Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Analog Dave - The Phone Message & The Razor’s Edge

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

"It began simply enough. It began with a phone call." On today’s episode, two stories about technical difficulties. In our first story, Dave attempts an inventive solution to an ill-considered phone message left for the Turlingtons. In our second, an electric razor causes him problems at the airport. And Jess shares some stories about Stuart’s habits with phones …and airports. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Uh, sorry, it's just, uh, we're having some issues here. Stand by. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. We've got two stories for you today.

Two stories about... Technical difficulties. Both of them hilarious stories, and both of them inspired in part by things that actually happened to Stuart. We're going to start with the story we call the phone message. I don't know the actual backstory for this next story. I don't know if there is one. And I don't know that Stuart ever did anything exactly like what happens in this story. I don't think so. But I can tell you he could have. Stuart loved talking

on the phone. He spent hours on the phone every day. Much of his work was done on the phone. He was on the phone all the time. He used to call it yacking. And there were lots of people in his orbit that he used to call almost every day. Me, our promoter Don Jones, his long-suffering story editor Meg Masters. We've talked about this before on the podcast about how he and Meg used to work. Every single Dave and Morley story started with a discussion between Meg and Stuart. There's actually a podcast about this whole thing if you want to hear more. There's a bonus episode where I interview Meg and she describes how she and Stuart used to work together about their process.

And if you missed that episode or if you want to hear it again, don't worry, it is not too late. You can still hear it. It's up on our feed. Just go wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. The one I'm talking about where I interview Meg

is from August 4th. It's called Long Suffering Story Editor. And yeah, like I said, you can re-listen to any episode you want, anytime. You can go back into the archives and listen to all of them. They're all there. There are about 40 episodes now. Yowzers! And they're all up there and available, well, forever, I think, or at least for now. So go back, re-listen to your favorites, share them with other people. They're there. Anyway, as Meg told us in that episode, she and Stuart hardly ever met in person.

They did almost all of their work over the phone, which is really bizarre because Meg and Stuart lived like five minutes from each other. They could have just walked over to each other's houses, but they never did. They always had these phone conversations, hours long, like two or three hours long. And I think that's because, well, it's because Stewart loved talking on the phone, but I think it's because something else too. You can multitask when you're on the phone, and Stewart was always multitasking. He was very rarely just sitting down when he was on the phone. He was always doing at least one other thing. Sometimes he'd be at his computer taking notes, but mostly he'd be doing stuff around the house.

Making tea, folding laundry, prepping dinner, loading the dishwasher, opening mail, filing paper, pacing, or just looking out the window, watching the birds. I'm the same way. I'm always doing something else while I'm talking on the phone. And I know, I know, we've all read the studies about multitasking and how inefficient it is. My husband, who is a serial unitasker, the guy really cannot do more than one thing at one time. My husband, the unitasker, loves to show these studies to me. He loves to show me data that says the way I live my life is wrong. But here's the thing.

I don't multitask to be efficient. I multitask because my body needs to be busy in order for my brain to be free. Like so many other people, I get my best ideas, my aha moments when I'm walking or running or swimming. I very rarely get those ideas when I'm sitting down in front of a computer staring at a blank screen. Stuart was the same. He loved walking and talking. On tour, we'd walk together all the time. And some of our best ideas came from those walking meetings. And I think that's why he liked yakking on the phone, because he could be doing other things. He could busy his body with mindless tasks like folding laundry that allowed his brain to wander, to let the ideas roll around in there, to toss them over and over again, tumbling them like pebbles in an ocean, rolling them around until the rough edges had worn off. This is one of the problems I have with our new work-from-home culture. It's not the working from home that's the problem. I've worked from home forever, like for most of my career. For more than a decade, I managed a team of people who very rarely got

together in person. That part I can do in my sleep. The problem isn't the working from home. It's the video calls. I feel like I'm in a straitjacket, both my body and my brain. My creativity is on a leash when I'm tethered to that video call. I miss the days of being able to roam freely. My favorite part of the week is Thursday morning. That's when producer Louise Curtis and I meet to discuss our work, mostly to talk about this podcast. I take all of those meetings on the phone, walking. And part of that is the multitasking thing. I can kill two birds with one stone, work and dog walk. And another part is I live in the country and I have horrible cell signal at my house. So I drive down to the river and walk there where the signal is better. But mostly it's about the ideas. I get my best ideas

when my body is moving. And like I said, Stuart was the same. He was always on the phone and he was always moving, always doing something. And it led to these ridiculous situations. Like he and I would be on the phone and then something would happen. Someone would knock at the door. So Stuart would hang up or he would think that he'd hung up, but he wouldn't have. So I'd hear the whole exchange between Stuart and whoever had showed up at his door, the FedEx guy or Cleo and Mason, his next-door neighbors.

The other thing he did all the time was pocket dial. Stuart would call me several times a day without even realizing it. I'd hear nothing but the inside of his jacket. Anyway, all of that informed this story, the story you are about to hear. This is Stuart McLean with The Phone Message. It began simply enough. It began with a phone call. A phone message, actually.

