Enjoy, Or Else · Saturday November 12, 2011 by Julie
Bob came over to make sure I’d noticed how absolutely lovely the morning was. Dark clouds, luminescent yellow maple leaves, black tree trunks, brilliant green grass.
Yes, I’d noticed.
“You know,” he said, “one time I was running my boat up to Alaska. Had a new deckhand, a lesbian woman who later became a dentist, but that’s another story. Anyway, she was on deck reading a book, and we’d just come into Lisianski Inlet. Dark clouds overhead, a glacier and snow capped peaks on one side, orcas skyhopping on the other, a flight of puffins somewhere else. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t get her to look up from her book. ‘Look over there!’ I’d say, and she’d keep reading. Never once looked up.
“So, when we got to dock, I fired her.”
