Damn, damn, damn. Our oven’s pilot light is out. I discovered it yesterday when I tried to roast some broccoli for lunch.

Our landlord instructed us to call PG&E. I made an appointment for someone to come over in the first available slot — sometime in the afternoon a week from Thursday. In the meantime I’m watching youtube videos about how to do it. I’ve got to decide whether I’m more afraid of trying to light it myself than I am of a stranger coming into our house and possibly infecting us.

Michael has been getting rid of clutter. He sits in the armchair when we’re watching our nightly TV, a cardboard box on his lap, carefully dividing the trash from the memorabilia. Every now and then he neatly trims something with his scissors, an article he wrote, or one that interests him, and puts it aside. Sometimes he holds up some artifact and asks me if it’s okay to throw it away. Last night I held back one small bit of paper from the recycling bin — A ticket to Madame Tussaud’s in London, dated October 30, 1996.

I am culturally literate. I read Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and John Milton for pleasure. But I love wax museums. The history of waxworks fascinates me. One of my favorite books in my collection, along with To the Lighthouse, Dubliners, and Portrait of a Lady is a battered old biography of Madame Tussaud written by her son.

 So, when we were a relatively young, freshly minted couple visiting London, we spent an afternoon wandering around Tussaud’s. I especially enjoyed the waxworks set up to fool visitors, realistic figures that looked like security guards or other tourists sitting wearily on benches. The house of horrors was entertaining, the true crime area, the figures of kings and queens, but the memory I truly treasure took place, I believe, in the section devoted to celebrities.

Michael was clad in his usual attire for walks back then — jeans, a scuffed up brown leather jacket, and a brown beret which I thought gave him a pleasantly artistic look. He decided he wanted a picture of me standing next to a wax figure. Michael’s method of taking pictures was to tell me to smile, then peer through his camera, and remain absolutely motionless as the seconds ticked by, waiting for whatever instant he decided was perfect. This is why my smiles in these pictures always look like I’m holding something between my teeth.

I stood. I smiled. I waited. He looked through his camera at me, hunched forward in concentration, eyes narrowed beneath his beret. He did not move.

A trio of camera-bearing visitors entered the room, conversing in French. They spotted us.

Michael did not move.

They paused. They conferred for a moment, heads close together, eyes on us.

Michael did not move.

They walked over, their eyes on Michael.

One of them was a couple of feet away from him, looking closely at his ears and plainly admiring the workmanship when he clicked his camera and all three jumped and shrieked.

I will never give up that ticket to Madame Tussaud’s.