A Series of Things: Louise

Summer a year ago we go to Cape Cod with Sioux and Duke and Aidan and one day we head up to Provincetown to whale watch then tool around town and I think to myself, like I do each time since my first (1979!) visit, what if Susie and I really had come and lived and worked here for a summer like we vowed to that day, what would this place look like/be to me now, but we never did live and work here, of course, and this time I show up armed with the stories Louise told me about her visits during Bear Week with one of her BFFs, who is apparently a bear magnet, so they often drink for free and are invited to bear afternoon teas and bear cotillions, so with Bear Week and Louise dancing in my head like visions of sugar plums, I purchase a bear bottle opener to mount on the back wall of my barn in Vermont, by the slate patio, so that I can, during the warmer months or even in a blizzard if necessary, open a cold bottle of IPA there, my Provincetown bear ripping the cap off with its teeth as I think Louise.