After losing Daffy, it took me more than a year before I was ready to welcome another dog into my life, but losing Paula Pug I felt cheated. The first Sunday of the New Year I went down to California Street to get the paper, but Walgreen’s was out as was the nearby sidewalk news stand. Undaunted, I walked two blocks to the other end of Laurel Heights Village, and that box had one paper left. Kismet! Back home Vince and I looked through it, and wouldn’t you know … there was a listing for Pug puppies.
We called the number and they had eight pups, three girls and five boys (for some reason I have never wanted a boy dog, only girls). The litter had been born on November 20th … my birthday! We thought about it for a few days, and finally I said to Vince, “I think I need a birthday Pug.” Then I called back. The breeder was funny, she said, “Oh, I remember you, Lance and Vance from San Francisco. Right?” “Well, actually, it’s Lance and Vince.” “Oh,” she said, “Well that’s pretty close too, isn’t it?
They were located way the hell up in Ferndale, but she said that they were bringing the litter down to Santa Rosa that coming Sunday, where they would be rendezvousing with other interested parties in the JC Penny parking lot. She said, “You’ll know us. We have a blue pick-up with a shell, and my husband is a real ‘Oakey’ so you can’t miss him.” We were the first ones there, so we had our pick of the litter, and of the three girls two had rather high foreheads. I liked the proportion of the third’s head better, and that’s the one we picked.
We had already done the name picking process, surprisingly Vince went along with my suggestion, “Petals”. Daffy had been “Daffodil” so there was the flower connection. Then, on the way home he said “Marie! Petals Marie!” That had a nice ring to it.
(Vince agreeing to the name “Petals” was quite a surprise, because normally whatever I decided on he’d pick the opposite. Especially when selecting a movie to see. He’d hand me the paper and say, “Here, you decide.” Which was always a wasted effort because no matter which I picked, he would veto it for something else. I finally learned the system. When I wanted a new drapery for the sliding door in the kitchen; I picked a fabric I liked, and then gave him the sample book of about twenty fabrics with three choices earmarked, none the one I wanted. That worked. By not telling him which one I liked, or including it in the three choices, that’s the one he picked.)
Back to puppyhood. It was often a bittersweet experience to say the least, but gradually Petals managed to find that special place in my heart reserved for a dog, and it was difficult to stay sad for too long with a new little girl in my life, keeping me laughing and hopping. Petals was asserting her own personality too, she was definitely not Paula. That was most evident in her absolute loathing of riding in the car. Although I did take her to the shop in San Rafael with me, she let it be known constantly and quite loudly, that she was not happy about it. Gradually I stopped putting her/us through that.
February my niece, Jayna, arrived for a visit, a working visit because she was going to be photographing some of my work to use in advertising. It was sort of a barter arrangement, because previously I had supplied all of the window covers for her new home/studio. She had bought the house that she had had her eye on since high school, did some major renovating and expanding (close to doubling the original square footage), and created an absolutely fabulous photography studio, office, and home.
In addition to photographing my work, the three of us spent time scouting around the city, in search of picturesque locales as backdrops for photographs of Vince and me. One shot of us perfectly captured the essence of our relationship, even though it was a very rare moment. After a few days her husband Tommy arrived, and they stayed a few more days with us - lots more sightseeing and plenty of fine wining and dining - before they continued their vacation in San Diego.
March started off with Doug (my installer/bookkeeper of three years) quitting, giving me no notice and no reason. He was paid well, used the company van and company gasoline for his commute from Guerneville and back each day (about 100 miles round trip). Later I learned that he had gone into the window coverings business for himself. Funny, all of the drapery and window coverings courses that he had taken each year at WWD’s expense; I rather thought they were for WWD’s benefit. Live and learn. His departure came at the end of a fairly busy few weeks sales wise, and there was a lot of installing to be done.
With the help of an independent installer and me working a few Sundays the jobs got done. April I hired a new fellow (trainee) for the installing, Jason, and a part time shop girl, Phyllis; more on these two jokers later. With April and tax time approaching, Vince was once again pissing and moaning about how much he had to pay. Health wise and work wise he was doing well, so once again I suggested buying a house, with the caveat that this time no messing around, we wouldn’t stop until we bought something.
We spoke with a few Realtors and when we told them that our ceiling was $200,000 and we were only interested in San Francisco, they pretty much laughed us out of their offices. So I started the search on my own, and on the front page of one of the real-estate magazines I saw a listing for a cute little Victorian-ish looking place in Ingleside for $179,000. That sounded good, until we saw the place.
