A big, well-lighted salad

It was a fine salad, big and full of things that were good. The table was not particularly clean, but the light was good and my lunch went uninterrupted, mostly.

An uninterrupted lunch with a book is a good thing, and rare.  The wine was cold and good. The backyard was quiet except for the saw Mr. Kamikaze was using to cut long pieces of lumber into lengths for making squares.

"This is going to be noisy," he said. 

"What?" I said. But he could not hear me over the noise.

Later, I feigned interest in the squares, which had something to do with a wall he was building.  Nothing much happened otherwise, which was fine and good as far as lunch, but is harder to appreciate in a book.   

   

--Excerpted from my forthcoming summer travelogue, Some People's Idea of Fun Will Have the Teenagers Pulling Their Hair Out: Doing Hemingway Over Drinks in Little Cafes     

Comments

[Audubon Ron]

I think you might want to power wash your deck, be it ever so gently.

[nthnglsts]

The man was good at cutting squares. His saw made a noise like hyenas dying. His arms were large and slick with sweat. He thought about the bullfight the night before. The bull had died bravely. The matador ahd been a coward though. Rain threatened but for now,the deck was dry and the woman he desired drank and read in the fine bright sun. The man cut squares. He had no adjectives left.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

He had never had much use for adjectives. They were expensive, messy, complicated. Like the woman with her wine and her books. Give him one noun and a verb and he could build you a room. Or a sidewalk. Not that anyone had asked for one. Where does it even go?

SK

[nthnglsts]

But the squares would be the same. All of them marching like a fine white column down the strong, bright sheet of day. They were even, predictable and required no punctuation and no mascara to perform. A wall would also rise, in time. No one asks where a wall goes.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

She'd ask. You could count on that. She'd ask while she was watching him work from the shade, where the wine was cold and the books and newspapers were stacked around her in a wall that went everywhere.

SK