Chapter 3
The Night at Susie’s
A couple hours after leaving the teenagers in the square, we were sitting in our waitress Susie’s living room, with a large quantity of wine, planning a supper for eight. Susie’s house was a ramshackle, white with red trim, split level, with three bedrooms, only two blocks from the Chat & Chew. Susie’s kids had gone off to the west coast, one to Vancouver, BC and the other to Seattle, and her husband was no longer around. She waitressed to supplement her Social Security check and was mostly bored and lonely except for a few friends, including Eloise, whom she had gotten to know as her kids’ teacher. They got to be good friends over the years without much luck finding interesting men to meet.
After the local school board voted to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and other books on Susie’s and Eloise’s shelves, they decided to try organizing some independent voters into voting third party in the next school board election [better than Republicans – and Democrats have no chance].
Max told us how he got to know Eloise. Max was wearing his usual grey cardigan sweater, button down shirt and khaki slacks. A tall, slender guy, now 68 years old, bald on top, he had a greying beard and a bulbous nose. After serving in the Peace Corps with Eloise in Nicaragua, he kept up the friendship. First visiting her in New York, then in Montana after she moved there to live off the land with a new boyfriend. But that didn’t last long, she ditched the boyfriend and got her teaching degree in Bozeman. At the time of his last visit, now ten years ago, she was in Boulder teaching, still playing the field. “What’s she up to these days?” Max asked hostess Susie, “and tell us more about the school board race.”
“Well, of course, I called her in New York right after you guys left the Chat & Chew, and she’s super-excited to see you, Max, and meet all you guys. She could use some pumping-up, her school board race isn’t getting much attention – and by the way, Max – she heard you’re back to being single. I think she wanted to say, ‘she’s eligible too’.”
That night movie-maker Patty and Sally slept in Susie’s house, and the rest of us in the camper (too rainy for tents) where the discussion turned to “How long you think we’re going to stay here?” … and … “Who knows, at this rate, we may never make it to the West Coast, much less the East Coast.”
It turned out we stayed long enough for a lot to happen.