It was what is called “functionally obsolete” because there was no room for a bedroom that was not also a walk through room. Starting at the front, one entered by walking up an exterior flight of stairs beginning almost at the sidewalk, and then into the first room, the living room. Next was a room the same size with a big closet, either a dining room or walk through bedroom; then the kitchen, which we recognized because it had a stove and refrigerator and sink, but nothing to speak of cabinet or counter wise.
After that was a tiny room (one small step up), which was then being used as a bedroom. A full-size bed squeezed into a corner between the back door and side wall. Opposite the bed was the door, and a big step down, to the bathroom. The same size as that tiny bedroom, it included another big clothes closet. The back door by the bed led out to a small rickety enclosed porch. Attached to the house at the very back was a large edifice, only accessible from the back yard, which had a shed roof that was sagging in the middle at the back.
The entire interior of the house was painted white, with a stucco-like finish that looked as though it had been applied by throwing plaster into a fan. It was very uneven with many big blobs of plaster in some spots while others had none at all. The kitchen floor was painted grey, the bathroom floor was a small ceramic tile, and the rest of the place had wall-to-wall carpet in a grey wool Berber (probably the best thing about the house, but not what we would have picked). Simply put, there was nothing about the house that was acceptable, short of an enormous amount of work and money, and I was at a complete loss as to what could be done to salvage the place.
Despite not being interested in that house, we liked the selling agent. He didn’t laugh at our financial limitations, and agreed to help with our search. During the next couple of months we found eight houses in San Francisco for under $200,000, but they were all not much more than shacks in bad neighborhoods. We were so desperate that we put a deposit on a house near Candlestick Park, in the thick of the notorious Double Rock Gang’s territory, and two blocks from a crack house.
We figured we’d enclose the property with a high fence, and then enter and leave the house through the garage, so we’d never have to go outside, other than in the relative safety of the car. That deal fell through for the sake of $1500. The offers and counters went back and forth, and when we were only $3000 away from making a deal, I said let’s split the difference, but the seller reneged. Needless to say, that was a blessing.
Next we started looking in Berkeley, the less than desirable southern section on the Oakland border. We made an offer on one place, a huge Victorian. It was so big that we could have lived quite comfortably on the second floor, while renovating the first, and then switch. I called a few Berkeley agents to get some information on the area, and they all said, “Ask your Realtor.” When I said that my Realtor was in San Francisco, they said that maybe I needed to get one in Berkeley. Then one said, “Why don’t you go over there and walk around, talk with the neighbors.” That’s what I did.
One sunny afternoon I parked in front of the house, and then started to walk east, until I spotted a large group of about sixteen young men hanging on the street corner. I changed directions. After walking around a few blocks, speaking with a few neighbors, I turned a corner and found myself headed towards the gang again. They saw me so I wasn’t comfortable retreating, but I subtly wandered to the other side of the street to avoid walking directly into their midst. At that point they crossed the street as well, and then the defacto leader said, “Well, well, lookie here my brothers, we’ve got a white man in our hood this afternoon.” Gulp!
At that I walked right up to him with my hand out, and said, “Hi! My name is Lance Edwards. I’m thinking of buying that house over there, so I thought I’d walk around the neighborhood and see what it’s like. Do you guys live around here? Is it a quiet neighborhood? Safe?” I just went on and on until they got so sick of it, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. The leader finally said, “Yeah, well, we gotta go. Good luck with the house.” They walked away. When I shared this story with Vince that evening he almost fell over. Truly, that encounter could have turned out entirely different, but I didn‘t show any fear (in truth, I didn‘t feel any fear), and I engaged them the way I would anyone else.
The last of the information gathering for that house involved engaging a structural engineer to check the foundation, which was said to have had a few small cracks. First, though, I figured I’d check it myself, and one day I put on my grubs and climbed into the crawl space. As expected, I found a few small cracks, but more important than that, I found over a half dozen large gaps where the foundation had cracked, crumbled, and shifted, that were big enough for me to stick my arm in. Didn’t need a structural engineer to tell me that that wasn’t good, and we backed out of the deal.
