my dear german journalist friend V disappeared for several months last fall after hip surgery, and i was afraid to write her while she was recuperating at home; i feared she'd say she wasn't coming back to volunteer at ye olde charity bookstore cafe again at all. "you were afraid i was dead!" she cried in her fantastic accent.* that isn't even a little bit true; V will outlive us all. she will be back visiting friends in the british virgin islands (where, as you may recall, she once opened a cinema and discovered a serious local demand for kung fu movies) when joe and i are visiting our friends in the dominican republic. we both love swimming but have yet to do it together, so i told her i think we need to swim to each other from our respective islands. you know, diana nyad it up out there. it will work.
she came over to give me a hug as she was leaving the store this evening—only the second or third i've gotten from her, i think—and looked uncharacteristically misty as she said that she wanted to say goodbye before we parted for a month. i grew suspicious and ground my strands of german DNA against each other like a boy scout starting a fire: I WILL BE EXPECTING YOU IN THE SEA.
*i told her today that a new volunteer had observed that everyone has exciting accents on our shift (in addition to V we have a few brits, a new zealander, and a belgian), and she looked crestfallen. "i thought i didn't have an accent," she said. "i start out one way in the morning and then i get tired, i get more german as the day goes on." maybe we all do, i said.
Nothing to say but <3.
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