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aadlerI had trouble getting to sleep last night, and Susan may be coming down with something, so it was nearly 9:00 before we got up. We did some cleaning of the apartment in anticipation of our departure; Mei-li has kept the place essentially spotless, and I doubt we can manage that but we can make a solid effort.
Kevin showed up maybe 12:30, between classes. He didn’t feel like walking, so he ordered delivery from Kung Fu (chicken and mushroom, with rice, for Susan and me), and we visited till time for him to return to work.
Sometime after 3:00 PM, I went with Susan to Walmart to pick up some final stuff. She wanted to get some local candies to share with her co-workers once we’re back home … but the ones she’d picked out were sold by weight, and the checker didn’t know how to handle that (would someone in the original department have been able to manage it?), so we left that, maybe for another and later attempt or maybe just giving up, that’s yet to be determined.
Kevin called somewhat after 5:30 PM to give us directions on how to meet him, but in the meantime Susan had decided she was sick with something and unwilling to chance passing it along to our granddaughter. I went on my own to the subway, traveling toward the Window to the World stop. Kevin got on two stops afterward, and we got off three or four later and took a taxi the rest of the way to the Yins’.
We had arrived enough later than usual that dinner was on the table within maybe fifteen minutes of our walking in the door. I had to pick a good moment, because different people kept getting up from the table to do one thing or another, but I finally found a time when everyone was present at once, and had Kevin translate for me while I gave Logan the bottle of Chivas as an expression of our gratitude for his hospitality. He gave me a beer in return, and then a bit later he gave me some of the Chivas, and then he has Mei-li translate while he asked: when I was driving for a living, how much did a truck cost?
The nearness of these different events had me a bit nervous: surely Logan wasn’t about to offer to buy me a truck in exchange for a bottle of blended Scotch? (Not utterly impossible, since the Yins are extremely well-off.) I gave my answers while trying to think ahead to how to gracefully decline if it should turn out to be that extravagant: a brand-new truck could run over $350,000 easily, but the one I had actually owned — before one of the engine valves blew up — cost me $18,000. Then Logan wanted to know how much I had earned for that. The answers there were different, because my first job had lasted less than a week and I hadn’t even earned enough to cover my first fueling, but my mentor had predicted (if I remembered right) a solid possibility of earning $1,400-1,600 a week, while my stint with a national carrier had brought me $450-500 a week after taxes. The back-and-forth went on for awhile, most of it between Logan and Mei-li … and it turned out there had been a misunderstanding, when I reported the amounts I had converted it to Chinese currency, and he’d thought I was saying as an owner I could earn ten thousand dollars a week instead if ten thousand yuan. Much of the byplay I hadn’t been able to follow had been him telling Mei-li, “If I thought he really could bring in that much, I’d buy him a truck in return for half his earnings!” Which would have been great deal for both of us, but alas, the actual amount was less than one-sixth what he had thought I was trying to claim. We laughed about that once things were cleared up.
As the meal was ending, Laura asked (through Mei-li) what Susan would be having for supper, and I remembered something Susan had said about whether she could keep something down, and they got immediately concerned about just how sick she might be. They put together leftovers from today’s meal — quasi-lasagna, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli — to send back in a Tupperware container for her, and sent Kevin along to check directly on her health. Back at the apartment, Laura herself came up after she had found a parking space, and we had ten or fifteen minutes’ worth of visit, and plans for tomorrow morning, before she and Kevin left for the night.
I had things to get ready, mainly packing everything except tomorrow’s clothes and what I’d use for showering, so I can’t make predictions. We need to be ready to leave by 6:00 in the morning, though, so I intend to make sure and be in bed by 11:30 PM.
