We´re on our last month here, which will go fast. I´m beginning to realize that Nevada is still in the 50´s while we happily bask in the low 80´s. (Those of you in Canada will just have to mentally change that to centigrade, but 80´s are really comfy). Richard made a list of everything that was wrong with our apartment when we came right up to present time, put on his best
Grouchy Richard attitude and got almost $300 knocked off our last month´s rent. There´s a lesson there. And since Arturo, our landlord, built the protective fencing on public property, surprise, suprise, we are in danger of losing said fence at any time. If it goes, we go. No fence, no us. We´ll find something else, it´s just the hassle of moving. We´ve made quite a nest here. Which reminds me that so have the termites. We keep finding a new place where they´ve nested down and we chase them out. This morning it was the kitchen and the computer table. Earlier it was in the bedroom. Do you ever win against termites?
Last weekend we were invaded by another sort of being. It was an 83 year old lady who landed next door in flight from a bipolar friend who she´d come to visit and who turned out to have a boyfriend already visiting. So Stephanie landed in Arturo´s studio apartment, totally unhinged, in a strange country without contacts, not knowing the language, the money, or anything else. But she had Arturo and she had us. Right away she found out the stove and microwave didn´t work, and the refrigerator froze everything. We could have told her that because the fridge was a refugee from our apartment. By the time the other things were working, more or less, she was getting sick from the verathane that Arturo had put on the floor, so Richard and I looked around and found her a very nice place in another hotel. She talked to Arturo and he even moved her. The last time I saw her she was yelling at the folks at the desk there, and I began to think it wasn´t the friend who was crazy, it´s Stephanie. But I think she´s relatively happy where she is now.
Tonight we´re having a show and tell art show for my art class, just like we used to do in school. All of my art class will be there, as will be all the friends I could round up and talk into going and of course, food. My sister told me she went to see an exhibit of the old masters in Seattle, but I ask you, which would you really rather see, art from a bunch of dead people or roosters, barns and boats painted by real live gringos? I painted a photo I took of Dina and Sara Lou, my sister and niece, when we were traveling together in China. Of course it´s not a masterpiece, but then don´t you have to be dead to be considered to be that good?
Richard and I will celebrate our 39th anniversary here next week by going to Archie´s Wok, a resturant that was started by Archie, of course, who was John Huston´s chief cook and bottle washer on his private island here when Huston was making ¨Night of the Iguana¨that put this place on the map. Huston stayed here afterward and Archie was his man until Huston died and Archie started his resturant. Archie has since died but his family keeps the place going and so we´ll help keep the place alive by going also. Along those lines, did you know that Elizabeth Taylor wasn´t in that movie? It was Ava Gardner and Liz just tagged along to keep Richard Burton company. Her house is still here, but his has been allowed to fall apart. But the bridge between the two is still there to run across.
Gringo Rita
