That Old Flower Moon...

I've had time in the apartment to rearrange, and now I am sleeping more directly under the windows.  The houseplants really open up for a night in the moonbeams after a day of direct sunlight.  And last night, again, I slept in its rays.

What strong light the moon has been issuing this month. 

We notice the moon more in winter, but you couldn't miss her here in the clear skies last night...
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Feldman Fieldmouse... a fable, by Nathaniel Benchley.  Illustrations by Hilary Knight.

* And!, in a bonus google search, a Benchley freebie to enjoy starting the day at home with coffee. No endorsement/I haven't read it myself, but I generally like his work. Peter's father, Robert's son.

Sounds promising... Surprise Party:

IT was early on a Saturday afternoon in May, and the bar was unusually quiet. The soft spring air had lured many of the regular customers to brighter, cleaner pastimes, and the few men who stood at the bar drank their drinks slowly and silently, as though they were planning some long-range, global strategy. One or two read newspapers, and signaled for new drinks simply by pushing their empty glasses an inch or two forward. In the back room, the waiters had cleaned away the luncheon dishes and turned out the lights, and were dozing in darkened corners, their heads resting against the wall.

Near the center of the bar, two men stood with their elbows almost touching and stared at the assortment of bottles on the back bar. Leonard Stewart, the shorter of the two and a man in his early fifties, drained his drink and put the glass down and then, without taking his eyes from the bottles, said, “It seems a shame to waste a day like today. There should be something we could be doing.”

Harold Archer considered this statement for a while. He was tall and thin, and strands of his greying hair looped down over his forehead, making him look like a man who has dressed in a hurry and is still sleepy. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “The best way to stay out of trouble is just to stay here. Nothing can happen to us if we stay here.” He finished his drink and looked at the bartender, who unfolded his arms and moved toward them.

“I didn’t mean trouble,” Stewart replied. “I just meant we ought to do something.”

“One and the same thing,” Archer said. “If you don’t do anything, you’ll never get in trouble for it.”

ADDED: Lol. Oh, it's a keeper!

Slowly but inevitably the party gained a lopsided kind of momentum. Stewart cornered Mrs. Hopwood and told her, in long and almost tearful detail, how much he loved her husband, while McCann and Hopwood stood with their arms around each other and sang If He Can Fight Like He Can Love and Don’t Bite the Hand That’s Feeding You and Every Day Is Mother’s Day at the Boston Lying-In, with Dockstader, who didn’t know the words, singing the bass accompaniment. Archer had backed Mrs. Dockstader against a tree and was telling her his recipe for crabapple jelly, and Mrs. Dockstader had the futile, helpless look of a newly caught mackerel. The four other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Lessinger and Mr. and Mrs. Pruitt, huddled together near the table like people in an open lifeboat. Mr. Pruitt tried once to get near the bourbon but was immobilized by a sharp command from his wife...
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Mrs. Pruitt took Mr. Pruitt firmly by the arm and steered him toward Mrs. Hopwood, and after making their excuses they left, taking Mrs. Dockstader with them. Mrs. Dockstader had tried in vain to pry her husband loose from the singing contingent, and was white with rage at something he had muttered to her in reply. Mrs. Hopwood made perfunctory noises of disappointment at the Pruitts’ and Mrs. Dockstader’s departure, but her hands were fluttering and her eyes had a frantic look, and it was obvious that she wished everybody would go home. Stewart, who had left her for a while, then came back to tell her more about her husband, sensed that he had lost his audience, and drifted instead over to where Archer was describing the intricacies of stud farming to Mrs. Lessinger.. ...

The setups and fast punchlines remind me of Michael Frayn's Noises Off, whose 1992 star-studded movie was hilarious. Bogdanovich directed.

Nicolette Sheridan, Julie Hagerty, Christopher Reeve RIP, Marilu Henner, Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Mark-Linn Baker, John Ritter RIP. (not shown: Denholm Elliot RIP)
 

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UPDATE: And there's a fine finish, sentimentally fit to the post-war times... (The story was published in Esquire, October 1, 1953.)

They looked for Mrs. Hopwood, but she had disappeared, so they all straggled down to the car, with Hopwood following them and protesting that they didn’t have to go yet. They shook hands with Hopwood, and embraced him, and then one by one they clambered into the car. Archer was the last to say good-by. “George,” he said, with his arm around Hopwood’s neck, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I insulted that lovely Mrs. Axminster, and I’m sorry we loused up your day for you, and I’m—I’m just sorry. Would you please accept my apologies?”

“That’s right,” Stewart said. “I hope we didn’t get you into trouble.” “And please ask your lovely your lovely wife to forgive us,” Archer said. “Would you do that?”

Gently, Hopwood took Archer’s arm from around his neck, helped Archer into the car, and closed the door behind him, then he rested his hands on the window rim and looked at the men inside.

“I just want to say one thing,” he said. “I’m just going to say one thing, and I mean it. That’s the nicest birthday party I ever had in my life. Now, shut up and get out of here.”

*It was all in the gifts they brang him, vs. what the other guests gave... Read the whole thing! (in the moonlight, if you're able... ;-)