‘crib’ on Thursday.”

“Typical,” Jack flashed.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just go over the edits and get back to me as soon as you can. I’m taking the rest of the week off to go to Palm Springs.”

“You hate Palm Springs. It gives you hives.”

“I don’t even know why I told you. It’s none of your business.”

“Very mature, Jack-off,” Theo mumbled.

“What?”

“I said… Never mind; just go to fucking Palm Springs. And have a gay old time.”

“Read the piece, Theodore” (spoken in four syllables).

“I’m sure it’s fine. Who gives a shit, anyway?”

“Hanging up now.”

Twenty minutes later, after stomping around the apartment and spilling a full container of peach yoghurt on the kitchen floor, Theo considered calling Jack to apologize in the hopes that Jack too would say he was sorry, but then he thought, fuck it. He’s probably going to Palm Springs with another guy.

He would have stewed over Jack all evening had he not opened Elgin’s e-mail, three pages, three long, rambling, naked pages; and even if only half of it was on the up-and-up, flattering and also kind of pitiful and desperate.

Excerpt:

I read your name in Hot Digs, which I subscribe to. You’re very talented. I knew that when I met you.

So what happened to you that last night? I woke up and you were gone. I would have come down to Boston, but I figured you never wanted to see me again. Not that I could blame you. I should explain what happened. People I thought were my friends and later found out were just envious, talked me into it. I know that’s not a good excuse but at the time I figured that if your friends don’t like your boyfriend, it’s probably not a good idea to move in with him.

I should never have listened. In all these years, I’ve never found anyone who made me feel as wonderful and special as you. Lately, I’ve given up hope of ever having a relationship. You were the one, Theo, and I let you go.

I hope you can forgive me and that you’re doing well and that life has been good to you. You deserve it. If you’re ever back East let me know. Maybe we can have lunch or dinner.

Theo printed up the e-mail. He needed a hard copy he could bend and rumple and read over and over again. It was the letter every jilted lover dreams about. Over the years, he had wondered what part he’d played in the whole Elgin debacle. Now here was proof that he had done nothing wrong. He was simply a blameless dupe, powerless against the machinations of outsiders.

He considered forgiving Elgin. Not in the forgive-and-forget way – he would never forget – rather in the agape, Christian charity kind of way. He sounded contrite and genuinely chagrined by what he’d done and how his life had turned out. Karma can be a real bitch. As he thought about it further, though, the timing struck him as odd. Perhaps Elgin was trying to right his past as part of some 12-step program. Theo didn’t recall him being a lush, and certainly no drugs, but he’d seen several friends social drink their way towards dipsomania, while others progressed from just a teensy hit of crystal on Saturday night, to a 24/7 all-consuming obsession. It might explain why Elgin had been unable to connect meaningfully with anyone over the past two decades. Substance abuse is a possessive mistress.

The third time he read the letter, he had another flash. Could it be that Elgin thought that, by coming clean, Theo would run to his waiting arms like in some cockamamie romance novel?

The idea enraged him, made him want to rip the letter into a million pieces or set fire to it whole and watch it crackle and burn. You’re twenty years too late, buster. The damage you caused, and not only to me, is irreparable. What happened in that P-town restaurant was more than a break-up, it was a breakdown. The Theo you fell for ceased to exist, morphing before your very eyes superhero-style into Theo the Merciless – the guy who pounded you into submission and then absconded in the middle of the night.

The new Theo constructed unassailable ramparts and lived by the credo of “Do unto others before they do it to you” – not an original ideology to be sure, but a time-tested one. For the next decade he cut a wide swath across Boston and, later, New York and Los Angeles, snake charming scores of men then politely (always politely) showing them the door. When phone numbers were offered, he graciously accepted. The slips of paper were tossed in a drawer. On some rainy night, they might come in handy. Whenever he returned to the drawer, however, he found that the names and numbers had run together and he couldn’t place a single face.

Elgin had given rise to this obdurate beast, but Theo took full responsibility for his feeding and care. Somewhere in that large collection of phone numbers were probably several decent chaps who warranted at least a rematch. And before Elgin, he would have been open to that possibility.

