DECEMBER 31 , 2017
New Year's Eve
So anyway. Everybody pulled back this year for quiet celebrations and commemorations for those who could not be here. Around the Almeida table there were empty seats, more than in years past, seats that once were occupied by uncles and aunts and friends.
At the Old Same Place Bar Suzie cried when Dawn lit a candle for Old Schmidt who had suffered a heartattack last year.
In the Howitzer mansion there was no grand fete even though Dodd and fellow servants had managed to re-erect the fallen Xmas tree which had collapsed with Mrs. Cribbage and Mrs. Blather in a cataclysmic smashing of centuries-old Russian glass ornaments and Hummel figurines during the Xmas gala.
The dinner had not gone well, with Javier adding tequila to the flan and Jose adding Kahlua and brandy to the rice pudding,which caused it to become a sort of a soupy, lumpy mousse that was also inflammable -- as they suddenly discovered when it passed near the candles.
The master chef had ordered the two of them to leave immediately, shouting with quite a red face.
After the disaster of the 15 foot Xmas tree falling upon his guests, including a couple foreign dignitaries, Mr. Howitzer resolved to pass the New Year quietly in his den with a bottle of Makers Mark, which he finished entirely by two a.m.
Mr. Howitzer did not drink responsibly that night, but at least he did not drive. Not driving on New Year's Eve may have been the only honorable thing Mr. Howitzer ever has done by way of omission. In all other spheres of endeavor, he was a property magnate and a thoroughgoing scumbucket of the first water.
On his atelier desk there were a couple letters, one of them addressed to Andre and Marlene, that same Andre and Marlene of the Household. Because of his binge with the Maker's Mark, those letters would be delivered late in the year of 2018 and so their evil effects would also be delayed by way of the legal necessity of time intervals and such.
And so as the seconds ticked away to the New Year, Mr. Howitzer railed against the portrait of Mr. Howitzer the First, clad in ermine and robes and wearing a crown.
"If you had to get a King's grant of land, why o why did you not request something in the region of Tahiti, Hawaii or the coast of France, for the sake of god!" Mr. Howitzer shouted, with his fist shaking at the portrait. "Why this infernal, uncivilized, benighted Island!"
Dodd sighed and gently closed the door. It would be a long night and he doubted he would be able to return and see The Missus before dawn.
Over in the rectory of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint Father Danyluk was enjoying the company of his good friend Pastor Nyquist of the Lutheran Immanual Church during their annual nondenominational celebration of the New Year which had become a Tradition ever since the two had encountered one another during their respective meditative walks.
It had been the habit of the Priest to exit the rectory and walk clockwise about the block that included his church and the apposite Lutheran structure during his contemplation for the next sermon. It has also been the habit of the Pastor to take a similar walk around the same block for the same purpose, with the Pastor taking, as was his nature, the anticlockwise direction.
So of course they would encounter one another at least once, if not twice, depending upon the cogitation, and so it was that one day a tremendous downpour -- this was back in the days when California experienced downpours of rain -- the two of them took shelter at the bus stop on Santa Clara and so got to talking about the Flock and the Saved and the Not Saved and all sorts of groovy kinds of religious things and they became the best of friends, for as it is said, the Children of Abraham are all cut from the same cloth.
The two of them worked out any number of arrangements to take care of affairs on an Island crowded to the gunwales with churches, but one tradition they maintained was that visit to the rectory on New Year's Eve, there to discuss over glasses of brandy the matters of import that concern men of the cloth. The reliability, and, more important, the likeability, of the Pope. What about all the geegaw and foofaraw that was cluttering the ceremonies and Xmas? What about Sinead O'Connor? And was U2 truly nondenominational? This was a big topic.
It pretty much ended as it did each year, as it has for the past twenty years of Island Life. Sister Caritas would come in to find the two men snoring in their chairs before the great fireplace, which she would dampen before covering each man with a blanket and dowsing the lights and candles.
And so, best of luck and a better new year to all of you out there.
The sound of the train horn far across the water keened across the estuary and died between the Edwardian house-rows as the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shadow-shuttered Jack London Waterfront, trundling past the Ohlone burial mounds to an unknown destination.
That's the way it was on the Island in 2017. Have a great year.