Dave came home and the message light was blinking, so he picked up the phone, the cordless phone, and that part's important. He picked up the portable phone, thinking maybe it was Morley. He was walking around the kitchen with a phone to his ear, the way you do when you're a bit keyed up, flipping through the mail, opening the fridge, pacing into the living room, over to the kitchen window, not really paying attention to the phone, and that part's important too. That part is maybe the most important part if that is you're interested in the archaeology of the infamous events that unfolded at Dave's house several weeks ago. If you're interested in sorting out the spaces between cause and effect,

the fact that Dave wasn't totally paying attention is key, because it wasn't Morley who had left the message Dave was only half listening to. It was Dave's arch nemesis, his neighbor from two houses down, Mary Turlington. Now Mary had called and left the message just before she and Bert left town, and it's important to know that, too, that it was a Friday night

that Mary called and said, we're going away for the weekend, but we're having a dinner party next Saturday, and we'd love you to come. And Dave was thinking as he paced that he'd rather have his legs waxed than go to another dinner party at Mary Turlington's. And that's when things began to happen too fast. Things that caused Dave to lose his focus, such as it was. Dave was in the kitchen, sort of listening to Mary Turlington's message, when all hell broke loose. Morley blew through the back door with her arms full of groceries.

Sam blew through the front door with two friends. The cat, well, you know what? You don't need to know all the details. You just need to know that things got pretty confusing for a moment, and Dave, who wasn't really paying attention, hung up the phone, or meant to hang up the phone. And this is the crucial moment. This is the moment where he thinks he hung up the phone, but what happened was he pressed the callback button, which means instead of hanging up, Dave called Mary Turlington. Or more to the point, Dave's phone called Mary's message machine. And Dave, who was holding the phone in his hand,

waving it in front of him like a microphone, said to Morley, who was unloading the groceries at the counter, Mary Turlington's invited us to a dinner party. And he dragged the words out derisively as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog. But he didn't stop there. He kept going. She said there'd be interesting people, which means there'll be name tags, which means she decides where we sit and there won't be enough food. There's never enough food and she never opens the wine anyone brings, which is true. She doesn't. The Turlington served Bert's homemade wine, and Bert's homemade wine

tastes like car wax. And he didn't stop there. Dave kept going. Dave said, I'd rather have my legs waxed than go to another party at the Turlington's. And that is when the phone beeped twice. Dave looked down at the phone beeped. Twice. Dave looked down at the phone in terror, realizing what he had just done. He had just left Mary Turlington a message. He had just told Mary exactly what he thought of her invitation. And when the enormity of what he had done became clear to him, Dave began to rock back and forth. He stood there staring at the phone, rocking back and forth.

Morley stopped what she was doing with the groceries and watched him. And then when he began to moan softly, she said, What now? Huh, said Dave. Right, said Dave. Oh, said Dave, trying to pull himself together. Oh, said Dave, reassembling himself. I, uh, uh, I really don't think I want to go to Turlington's for dinner. Get over it, said Morley. Right, said Dave. Get over it. It's nothing. I'll get over it. It's okay.

But it wasn't okay. And Dave wasn't about to get over it. And it certainly wasn't nothing. It was something. And Dave knew he was going to have to do something about it. The potential for gossip was just too horrible to consider. If Mary heard the message and if the story got out, then who was he kidding? Of course the story would get out. Even Morley would be telling the story once she heard it. Propelled by the universal, indisputable, undeniable drive that all women share. The dreaded urge to tell other women embarrassing stories about their husbands. urged to tell other women embarrassing stories about their husbands. Mary and Bert were away for the weekend. Dave had 48 hours to get into the Turlington's answering machine. 48 hours to erase his message. First thing that came to Dave's mind was that he had

to get his hands on the Turlington secret code. If he could intuit their PIN number, he could get into their message service and erase the message. He wasted the first half of Saturday morning trying to ferret out the year that Mary and Bert were born. No one seemed to know, though everyone wanted to know why it mattered to Dave. know, though everyone wanted to know why it mattered to Dave. So he gave that up and he tried to dial directly into the system, planning to plug in numbers at random. 1958, 1959, the Turlington's twins names, whatever. But he couldn't find his way in. The Turlington's didn't seem to have a message service. And that's when Dave remembered. The Turlington's didn't seem to have a message service. And that's when Dave remembered. The Turlington's didn't have an answering service. They had an answering machine. It was one of those merry things that made Dave crazy. It's way cheaper, she said dismissively

the night Dave spotted the old tape machine in their upstairs family room. For the first time since Friday night, Dave felt a flicker of hope. He didn't need a secret code. He just needed to get into the Turlington's house. If he could get into their house, he could erase his message with a push of a button. Dave waited until dark. He circled the Turlington's house, starting in the backyard, shaking doors, pushing on windows. The Turlington's house was locked up tighter than a bank. Trust Mary, muttered Dave, his hand on the front door handle, shaking it desperately, which is about when he spotted Polly Anderson watching him from the sidewalk. No one's home, said Dave, trying to pull himself together.

All the doors are locked, said Dave. And then he dropped his voice an octave and said, I was just checking the security. There's no way in. And then he said, shut up. Shut up. He intended to say it silently to himself. It was supposed to be a personal order. But Dave was so wound up, he barked it out loud. Polly began to back away. It was half an hour later, wandering through the park, the dog by his side, the empty swings hanging glumly in front of him,

that Dave had his brainstorm. He was whistling when he came home. What are you whistling? asked Morley. Dixie, said Dave, taking off his jacket and throwing it across the room, watching it float above the easy chair like a big black bird, falling onto the arm perfectly. Bingo, said Dave. Magnetic recording tape, the kind in the Turlington's answering machine, is essentially a ribbon of microscopic iron filings. Now, when you record something, say, for instance, a phone message,

the tape recorder organizes those filings on the tape into a recognizable pattern. If you want to erase what you've recorded, you just have to pass the tape over a magnet. The magnet returns the filings back into a random pattern. If Dave could get a magnet, and if he could get the magnet into the Turlington's house, he could erase his message.

Heck, if the magnet was powerful enough, he could, hypothetically, erase the message from outside the house. Hypothetically. He tried a building supply store the next morning. They didn't have the kind of magnets that Dave was imagining. This will pick up 200 pounds, said the guy at the counter. Stronger, said Dave.

Not here, said the guy. Try a scrapyard. They have magnets strong enough to lift a car. The scrapyard guy had to lift his head to look at Dave from under his greasy baseball cap. When Dave told him what he wanted, the scrapyard guy, Steve, or that was the name stitched on his blue jacket, Steve lifted his head and squinted at Dave. Then he walked away without a word, Dave wondering what he was supposed to be doing until Steve motioned with his head, follow me. Dave followed him into a dark and dirty back room, a room piled with old engines and car doors and stuff that used to be something but wasn't anything anymore. The guy pointed with his head at a device the size of a waste paper basket hanging from the ceiling

Like this, he said Exactly, said Dave Could I borrow it for a couple of hours? I'll pay you $75, said the guy, and you have to have it back by closing When do you close, asked Dave The guy started to laugh And the laugh became a cough, one of those disturbing, raspy fits that you think is never going to stop. You think the guy's going to die right there in

front of you, his belly hanging over his belt. Dave thought maybe he should get the guy some water, but then the guy stopped coughing and spat on the floor and said, we never close. He was shaking his head again. And then he reached up and pulled a rusty chain pulley and he lowered the magnet. You have to be careful with it, he said. I can handle it, said Dave. Guy gave Dave a close look from under his cap. I better show you, he said. He lugged the magnet into the shop, and he set it up on the counter, waist high. And he unwound an extension cord and turned to plug it in.

And as he did, Dave was thinking he should show this guy that he knew what was going on. So when the guy turned around, Dave was flicking the switch to turn the magnet on. And suddenly, this guy, Steve, or whatever his name was, this guy who had barely said a word, this guy who had hardly moved when he moved, suddenly, slow-moving, say-nothing, scrapyard Steve exploded. No! He shouted, jumping back, his arms flying down to protect his waist. Huh? said Dave.

Now there are many fundamental laws of physics. The magnet only knew one of them. The magnet only knew the law that was in its nature to obey. The law about magnetic fields and the forces of attraction between opposite poles. Like, say, an electromagnet and a belt buckle. Dave's. Dave flicked the magnet on and slow-moving guy behind the counter threw his arms to his waist and said no And then it's hard to remember exactly what happened next Except the magnet flew off the counter

Dave would later compare it to a wolverine Dave would later compare it to a wolverine because it flew towards him viciously there was a whooshing sound as the magnet smacked into his belt buckle and all the wind left Dave's body at once and his knees buckled and he sank to the ground pawing at this thing drilling into his groin Dave dimly aware of slow moving guy his knees buckled and he sank to the ground pawing at this thing drilling into his groin. Dave dimly aware of slow moving guy hovering over him, wheezing and coughing and spitting,

wrestling with a magnet trying to get at the off switch as Dave lay on his back like an upended turtle. Later Dave would try and explain it away. It was a sucker punch, you'd say. In any case, when he got off the floor and regained his wind and brushed himself off, Dave had to convince the guy that he could handle this thing. It was a close thing, $75 rent and a $400 refundable deposit. Just bring it back, said the guy, smirking. Once he got it home, Dave decided he had better try out the magnet before he hauled it up the ladder for real. He had jury-rigged a carrier that he was going to use to get the magnet up the ladder to the Turlington's den window.

He had it on one of Sam's backpacks, which he was going to wear on his chest like a snuggly. He had removed his belt and his watch. He had emptied his pockets of everything. There was zero, none, no metal on him at all, not anywhere. And there was no one home at his house. A good thing. He went into his kitchen and he switched the magnet on.

