A black Lincoln Town Car stretch limo occupied at least three normal-sized parking spots on the street in front of my house overnight last Tuesday, and a tall, dark and handsome older man slipped into it at around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning and drove away. One can only imagine the shock waves in our neighborhood, which include many Baltimoreans who keep a close eye on the parking situation — but can the speculation be that much more interesting than the truth?
The events that led to this unusual sight on Keswick Road began over spring break, which went well for me, so forgive this detailed account. It will lead to the handsome stranger eventually, I promise, and includes key background to that part of the story.
Wally and I began our week-long spring break road trip with two nights in Washington, DC, flitting from one friend’s house to the next, enjoying delicious meals (seared tuna muffaletta is as good as it sounds ) and dog walks. A highlight was the afternoon I spent day-drinking in her basement with my friend Judy, screening the perfect Nicole Kidman double feature: Babygirl and Eyes Wide Shut. As many readers know, this was already more sex than I had been anywhere near in years.
From DC, the drive to my daughter Jane and her boyfriend AJ’s house in Wilmington, NC is just five hours, so we were there unpacking our cooler (me) and sniffing Daisy’s butt (Wally) in plenty of time to get a good table for Trivia Night Tuesday at the nearby Ogden Tap House. Jane and AJ and his lifelong best friend Will (AJ grew up in Wilmington) had made a weekly event of this, and I was soon sold as well.
Though our team, “Ron Cummings Baker” (after the name on AJ’s very first fake ID) was beaten by both “Patio People” and “Five Bros and Two Hos” (among them, Will recognized teachers from the local middle school), we did come in third and get a $10 gift certificate. One of the questions was who was Nicole Kidman’s first husband, which I never would have remembered without my recent Eyes Wide Shut experience, and they also asked what probiotic soda brand was recently acquired for several billion dollars by Pepsi. Judy had read me the Poppy takeover article from the Wall Street Journal that very morning. (Her point being, why can’t we think of some stupid but crazily popular thing like probiotic soda?)
Wednesday, Jane and I took a beautiful walk at Wrightsville Beach, a wide strip of white sand and clear turquoise ocean just fifteen minutes from her house. We also had a fun time taking “drought photos” — pictures to illustrate Jane’s forthcoming article for Carolina Public Press about difficulties faced by farmers around the state. (Yes, I am very proud of my 24-year-old journalist daughter.) Jane was able to Google up a farm not too far away, where she snapped a picture of a dried-up plant that her editor really went nuts for. We celebrated at Half-Price Wine Wednesday at a fine indoor-outdoor establishment called The Bend.
This was my fourth visit to Wilmington since the Jane & AJ era began. (They met in college at Bard.) My maiden voyage in 2023 was slightly marred when my first sight of Wrightsville Beach was dominated by a 50-yard-long sand sculpture with huge, professionally formed letters that read JESUS RAPTURE. As a Jewish atheist, this unnerved me somewhat. But during that same visit, a Democratic door hanger appeared on Jane’s front doorknob. Also, I was finding that, like Jane, I adored AJ’s parents, Barb and Erik, who are churchgoing Trumpers. In all, the jury was out on whether Wilmington would win me over.
But on this recent visit, the jury seemed to be coming around to the pro-Wilmington side, which incidentally went 50/50 for the two candidates in the 2024 election, though the state as a whole went for Trump. The town had started to remind me of Austin, Texas, in the 1970s, then a little-known oasis with many cool bars and restaurants, a beautiful natural setting, and a jolly combination of hipsters and good ol’ boys and girls amiably dedicating themselves to the good life. Unfortunately, I was to find out that, at least in Wilmington, this amiable harmony has its fault lines.
Thursday, we had lunch with AJ’s mom, Barb, at place called Dockside, a very Spring Break-y locale, with fried oyster sandwiches and wine and big boats all around. Since AJ had to work late that night, Jane and I decided to hit Thursday Night Trivia at Seven Mile Post, which is even more popular and competitive than the one at Ogden Tap House. We called our team “Mozzie and Nooza, They Are the Poozas” in honor of our family nicknames, but thought we would have little hope of winning with just two people. Then it turned out I was the only person in the place who knew that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest and that the country Finland became independent from in 1917 was: Russia! (I am embarrassed to say I vetoed Jane’s response for the first female billionaire, choosing Oprah over her correct answer, Martha.) Though this and other errors caused us to fall out of the top rankings, we were tied for first at half time and got a gift certificate for $10! And on the drive home we saw a North Carolina license plate that said MOZZIE. Yes, really.
