Lou Prepares for Forty Guests; Seven Show Up

Tamsin Reads the Manual Aloud

Lou asked Tamsin Oyelaran to look the machine over before he plugged it in. She sat on his tailgate and opened nothing, which is her policy with anything that has a cord.

"Have you tried reading the manual? I have," she told Gus Ferreira, who had wandered over to say a man could build one of these in a weekend and had picked up a blade assembly to prove it. She took it from him by the base. The manual, she noted, asks for extreme caution around the blades.

Then she read the useful parts. The motor is 1500 watts, which is what lets the big pitcher turn ice to snow in seconds. The pitcher says 72 ounces on the side, but only 64 of that is for liquid, so you do not fill it to the brim. Lou wrote 64 on his wrist in marker. There are four settings (Blend, Mix, Crush, Single-Serve) and four blades, each meant for one job, and Lou named the stacked set Reginald on the spot.

Gus produced a tape measure, because he always does, and reported that the thing stands 18.07 inches tall and 15.75 deep. He said it with some satisfaction. Anyone with low cabinets or a small counter, he added, would be wise to measure first. Nobody argued, which is rare.

I can name a package by its rattle.

The Long Courtesy

At noon Lou had the tables out, the coolers full and the pitcher in his arms when Brenda came out from under the porch at No. 2 and sat on the top step.

When the domesticated bear sits on the top step of No. 2 and considers the street, the lane observes the Long Courtesy: nobody starts anything, nobody crosses her line of sight, voices drop to library level, and anyone mid-task freezes where they stand and nods once, which is understood as asking permission and which she has never refused.

Lou nodded once. Then he stood at his tailgate holding sixty-four ounces of nothing for most of half an hour, while Mags watched the start time of Memo 212 go by and drafted Memo 213 in her head. Brenda finished her consideration, which I believe concerned the mailbox cluster, and went back under the porch without any hurry at all.

The Accord of the Seven Cushions

The next obstacle was Admiral Biscuit, asleep on the hood of Mags's car. Mags, speaking for the Caucus, whose members hold that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, cited the Accord of the Seven Cushions, signed by the cats of Alexandria, upheld by a Venetian magistrate and reaffirmed by every cat since, which forbids machinery within earshot of a sleeping cat.

Doris Kowalczyk asked for a call number. Mags said the Accord is unwritten, being too important to be written. Doris noted this as provisional.

Mags then ruled, and I thought it was fair, that the Accord limits a motor to the length of one yawn. Crushing a cooler of ice to snow takes seconds. Lou ran the pitcher, there was a sound like a gravel truck clearing its throat, and it was over. Admiral Biscuit did not stir. The Caucus took this as proof of the Accord. I took it as a cat asleep.

Seven Guests and a Great Deal of Snow

Seven people came to the gutter meeting, plus Pepper, who came for everyone. Lou had prepared for forty.

This is where I should tell you he lets no food go to waste, and where the Ninja earned its place. The extra onions and peppers went into the 8-cup processor bowl, which chopped them evenly enough that he put them straight into the truck's stock pot. He fitted the dough blade, mixed two pounds of flatbread dough in about thirty seconds, and the gutter meeting was catered, a first for gutters.

Doris and Gus each walked home with a shake in one of the two 16-ounce Nutri Ninja cups, lids snapped on. Doris entered both cups in the Lending Ledger. The pieces went into the dishwasher, top rack, as the manual suggests, and the motor base got a damp cloth.

That evening ORACLE posted that the ice shortage had been resolved and thanked the harbor for its cooperation. Lou said he did not know what had been solved, but the lane had more flatbread than it had that morning.

I carried the empty carton back to the cart. It rattled nothing at all.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell