My Father, Who Died Last Fall

I went to a party the other night where I met a lot of interesting people.



Things got a little out of control as the evening progressed, though, which was due in part, perhaps, to the band's rather unrestrained renditions of polka tunes.


Soon people who’d only just met were behaving in strange and unusual ways.



Eventually I happened down a series of corridors that led to a room decorated as a cantina, where the proprietress suggested an alternate explanation for the evening's goings-on.


I wandered outdoors shortly afterward just as a woman was walking by, and when one end of her scarf whipped up into the air I was suddenly struck by how cold it had gotten.

Remembering my jacket, I returned inside and found that although I’d been gone only a few minutes, Nancy the coat-check girl now had very few coats left besides mine and hers. While I looked for a dollar or two to put in her tip jar, we struck up a conversation in the way complete strangers sometimes do.
She told me about a friend of hers who had just returned from Rome, where he swore he had briefly and unac- countably levitated in front of St. Peter’s.


Then I told her about my friend Erica, who had just returned from a research expedition to British Columbia where she had identified a previously unknown lichen.


During most of the long train ride home the guy across the aisle from me slept soundly.


Back at my apartment I found that my mother had mailed me an old picture of my father, who died last fall. I was struck by how much my father at that age resembled my next-door neighbor Warren, and I made a mental note to show Warren the picture in the morning.