At this point, I was so in love with bar trivia that I decided to extend my stay a few days so I could go back to Ogden Tap House the following Tuesday, driving home at the last possible minute to teach my class at the University of Baltimore Wednesday night. And it’s a good thing I did, because here’s what happened Friday evening.
We got dressed up and went out to dinner with Barb and Erik to a fancy place called Seabird. We had reason to celebrate because AJ had wangled a promotion at his computer security job. Seafood tower, baby! Dirty martinis! After dinner, a downtown bar tour ensued. We started at a classy upstairs piano bar called Tempo 33, and by the time we arrived at the Penthouse, I was rather lit up.
In the lobby of an Art Deco tower, Erik presented his membership card to a young man who took down all our names in a notebook. Then we zoomed up in the elevator to what looked like a setting for a David Lynch movie, a private club in a converted apartment. We were jauntily greeted by an ancient woman piano player who was tickling the keys with a swoop-haired Liberace belting out lyrics beside her. Decorations included cozy groupings of vintage furniture and interesting art on the walls, plus a flotilla of slightly dusty black and white balloons and a neon sign seemingly left over from someone’s “Dirty Thirty” birthday party. The club owner and president, a local event planner and entrepreneur named Jesse, circulated and chatted.
Barb went to the bar to get a round of drinks, and after a bit, I went over to help her carry them to our couches. No one remembers exactly how we started talking to the attractive older man sitting by himself at the bar, but as soon as he explained that he was there to celebrate the day his divorce was final, Barb picked up immediately on her wingman role. Soon we knew a lot about 68-year-old Jim Fiore, retired IBM semiconductor engineer, Italian-American father of three, retired to NC from Burlington, VT, veteran of two twenty-year marriages, now living in a 55+ retirement community. Somewhere along the way, Barb disappeared, but then a little later we went to join the group, and then a little later still, all the couples were slow dancing, and there may have been a kiss involved.
The next morning, I texted the number Jim Fiore had given me to share one of Barb’s many papparazzi shots of the evening with the question: Did that really happen?
And he promptly replied, “Yes indeed !! After you and the rest of the gang have figured out what you are doing today, give me a call so we can plan our future together !!!” (I have preserved his signature punctuation.)
But more importantly: Okay!
AJ, Jane and I had planned a one-night mini-vacation to Southport and Oak Island, beauty spots about an hour and a ferry ride south of Wilmington. We had lunch plans at the great Provision Company in Southport and a room reserved at the Captain’s Cove motel, but not much else locked in. Jim Fiore, however, was an Oak Island veteran and said he would drive down and meet us for drinks mid-afternoon.
So he and Wally and I met at the Lazy Turtle beach bar, and he patiently re-told me a lot of info and stories I had forgotten from the night before. Then the kids arrived and he took us all out for drinks and shrimp and ahi nachos and fried green tomatoes down the beach at the KoKo Cabana. After that, our plan was to play Scrabble in a bar and he gamely came along AND PLAYED. (In my experience, willingness to play Scrabble is a very rare quality in a man. And even though he was not a very experienced player, he seemed to be catching on.)
Right down the street from the Captain’s Cove, the Pirate’s Den was the perfect strip mall hidey-hole to take your family, your dachshund and your Scrabble set, and then at 10 p.m., it miraculously turned into a karaoke bar. Jane said Jim Fiore watched my rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee” with stars in his eyes, and may have even been moved to tears by our duet on “Drops of Jupiter,” a cover of a Taylor Swift cover of Train.
After that, he drove home and we went to our $73 motel room and slept well, as one does near the ocean. The next morning, we had great stone-ground grits at a breakfast spot called Fixins, but the manager was so outraged and mean about Wally (not actually a service animal, sitting on the banquette next to me and sharing my scrambled eggs) that I eventually had to put him in the car. Oh well. The food was good.
That night was AJ’s bio dad’s birthday – and it is indicative of what I love about all these people that Barb and Erik (AJ’s stepfather) were among the guests. Jim Fiore stories were, of course, thick on the ground.
The next day was Monday. I gathered that maybe Jim Fiore had Other Plans that evening, but perhaps because this was our only chance to go on a date all by ourselves before my departure, and even though he had already agreed to join us at trivia on Tuesday, he rescheduled that appointment. When he came into Jane’s house to get me, he commented on the sorry condition of the Prius I passed on to her last year when she graduated from Columbia J-school and moved to Wilmington. The front bumper had been hanging off the car since 2016, when I hit something in a parking garage on the way to the Pussy Hat March. It really was ugly and depressing, but the quotes to fix it started at $1500 and it wasn’t actually causing any problems except aesthetic and psychological ones.