Back in San Francisco we started looking at condos – a last resort – and that was a pretty dismal experience as well. In the meantime our Realtor had told me that the Ingleside house was still on the market and the owner was getting desperate (he was in graduate school at Chico State, way up north). Vince and I confabbed about that and I came up with a plan that might make the house doable at the right price, but Vince was not convinced. The Realtor said that he would be showing the place again that Sunday, if we wanted to take another look.
That morning we looked at a “junior one bedroom” at the condos out at the beach, the ones that had been such a white elephant that a few years earlier the developers started auctioning them off. No auctions now. The “junior one bedroom” that we looked at was actually a studio with a sleeping alcove, but it did come with a panoramic view … of Safeway and its parking lot; all for $189,000. Crestfallen, we went back to the car and I suggested that we take another look at the Ingleside house. We debated. Finally I said, “We go look at that place again, or we are finished. This is it; the end of looking.” So we went.
Neither of us was in a very good mood when we got there, and as we walked through I started telling Vince about the plan that I thought would work. Like so many politicians, he was quick to tell me what was wrong with my plan, but had nothing to offer. I went storming out to the car and – as I sat there fuming – another plan started forming in my head. When Vince came out I told him what had come to me, but like many people Vince wasn’t able to visualize, so we went back in and I walked him through it, covering all of the details. Simply put, my plan involved renovating the entire interior, switching room usage, building two additions plus a porch and deck.
First, take off the front stairs, turn the landing into a balcony, and replace the solid front door with French doors opening to the balcony. Build a closet in the living room and make it a bedroom. The second room, currently ambiguous, would become the kitchen. Replace the rickety stairs and landing on the outside of the existing kitchen with new stairs, porch and foyer, and enter the house through the side gate (this house one of the few that actually had a six foot wide side yard). The kitchen would then become the living room, after pulling out the flat ceiling and creating a vaulted ceiling, and installing two skylights.
The tiny back bedroom, bathroom, and back porch would all be reconfigured in some way that would create another non-walk-through bedroom with sliding glass doors to the new deck and back yard. Well … now, Vince was beside himself, and frantic. “I want this house! We must get this house!” The Realtor told us that the desperate owner would probably let it go for $145,000 (he had paid $54,000 for it ten years earlier), and that sounded doable, but I offered $135,000 with the stipulation that the refrigerator and stove (they weren’t anything special, but I didn’t want to mess with replacements until the new kitchen was finished), and the brand new Craftsman table saw in the basement, would stay with the house. We had a deal!
On to financing. Between the two of us, we made one good house buying entity. Vince had the ten year work history and good salary with UCSF, and I had enough money to cover the down payment with a handsome chunk of change left over (I once called it my hit the road Jack and don’t you come back no more more money, and Vince said he knew how I meant it, but please don‘t say it again). As for being self-employed though, the vetting process put me through hell. They wanted to look at everything short of giving me a sigmoidoscopy.
After submitting my financial statement for the previous year, and the first quarter, at the last minute they wanted the second quarter. So much for timing, my accountant was on vacation. At that point I was ready to give up, but the mortgage broker was encouraging. So I made-up my own financial statement (the operative words being “made-up”) and when I brought it into the broker I said, “This is it. I wear a size 42R jacket, my shirt size is 16/32, my inseam is 33, and if they want my waist size the deal is off!”
We got the loan and closed on Fifty Granada Avenue (ADDRESS #25) the middle of July 1989. The house was an amalgam of a few buildings strung together in a row, ultimately resembling the “shotgun houses” built in The South from the end of the Civil War (1865) through the 1920s. It was narrow (20’) and long (62’), and as claimed about the shotgun houses of New Orleans … open the front door and the back door, and a hurricane can blow right through. Too bad that wouldn’t work with earthquakes.
As best I can determine from my research, although I never had it certified, the original building was one of the 1906 earthquake refugee cottages, or “shacks” (I like “cottages” better) that were built by the Department of Lands and Buildings of the Relief Corporation to house refugees from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. A total of 5,610 cottages were constructed to house over 16,000 San Franciscans in 11 refugee camps in locations including Dolores Park, Washington Square, Precita Park, Portsmouth Square, and today's Park-Presidio Boulevard.
Union (of course) carpenters built three main sizes of cottages between September 1906 and March 1907. The cottages had cedar-shingle roofs (as did #50), fir floors and redwood walls (as did #50). All were painted green to better blend into the parks and public squares in which they were erected. When the camps began closing in August 1907, refugees hauled cottages to private lots, and often cobbled together two or more to form larger residences. Of the 5,343 moved from the camps only a handful are certified to still be standing.
