“We absolutely have to do this, since if we don’t, Joyce
DiDonato will be totally disappointed and that would be more than I could
bear.”
That’s what I was telling Lady on the day that we set off to
buy the largest television we could afford at Costco. And was Lady listening?
Of course not, since we were all grumpy: the coffee hadn’t clicked in for me,
Sunshine had spent twenty minutes looking for parking, and Lady had been
getting increasingly irritated updates on guess-what from Sunshine.
“Dammit, doesn’t he know the law of attraction? He comes to
San Juan with his mind made up—no parking. So what does he find? Of course, no
parking. So he has a yeyo and gets it
into his head that he has to pay for parking in the municipal lot. What is
he—made of money?”
That’s when Sunshine, driving the car ahead of us, sailed
right past an empty parking space. So then Lady is honking her horn and
gesticulating “why” with one hand while pointing backward with the other. Which
may have put Sunshine in the mood to greet the street porter as his long lost
brother, which meant they instantly embraced, and then began trading insults.
And who might the street porters be? Well, these are
resourceful men and women who adopt a block and then assist drivers in parallel
parking. So for two years of bricking the street, I endured generators and
jackhammers. Now, what do I get? A guy nearly as loud as the jackhammer
shouting, “DALE DALE DALE DALE DALE!” Once the parking is done, the guy
“offers” to look after your car, since you wouldn’t want anything to happen to
you car, would you? WOULD YOU? So these gentlemen have very cleverly gotten the
municipality to completely repave the street for them, and have now converted
public property to private property. For make no mistake—any other street
porter intruding on territory is looking for a fight.
So Sunshine at last parks the car, but is the porter
satisfied? Of course not—he’s putting his two thumbs down and smacking his
forehead and then he goes to verify the chasm between curb and car, and spreads
his arms nearly as far as he can to show Sunshine. So that means that
now he and Sunshine have shifted to mute mode—being that there’s a windowpane
between them. But no matter, since hands are just as effective as voices, which
we learn when the porter—at last satisfied with Sunshine’s parking—comes over
to let us know. He points to Sunshine, then swirls both index fingers around
his temples, and whistles through his two—and only—teeth. So we get the news:
Sunshine’s crazy.
OK—no news there, since the last time we had gone
anywhere with Sunshine, he had ended up covering his exposed male parts, after
recklessly taking off his swimming trunks in the deep end of the pool, and
spinning them like a lasso over his head, all the while shouting, “Whoopeee!
I’m a cowboy!” Lady and I took one look at each other and who knows who said,
“let’s go!” But I can report that Lady is a strong swimmer, or just more than
usually curious…..
Nor was once enough for Sunshine, since he repeated the
trick, with predictable results. But this time Lady and I shunned the male
parts, and attempted to seize the swimming trunks. Rather inadvisably, Sunshine
opted to throw them, which meant that while Lady and I couldn’t grab them,
Rafael could. And did. And then got out of the pool, and made gestures to fling
the trunks over the chain link fence.
Well, I’m pleased to report that Sunshine kept his pants
reasonably well on for the drive to Costco, and a merry time it was. So then we
had to find the television, since I had gotten it into my head: audience
building. Because the average person doesn’t like opera—or so they say. But who
could not like opera? Remember the famous Sull’aria
from the movie The Shawshank Redemption? It turned droves of people onto opera.
So the plan is put the television in the Poet’s Passage, and
have opera Saturdays, and since someone was good enough to put YouTube into the
world, and since a million opera fans have uploaded full operas—well, why not
start an opera café, at least for one day a week?
“Besides, it’ll be great for Ilia, Raf’s mother, since she
loves opera but her husband…well, not so much. So we’ll be starting a major new
trend, converting millions of people to opera, and giving pleasure to a little
old lady who sorely needs it.”
So we bought a 70-inch set, and then wheeled it to the SUV we
had borrowed to transport it.
“I’m lying under the TV,” said Lady, and both Sunshine and I
fought it for as long as we could. But the thing about Lady? She always gets
what she wants, and so there she was, lying on her back under a 70-inch TV and
munching on blackberries. She couldn’t have been happier. That’s when I
remember Joyce DiDonato, about whom I have gone through obsession and am now
into stalking, if only electronically.
“She’s this totally cool, completely unaffected mezzo-soprano who started out wanting to be a music teacher, but then got drawn
into opera. So when she was in Chicago last year, she spent an intermission at
the Lyric Opera talking to a group of kids from Youth
Opera Council. And the kids were totally into it.”
“Well, that’s how it happened for me,” said Lady, whose
aunts used to take her to the opera.
“And that’s what happened to Montalvo, who at age 21 could
have been the great-grand child of most of the audience. But remember his
characterization of Iago in Otello? It was along the lines of, ‘wow, that’s
some badass Niggah,’ a sentiment he shared in full, almost operatic, voice. All
of the ladies’ hair turned one shade bluer….”
So we plan it out: we’re starting with a Mozart Festival,
since once you’ve seen Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and
Cosi—well, you’re either hooked or deaf.
“I’ll definitely have to tweet this to Joyce, since she has
to know, and spread the idea of the opera café throughout the major
metropolises of the world. In fact, she should refuse to sing in any city
without an opera café….”
“But she has to give us credit,” said Lady, always on the
lookout for marketing.
“Absolutely,” I told her. “We’ll be world famous! We’ll be
in Wikipedia! Kids will be whistling Un Bel Di as they
walk down the street. Mothers will be threatening to take away their children’s
opera privileges if they fail in school. Fathers will beg their sons to play
baseball—but miss the Saturday afternoon broadcast from the Met? No effing
way….”
It’s pleasant to think about, and Lady keeps munching on
blackberries, and Sunshine reaches for some. But just at that moment, the
blackberry supply had been converted into the raw material for blackberry pie,
so Lady gives him only one. He’s reasonably content and…
…at least he kept his pants on!
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