Jedgar

Two small coincidences yesterday.

I finished reading Benjamin Black's The Lemur, and started Don Delillo's Underworld. And there was J. Edgar Hoover in both of them. As the likely murderer of a CIA big in the first, and as the fourth amigo in the box (with Sinatra, Gleason and Toots Shor) at the Bobby Thompson game three of the Dodgers Giants playoff.

And where was I reading Underworld and what happened? In the lou, just off our kitchen, when at exactly 6 o'clock ante meridian, the coffee maker turned on and it started raining hard outside, the glurgy-poppy sound of the maker and the sussuruss of the rain mixing together all at once. But, you know, something didn't seem right, something I half remembered, and a few minutes later I went checking clocks and it turns out that the timer on the coffee maker was 6 minutes fast. So it all happened at 5:54, which somehow then seemed a little less special. And the rain stopped.

But 3:58 PM remains an interesting time for older New Yorkers.