A MAGICAL NIGHT

On Sanibel Island last evening, Larry worried that my head might explode. It was a night of magical serendipity.

We had arrived for dinner at the home of his friends, Peter and Mallory, and were immediately introduced to a group of four women, who had been visiting for the afternoon. It was hard to concentrate on their names; the view from our hosts' deck was a strip of mostly-deserted white beach, and then the Gulf of Mexico, as far as you could see. The surf swished onto the sand.

Making small talk, I asked one of the women where they were from.

"Watertown, New York."

I paused just a moment before confessing, "I was once engaged to a woman from Watertown."

Suddenly, I seemed to have everyone's attention.

"What was her name?" someone asked.

This time, I paused so long that I could sense people's discomfort. Did I really want to go there? What if one of them was related to her? Plus, that episode was not exactly my finest hour. But it was too late. I said her name, Mary C...

No one seemed to recognize it. I added, "Maybe you know her boyfriend from when I met her. T M…"

Quiet murmurs and knowing smiles. They all knew about T. After all, he was, at least in his day, quite the handsome stud. Plus, he owned an island.

They had a few more questions to fill in my story.

How'd you meet? In a little town on the St. Lawrence River, in 1979, she pulled me into the street dance with a Dixieland band playing Just a Closer Walk with Thee.

What happened? She dumped me, thankfully.

At this point, we all were shaking our heads, or having some similar reactions.

I asked, what about Rick, the guy I'd just spent three days with on the other side of Florida? Did they know Rick? Check! How about Rick's friends? Check!

What about Save the River, the group I worked with from its founding, to protect the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boondoggle. Check!

What about the Corps' first public hearing, when I came out from Michigan to speak, along with 500 locals raising hell about their proposal? Check! They were there.

What about that Pete Seeger fund-raising concert in Alex Bay, that I'd attended back in the day. Check! In fact, two of the women had been singers in the warm-up performance.

How about Save the River organizer, the late-Abbie Hoffman, and his partner Johanna, who is still my friend? Check! "Johanna is my god-mother," explained one.

I shared a story of my boat ride with Abbie in Johanna's boat when he hit a reef and sheared off the lower unit of the outboard engine. Check! They knew her red-and-white boat well.

I recalled how after the accident, we finally made it back to Johanna's house well past dark, and she had dinner waiting, assisted by two young girls. I struggled for their names. "Violet?"

"Velvet?"

"That's it!" I said. "They were two hotties!"

At this, the women exchanged looks, then couldn't hold in their laughter. I didn't ask.

Addendum: After I posted this story last night, my friend Rick read it and texted me: "You should have asked. The other one was Monica, who you took the picture with that you sent me." No wonder she's grinning.

* * *

I never did find out how these women were connected to our hosts, who hailed from Maine, not upstate New York and the Thousand Islands. It certainly wasn't apparent, and it really didn't matter. It was a "small world" moment at it's most mysterious.

After the group departed, we sat down for dinner in front of the TV to watch Anderson Cooper grill Stormy Daniels on 60 Minutes. When she calmly described ordering the now-POTUS to drop trou so she could spank his flabby ass with a magazine with his face on its cover, well, the four of us whooped it up. But when S.D. related how the now-POTUS told her -- this porn star with giant fake tits, who he was about to screw -- how much she reminded him of his daughter, we all groaned in unison.

After the show, Mallory gave me a tour of their magnificent house. She seemed to me like a force of nature, an artist to her core, with unbridled energy and insatiable curiosity. Every wall, every space was filled with exceptional art and thousands of things -- shells, fossils, bones, all manner of miscellany -- filling drawers, shelves, and framed shadow boxes. I ogled everything.

When we left she gave me a marvelous, mounted starfish from Oregon. It will have a good home.

Day-before-yesterday: FRIENDS & BIRDS