There was a high-pitched electronic sort of hum, but nothing dramatic happened. And Dave smiled. I can handle this, he thought. And then he gasped in terror because out of the corner of his eye, he spotted flying across the kitchen towards his chest a carving knife. Blade first. Dave twisted at the last moment and the knife flew by him and stuck

in the kitchen wall. But now he was facing the stove and a cast iron fry pan was making menacing movements. He spun around again and cans started sailing out of the recycling bin. Cans hitting him in the chest, attaching themselves onto the magnet and then onto each other. And Dave twisting around, twisting and twisting and things flying around the kitchen. Dave fumbling for the off switch, lunging around the kitchen trying to reach his arms around the growing layer of tin cans, slotted spoons, pots, and pan lids that festooned his torso. He looked like a piece of modern art. It was 6 p.m. when he propped the ladder against the Turlington's house. He hitched his beltless pants up and he gave the ladder a shake to make sure it was secure. He was pretty sure he had taken care of every

variable imaginable. He went over it in his mind one last time. There was absolutely no metal on his person. No belt, no pens, no watch, nothing. Unlike the kitchen, there was no metal in the vicinity either. Nothing loose, anyway. He had borrowed an old wooden ladder from Carl Loebier. He started up the ladder, playing out the extension cord behind him. He looked like a ghostbuster. And when he got to the top, he braced himself in position in front of the Turlington's den window.

He looked around one last time. He took a deep breath. He shut his eyes. Now, he'd already been up here twice without the equipment. He'd checked the window frame. It wasn't metal. It was some sort of polyvinyl plastic. There were no overhead wires. He'd thought of everything. He flicked on the magnet. He had thought of almost everything.

Mercifully, things happened so fast, Dave had no idea what happened until it was over. He only knew that when he flicked on the magnet, he flew off the ladder. Flying through the air like he had a jet pack on his back. Flying and flying until he smacked into the side of the Turlington's house and stuck solid. Attached to the Turlington's drainpipe. He was a good 15 feet above the ground. Arched backwards like some sort of hideous marsupial. All arms and legs and drooling horror.

His beltless pants dropped around his ankles. Of all the moments for Polly Anderson to come to feed the Turlington's cats. As Dave was hanging from the drainpipe, wondering what horrible thing he could have possibly done in a previous life to have deserved this, Polly Anderson was coming down the driveway with raccoons on her mind. Polly is terrified of raccoons, and she had spotted one the night before

when she had come to feed the Turlington's cats, and Polly was on high alert. So when she walked directly under Dave, and Dave's pants finally slipped loose and landed on her back, Polly thought she had been jumped by a raccoon. She lifted off the ground and she screamed. She screamed so loud that lights began to flick on all over the neighborhood. And there was Polly heading down the drive, Dave's pants flapping around her head,

Polly batting at the pants with her hands, until she stopped abruptly and untangled herself and looked up. And all Dave could think was of all the days to have put on the white boxers with the red Santa and the prancing reindeer. And all he could think of saying, hanging there upside down in his boxers,

was, hi. And then, then without thinking, he switched off the magnet. Then, without thinking, he switched off the magnet. Jim Schofield arrived just as Dave hit the ground. Jim took the keys from a shaking Polly Anderson and said, You go home. I'll deal with this. He didn't say anything as he helped Dave up and waited for him to regain his wind. Ever since witnessing Dave in the Plaza Hotel lobby with a raw turkey under his arm,

Jim doesn't ask about Dave's private life. And he didn't comment when Dave followed him into the Turlington's house. I need a drink, said Dave, and Jim didn't notice him slip upstairs into the den. Dave didn't have time to work out how to erase the messages. Instead, he opened the answering machine, thinking he'd take the tape home and erase it at home and return it later. There were, however, two tapes in the machine.

One was for the Turlington's greeting. The other was to record the incoming messages. There was no way to tell them apart. So Dave grabbed both tapes. Before he left, he unlocked a window at the back of the house so he could get back in. It was after 10 when he squirmed through the window with both tapes in his pocket. He was in and out as fast as he could, locking the window he came in through and leaving by the back door, locking it too.

He only had one last thing to do. He hadn't erased his message. There were other messages on the tape, and he decided he shouldn't ruin them. So instead, he had queued up the message tape at the beginning of his message. All he had to do now was go home and phone the Turlington's and record over it. And he ran home. And he gathered himself up, and he dialed the Turlington's number and the phone rang once, twice, three times and he heard the thump and whir of the message machine picking up just in time too because out the window he could see the Turlington's car pulling into their driveway. And as he watched, Mary Turlington walked up her front steps

with her keys in her hand. And then the Turlington's recorded greeting began. And this time Dave was paying attention, thinking that if he had only paid attention the first time, none of this would have happened. Except it wasn't Mary Turlington's voice he was listening to. It was his voice. And he was saying, Mary Turlington has invited us to a dinner party.

