Sunday, July 22, 2007

Bearing Tirimisu and Lemonade

Pan Dyrektor came calling today, after I returned from Sacramento. Calling as in visiting, sitting (in this case half dozing) on the couch in the old fashioned way, talking about non-commital things and his friends . He brought a tirimisu and a bottle of lemonade! What's not to love, about a man who brings tirimisu and lemonade on a breezy Sunday afternoon, and looks like Derek Jacobi? Then insists you keep the leftovers?

Pan Dyrektor remains unconvinced of his own personal attractiveness, augmented as it is by a dessert in one hand. All interpersonal relationship issues between us were resolved in April, under the double threat of being banned permanently from working on the Volvo and his refusal to make any more Golubki. A mechanical engineer and stupendous cook, he's never more happy that working on two cars at once. Unless he's at Costco.

He's recently switched jobs, and part of my vacation was spent with him in my VW, running all over Santa Rosa trying to find him a house. He owns a '81 Buick, and I had the impression that his air conditioning in the car had died. He'd never really asked to use my car before.

The real story was, that he'd left his 6 parts sugar : 2 oz. coffee cup from 7-11 under the front seat overnight. An entire ant colony had moved in to his front seat, and he sprayed it with Raid. He'd been driving with a contact high and the remainder of an ant colony in 100 degree heat for about 7 days before I talked to him.

We go to the flea market, have breakfast, joke about the people we see, talk about my most recent collection of bruises and cuts from work. It's a very comfortable, happy time. He tells me about the random phone calls for marriage and cigarettes he recieves from friends of friends of friends, his fathers' twenty year collection of soap and jam, and pushing a motorcycle across Warsaw for 12 hours.

I mention him, because of his tendency to drop what he's doing and go to Siberia. Or somewhere equally distant and uninhabitable, since Vladivostok was last autumn (duh, Josie). I don't have any family of my own, so the friends I pick up, with all their quirks labyrinthed out by a language barrier, are more precious than clean water. You'll hear about him again, I promise.

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