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scrutiny doesn't feel like luck
Saturday, June 1 2002setting: Silver Spring, MarylandGretchen's parents had plans of spending the day at their cabin up in Maryland's sliver of the Blue Ridge (near Camp David), and they invited Gretchen, me and my mother to come along. But I was eager to just go home, and Gretchen so was Gretchen. Besides, it turned out that Gretchen's parents had actually invited some other random people to join us at the cabin, and thoughts of the sheer density of social permutations and obligations, particularly with my mother thrown into the mix, exhausted me. I just wanted to go home, kick back on the couch, switch on the teevee, and relax. As for my mother, she seemed to be of a similar mind. Sometime in the late morning, after being given the grand tour of lavish new addition on Gretchen's parents' house, we all went our separate ways. My mother drove back to Virginia with the aid of a detailed map drafted by Gretchen's father, Gretchen and I were dropped off at the Silver Spring metro station, and Gretchen's parents were free to entertain whomever they wanted off in the mountains of Maryland.
For most of the Amtrak ride to New York, Gretchen and I had eight seats to ourselves, but later this Indian businessman decided to join her in her cluster of four seats. Then other people started showing up and Gretchen was forced to join me in my four seat cluster. In Philadelphia, an elderly couple came and sat directly across from us in our cluster, though the intimacy was so uncomfortable that they eventually found somewhere else to sit.
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We got back to the brownstone and found that poor Noah had been unable to figure out how to get in through the window and must have spent the night outside. He was so upset about it that he didn't stop complaining for several minutes after being let back in.
Sally had spent the better part of a week over at Ray's house because Gretchen had been too weak to walk her. At nearly midnight, Ray brought Sally back, though she was strangely uninterested in either of us, despite our various absences. I hadn't seen her in over two weeks and had forgotten how small she is.
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