Steve confirmed that he was coming over by 6:30, saying he'd stop at the video store and rent a couple of movies for us to watch after we ate. He suggested "Sister, My Sister"--an "art" picture about two murderous sisters who work for a tyrannical mistress.
I didn't recognize anybody in the cast--I usually don't watch art movies unless they have Hugh Grant or Emma Thompson in them--but I decided to give this one a chance since Steve told me that this was the true story that Jean Genet based his play "The Maids" on and I had just finished the biography.
I asked him to rent the new Keanu Reeves movie, "Johnny Mnemonic," as a buffer, just in case.
Naturally, the tire blows out on my way home from Mocha Daze, in rush hour traffic. I'm in the middle lane and nobody will let me get over to the shoulder of the road, so I brazenly forced the front end of my car into the next lane, eliciting horns and fingers, galore.
By the time I got home, it was 6:15.
I started water boiling, turning the flame up high, added salt to make it go faster, dropped some uncooked spaghetti into it, poured my own special sauce recipe (okay, Ragu) into another pan, turned the flame on under that one and jumped into the shower.
When I got out of the shower, I smelled something burning and ran into the kitchen. Apparently, I had turned the flame up too high under the Ragu and all that was left in the pan was a thick charcoal paste.
I grabbed the pan off the stove without thinking and burned my hand.
Then the phone rang.
I looked at the clock. It was already seven.
Holding my blistered hand under cool water, I picked up the phone. "Steve?"
"Sorry, I'm late. What's your address again?"
"Where are you?"
"Compton..."
He'd left the directions at home, confident that he'd remember where I lived. After taking a right when he should have gone left, he ended up on the freeway.
We hashed out the way back and said our good-byes.
I opened all the windows, hid the dirty socks and t-shirts under the couch, sprayed room deodorizer and ordered pizza.