And he dragged the words out derisively, as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog. David reversed the tapes. He had put the tape with his offending message in the greeting slot, and until someone changed it, everyone who phoned the Turlington's would be greeted by Dave. And he would be saying, there will be name tags. She will decide where we sit. There won't be enough food. There's never enough food. She never opens the wines anyone brings.

And he doesn't stop there he keeps going he says i would rather have my legs waxed than go to another party at the turlington's dave began to rock back and forth oh my god he moaned oh my god thank you very much. That was the phone message. That story was recorded in Brandon, Manitoba in 2003. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another Dave and Morley story. So stick around. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now.

This story was recorded more than 20 years ago in Stuart's hometown of Montreal, Quebec. This is The Razor's Edge. It was 10 years ago that Dave came home from a visit to Cape Breton with his uncle Jimmy's electric razor. Didn't steal the razor. His aunt Elizabeth, Jimmy's wife, Jimmy's widow, gave the razor to Dave. Elizabeth, who's 87 years old, lives alone in Halifax in a rambling wooden house, a stone's throw from the university. Elizabeth, who Dave tries to visit every time he's through town, has been parceling out Jimmy's possessions to relatives for 25 years. On previous and trips subsequent to the electric razor, Dave has walked out of Elizabeth's with a wooden-handled hairbrush,

a wool jacket, a thick black-and-gold ballpoint pen, and a stuffed duck. This used to be your uncle's duck, Elizabeth said as she handed it to him, Dave standing there at her door, holding on to his suitcase. What could he say except thank you? What else could he do except march up to airport security with a duck tucked under his arm? They x-rayed it. Seems to be dead, said the security guard as he handed it back. So each time Elizabeth handed him something, Dave thanked her earnestly

and dutifully lugged it home, which is why he has a stuffed duck on the shelf in his bedroom closet. That's where he put the hairbrush and the electric razor, too, on the shelf in his closet, out of the main current, but not out of the river of his life. Elizabeth is the last sister alive, and visiting Elizabeth is one way Dave can still visit his father, one way he can still reach out to Charlie. at his father, one way he can still reach out to Charlie. Elizabeth's children, Dave's cousins, have been trying to get her out of her house and into a home for almost a decade,

ever since she began boiling all the tap water before she'd use it. Elizabeth began doing this a year or so before her 80th birthday. At first, she just boiled drinking water, but now she boils everything. She boils the water she's going to cook in before she boils it for cooking. Boils her bath water. She has two power bars in her bedroom and eight electric kettles in a row. Takes her an hour to fill the tub. It's poison, she said, but you can boil the poison out if and you're careful. Aside from her thing with the water, Elizabeth seems eminently capable of caring for herself, and her dramatic good health has given Dave pause about her water boiling. Anyway, anyway, the razor.

The razor spent five years squirreled away at the top of Dave's bedroom closet in its zippered leather case, and then one Saturday afternoon when Dave was home alone and doing nothing of consequence, he went looking for a sweater and he found the razor instead. Dave plugged the razor in, and to his great surprise, it worked. And in that instant, that vibrating piece of antique chrome became his razor. And in that instant, Dave knew that Uncle Jimmy's razor would imbue the morning ritual of shaving with a new pleasure, the pleasure of continuity, the pleasure of touching the past. Things are seldom that simple. Things are seldom that simple.

The first morning Sunday was simple, but the second morning, the Monday morning, the razor's motor cut out abruptly, halfway through the job. Dave staring in the bathroom window with his Uncle Jimmy's razor clinging to his beard like a leech. Now, the last thing you want to do if you have an electric razor sucking on your beard is to try and pull it off. No telling what might happen. You have to be clever about these things. Well, first you have to take a moment to panic. You imagine yourself hunching into the nearest emergency room,

the razor dangling from your face, and some smart-ass intern grabbing a hold of it and grinning, saying something like, this might hurt a bit. So you don't go to the hospital. You work at it yourself, and after Dave had fiddled with it for a few moments, he got the razor back to life by twisting the electric cord, holding it at a certain angle, nothing to it. As long as he held the cord in that position, the razor worked fine.

And so shaving became a two-handed job. One hand to hold the razor, the other to twist the cord and as long as he got the angle right, the razor behaved. And this worked fine for a couple of years but all the twisting and turning eventually took its toll on the electric cord and the razor got crankier and crankier and one morning Dave finally got fed up. This is ridiculous, he thought. And he headed off

to the basement with Uncle Jimmy's razor determined to fix it. There are many satisfactions in this beautiful life, but one of the great satisfactions up there with great meals and great friendships and afternoon naps is fixing something that's broken. The devil himself could bump down the basement stairs when a man is engrossed in, say, fixing an electric razor. And the devil could scratch a match on a wooden beam and smile and say, excuse me, don't mean to startle you, sir, but I thought you'd like to know that upstairs in your living room there is a woman waiting, and she is waiting on you. And all your secret desires and wishes, and I know them all, sir,

