IN WHICH WE'RE VISITED BY A GERMAN ELECTRICIAN

Last week, we had a German electrician in to fix a bathroom light fixture that’d been melted away by the previous tenant. (Only took the agence immobiliere seven weeks to get someone out here but, I digress…) The electrician wasn’t brusque exactly, maybe just all-business. As in: get in, get the job done and get out. For about an hour he was in our bathroom banging away. From time to time, I heard his harsh German voice aggressively arguing with someone via his cellphone. (Or maybe he was just having a normal German conversation; it was hard to tell.) Once or twice I heard the word, ‘Kaput!’

Eventually, he emerged from the bathroom, toolbox in hand and, in very calm clear English, declared the job done. He had me sign some papers and turned to leave, but suddenly found himself in the mood to tell me about his various trips to America. 

“I was there before,” he says. “Lots of times. Florida. Uh, … Orlando. The place with all the parks.”

“Oh yeah, like Disney World?” I say.

“No, not Disney World. That’s for the little children,” he says. “I like the, uh … Harry Potter World! That was cool! They have this one ride—you feel just like you’re flying! Flying with Harry Potter—I loved that!” 

He also told me that he owned some kind of race car and that he once had it shipped over to Nashville. I thought he was going to detail some sort of racing he did there. (Rally car? NASCAR?) But instead, he was practically breathless with excitement as he told me how loud and powerful the sound system was in this race car. How he’d installed this and that, and how many decibels, watts, etc. that it pumped out. He never once said anything about racing or even driving the car. I nodded as if I understood perfectly, but I was thoroughly confused. 

Lastly, he told me about his upcoming trip to Las Vegas and Hawaii and Phoenix. (The mention of Phoenix often causes a knee-jerk reaction wherein I launch into the Ironman triathlon I once did there—see, I did it again!) 

“Phoenix wasn’t my choice,” he says. “I wanted to go to that place where they have the bridge. The big red bridge.”

Red bridge in Arizona? Maybe he means red rocks, I wonder.

“Sedona? Or the Grand Canyon?” I offer. 

“No, the big red bridge. In California, Francisco.”

“The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he says. “But the tour wasn’t going there. I go to the red bridge next time.”

Sounds like a plan.