What a surprise then that after offering his soul to the vultures as carrion in return for an eternity of one-night stands, Theo suddenly found himself to a relationship. Unfortunately, it was with Glenn, who was as wrong for Theo as wide horizontal stripes on a fat person. Theo mistakenly conflated their uncanny sexual chemistry with intimacy and compatibility. So what if Glenn earned his living by playing poker on the Internet ten to twelve hours a day? Millions of football widows lived with that kind of benign neglect. If he wanted conversation and companionship, he had friends. No one person can be all things to his mate. Glenn curled his toes and that was enough. Anyway, that was his story and he was sticking to it.

Glenn did him the big favor of disappearing to Las Vegas for extended periods and eventually announced he was moving there permanently. He didn’t exactly ask Theo to join him: “You’d probably be bored in Vegas, and besides your work is here. But we’ll still be friends.”

Glenn’s absences had given Theo the distance he needed to reassess. “I don’t see that happening,” Theo told him. “You know the phrase ‘friends with benefits’? Well, we had the latter without ever having the former.” He admitted that he would miss Glenn’s warm body and the fireworks, though. Oh, and his grilled cheese sandwiches.

Had Theo’s friends been as devious and insensitive as Elgin’s, Glenn would have been dispatched a lot sooner. They recognized that the attraction was merely nookie-based and waited for it to die a natural death. When Glenn departed, there was no longer any need to pretend and they immediately broke into a Hallelujah chorus. Theo was caught off guard. But then the husband is always the last to know.

The second time around was better, so much better. Jack-o was nothing like Glenn. Jack was easy – easy on the eyes, easy to be with, easy to like. The same things turned them on, turned them off. They were simpatico from the get-go.

But maybe easy was part of the problem. The absence of drama and the absence of tedium were suspect. Neither could explain why they never fought. They sniped plenty, mostly for the sport of it and because they loved the sound of their own voices, but in all their time together they’d never had a single, serious “I hate you, I hope you die a slow, painful death” knock-down, drag-out brawl. Can you truly love someone if you don’t despise him sometimes?

There was also the cohabitation issue. Theo had hastily set up house with Glenn and was determined not to make that particular mistake again. Jack had thus far shown no interest in living together. They saw each other almost every night, anyway, except when Jack wanted some alone time. Theo saw all this as a sign of maturity. Jack was not clingy or needy, which was good, Theo told himself. At the same time it was starting to drive him slightly batty and Jack knew it, which is why he requested a time out.

Theo curled up in bed with Elgin’s letter and watched a rerun of “Cheers.” As he drifted off, he had a flash. If Elgin hadn’t dumped him, they would have become a couple. There would probably have been no Glenn or Jack, both vital steps on the slow, twisty road to mensch-itude. The relationship with Glenn was a failure and maybe Jack was, too. The important thing was that he’d tried to embrace the unholy, glorious mess of sharing his life with another person. He’d proved to himself that he was a nester at heart and probably always had been. If anything his gadfly days were the aberration. He’d needed to build up his non-existent self-esteem after Elgin ragged and boned him. He had succeeded, almost too well.

Theo popped out of bed at two in the morning and composed a letter to Elgin.

Excerpt:

Elgin, so good to hear from you. Thanks for the apology. No prob. These things happen for a reason. We both had some serious growing up to do. In the interim I’ve been lucky to find partners to help me with some of the heavy lifting.

Next time I’m in New York maybe I’ll send you a heads-up and if it’s convenient we can meet. All the best.

As he read over the e-mail, he was satisfied he’d gotten his message across without rubbing Elgin’s face in it. What they’d enjoyed had seemed like love but was probably nothing more than an extended schoolboy crush that ended badly. They now lived in different countries, their passports stamped by their individual experiences. He couldn’t be certain whether Elgin had been unlucky in love (and he truly believed that luck plays a part in it) or merely incapable of putting in the hard work a commitment entails. As Theo regularly reminded his woe-is-me single friends, a relationship does not cure what ails you. It’s not a panacea, but rather a sweet and sour stir-fry of joyous moments and dozens of reluctant compromises.

He saved his draft so he could look at it in the morning with fresh eyes and decide whether he should even bother to send it. Reaching for the remote, he clicked on the TV: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, who so obviously belonged together. You could tell because they enjoyed the sparring as much as the cuddle and coo, which led him back to Jack-o, who was so much like Cary Grant in “The Awful Truth”, prideful but also tender and true. Sometimes, when he let down his guard, his affection for Theo was palpable.

