Of course it happened while we had a guest. My college roommate, a wonderful woman from Suomi (Finland), was visiting us for a few days before going on to see some other friends. We were chatting away in the front room, when the phone rang.
Here's what my former roommate saw: Me answering the phone, going stiff with shock, screaming "WHAT!? HOW?", then bursting into tears, dropping the phone, and running into the bedroom and slamming the door.
That's really what you need from your host when you're in a foreign country. My friend was very generous and supportive and tried to comfort me, but I was unhinged.
Just to make it more festive, we then had to go out to Kinko's--some kind of deadline, I don't remember what--and the poor woman had to stand there while I yelled at the store's selection of birthday cards. Why? Because they were *consoling* people for reaching ages that my friend Joe would never see. (My boyfriend, meanwhile, was doing all the actual work, since [a] it involved computers and [b] I was too busy yelling at the ingrates who think it's some kind of tragedy to turn forty.)
#
When I met Joe, he had another name. His voice was dark and gravelly and his eyes looked you over before they decided to reveal anything about themselves. He was a sweetie with people he liked and very much not with people he didn't. I never knew his instincts to be wrong. He steered both himself and other people through life that way. Once he told me to move to LA with him. I said "That place is social intrigue with a machine gun." He laughed and said "Aw, I'll protect ya." He would've, too.
At my wedding I set a place for him. I don't know quite what the restaurant owners made of that, a place being set for someone who wasn't there. It didn't seem like that happened too often.
But then, guys like Joe don't happen too often either.
