SHACK WITH A HOT PLATE

the owner of the place had been told that i was a researcher from an american university. that i was told. i was not, however, apprised of whether or not i was to be visiting on official research...business?...and neither was i told whether the owner of the place, who also owns the restaurant next door, had been apprised of the same. but when the owner of the place came over to deliver the table for the front terrace, it was my impression that the materials i had spread out on the kitchen table might probably have given the casual observer the impression that my translation had made some actual progress. that, at least, should have done something to shore up the reality of our shared disinformation as the both of us pretended to know what exactly what the both of us should have known. i doubt, however, that my bathing suit and the "boytoy" necklace did much to shore up my credibility as a researcher. and don't get me wrong: when i opened the door (after deciding that i would do worse for my credibility to take the time to change), i was very much that researcher from an american university -- but whatever research we didn't know i was doing probably wasn't very credible. anyway, i had the high ground. sure i was being given the table, but the thing was that the stove was shocking me whenever i touched the metal, and that's something that you don't want happening to a researcher from an american university (even a dubiously credible one) when you're the owner of his place. and, sure, he played the having been hospitalized card, but he still needed to fix the stove. i have no idea what the blue knob ever did, but it must have had something to do with electricity -- or maybe the gas burners used to light automatically without the application of an external flame. and i don't know why he thought i would believe him as he was putting electrical tape over a set of obviously faulty connectors, but he told me the story anyway. that one woman, she used to make a lot of soup. and, he continued in the one language that we shared -- which was neither of our mother tongues -- the liquid from all those soups must have seeped into the crack around the blue knob. and now there was a little electrical storm caught in the humidity inside the stove, and so he had no choice but to disconnect the electricity -- which i still had no idea why was connected to the stove in the first place (the fan in the hood still works). but i gave him the benefit of the doubt. the other day on the beach i met madonna. and i told her that i knew where she lived because a friend who lives in quinta do lago had pointed out her house one day while we were driving by. luckily she laughed. it wasn't quinta do lago, and where i was staying had some problems with the wiring in the kitchen, but at least i hadn't had to drive to get here, i said. then i told her that i wouldn't have minded her giving me a souvenir of the meeting, you know, to show people. and i didn't think that the guy who came over to deliver the table and fix the stove was going to be the first i showed it to, but i was happy that madonna was willing to part with that necklace. but it doesn't matter, she told me, no one's going to believe you.