Still, was there something missing between them. Something elemental, or was it that, because they were now in their middle ages, any commitment would have a feeling of finality to it?

When he woke up, Bela Lugosi was slithering across the screen. He missed the phone because he was down the hall gathering the morning paper. He didn’t check his cell until later and saw Jack-o’s name flashing across the digital screen. Before he could call him back, the phone vibrated in his hand.

“I just saw your —”

“I’m on my way home,” Jack interrupted. “I would have come back last night, but the whirr from the windmills on the I-10 in the dark freaks me out. You were right. I hate this place.”

Theo held his breath so he wouldn’t blurt out something snarky like “you hate Palm Springs or the person you went there with?” Whether Jack had gone there with someone was not his concern; that he was calling to let him know he was coming back was very much so.

“Hey, do you think it would be okay if I came over to take a nap? I didn’t get much sleep in the desert.”

Again, he resisted the urge to ask, “You didn’t sleep because you were restless or you were getting poked?” Instead, he opted for coy: “Given that you live in the hills on a dead end street and I live in the noisy part of town is this your roundabout way of saying you miss me?”

“Yes. I do. And thank you for not asking if I went to Palm Springs with another guy.” (Theo shuddered. Was his mind so easily picked?) “I didn’t. I went there to think. About you and me.”

“You and me, or us?”

“Whether you and me should be us.”

“So I take it the nap thing is a positive sign.”

“I was actually hoping to stretch it to a weekend or a year.”

Theo’s heart started racing and he felt a little bubble rise in his throat. “In that case, I think I can fit you into my social calendar.”

“And Theo, something else. You don’t have to answer right away, but I need you to give it serious consideration. If we, you know, decide to move in together, do you think… not now but someday when it’s finally legal in the state of California… you’d ever consider marrying me?”

“Darling, this is so sudden.”

“Do not be flip, goddammit.”

“Give me a break, Jack-o. Is marriage really something we should be discussing over the phone?”

“I don’t expect you to say yes, just that you’ll consider it.”

“If you want to hogtie me because you think I’ll leave, you already know I’m not the leaving type. Besides, from the start I’ve always cared more about you than you have for me.”

“Well, I, uh, don’t know if that’s true… I mean —”

“And I’m okay with that. Makes me work harder. At the same time, I’m not Jerry Maguire. You don’t complete me. I can live without you, though I’d prefer not to.”

“I’m not worried about you. I mean me.”

“A piece of paper is going to make you stay put if you want out?”

“Not the paper, the vow. I take vows very seriously.”

Well, well, Jack-o, you are just full of surprises today. “And you would be ready to make that vow to me?”

“I don’t want this to influence your decision but, yes, absolutely.”

“Then I will definitely give it serious thought. But first things first, like who’s going to move in with whom? I don’t like living in the hills —”

“I know. You don’t want to be trapped up there when the big one hits.”

“Correctamundo. And my place is a bit snug, especially given your hoarder instincts.”

“Yes. It would probably be best if we started out on neutral ground. And I’m not a hoarder.”

“Are too, detoo.”

“One more question.”

“You’re not going to ask me to bear your children? ’Cause that’s a deal breaker.”

“No, but only because I don’t know how we’d pull that off… though our offspring would be adorable. I want to know if, before I called, you were considering going back to that Elgin person?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I read the e-mail. He says you were ‘the one’. That’s powerful stuff.”

“Well he was wrong and I was wrong. There is no ‘one.’ And if there is, I’m not about to gamble my whole life on the off-chance he might someday show up. Look, if you’re lucky enough to meet a guy who, to quote Leo Sayer, ‘makes you feel like dancing,’ who’s decent and considerate and not a chump or some kind of narcissist, instead of constantly complaining that he is not perfect, try reminding yourself you’re not exactly on the fast-track to canonization either. When life gives you strawberries, you make strawberry shortcake.”

“You don’t mean lemons, I hope.”

“I’ve known some lemons in my time. Believe me, you’re strawberries. So no more life-altering decisions over the phone, okay? Where are you now anyway?”

“Getting on the 101. I’ll be there soon. Are you wearing the grey sweatpants? You look yummy in them.”

“Getting into them as we speak. I’ll put on a pot of coffee; you pick up some bagels at Noah’s. I may be on the back deck watering the plants, so I’ll leave the front door unlocked. Let yourself in.”