Evan Began Friday Morning with ...

Evan began Friday morning with a few quiet moments spent reading the morning prayer from his recently acquired copy of Shorter Christian Prayer. It’s likely his reading from the second week of ordinary time was not the proper one for that particular Friday ... Evan had abandoned any effort of trying to track the exact specific liturgies proscribed for recitation on any given day just as he had abandoned getting the readings online at Liturgy of the Hours Apostolate ... he was more comfortable with the nearly pocket size Four-Week Psalter and was also comfortable that his efforts were sufficient for his purpose.
From his seat, a deck chair he had bought last summer at a yard sale which was now tucked in behind a keyboard among the plants in front of the picture window, Evan looked out at the lawn and trees below. It looked like it was going to be a nice day ... it had certainly been a nice night ... the party lights from the Cinco de Mayo party with Mina were still strung around the window and plants ... or at least most of them were. Cinco de Mayo ... Evan thought maybe it had something to do with Mexican independence but all he knew for sure was that it was a holiday that they had picked up from a Seinfeld episode. Mina’s visits frequently had a theme and her favorite TV viewing ... Seinfeld, Family Feud and the Western Channel where she made tapes for Evan ... was very often the source for those themes. The visits were always a delight.

Evan put down the prayer book, rearranged the party lights and thought about what he might do today. His neighbors wondered what it was that Evan actually did. One of the theories was that he was the recipient of some sort of government grant ... the paintings he had hanging in the walls of his apartment ranged from very nice copies of N.C. Wyeth to abstract landscapes based, or so Evan said, on nearby potato fields but no one thought he was getting a grant for his art work. Another theory, and this was the current favorite, was that he was receiving some sort of disability from a medical accident.

After a quick breakfast of toast and fruit Evan drove to the North End Garden Shop to pick out some more plants for the garden at Mina’s house. Plants were always more work than it seemed they should be ... this batch was a mix of perennials that included Bee Balm, Day Lily, Tickseed and Sea Pink ... chosen after carefully weighing sizes, shapes, shades and sun needs ... as well as a rose ... Evan couldn’t go to the garden shop without buying a rose to go with the others he had already planted on the southwest side of Mina’s or for a container to go on Mina’s deck or on his own front steps. This, an Ambridge English rose, had a tag that claimed it was good for cut flowers and had an excellent fragrance ... what more could you ask for ... Evan certainly didn’t know.

While at the garden shop he also took another look at the River Birch ... it could be what was needed to replace the dogwood Mina and he had planted in the swampy corner of her yard near which had not survived the winter. Something other than the Pussy Willows cuttings taken this spring from the shore below Evan’s apartment were needed there. Later during a break from his planting, Evan sat on the lawn sipping a Vanilla Pepsi into which he had poured a generous shot of Jim Beam and thought some more about the Birch as well as other things.

While Evan was busy in the garden Mina was seated at her desk in coat and gloves to ward off a chill from the air-conditioning. She was scowling at the screen in front of her. Something was just not right with the logs from last week. She would need to look into her latest findings a little more deeply but not right now. It was impossible to concentrate on the patterns she thought she might be seeing with all the noise coming from outside her office. Pushing away from her desk she opened her purse and looked at the two cigars she had there. Mina smiled, then, closing her purse, putting it down and leaning back to her desk, she opened a new browser, logged into her Yahoo account and sent Evan a short email with several lines from a poem by E.E. Cummings. Tomorrow she might send him something from the Cure ... or maybe something she herself had written ... it would very likely depend on how things went with the logs. (/2/ to be continued ...)