“I know you’re thinking hard,” said Mary. “If you don’t stop puffing you’ll disappear. And you know it’s not the smoker who necessarily gets the emphysema. It’s the one sitting across the table.”
Stan, momentarily invisible inside his cloud of smoke, was dreaming of his latest project, a miniature carousel. Not quite the work of art up in the park, perhaps. Let’s face it, he was no brilliant woodcarver like Muller, who created the original merry-go-round, but he did have his own small flair for things. He could have it finished for Christmas if he hurried. He looked over at his wife. Whenever Mary looked this pretty, Stan worried, it usually meant that her blood pressure was up. “I’ll go on and get that meat,” he said.
Mary and the Mayor watched him with equal expressions of irritation. First he had to choose his tape and attach his earphones. To someone as nimble and quick as Mary, this could take an inordinate amount of time. This morning she chose not to notice. She raised her eyebrows and kept them raised and turned her back. Chopin. Chopin meant the rain would go on and on. Tch. She’d have to go back upstairs and change her shoes. The Mayor sadly noted the first high strains of Chopin as a continuation to his long-standing bout with arthritis. It never failed. He was really starting to take a dislike to this particular composer. This weather took the starch right out of you. Then again, it was always better to know in advance, wasn’t it? You didn’t want to find yourself too far from home when it started to rain. One thing he could never figure out, though, was whether Stan played Chopin because it was going to rain or if it rained because Stan played Chopin.
Claire slept late. As long as it rained she was deep in the eyes of blue Morpheus, and the minute it stopped so did she. One eye was crumpled shut, the other telescoped the dim attic, not yet sure just where she was. It rested on the note propped on her dresser, bold and yellow, scrawled in Carmela’s dynamic script. “Here’s the address,” it read, “you can pick it up after eleven.”