Once we got the keys we met Linda Pavia and another friend at the house. She brought champagne and, aching to make my mark, I brought a hammer. In the living room (to be a bedroom) the door to the next room (to be the kitchen) was at the south end of the east wall. That door would be filled in, and a new door installed on the north end of that wall, just next to the planned closet, so that was as good a place as any to start.
A few good hammer whacks and nothing. The process of discovery began, leading to the earthquake cottage theory. Those first two rooms shared equal halves of the original building (20’ x 20’), and the interiors of all the walls, including both sides of the dividing wall, were constructed of full one inch thick by twelve inch wide rough redwood boards, covered with a thick embossed cardboard wall covering. The ceilings in those rooms were full half inch by twelve inch rough redwood boards. Walls and ceiling were covered with ¼“ sheetrock sometime in the 1920s (I had never seen ¼” sheetrock before).
The moving project was a chore as expected, and as usual the maestro was running around seeming to orchestrate everything, while I did the leg work and the grunt work. Taking one or two van loads over there every day, and spending a couple of hours working there when I could. We did, of course, hire movers for the big stuff, especially the piano. When I received the proceeds from the sale of the beach cottage in Rhode Island, shortly after moving into #3848, I bought a new computer (my first) and Vince wanted to buy a piano, so I “loaned” him the money.
Looking at all of the used uprights on the main floor of -- I think it was Kassman’s, it was on Gough or Franklin -- we found a beautiful, like-new Kawai for $3500 in what was apparently an annex showroom, where it seemed as though they kept the really good stuff out of sight. Add to that $150 for delivery, plus $80 for an extra man (because of the stairs), plus $5 per step (we had 39), and the piano was delivered to #3848 and then moved to #50, where there was one flight of stairs.
When Vince was talking with his family in Schenectady, they asked lots of questions about the house, and he told them our/my plans, which did sound ambitious ... they were. When he mentioned building this, changing that, and the whole list, they’d comment that it all sounded very expensive, but he said, “No, Lance is going to do it all.“ When he mentioned creating the kitchen in a different room, they asked what about the sink, plumbers are expensive, and again he said, “Lance is going to do that.“ “He does plumbing too?!?!“ they asked. Yeah, I knew how to do all of it, but that didn’t stop mister-know-it-all from adding his critique, despite the fact that it was on subjects about which he had nary a clue.
Everything got moved in with much of it piled into the living room cum bedroom, and the back spaces, to leave things clear for the first of the remodeling and some living space. The first major project was the new kitchen, so that room stayed empty, and our sofa and television, dining table and chairs were squeezed into the existing kitchen, along with lots of other furniture and boxes. The first project I did though was the desperately needed closet in the front room, which was for all intents and purposes the bedroom.
When I finished that and started hanging clothes, Vince complained that the interior was not finished. I forget how I responded exactly, but the next day when he came home he said, “I talked with so-and-so and he said a closet is not finished unless the interior is sheet rocked.” “And?” “Well, you said the closet was finished.” “No I didn’t, I said the closet was as finished as it’s going to be for now.” And I went on, “The old kitchen is also our living room, with everything packed in so tightly there is hardly room to walk through. The bedroom is packed so tight that there is barely a path to the bed, and I have to climb into it from the foot because my side is jammed right up to the piano. With everything that has to be done, believe me when I tell you, the interior of the closet is not a priority!”
Next I cut the door opening for the door relocation, closed-in the old door, and installed the new door. Once it was all framed in and the casing installed, the resident self-proclaimed “expert” was at it again. He examined the casing where it met the frame, and wanted to know why the casing was set back about ¼” inch rather than flush. Because that’s the way it’s done. “Why?” “You know, I have much too much to do to spend time justify how I have done things, to someone who wouldn’t even ask the question if he had any idea what the hell he was talking about. Start paying attention to window frames and casings in other houses and buildings, and if you find one that is done the way you think it should be done, rather than the way I am doing it, and we can discuss it then.”
It was never mentioned again. That didn‘t mean that he wasn‘t an ongoing pain in the ass as the work (my work) progressed. Ultimately I sat down and wrote my “resume” of carpentry, electrical, and plumbing experience. Two houses and four apartments completely remodeled, thirty-two windows installed, eighteen doors, three buildings built from the ground up, five roofs roofed or re-roofed, four kitchens remodeled, five bathrooms remodeled, three stairways built, two decks built, and sinks, and toilets, and the list went on.
