Your Wallet Found

So the email of 9:12AM from my assistant read, which I discovered upon opening my eyes and shaking my head clear of the Mercury cobwebs and images of breasts explosive and unnatural from the evening prior. I had realized said wallet was lost in the wee hours on the walk home, had scrawled a wildish note to self in concern on the fridge, and begun thinking on the terrible rehabilitation process of paper and plastic I would be forced to endure.

Enter Mr. Ed Hepburn, stage right. The smile broadened on my face to see my assistant's email as I lay in bed, whose response set out the name of my saviour. It was a joy to close my eyes in contentment again and recall past moments of similar bewilderment at the beguiling efforts of strangers on my behalf concerning items of value. I was provided his number and called him - waxing effusive plaudits to his great spirit and even telling an abrievated version of the Clifton story as a sort of recompense for the efforts of our man and his wife. Note I dared not ask her name in fear it would not be Audrey or Kath. The two dug through the Costanza-esq piles of poetry and information to find my business card (the actual one, as opposed to the one I was given from "Ken Erman, Jack Daniel's Ambassador - Canada" that has come in handy on occasion) and in our brief rendezvous outside the Delta Barrington he arrived with the wallet and contents in a plastic bag. As I type it is still absolutely soaking wet. Though I like to think it took a brief dip in the Atlantic, the safer hypothesis is either the sink or a toilet, considering its discovery in the bar washroom. Oh my.

Ed hands the wallet over noting his wife's remark that it is one thing to come home with a girl's phone number, but something else to bring in a guy's wallet. But the quote for the day goes to one of the associates in the office, who I see on my way back from the pickup and lunch with the wallet still in the plastic bag and relay the story. As I come to the end and mutter "Ed Hepburn is a legend", A. exclaims back: "Ed Hepburn! Big Ed? I went to school with that guy. That's Halifax for you. As my uncle says, a city big enough for a symphony; too small for adultery."

And there it sits. Trouble averted once again, and once again before I truly concerned myself with consequences negative. This hangover is wide and deep, but still a rum and coke is called for after this, I reckon. Now that I have access to cash to pay for it. From this baby blue sky unto the darkness. I leave you with not Shakespeare this TFI but the opening of Chapter 23 of that favored book, The Three Musketeers:

D'Artagnan ran home immediately, and although it was three o'clock in the
morning and he had some of the worst quarters of Paris to traverse, he met with
no misadventure. Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting
deity.

Indeed. I so aspire to be both.