Marilyn is moving.

“Turf,” the post I wrote about her in June 2009, still gets a lot of hits. (Second only to the obit on Sen. Ted Kennedy.)

She will be missed.

NURSE (speaking to ailing, elderly man): “Sir, can you tell me what day of the week it is?

MAN: “Thursday!”

NURSE: (nodding) “OK, now can you tell me who the President is?

MAN: “That black guy.”

I’m not sure if he got points for that answer or not.

Our machine did indeed turn out to be one of the few with the defect. I’d used the thing almost daily for over a year unknowingly risking my life. I tell you, this housewife thing is like combat.

The machine was fixed by a nice man who stuck around to share half my almond-butter sandwich and chat about the risks of wayward appliances and the politics of recalls. We wondered what people get paid when their washer turns on them. We wondered if recalls could be a way to manipulate stock prices. It was the sort of enjoyable conversation that two strangers have when neither one knows anything about the topics discussed. Sort of like a Tea Party gathering, only we weren’t blaming the government for high taxes, cellulite or anything else that has ruined our lives.

I wish the story in yesterday’s New York Times had appeared earlier. It was  headlined “Johnson & Johnson Recalls Hip Implants” and it would have been fascinating to kick around that development with the washer guy. Maybe some other customer will mention it to him.

Photo by Tracy Tkach/Facebook

Now, that puzzled me. I would never selfishly commandeer a moment like that. In fact, all during the Oscar pre-season I kept quiet about the fact that I was way ahead of this sudden Hollywood interest in explosives. The makers of The Hurt Locker (winner for Best Picture; Directing, Film Editing; Sound Editing; Sound Mixing and Original Screenplay) are not the only people who know from bomb squads. But did I rub anyone’s nose in that? No, I did not.

Did I use my influence and power as a blogger to remind everyone that I spent quality time with the Bomb & Arson squad of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department four years ago, and wrote 8,151 words on the experience for the San Diego Reader? No, I did not.

Did I post any sample paragraphs from my story? No, I did not. If you read the following you will notice that it has never before appeared on this blog:

This is the first absolute truth of being a good bomb tech: You must have an abiding respect for every device you face down. There is nothing static about this respectfulness; it is fed by obsessive training, reading, tinkering, and shop-talking. That’s where the second absolute truth comes in: You can have surgeon-steady hands and a pair of solid-brass cojones, but without a brain crammed full of the chemistry, physics, history, sociology, and weaponry specs that make up bomb-smarts, you’re just a guy leaning over a pile of antsy gunpowder, hoping for a spell of good luck. -

-excerpted from “Things that go BOOM,” by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, San Diego Reader, April 2006.

Last night wasn’t about me; it was the big night for the folks who brought you The Hurt Locker, and I respected that.

I usually start my day with a cup of coffee and something to read in front of the big second-story window that gives me a wide-angle view of the street. Several regulars park right in front, a pristine white 1964-1/2 Mustang (yes, there is such a thing); green Subaru wagon; bronze-metallic Jeep; a very battered bright-blue Toyota with its entire nose ripped off, leaving the headlights poking out like frightened bug-eyes.  I don’t often see the people themselves; they swoop in, park, and hurry off.

This morning, though, the baritone growl of the Mustang pulled me away from my reading. Good, I thought, I’ll finally get to see who drives that car.  I love those V-8 ‘Stangs because they were everything, good and bad, that cars can’t be anymore. Big engine in an absurdly small package; the cockpit bristling with dangerously pointy stuff, like that Boy-am-I-hot-shit floor shifter. Motown blasting on AM radio in one of these cars is pretty much what heaven will be like.

I watched while the driver climbed out, and even before I saw her face, I knew she was young, in her 20s. She slid out of the low-slung bucket seat and stood in one smooth motion. She didn’t heft herself up with a hand or hold onto the door. In fact, both hands were full: silver thermal coffee mug in one, canvas tote bag in the other.  Her long brown hair was still wet.

As I watch, she locks the Mustang’s door—the old-fashioned way, by pushing the button down and slamming the door–hefts the tote bag higher on her shoulder, and heads down the street.

I take in the details of her outfit. She’s wearing an above-the-knee green-print skirt, sheer stockings, black shoes with a high, but not perilous heel.  Her tan trench coat (brand-new, looks like) is shorter than the skirt by a few inches, a fashion trend that decisively separates her generation from mine. She looks nice.

