Together, we headed down the path toward the dock. Along the way, I decided, after a quick survey of my personal history conducted while walking with my head down, my eyes on the ground, and my hands in my pockets, that Lou was probably the first person I had ever heard actually use the word swell , or, if I was wrong about that, certainly the first person I had ever heard use the word swell so early in the morning. He brings his boat within what seems to him to be flinging distance of our dock and then from that distance he flings a plastic bag in our general direction.
We stopped there and stood in silence for a moment, looking at a plastic bag floating just out of reach.
I stretched out on the dock and began trying to snag the bag with a boat hook while Lou ate his meat-loaf sandwich. Then we carried the dripping bag between us all the way back to the hotel and began laying the things out to dry. When Albertine came into the front hall, she found it covered with newspaper. He handed me a limp envelope and the letter that had been in it. He was right. I SUFFER from a couple of forms of inherited mental illness that have been passed along on both sides of my family for generations.
To give you just one example: once, when I was about twelve, I got the idea that I could build a tape recorder. Not only did I suppose that I could build a tape recorder, but I expected to be able to build it out of common household junk. If that seems unlikely to you, then you have never come across a copy of Impractical Craftsman magazine. I think it is safe to say that this magazine has been responsible for more wasted hours of labor in the basement workshops of America than any other single cause.
I walked to the drug store to get the latest issue. Men with nothing better to do were lined up at the coffee counter, waiting, staring into their cups with the empty eyes of the desperately addicted. I took a stool at the end of the line. When the stock boy emerged from the stockroom with a bundle of magazines in his hands, the men rose and followed him. So did I. I had already tried to go into the photography business, and once was enough. To give myself something to do while I was enduring the pain of waiting for the kit to arrive, and to recover its cost, I advertised myself as an expert in photographic services.
