Odd, The Plunger recalls himself thinking then. No answering machine. Cousin Richard loved playing callers’  messages for audiences of friends and house guests. When words have left one’s tongue one is no longer their master. Fuddle, fuddle, flip the tattered notebook’s pages, find the somewhat less complex telephone number for Richard’s modest retreat in the hills above Ventimiglia. Italia.

His Finnish stepson answered.  I asked for Cousin Richard.

Funny thing, replied Stepson. Richard croaked in Paris about five minutes ago.

Sic transit gloria, sigheth The Plunger. I’m too late.

Sic semper tyrannis, snappeth back Stepson.  Laissez les bontemps rouler.

Next call, to Father, in Boston, and the news relayed.

So, quoth Father,  of good cheer. The long-awaited event has finally come to pass.

A pattern here? What ought one say on receipt of a death notice?

Father, what are we supposed to say when informed that someone has died?

A pause, then -

We should say, Better Him Than Me.

The deeper meaning of which became clear years later, in the past so recent it’s insdistinguishable from the present.

She popped the question at dinner.

Take a plunge if it’s for a good cause? The Plunger, of course, does not generally get wet unless it’s in order to get paid or get – well, it rhymes with ‘paid’. But this is different, She protested. So what if you won’t get paid?

Did you know, Reader, that there is an active, organized and most benevolent and valuable effort afoot in the world to bring the good warmfuzz of scuba diving to persons with physical infirmities of an extreme nature? There is, and She’d got herself involved with it, Scuba Diver Extraordinaire as She is. Training up to train instructors to instruct paraplegics, quadraplegics, the blind… Plunger, having more than a few comrades who’d perk right up if that possibility were opened to them.  The deal was done.