It reminds me of how long it’s been since I worked in an office; a place where things like new coat lengths were filed in my brain without my even realizing it.

I wonder how many of her co-workers know she drives that cool car.

“I would like a striped bathrobe. ” (Long pause.) “With a hood.”

By then we were already used to his dramatic presentation and his affinity for things difficult to obtain.  We tended to ignore the former and acquiesce to the latter. That year my sister scoured the retail landscape  until she found the requested article of clothing.

Christmas Day dawned and James was soon sweeping through the house in his hooded robe looking like a small, self-assured Bedouin.

Now nearly 20 years later, he’s a man; one with a past full of roadblocks skirted, challenges faced down, painful losses mourned.  He spends his days doing mysterious things to the faces of women and men who are pursing the Holy Grail of perfect skin. He sells them expensive potions full of botanical rarities and sheep placenta. He’s very good at it all. He hasn’t given up his dream of being an actor; his clients are just audience members lying down with cucumber slices on their eyes. Imagine a deep-cleansing facial from Rex Harrison and you’ve just about got it.

When the poor economy and a layoff swept James into sudden unemployment, he took his salesmanship to the street, in his case, Madison Avenue, and promptly landed another position with an even more exclusive house of epidermis-worship.

He was excited when he called to tell me about his new job. In his telling the interview became a soliloquy, the job-offer a love scene. Knowing there were a hundred more applicants ready to pounce, he coolly requested a bump in salary.  I’m guessing he will get it sooner rather than later.

When we hung up, I sat there for a long time, remembering the small boy standing in that living room, describing exactly what he wanted, confident it would come to him.

I’ve heard her many times before: squeaking, repeating the same odd phrase over and over. One day last month she was cawing like a crow.

In my head I call this woman Maeve, a name I’m shy of trying to pronounce out loud, but one that I’ve always thought looks quite smart in print. Words with an a next to an e have a whiff of the classics. I wonder: Do they still teach students “agricola, agricolae” as the first vocabulary word in Intro Latin? Or maybe someone with pull in the world of language arts has realized that “farmer” is a non-starter as a new noun.

But, back to Maeve.

She’s in her 50s probably. Her light-brown ponytail looks like a clump of dry weeds hanging midway down her back. She’s not heavy, but big-boned and broad of beam. Her face is gaunt in a way that doesn’t match the rest of her. She’s dressed in the same grey-brown-green palette worn by nearly everyone else in Portland. She never carries anything. The first inking that something is off-center about Maeve is the way she holds her arms: stiffly pressed to her sides, fists rapidly opening and closing.

Today I realized something about Maeve’s soundtrack. Hours ago, very early this morning, I heard a cat carrying on–I know it was an actual cat because I could see it, scolding some other animal hiding under the neighbor’s front porch. By afternoon Maeve was replaying the cat’s monologue, pitch-perfect. When I think about it, I recollect crows visiting the street too. Two sets of real sounds recorded in Maeve’s brain and played back.

I’m wondering where the human phrases come from. I’ve not often been able to make them out completely, but these one-liners always seem to end in exclamation points and involve breaches of etiquette: “She didn’t say you could come over today!”

I’m working up the nerve to lean out the window and call out a hello. Then, maybe sometime later, I’ll hear exactly what I sound like.

But my watch battery died and that night’s cake recipe called for chocolate chips…and Freddy’s is the place where one can find both necessities. In fact, this particular store is so big that it has a full-size jewelry store inside it.

There was a queue for the watch-repair man, a very tall fellow with a German accent, who was attracting the sort of attention usually reserved for a magician. He changed watch batteries, untangled gold chains, attached poodle-shaped charms to bracelets.

I was shocked to see that people were tipping him. This is not a big gratuity town; a parking valet outside the swanky Benson Hotel told me he can tell locals from visitors: locals are the ones who say, “Darn! I only have a five..catch you next time.”

When my turn came, I could see why the tips were flowing: the watch-fixer opened my battered Seiko, removed the battery, replaced it, put the thing together again. Elapsed time: 2 minutes. Cost: $10.

He didn’t sit down, but bent over a work bench behind a low glass wall, moving his elegant hands with the grace and speed of a surgeon or a pianist.

Each time he completed a task, he quoted the price, took the money and gave a slight, courtly bow.

It isn’t easy to appear dignified when hemmed in by half-price poinsettias and talking over a recording of Alvin & the Chipmunks singing “Jingle Bells,” but he managed.