The remodeling continued despite all of the kibitzing. The soon-to-be new kitchen only had one window, on the east wall, at the corner with the north wall. So the first thing I did was replace that window with a new one, and then cut a big hole out of the north wall, and installed a new double window, about five feet wide and four and a half feet high, which opened up a lovely view. Interestingly enough, Vince never said word one about the casings being set back from the edge of the frame. Apparently he had done his research.
For two of the kitchens that I had remodeled previously, I made all of the cabinets and doors myself, but this time I was buying readymade. We had been thinking about the white laminate with oak trim that was in vogue at the time, but finally opted for a traditional style, all wood not laminate, with a whitewashed oak finish; a much better choice for the cottage-esque home that was evolving. Roughly speaking, two-thirds of the ten by twenty room was kitchen, the north one-third the dining area, so in total there was approximately thirty-five feet of wall cabinets, and thirty feet of base cabinets, deducting for the refrigerator and the stove.
All of the cabinets, including all thirty-five feet of the wall cabinets, I installed myself, with no help whatsoever. No small task, just imagine how heavy one single wall unit (30” x 42” x 12“ deep) of oak and compressed hardboard would be. Like father like son, my dad built our ranch house in Norwood from the foundation up, pretty much singlehanded. For the splash-back (the wall between counter and upper cabinet) we selected a rather unusual ceramic tile from Italy, with a coordinating two inch wide contrasting accent border. Although it was my first (and only so far) experience installing ceramic tile, it came out perfectly if I do say so myself, despite a lot of cursing when cutting (and breaking) the damn things.
During all of this time Vince was making a name for himself in AIDS research, and got a promotion. His system for research triage (which I did the layout for on my computer) was picked up by the FDA and the NIH, to be used as a model. He had an article published which was presented at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto that June. The local NBC affiliate did a piece about him, on one of the evening news broadcasts. One of a few times that he was on television during his career.
He was frequently meeting with health dignitaries from around the world, one I remember was the Minister of Health from the (then) USSR. The AIDS Activities Center was a political hotbed at the time, and the pressure was coming from a number of different directions. Vince was frequently hearing from Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi on one issue or another. He also had offers of under-the-table money (in one case $200,000) to pull strings and get this person or that one on a study. People did not understand that a “study” is not “treatment” but, of course, people were desperate.
One evening as he was about to leave for home, a fellow from Germany showed up. He had heard that SF General was the place to go for treatment, so he hopped on a plane and went directly there. Vince felt so badly for him that he brought him home for dinner and to spend the night, and then helped him get a room the next day, but I don’t recall that he ever got on a study. Despite all of this and the associated stress, Vince’s health was holding up. Through the end of 1989 he had had no major complications, but a fairly regular parade of chronic ailments which never seemed to give him a break.
As the old saying goes, a bad penny always turns up, and Phil was no exception to this adage. He showed up in October of 1989 for a visit … just what I needed, him in the middle of all that was going on. Before he arrived I stored away much of the contents of our liquor cabinet. This time there were no parties at our home, and he spent a good deal of time visiting with his friends elsewhere. Phil wasn’t the only unwelcome guest that October.
On one unusually balmy Indian summer day, three months to the day that we had closed escrow, Vince came home from work early. We were in the tiny back room that was a walk through bedroom when we bought the house, where I had set up a small desk for at home business, when all of a sudden the house started shaking. Eleven-month-old Petals was sitting right next to us but, despite what they say about animals knowing in advance when a quake is coming, she didn’t even know it when the house was doing the shake, rattle, and roll.
Grabbing Vince’s arm I said, “This is the big one!” As it turned out it wasn’t “the big one” it was the Loma Prieta Quake of October 17th 1989, but it was big enough for me. It was the end of my love affair with San Francisco, and I swore that I would be out of that house and San Francisco by 2004. When Vince threw the back door open, I said I didn’t think standing in the door frame would do any good, at which point the said, “I’m getting out!”
Truly, we thought the house was coming down. It shook like I imagine the Mayflower would shake on the high seas in a hurricane. It shimmied and creaked to its very core. It was surreal. Then it stopped. It was the longest fifteen seconds of my life. We had no damage to speak of, primarily due to the fact that all of our breakables were still packed in boxes, and the house survived unscathed as well. A good thing we couldn’t afford the Marina, we had to buy on bedrock!
