We're Home from Stiletto

One thing Stiletto City has over most other cities is a beautifully restored railroad station. It's lovely, most of all, because nobody uses it. There are fewer and fewer long distance trains, and Plot has never met anyone besides Ducknik and himself who have actually ridden on the subway. It's a shame, because it's a really nice subway and they're adding new lines all the time.

Union Station is deco to the max.

It is often half the price to fly from SFO-LAX instead of OAK-Burbank. So if you take advantage of that price difference you can take the Flyaway bus to Union Station and Mummy P. and Lillian will pick you up.

Except they never quite get to the right place. Plot and Duck know now that if Lillian isn't waiting when they get off the bus, she is parked on the other side of the terminal where people meet trains.

This means we get to walk through this beautiful station from one side to the other. You don't see a cigarette butt on the ground. The floors gleam. Plus, the hobo-to-passenger ratio doesn't seem nearly as high as in Saint Plotniko or The Shmapple.

Mummy P. announced she was taking Plot and Duck and Gloria, her Helper Number Two, out to dinner Monday night. We could pick wherever we wanted to go how about Thai food? We said "do you mean we can pick wherever we want or you want Thai food?" She said "we'll go wherever you say."

"Great," said Plottie, "let's go to El Caserio then." "Fine," said Mummy P., "wherever you like. How about Thai food?"

Plotnik said "sure," and drove straight to El Caserio. The lomo saltado and the halibut in tricolor sauce and the milanesa with many fried bananas were as good as ever. "The food is very good," Mummy P. said.

Then she ate her milanesa, all the while complaining about the cumbias they were playing very softly on the house music system. The problem is her hearing has deteriorated so much that she can only hear bass frequencies, which also means women's voices, such as her daughters-in-law, have disappeared. This also means strings, guitars and all singers. Musically speaking: only bass.

She refuses to get a hearing aid. We've been through this before.

"Do you call that music?" she said, and the ninth time she said it Plotnik said "Yes, and so do Barbara and Gloria. We are enjoying this music. So you don't have to tell us you don't like it any more."

"I thought we were going for Thai food," she said.

She is doing well, though she seems to be getting smaller and smaller. But, all things considered, and with the amount of cigarettes she smokes, she's doing perfectly fine.

Plot always dreads the mornings they are leaving to come home.

"I'm very sad," Mummy P. says. "But it's OK. I'm so glad you were nice enough to come see me."

"We love it too, Mom," says Plottie.

Like everything else, this small exchange begins to lose its value after the fifteenth time.

But then there they are at the airport, and she's struggling to get out of the passenger's seat so she can kiss Plottie good bye, and The Great Plotnik is hugging her, but not too hard, because there is so much less of her than there used to be. And then she gets back in the car and they all head off in different directions.