Week, Reviewed.

"...have a languid day...."- Martin Ewen

Unprompted, he leans into the open convertible to kiss me goodbye.

Based on Martin's description of mornings at my house, That Girl has taken up calling me The Breakfast Nazi. She sits on the floor of my guestroom painting a huge wooden dragon with flippy feet from a dun grey to what she terms "our" colors. "They're emblazoned on my brain." She's slept naked and let the dogs out wrapped in a soft pink blanket that I bought for two dollars. She told her friend Sue, meeting us this morning, that if she wanted breakfast, she should be here closer to eight than eight thirty.

"Breakfast at her house is a machine," Martin tells Hilby. "If you stand about her kitchen looking vague, she will tell you what you want and where to get it. 'Cups: drainboard! Coffee- There! Milk and sugar? On the table! Here's a spoon, go sit down.' It's frightening, I tell you."

My response? "What do you expect from a woman you decided has the soul of a three hundred pound black woman? My inner Beulah is showing." She has no cause to complain; my inner Beulah has fed her hungry self more times than either of us care to count.

Thursday I bustled in preparation for the houseful ahead, taught the semester's first drama class. Among the Kaitlins and Kaylees and Sarahs, a lovely girl named Fatima looks just as you'd imagine a Fatima should look. Friday, more bustling, and frenetic checking of Amtrak timetables, for Martin hasn't warned me, nor indeed even decided, which train to take, or when he'll arrive. When I show him my car, he says, "No." Yes. "Well, you know what this means."

Sunglasses?

"Even better." He dons a fleece beanie topped by a white propeller, instructs the children to inform him if it goes so fast they can't see it.

We phone Hilby, but he won't join us until next night. After a gratifyingly large crowd (20,050)on Saturday, three weary street performers order carryout Chinese, delivered, and swordfighters John and Eric wander in close to midnight. Four men sleep in my house, none of them with me.

Sunday is more lovely than Saturday, if that's possible. I get a little uppity when one of the poseurs from Medieval Times informs our Angelic Procession "The Green Knight wishes you to attend him." Oh, as if. Patrons: "Wait, wait, let me get my daughter's picture with you..." Sorry, lady. We are not a backdrop.

Random female patron: "Them's some tall bitches!" Random male patron, to his four-year-old, dressed in a white princess outfit: "Come on, honey, let's go find you a husband."

I finally see Wolgemut, and am reminded of Alexander Woolcott's famous quote about Harpo Marx, for though all three musicians are wonderful performers, it is Bruno who shines for me.

As I leave the show, obviously volgemut, in a good mood, I see someone whose T-shirt identifies him as a pirate, so, as the shirt instructs, I kiss him. He is gratifyingly embarrassed, and embarrassedly gratified.

Weekend Five, gone. Faire's half over. Come out, come out, come on.

Monday is spent returning Martin to the train station (does he live there? No, why? He's always there when we go to get him, and when he leaves, that's where we bring him back. Ah, toddler logic) and limping around a used appliance store, feeding my moneypit house, which seems to have bad mechanical karma. Select replacements for the stove, the washing machine, the dishwasher. Plumbing chores in the kitchen and the bathroom. Meanwhile, the still-distant hurricane attacks my ankle, and I spend time fussing over a creaky body part.

Tuesday is a blur of housework and dance lesson, and Wednesday we go to see a show that is so poorly written it's actively painful. Then, waiting around for the men with the machines. Finally, they arrive, just as I'm taking Fluffy for his dance class. A phone call: Hawk, infuriated. "Did you know these people don't hook the things up, or unhook the old ones?" Of course not. I have my second fit of the day, the first having manifested after the delivery time screwup. It was a good thing he was there instead of me, because those guys would have put three large appliances back on the truck, along with at least one new asshole apiece. Hawk is much more tolerant with morons and liars than I am. He earns special favors installing machinery that will make him more comfortable.

I wake to That Girl, anticipating a morning in flight, and make coffee.

We approach the harbor, through fog thick enough to chew.