Maple Drive: A Word for It

Part 5 of 9. How I fell in love with my wife 33 years ago. The story of the the nurse who married the waiter and the waiter who married the nurse. The happiest two months of my life.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

⬅️ Chapter 4

I became friends with them.

In fact they were so new to Los Angeles I was their friend; they didn’t know anybody else. So for the fifty three days before Melanie and I tipped over into a relationship, I had a monopoly on the two of them in my role as American Goodwill Ambassador, a role that had some well-defined automobile-related and DIY responsibilities.

Not that it would have ever happened, but if they had run out of gas driving their new car home from the dealership, I would have been the one they called on a cell phone borrowed from a passing car. Or if later that same week they couldn’t stop their windshield wipers from dry-wiping every fifteen seconds and scraping their windshield corneas so badly they couldn’t drive in sunshine for a week, then they would call me.

“It’s us again,” one of them would chirp over the phone, passing the phone back and forth for equal time with the American. “Is this an okay time? ... Can you hear that horrible squealing? ... We didn’t even know the car had an alarm. The building manager wants to know how soon you can come and turn it off.”

“It’s us again. We need your help because the corkscrews in this country are rubbish. Can you come get this bottle of wine open. If it wasn’t so important we wouldn’t ring you at 6AM on a Sunday morning.”

I was their hero on call.

Of course to get over there on such short notice I had to disentangle myself from the harem of American girls I kept lounging around my apartment. There were just bodies draped everywhere in those days, and I’d have to gingerly move sleeping arms and pull my own legs out carefully from far-flung pillows. I’d let my ladies know the English Girls were on the line, and I need to head out for a while.

Everyone kiss each other for a bit! I’ll be back!