they're all there in this woman. You might say she's the woman of your dreams, and if you'd just put that screwdriver down and follow me, follow me up those stairs, surely you'd like to make her acquaintance, sir. There could be no harm in that, surely. And I'm sure you would like to meet her, for she is part Hayley Mills from the original Parent Trap. And she's part Audrey Hepburn from Wait Until Dark. But she is also part Lisa Bonet from that movie that was censored,

and I don't think you've seen the uncut version of that film, have you, sir? The part with the chicken blood? Well, that's the part that is playing upstairs right now, in your living room, sir, right now. And your family won't be home for hours. The devil could puff on his cigarette and say all of that, and oh yes, some men would go. Even some family men would go. Even some family men would go, but not if they were fixing something. If they were fixing something, you know what they would do. They'd wave their screwdriver absentmindedly in the air,

and they'd say, oh, I'll be up in a minute. I'm just about done here. But they wouldn't be up in a minute, because you're never just about done when you're fixing something. Dave took the back off the electric razor. The simplicity of it is what startled him. Everything was so small, Dave wasn't sure how he was supposed to repair it. He found a loose connection. He tried to glue it back into place, but that proved unsatisfactory. And he was worried about electrical arcing, so he covered the join with electrical tape,

and he plugged the razor in, and it didn't work at all. And he thought, well, there's nothing to lose, so he got out his soldering gun, and he re-soldered every connection he could see. And then he replaced the electric cord with one he'd cut off an old tube radio, and he soldered that, and then he covered all the joins with more tape. And by the time he had finished, there was so much solder and so much electrical tape, he couldn't get the chrome cover back on. But the razor was working.

So he got a roll of duct tape out. And he wrapped it around in duct tape, and he was back in business. It wasn't as elegant as it had once been, but it was functional, and it was Uncle Jimmy's. And he had fixed it himself, and that gave him a certain pleasure. And he still had the chrome case, and he intended to get it repaired one day when he could find someone to repair it, and he had the time to take it to them. And in the meantime, he was worried about dirt fouling the circuitry of the motor, so instead of the leather case, he kept it in a Ziploc plastic sandwich bag. Used it every morning.

Even took it with him when he went away. He had it in his suitcase last month when he rushed out the door at a quarter past six on a Friday morning. Horribly late. Horribly late for the 7 o'clock plane that he was supposed to be taking to New York City. Danny Kuchmar's daughter was getting married at noon. It'd be tight, but he could make it if he made the plane. Danny used to play drums in the Flying Squirrels, a band that backed James Taylor, among others, and Dave and Danny went way back. As Dave squealed out of his driveway, his bag bounced on

the seat beside him. He had a tie crammed in his pocket. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and he began to calculate what he had to do to make his plane. It would be tight, but if everything went without a hitch, he might make it. He would make it. He'd make it. He was going to make it. It's always like this with Dave in airports. Always. He's always late. Habitually late. He never arrives an hour before a flight. Half an hour is too early for Dave. He never arrives an hour before a flight. Half an hour is too early for Dave. Those are airport rules.

Dave doesn't play by airport rules. Those rules are for everyone else. Dave thinks he's better than airports. He thinks he can cheat time. He thinks he can outplay time. Thinks he can get more out of time than time's going to give him. Airport time, anyway. Look at him.

6.15 in the morning, 45 minutes before an international flight, leaning forward over the wheel, squinting at the cars ahead of him, weaving in and out of traffic. He never drives like this. This is a gentle man. 45 minutes to go and he thinks he's okay. And what's he repeating over and over to himself? I'm going to make it.

I'm going to make it. Maybe he will. He's done it before. But this is Monday morning. Dave's not used to Monday morning driving. You know what's waiting for him around the corner? Traffic jam. Anyone else would have given up at this point.

But Dave's not going to give up. He's not even going to stop. He's on the shoulder. He's leaving the highway and exit early. He's cutting through an industrial park. He has no idea where he's going. Streets aren't straight in there. They curve in long arcs that make you lose your sense of direction, and he's using the sun to navigate.

He's working on straight instinct here. And when he screams into the airport parking garage, 15 minutes later he leaves a trail of blue smoke hovering in the air behind him. He has 12 minutes until his flight is scheduled to leave, and he's still muttering, I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it. He's muttering, I'm going to make it, as he sl to make it. He's muttering, I'm going to make it.

As he slams the car door closed behind him, he has to check in and clear customs and immigration and security. He has to make it to his gate, but if there are no more hitches, maybe he can still make it. And he's running for the terminal now, his tie half out of his pocket, his suitcase bumping against his leg. He's going to carry it on with him. Maybe he is going to make it.

But when he bursts into the terminal, he comes in at the wrong end, the complete wrong end. This is the international terminal, and he doesn't know it well which way to go. Now, this is a moment for regrouping. Dave should stop for a moment, just for a brief moment. He should stop and check his ticket and check one of those departure screens. But the clock is ticking and there's a hundred yard sprint ahead of him and Dave figures he can read the screens on his way by them. And he's determined not to stop. He's sure he can do this on the fly. He has 10 minutes. And over and over again, he's repeating to himself, I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it. And with eight minutes to go, he gets in the wrong line.