What freaked me out the most is that the ground continued shaking for quite some time afterwards, although everyone said I was nuts. Then I read that during the following two weeks alone there had been over 3500 aftershocks. So the ground was shaking, and it was very nerve wracking. At least with a hurricane when it’s over it’s over, it was very spooky living on shaking ground. That’s when I started wearing sweats to bed (as I did for the rest of my years in San Francisco), rather than pajamas, so at least I’d be dressed if I had evacuate. And in response to a couple of the bigger aftershocks during that time, I did grab Petals and ran for the door.
Although my commute to the shop in Marin was a sweet twenty minutes from #3848, it was about double that from #50, and then after the quake it was anywhere from 1½ to 2½ hours each way, until the Bay Bridge was reopened. During that time I only went to the shop two or three days a week, and realized that it was probably time to start rethinking the wisdom of having a shop in San Rafael.
Then I fired my installer, Jason, the week before Thanksgiving. He had had a Saturday installation scheduled and, without consulting me, called the client to reschedule it. She wasn’t home, so he left a message, and when she called back I answered the phone. The rescheduling was not a problem, going behind my back was. When we discussed this he said to me, “Who are you to tell me what to do with my time?”
That was it. “Well, Jason,“ I responded, “up until two seconds ago, I was the guy who signed your paycheck. But now, I’m nobody. Absolutely nobody!” He tried to smooth things over, but I pulled out my checkbook, wrote him a final check, and kicked him out. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I started hearing the horror stories from clients, about what an obnoxious jerk he was. Why did it take me so long to realize it?
Before buying the house we had had a timeshare confirmed for a September week at a converted castle in Warwickshire, England, but needless to say that was cancelled when our priorities changed. By the end of 1989, an eventful year, much progress had been made on various fronts. The new kitchen was finished, and work was underway on the living room. In addition, the electrical system had been completely upgraded.
A circuit breaker box was installed adding many new circuits (replacing the old fuse box which had only two), and I had completely rewired the front two-thirds of the house. That included a lot of bending of the metal conduit (pipe) where needed, running about 175 feet of it throughout the basement, crawl spaces, and up into the walls, then pulling about 525 feet of wire through. Yes, I do electrical too, but at the time I was fortunate to have an electrician nephew-in-law for frequent phone consultations, and David Arajo’s help part of the time. Even I couldn’t manage to be at one end of a fifty foot run of conduit, greasing the wire and feeding it through, while simultaneously being at the other end pulling. It may be hard to believe at times, but I am only human.
The Billy Lowney update. Flashing back to 1986, after attending my niece Jayna’s wedding in May, I did some visiting around Southern New England. One day while in East Providence I swung by the house where Billy last lived before moving to New York. It was a lovely cape that he shared with his sister and her friend, Holly, who owned the house. Holly’s parents lived across the street. Coincidentally, although I didn’t know them personally at the time, I had sold the parents custom slipcovers when I was working for Paris Fabrics.
Holly and her parents were shocked to see me, because they had been trying to get in touch with me regarding Billy. He had been living in New Orleans, where he partnered with a fellow who owned a bar, above which was an apartment where they lived. One evening during an AIDS benefit Billy said he wasn’t feeling well, and went upstairs. When the partner closed the bar and returned to the apartment, he discovered that Billy and two suitcases were missing, along with ten-thousand dollars from the safe. That had occurred just a day or two before my unexpected appearance in East Providence the spring of 1986, and everyone thought for certain that Billy would come looking for me in San Francisco.
Billy never did show up in San Francisco, and I never heard of him again until sometime after Vince and I moved to Granada Avenue in 1989. One day Debbie called to ask if I had heard anything about Billy. Apparently when Kitty’s children were playing with Debbie’s daughter, she overheard one of them saying that their Uncle Billy was dead. Did I know anything about it? No. Yet despite being three thousand miles away, I had the facts within twenty-four hours.
Not long after Billy’s disappearance from New Orleans, his body was found in a New York hotel. There was a rig in his arm, so it was considered an accidental overdose, although the ten-thousand dollars was nowhere to be found, and in my experience Billy never did drugs except for pot. To me it reeked of foul play, but nothing had ever been pursued. His father was contacted, and he and Kitty went to New York City to take care of the arrangements. After which they never said one word about it to anyone, not even any family member. Apparently what Kitty’s child knew was from overhearing a telephone conversation that Kitty had had with her father. I shared this information with Bob and Deb … we were all shocked.
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