Out of gas and out of mind.

Michael. Wonderful husband and father, Type B banking guy, good with numbers except ZERO, as in no gas, no fumes, no luck - start walking! That was my man last week. And why?! I’ve been thinking about this for days. A fluke? A brain focused on the Charlotte job? Must be that, as the gauge works fine and it had been pointing to “E” for a while.

We were on our way to the San Francisco Symphony (www.sfsymphony.org) for an evening that promised to take us away from thoughts of a fragmented life in Charlotte. Plus, it’s winter, even here, and as mild as it is I’m ready for spring - and music is nothing if not transcendental. We dressed up, as about half the people do at the symphony. The other half, well…anything goes in SF. At one chamber music concert there was a guy in a delicate ladies’ slip accessorized with rustic (!) turquoise jewelry.... (???!)Anyway, we had reservations at Farallon (farallonrestaurant.com), one of my favorite seafood restaurants and with décor inspired by Nautilus himself. This was going to be an incredible evening!

Except for a pesky gap between expectation and reality. We were maybe five miles from the house. I was using my BlackBerry to email myself reminders for the next day when the car suddenly sputtered and died. There wasn’t a warning, a few coasting miles of realization that the end was near, it simply was. I may have used some colorful language as we slowed to a dead stop, however unusual that might be for me. Now what? It was dark, and we were obviously not anywhere near a gas station. We were in my car so I knew there was a gas can in back, but no, not any more, it turns out, Michael had removed it to get gas for the lawn mower months ago and did not replace it – ahhhh! Just like my toolbox, good scissors and my dental floss! I was madder than ever and stepped out of the car to think, and as I did, my feet made a thwook sound – I realized to my horror that I had stepped into about 6” of mud in my Jimmy Choo pumps! Yes, I got them on sale, but Jimmy Choos!!! At this point I yelped (or screamed, according to Michael). He got out to help me and the submerged shoes back into the car. I had adopted a childish “don’t touch me” posture and I’m sure my face was a rictus of fury. He retrieved the roll of paper towels I keep in the back seat. Funny, he hadn’t removed that also. As I was occupied, angrily cleaning off the muddy suede, Michael wisely decided to seek help for our predicament and/or seek safe distance from Mad Maddie.

One thing about Michael that has always irked me is his luck. He just has this ability to turn lemons into lemonade. (I hate that expression.) And so, not ten minutes later he was back, smiling. He had flagged down a truck of farm workers, and without speaking a word of Spanish he managed to communicate his dilemma and gave them money for a can of gas. I knew he believed we’d be off in a few minutes. Sure enough, the Saviors of Chevron returned with fuel, and Michael gave them a nice tip. But we weren’t off in a few minutes, as it proved nearly impossible to open the new can’s nozzle. Michael wrestled with it, using some colorful language of his own, even (gross!) attempting to bite off the cap, then digging at it with the corkscrew from the glove box. (Had we had a flashlight he would have seen the “squeeze and turn” instructions I noticed the next day.) He finally succeeded and we were off. No time for dinner, but drinks were what mattered at that point – after a stop at Saks for shoes. (I walked in wearing the damaged shoes, not trusting Michael to choose a replacement pair for me.)

The concert was great, a real treat. And afterward, we shared a late-night seafood platter at Farallon’s stylish bar. What I’ll remember most about this evening though was the aftermath of hanging up 22 button-down shirts, after midnight, in various spots in and outside the house to air out noxious gas fumes. (The neighbors must have thought I was nuts, but it wouldn’t be the first time.) The shirts had been in the trunk that evening because they were ready to be delivered to a client. The gas can, thanks to an abused nozzle, had leaked its last pungent drops into the trunk. (Grrrr, Michael!)