Closed

Tonight, I went by the hotel around the corner from my new condo and picked up the keys.

From the bartender. Also the seller's real estate agent. 

Of course. And of course the co-publisher knows him. Why not? 

The seller was there at the bar, talking with her neighbors and her brother. She hugged me and asked me to take care of her plant.

"This is my brother. He found the condo nine years ago, when they first went on sale. I got first choice. I said, do I want a condo over an alley? He said...yeah, but it's a Burbank alley."

Everyone laughed. Burbank is so tame compared to its big sibling to the south.

The seller's got ten years on me, so she'd decided to buy a Winnebago and leave her job. She's off to a park in Alaska where she'll be a campground host for the summer, then who knows. 

I know a bit about that sort of life, and it seems both like a distant memory and like something scary and strange. It's funny how I can switch from wandering the back roads of Cameroon and Borneo to trudging to work every day without too much angst.

Well, maybe a little.