The weekend was pretty quiet. Saturday, I finished up painting the porch, raked leaves for a few hours, and then went next door for a shower. Logan was back to his friendly self, maybe he was just having a bad day on Friday. Anyway, after I imposed upon him yet again, we went to Vic and Irv’s for burgers and than decided to head over to the Seabreeze Drive-In. They were showing a restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, one of my absolute favorite movies. There is something really powerful about German expressionist film.
After the movie we sat on Logan’s porch and discussed all the movies that had stolen bits and pieces from Metropolis. For example, the “evil” (emotionally stunted by heartbreak) scientist Rotwang loses his right hand and replaces it with a black gloved prosthesis. This exact same injury and repair is repeated in Dr. Strangelove and Star Wars. And the architectural style has been repeated in nearly every successful sci-fi picture of the last 30 years.
We continued talking for hours, and next thing I knew I was squinting across the water at the morning sun as the smell of fresh coffee slowly brought me around.
“The automatic coffee machine has to be the best invention of the 20th century,” a voice echoed from inside my pillow, which turned out to be Logan’s shoulder. We sat there in silence starring at the water for another few minutes until we heard the coffeemaker stop dripping. Logan slowly pulled his arm from my shoulders and went into the kitchen. That was when I realized that at some point during the night, a blanket had appeared around me. Another one was piled were Logan had just been.
He returned with two steaming mugs, “Want milk or sugar?”
“None for me”, I said inhaling the steam as deeply as my lungs would allow.
“Good” he winked, “cause I would have to lose respect for you if you did.”
We just sat there drinking our coffee staring at the early morning rowers and runners below. Eventually, we both got up and walked down the back steps. Logan went to prepare the boats for the day and I wandered through the gate to my house.
I spent most of the morning just lolling around. My friends Janey and Beth called around 11 to go over the plans for the coming weekend. The last big race of the year in Charlotte is this coming Saturday and I had promised to come back down for it.
Janey, Beth and I all used to work together, that is until Beth married Janey’s twin brother Olie and stopped working altogether and I moved here. Janey is still a little ticked at us both, but it is not as if she has to work, she is a Denton after all; her family owns the largest chain of department stores in the South. Janey just can’t stand sitting around doing nothing or lunching and shopping with the vapid, gold-digging socialites of Charlotte.
We spent an hour or so catching each other up on everything and hammering out the plans for next weekend; when I would arrive, what ingredients they needed to have on hand for me to make pulled pork, where exactly I would be staying.