It's a small world

I had completely forgotten about the Congressman next door who used to show up on the doorstep of our group house with a bottle of wine and his guitar when his wife went out of town. But today at my piano lesson I was reminded of my flirtatious neighbor.

I had brought a new piece -- William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag -- to my lesson. I had a question about syncopation. My teacher has a network of musician friends she calls when she doesn’t have the answer herself. She called her friend of 30+ years SS, who had played the rag and knew exactly how it was supposed to sound.

But I was more impressed that she knew SS than the fact that she had managed to answer my question. It seems that was the wife of the neighbor who went roaming when she left town. And they apparently are still together. My teacher and I shared stories that confirmed we were dealing with the same man.

I was reminded of him ordering take-out Chinese food and inviting all 5 of us over to dinner. I remember admiring the beautiful piano in the living room; he said his wife was a serious musician. One girl stayed behind after the rest of us left.

He regularly played tennis with another one of the girls at a prestigious NW DC tennis club. In fact, he gave her a tennis dress for her wedding present. He did invite us to a high-brow party around his backyard pool. His wife SS was always very cool to us, the 20-something girls in a neighborhood where most people owned their own homes.

He took each of us out to lunch at least once. I distinctly remember him asking me if I were a Seven Day Adventist or some religious zealot, perhaps because I seemed the most prudish of the lot. I had to laugh at what he didn’t know about me.

It turns out to be a very small town after all. I sent my greetings with my piano teacher to the man and his wife, reminding her to tell him the religious girl next door from 1973 said hello.