Travel Reference
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Then, just when the party was kicking into high gear, a couple of uninvited guests
showed up. And when I say uninvited guests, I'm not talking garden variety hangers-on
who'll go anywhere for a free drink and a plate of canapés.
I'm talking Daniel and Charlie.
Yes, the very same Daniel who had painted our house the wrong color and then fired
us for having the audacity to bring it up. In he sailed, pudgy and self-satisfied as ever, and
trailing behind him was Charlie, the guy from the coffee house who had so thoroughly
trash-talked Daniel behind his back a couple of years earlier.
I was chatting with Roger the Painter when this unsavory pair rolled in. In fact, we were
discussing the wall color and how everything had turned out perfectly well in the end.
When Daniel spotted me he trotted right over.
“Well, I see you didn't change the color after all.”
My first impulse was to give him a punch in his smug little snout.
“I tried,” I said, “but it kept coming back. Like Lady Macbeth's stain.”
He stared at me blankly, then began giggling like a school girl. I was pretty sure he'd
never read a word of Shakespeare and thought I'd made some sort of obscure gynecologic-
al joke.
So I tried to help him out (I was feeling somewhat magnanimous tonight).
“You know, 'Out, out, damned spot.'”
This sent him into further gales of laughter.
Oh, why bother.
“And I see you haven't upgraded your furniture either,” he sputtered between giggles.
“Actually, they had a sale at the Shoddy Furniture Warehouse in San Juan. We bought
them out.”
This was Michael, who had appeared out of nowhere at exactly the right moment.
“Oh my,” Daniel said, struck speechless at the very thought.
But soon he sufficiently recovered himself.
“Roger darling, would you lead me to the bar? I need a drink.”
To his eternal credit, Roger looked mortified. But as a businessman who undoubtedly
got plenty of work from Daniel, he obeyed.
And off they went.
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