Last night’s Zoom book event got off to a slightly rocky start when, after I’d already let the audience into the meeting and muted them, the author objected to everyone having their videos on and asked me to turn their cameras off en masse so he could see only their names. “Zoom bombing is terrible,” he said. I am still not sure how someone would “Zoom bomb” while muted. (Maybe make obscene gestures and hold posters with dirty words up to the camera?) I’m pretty sure I can set Zoom to turn the cameras off before people enter the “room,” but I could not figure out how to do it during the meeting and was not inclined to experiment.

After some back and forth we realized the author had his Zoom set to gallery view, which means all attendees (48) were shown in a grid on two pages of the screen like the old Hollywood Squares game show set. From Paul Lynde’s location on the upper left I advised him to switch to speaker view (“Look on the upper right of your screen.”) This would show him mainly the two main speakers and the host while minimizing the audience. He did and after that all was well.

Funny how shyness about public speaking manifests itself online. Obviously, we need to brief speakers about Zoom before events. It’s too easy to assume everyone is familiar and comfortable with it.

Last night another party in the gazebo next door, whiffs of barbecue, the sound of laughter and singing well past midnight. Michael did not even bother to mutter under his breath.

A conversation with my mother yesterday on our weekly telephone call has left me a little less ambivalent about PG&E coming in to light our oven pilot. I’d been looking at videos on youtube about how to do it. (Like most online videos about home repairs that assure us “it’s easy and safe!” it didn’t look all that easy and safe to me, involving taking out the floor of the oven, using a long match which we don’t have, being careful to do this, do that, don’t do that other thing and for God’s sake, don’t forget to do that yet other thing…)

I mentioned to Mom our pilot light going out and said I remembered hearing about Dad relighting ours when I was a kid.

“Oh yes,” Mom said. “That was back when he was still at Tulane and we had that little apartment on Plum Street with a gas stove. The pilot would go out and your father would have to relight it.” She laughed. “Half the time we’d hear a POOF and when he stood up his eyebrows would be singed off.”

Then she reminded me of a family anecdote I’d forgotten, about one of my aunts trying to cook on that stove during a party and the pilot light going out. She’d called in one of Dad’s fraternity brothers to relight it and waited until he was bent closely over it and striking a match to tell him “I already turned on the gas, you know…”

I asked Mom how things were Western Carolina. “Crowded,” she said. “The Floridians are here.”

The area where she lives has been a summer resort for well over a century. Its population grows dramatically in the warm months and the pandemic has not changed this. For some reason involving tax rates and property, many affluent Floridians have houses there. She said that when she drives through downtown now, it’s bumper-to-bumper cars with Florida plates and the sidewalks are crowded with people. “They’re not wearing masks,” she said. “I do my shopping in Boone.”

Last night, on our weekly Zoom with friends, I asked for advice about the pilot light and was advised to tell PG&E we could smell gas in the apartment. “But we don’t smell gas,” I said.

“Say you do anyway and you won’t have to wait until next week,” Lydia said. “They’ll tell you to get out of the apartment. You just stand outside for a bit. They’ll be there in fifteen minutes to relight the pilot, and you can go back in.”

I think I’ll pass, given that PG&E is likely to be getting more calls like that than usual and I don’t want us to have to wait outside with the cat carrier for heaven knows how long.

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.