He's in the first class line. And when he gets to the counter, the lady goes to wave him away, but then she sizes him up. He's sweating and disheveled, and she's begun to print him a ticket. And miracle of miracles, it stutters out of her machine in record time. And he grabs it, and he's running again, lurching toward the next stop, immigration, who wave him through with a nod and a smile, and he's home free. There are still five minutes to go, and he's still moving, still running. His shirt has pulled out now, and his heart is pounding,

and he's really sweating, but he's going to make it, and that's when he hits security. It's always at the moment when you think victory is yours that things start going wrong. Dave clears the metal detector, and he's waiting for his suitcase to clear the x-ray machine, and so is the security guard. She asks him to open his suitcase, and he opens it and watches her reach inside and pull out his little Ziploc plastic bag, and she holds his razor in the air, swinging this ball of duct tape and dangling wires in front of his face. And she says, what is this, sir? It was the last thing he was thinking. Everything else seemed so much more important to get so close and stumble on the last hurdle. To have to phone home and face Morley. I missed the plane like she hadn't warned him a hundred times,

like she hadn't warned him this morning. He tried to get calm. He breathed deeply, and when he did, he noticed that everything around him had ground to a halt. The hustle and bustle of the security check had stopped, and everyone who had stopped was staring at him. He was surrounded by businessmen in business suits, men with sleek leather carry-on bags, men with cell phones, men with copies of the Wall Street Journal, men staring at his corduroy pants and his suede shoes and his untucked shirt tail because they wanted to know the answer to the question

as much as the security guard. Who is this guy? And what is this mass of tape and wires that she has found wrapped in his luggage? And Dave felt his heart sink. A man's razor is a reflection of his masculinity. A symbol of his manhood. Here he was surrounded by these stud horses,

all of them whinnying and waiting on his explanation. And when he points at this ratty mess of wire and duct tape and says pathetically, it's my razor, one of the men actually snorts, and Dave is engulfed by a wave of self-loathing. But he still has four minutes before his plane is scheduled to leave. And he's not about to give up. Not yet. He starts to explain about his uncle Jimmy and all the men are shaking their heads and walking away. And even the security guard isn't listening to him. She's saying, you're going to have to turn it on for me, sir. You're going to have to shave for me.

And Dave is no longer thinking about Morley or the businessman or even the security guard. All he can think about is his game plan, and his game plan is about to blow up in his face. It's fight or flight. Dave looks at the security guard and says, I don't have time to turn it on. I don't want the razor. You keep the razor. It's yours. And he bolts. He grabs his suitcase and runs. And he's running as fast as he can all the way to his gate. And when he gets there, there are still 45 seconds left before his flight is scheduled to leave, but there's no one around. No one. It's completely empty.

The sign behind the empty desk says New York, but there isn't a soul in sight. A departure gate has a certain funereal feel to it when it's devoid of passengers and animated clerks. Dave sensed there was something wrong. He ran to the lounge window and he saw his plane. It was still there at the gate. So he did something he knew he wasn't supposed to do. He went right through the crash doors and began to lurch along the corridor looking for the tunnel that would lead him to his flight. As the doors swung shut behind him, they made a loud and ominous click. And Dave had a fleeting thought. Whoops, he thought. and Dave had a fleeting thought.

Whoops, he thought. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. But there was nothing to do now but to keep going. So he followed the deserted corridor until he came against another locked door that wouldn't open and only then, when there was nowhere left to turn, did he do what he should have done when he'd arrived at the airport? Because he couldn't think of anything else to do, Dave pulled out his ticket and he saw that his plane was scheduled to leave at nine o'clock, not seven o'clock.

Should have felt like a fool, but he didn't. He felt happy because he was going to make it and because he thought going to make it. And because he thought, I can go back and get my razor. He turns back towards the plane and he realizes the only way out is to walk down the long, deserted hallway through customs and back to where he started. The cavernous custom hall was deserted safe for two uniformed clerks drinking coffee at a desk at the far end. And when Dave walked in, they both stared at him with complete amazement. It was seven in the morning. No international flights were scheduled to arrive for an hour.

Where did you come from, they both asked. They were more understanding than you would have thought they'd be. They let him through with a minimum of fuss, although he did have to fill out a customs form. He declared a bottle of scotch and a carton of cigarettes. And he was vomited back into the terminal, at the wrong end again, of course, and he marched back through the airport, this time without stopping for a ticket. He went through immigration, being careful to avoid the clerk who had processed him not 15 minutes earlier. He went back to security. Aren't you the guy with a razor?

Said the guard, reaching for her walkie-talkie. I changed my mind, said Dave. I want it back. the guard reaching for her walkie-talkie. I changed my mind, said Dave. I want it back. She made him turn it on. She made him run it over his face. He had hoped she'd let him do this in a little room somewhere out of sight, but they brought out a long extension cord and he had to do it right there beside the x-ray machine. He said it felt like he was taking his pants down in public. But he was beyond embarrassment now. He got a coffee and a donut and he went right to his gate, still an hour and a half before his flight. There was a clerk there now, but he was the first and only passenger.

