I have been wasting my time on a piece I am not going to do anything with, since the Big Pink 2013 Pool Party was last night, and we were drinking tequila and making merry.

I came up from the farm to attend- I am the pool deck mayor emeritus, after all, and this is a significant event in the season. It was nice down in Culpeper, and I hosted- or better said, Mattski and the Russians hosted- a free form outing with some pals at the range down on the lower pasture.

We made all sorts of noise, but were very professional about range safety and nothing untoward happened, which was the standard you want to have around a dozen types of firearms.

It was grand fun, though the wet season has spawned mosquitos and increased the population of some other creeping bugs. I grilled some roll-ups for lunch when we were done, and ignored the stuff that needed to be done while I got into an emotional discussion with my Mexican pal about what was going on. What I considered black and white was also white and black. Glancing at the clock next to the flintlock pistol-based lamp, I realized I had to get on the road.

I made a point of listening to music on the drive back up to avoid any further reference. Some bone-headed driver caused a personal injury accident at the Vint Hill junction- you know the one, where the double camel-hump of Rt 29 obscures the traffic light. That caused a long back-up and a certain amount of anxiety, since I didn’t want to be too late to the party. Everyone rubber-necked to see if they could determine the level of injury as they crept by, doubtless thinking (as I did) what it would be like to be stopped at the light and have some moron plow into you.

Just the luck of the draw. Life has its little surprises.

We crept slowly forward, weekend traffic merging into a single lane northbound, but it eventually worked itself out, and the rest of the trip on the interstate from Haymarket was a breeze. I got a shower, inspected myself for ticks, pulled on an aloha shirt, trunks and flip-flops and grabbed a bottle of wine and padded down the stairwell to the first floor.

I managed to be just fashionably late to President Joe’s patio, where the lovely Mary Margaret was having the soiree. Marty 2 was bartender and hostess. Everybody who was anybody was there- Jiggs, Mila, Mandy, The Lawyers in Love (who have produced a tiny boy named Alexander), little Grant and his doting parents and Leo the Engineer.

There were also some new faces, and commemorative shirts for the occasion, and plenty of food and drink.

Which eventually included margaritas, once we had drained Joe’s supply of vodka, and which fueled all sorts of conversation. I was starting to think it was time to actually get in the pool before it closed and the evening was starting to dim the colors when it happened.

No shit- this was amazing. Mandy had gone up to her unit to get something, and Mary Margaret was standing in front of Joe’s door, chatting away. I was sitting over with Death Junior and her new Husband marveling at the changes the last decade had brought to all our lives when there was a violent clatter.

I looked over toward where Margaret had been standing, and there on the concrete were shards of…Big Pink!

Mary Margaret looked stunned. “What the hell was that?” I asked, standing up to walk over.

“It just fell.”

“Hey, are you guys OK?” came a voice from high above.

“What fell?”

Mary Margaret pointed to several large shards of what clearly were bricks from the stylish façade of Big Pink’s massive flank. “Holy crap!” I said. Where did that come from?”

Leo-the-Engineer looked concerned, since the building is his baby. Jiggs was looking up, his cocktail clutched in a beefy hand. “Look!” he said, pointing up. “A whole tier of bricks fell off the building!”

I peered up in the growing gloom Sure enough; below the open window to Mandy’s place in 507 from which her face shone fairly in the darkness a dark line perhaps five bricks across marred the harmonious dusty mauve of the uniquely-fired brickwork specified by Francis Freed, the doyen who had commissioned this place in 1964.

“Goddamn,” said Jiggs.

“Can you imagine…” I said.

“If one of those bricks fell five stories and whacked Mary Margaret on the head?” Death Junior finished for me. She looked concerned, and the more I thought about it the more concerned I got.

“We just dodged a bullet,” pronounced President Joe, and there was some nervous laughter. I picked up a fragment of the brick that I intended to keep as a souvenir of the near disaster. The pink side of it had little drak pebbles fired into the glaze. The sides were sharp enough to cut. Mary Margaret rubbed her forearm, where a shard had glanced her.

“I could have been hit in the head,” she said in wonder. “Do you think it might have been an earthquake?”

“Maybe damage from the quake last year that took a while to work out,” said Jiggs.

We stood around drinking for a while, looking up, and Mandy came back down to explain she had nothing to do with bombing us, and had opened her window after she heard a strange sound.

“It was sort of a whooshing sound. I am so glad no one got hurt.”

“I guess it is the luck of the draw,” I said. “In Chicago, some of the old fancy skyscrapers have things drop off all the time. It is a wonder more people aren’t badly injured.”

“Or killed,” said Death Junior.

That was worth a fatalistic shudder, a last margarita and a plunge in the pool. The event had sobered everyone a bit, and Leo told us to leave the pieces of brick where they fell for the investigation.

After toweling off, I decided to avoid any further potential danger and walked back up to the unit. It had been a long day, and a lot of merriment punctuated by stark reality- traffic and brick related.

I yawned and decided no to bother with falling asleep on the couch in front of the television and just go to bed. I took the iPad with me and scrunched into the covers with a sigh. I opened the leather folder and punched in the access code, and that is when I found out.

I don’t know what you think, but I know what I feel.

I felt like a brick hit me.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com