Tonight I was supposed to attend my book group. I was really looking forward to it, since I had suggested the book we were discussing. But when I got to the group, on the other side of town, there was no house corresponding to the address.
I knew it was somewhere around there – I’ve been there before – but I’d written the address down wrong. And I am the only person in the continental US without a cell phone. So I began to search, methodically driving along every street for two blocks and ten streets on either side of the address … no luck.
I tried to find a store that would let me look at a white pages. The white pages are extinct. Then I tried to find wi-fi so I could search for the address online, but this was a part of town where reliable wi-fi was unavailable.
I finally gave up and headed south, stopping at my office to download the address and discover that I had only been 3 blocks off and if I had searched one block further north I would have found it. I came home mad enough to spit tacks, with nobody but myself to blame.
But I also realized that this is exactly what my wicked magician will do to his students in the novel I’m currently working on, in order to make them angry enough to generate magic. So it’s OK.
