Summer of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

puzzle — this web, if you will — is to keep you going forward. Too often in my own life I felt like I was treading water (or coffee) when I should have been making motions. So since I’m not there to kick your butt in person, I’m kicking it figuratively. Life is all about the pieces, and here’s a bunch for you to sort through. Once you’ve looked at them, you’ll know what to do. Love you to bits — heh. Aunt Mable x.
    Pocketing the note, I crouch down and begin to look through the various shards in the small bin. Each one is different — patterned or plain, glazed or just grey. First I just look at each one and put it into a pile, but soon I notice there are three main types — green the color of the Atlantic in the fall, sort of mossy and dark with lighter lines on them, a bunch of plain gray ones with darker lines on them, and ones that are striped blue and white, like a beach chair. I separate them all into piles just to make the process less confusing — which of course it still is because I don’t know what I’m looking for. I suspect that the process — just following the flow of the pieces — and not really knowing why — is part of Mable’s plan. She always wanted me to allow things to happen, not to think too much, and in this — I can’t really thin too much so I just do it.
    Then, once I’m almost all the way through the barrel, I notice that each pile contains a mug handle. I take the three broken handles out and look at them. No clue. What the hell and I supposed to make of all this?
    I head back inside and ask Tink.
    “Do these mean anything?” I ask him.
    He looks up from the wheel. “My sister says you’re bright — that you’re headed to a good college.”
    “I hope so,” I say.
    “Well, I went to RISD myself. And if I learned anything — which I’m not sure I did — then it was to consider the art not just for its parts but as a whole, and not just for the whole but for its parts.”
    Oh, um, thanks — you’ve been really helpful. Not quite. “Oh, okay,” I say and go back outside. For some reason I thought he’d just tell me something, explain the whole ting, but no.
    Then, as I’m about to put the handles back down, I notice the dark lines and the light lines kind of line up. So I take each curved handle and line it up. On the outside, the lines are just patterns, but on the inside, the lines and curves for letters.
    “Find the matching blue and white mug and drink in all life has to offer. Everyone deserves a”
    The words cut off after ‘a’ — everyone deserves…what? I don’t know now, but I will if I can find the mug that matches the green one. With my next clue in hand, I take my blue coffee mug from Tink, the note from Aunt Mable, and the mugless handle, and head back to my car. Who has the matching mug? And why?
    My cell phone rings, breaking the quiet and my thoughts. “Are you here or what?” Arabella asks.
    “I’m on my way — seriously,” I answer, “I’m just going to call my dad and tell him I’m alive and well and then I’ll get there.” So I call home, have the perfunctory but obligatory talk with my dad about being safe and having but not too much fun, and then drive my cluttered car toward Edgartown and the café.
    After circling the block for fifteen minutes and dealing with traffic and pedestrians crossing the street with little notice, I double-park outside Slave to the Grind II. Nestled between a bank and a clothing store, but on an angle so it’s sort-of separate, the café is teeming with people. Good news for business, perhaps bad news for Arabella whose arms are streaked with espresso, her forehead damp. Doug and Ula, the brother-sister team Mable hired to help run the place, are an example of yin and yang. Where Doug is calm and smiling, Ula is frantic and frowning — hurrying coffees over to the tables, plumping pillows as soon as people stand up from the orange and purple floor cushions, and generally looking