He sat down and he smiled at the clerk, and she smiled back at him, you're early this morning, she said. He nodded calmly. I always try to be, he said. Never understood those people who wait until the last moment. Thank you. That was the razor's edge.

I told you today that both of today's stories were inspired by things that happened to Stuart. Stuart, like Dave in that story, was always late. Perpetually. It came from a good place. Or rather, I guess it didn't come from a bad place. He just tried to fit too much in. He had too much to do and not enough time. And he always thought that things were going to take less time than they actually did. He underestimated the amount of time tasks would take because, I think because he was optimistic, overly optimistic. I can do that, he'd think, about everything. And he could, but it would take him two hours to do

that thing, not 20 minutes. For the most part, this was frustrating, but not problematic. We all knew to expect it. He'd say he'd meet us in studio at 4 p.m., but we all knew he meant 6 p.m. But it made travel difficult. And that made life difficult because, of course, we used to travel all the time. We'd be on the road more than 100 days a year. Stuart liked to share a taxi to the airport, and I liked that too. We'd always be rushing around before a tour, writing, editing, rewriting, rehearsing, packing, choosing songs, painting sets. The drive to the airport was an hour together to just breathe, catch up, touch base. We looked after different parts of the tour, so we'd be spinning in our own little orbits before we launched.

The drive to the airport was our time to merge worlds, to reconnect, to become a team again. I loved it. And I hated it. Because I would be standing on my front porch for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, even an hour, waiting for Stuart. I used to joke that if I wrote a book, that's what I'd call it, waiting for Stuart, because that's pretty much what I did for 15 years of my life. Wait to be picked up on the way to the airport, wait in studio, wait for him stage left, wait for him to send me the script. It prepared me well for dealing with toddlers and kids. Eloise learned how to tie her shoelaces this fall, and I would watch her do it every morning before school, knowing that I had

to just watch patiently, to be calm, to give positive feedback, but also knowing we were going to be late for school. Whenever I got impatient, I would remind myself of those hours on my front porch with my eyes down the street waiting for Stuart's taxi. As much as I loved our time together on the way to the airport, I just couldn't take the waiting. I just couldn't take the stress. I don't like to cut it close. I don't arrive at the airport, or apparently, at kindergarten drop-off with tons of time.

I'm not an early person, but I always arrive with plenty of time. And with Stuart, we always cut it close, too close. I remember one time early on, after running through the airport with him, I turned to him on the plane and I said, I'm beginning to think you enjoy this. He didn't disagree. But despite the stress, I almost always rode with him. Partly because I loved that time. But mostly because I figured, if that's what he was like when I was there with him, what would it be like if he was all on his own?

The stress of traveling with him was much more manageable than the stress of not knowing how late he was going to be. We never missed a flight. We came close tons of times, but we always made it. But he missed a flight once, without me. And he missed it because, wait for it now, he missed it because he'd arrived at the airport early. He had arrived with so much time that he'd allowed himself the luxury of wandering into the bookstore and getting something to eat. And he'd had so much time, he'd lost track of time and completely missed his flight.

And that was, in part, the inspiration for the story you just heard. It was also his defense every single time I'd call him from my front porch to tell him he was late. He'd learned his lesson, but he'd learned the wrong lesson. If we're too early, he'd say, we'll miss our plane. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including this one. Dave was ecstatic. He was home free. He'd keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all that was left... He'd keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all that was left was a cardboard toilet seat cover.

Eventually he could do away with that, and then maybe he'd write a book. Get rich. And then out of the blue, disaster struck. It struck at 10 one night while Dave was watching the news on television. The toilet flushed and Dave looked around. Morley was beside him. Sam was in his room. Stephanie was out.

Dave looked around. Morley was beside him. Sam was in his room. Stephanie was out. The small smile that was tugging at the corner of Dave's mouth widened pride before the fall. As Dave sat in front of the television feeling prideful, a hideous shriek filled the house. A piercing shriek of desperation unlike anything Dave had heard in his life. shriek of desperation unlike anything Dave had heard in his life. A howling, yowling, wailing wall of terror. Morley reached over and gripped Dave's arm. The shriek was so horrifyingly loud that it lifted the hair off both of their necks. Dave thought there's a maniac loose upstairs hacking Sam apart with an axe. Except it sounded worse, worse than that, worse than murder. So desperately worse that it was no longer the sound of murder, it was murder itself come to life on his second floor. Murder was in his house,

and it sounded just like someone trying to flush a cat down the toilet. trying to flush a cat down the toilet. Dave said, oh my God. He pried Morley's hand free and he flew up the stairs. Sam, who was already up the stairs, was on his way down, his eyes as wide as saucers. There's a huge sewer rat climbing out of the toilet, he said. That's next week on the pod. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone who never cuts it too close, Greg DeCloot.

Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.