If not that, two.
FB put me in touch with a “Friend” whom I had last seen – or, maybe next-to-last – at “Lorna’s” in the mid-‘60s, when I was at Penn Law – or maybe it was “Frank’s” – hanging with Max Garden and that crowd, and when I “shared” a post from this fellow in praise of Cheesesteak, the brother of a deceased UG cartoonist/tattooist, whom I’d written about a decade ago, said he believed – correctly, it turned out – that his father-in-law had dated the “friend”’s mother; and, at about the same time, a three-party e-mail chain connected me to an Ed Garden, who did not know Max, though they’d graduated the same high school two years apart, and who connected to me via (a) another friend he had graduated high school with, and (b) a different friend he had attended summer camp with for seven years, and, while both were friend’s of him and of me, neither was a friend of the other, and, I furthermore, learned Ed and I had graduated in the same law school class of less than 200 without being aware of the other’s existence, and, further furthermore, both Ed and Max had the same girlfriend, independent of and unknown to each other, before she married the basketball star/future acclaimed novelist, who, rumor had it, physically abused her, and when I remarked upon this to a recently acquired – through his interest in Cheesesteak – correspondent, Billy P, who presents himself as deeply – if sometimes dubiously – privy to the foulest secrets of the seamiest sewers of the Philadelphia I quit more than a half-century ago, he confirmed my suspicion that the basketball star had been running buddies with the then-campus hanger-on – known to Max and me as a small-time pot dealer and thorough putz – but future Hippie Guru and – still-to-come – International Fugitive/ Trunk Murderer, following the discovery of his missing girlfriend’s beaten body in his closet, which he put down to its having been planted on him by the NKVD – or was it the CIA – because of his investigations into paranormal research.
I could practically hear Scipio’s “Ah, those were the days” as he went on to detail his sipping Martinis and trying to pick up women while seated at the bar of La Terrasse, the newly-opened fancy-schmancy restaurant, on Sansome, a baguette’s throw from the law school, with said basketball star, said hippie guru – and – drum roll – Donald Trump (Wharton ‘68).
“I didn’t think I could have a lower opinion of either the guru or the Donald,” I said. “But you just hit this daily double. I want photos, tapes, and Tom Stoppard for the dialogue.”