Meanwhile, he had in hand a copy of my book First Comes Love for me to sign, which he had already ordered and obtained despite having admitted that he had not read a book since high school, at least not a novel or a memoir. This gave me pause, but who knew, maybe my book could change all that. Or maybe it didn’t really matter.
After we climbed into his Chevy Equinox SUV and before we left for our night out, he turned to me and said, “Am I right in thinking you are something of a rebel?”
What the heck, I thought, are we going to drop acid?
No, it turned out we were going to violate the open container law by sipping mimosas with fresh OJ and strawberries on the way downtown.
(Okay, we’re getting to the big bump in the road, so prepare yourself.)
The bar at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse has $11 Manhattans as well as some appealing food specials, slightly obsequious service, but a fantastic view of the sunset over Cape Fear. The conversation flowed smoothly over many topics. Somehow I had mentioned that I had been on Oprah, and though I don’t love telling that story and he could read it on my website, I sighed and ran down the whole shitshow. (You can indeed read it on my website.)
Another topic was my atheism versus his Christianity. He was surprised to hear that I don’t believe in life after death, and I was surprised to hear that he believes in Heaven and Hell. We also talked about Trump, whom we both hate, but our opinions on Elon Musk diverge. Long story short, I am a bleeding-heart liberal and he is a fiscal conservative who once voted for Ross Perot. We didn’t argue or raise our voices but right about the time we got our check, a portly red-headed young man seated at a table directly behind us jumped up and started shouting.
“OKAY Y’ALL NEED TO PAY UP AND MOVE ON RAHT THIS MINUTE! GIT ON NOW! AH WAS JUST TRYING TO HAVE A QUIET EVENING WITH MAH DAD, WHO AH NEVER GET TO SEE, AND THEN Y’ALL TWO COME ALONG AND RUIN IT. AH HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS KIND OF TALK ALL DAY EVERY DAY AT WORK AND AH JUST CAIN’T STAND IT ANOTHER MINUTE —”
Before the rant could go any further, Jim Fiore moved in to shake the guy’s hand and apologize. I was kind of in shock, but agreed that we were sorry to have ruined his quiet evening with his dad. We scurried out of the bar and split up to visit the restrooms on the way out. As I tried to recover my equilibrium, it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure whether the guy was specifically reacting to the beliefs I had expressed, or was just pissed off about having to hear someone else’s conversation, particularly a political one. This was important to know, vis-à-vis the jury and Wilmington. I decided to go back in there and ask.
He told me that it was the latter, that though he didn’t agree with a single word I said, that wasn’t why he had to send us on our way so abruptly and forcefully. He’s just so sick of all the extremism, and as you know, he was just trying to have a quiet evening with his dad.
By this point he was being more polite, and we were pretty much burying the hatchet when suddenly two shrews around the other side of the bar, like at least ten feet from us, jumped to their feet and started screaming at me. YEW ASKED SO WE WILL TELL YEW. YEW HAVE RUINED THIS EVENING FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS BAR. And it went on from there, though trauma has erased the specifics. These vicious harpies had somehow listened to every word of our conversation (there is something very wrong with the acoustics of this bar) and they wanted to express their total revulsion. Whether it was the atheism, the leftism, or any of the numerous triggers involved in the what-a-big-shot-I-am Oprah story — hard drugs, homosexuality, AIDS, adultery, the dissing of Oprah, and more —I cannot say. Probably all of the above.
Jim Fiore had been waiting for me out at the front door of the building and now came back to see what was going on. He saw and hustled me right out of there. I was in tears. We went to another place, a quiet loft in a deserted Mexican restaurant I gather Penthouse Jesse used to be involved with, and drank brandy or maybe it was red wine so that we could pull ourselves together before going back to report to Jane and AJ.
Jane could not believe it. She lets me out of her sight for two hours, and THIS HAPPENS!?!? I wish Barb had been there, I said, not for the first time, and indeed later when we told Barb the story she was ready to track down those “rednecks” and teach them to mind their own business.
So. We lived through that. And then it was my last night. The four of us had dinner in the backyard and returned to the Ogden Tap, where “Ron Cummings Baker” came in second this time! Twenty-five dollar gift certificate.
The next day, after I left, Jim Fiore went to Jane’s house and in two hours fixed the bumper of that damn Prius. Yes, he did.
Once I was back in Baltimore, Jim Fiore and I had a phone call to see whether we should file this whole adventure in the happy memory department or make further plans. He said he wanted to take it slow, and I said I had pretty much decided I was done with romance but this had been fun. So… maybe he would come up for Memorial Day?
What I’ve left out of this story so far is that Jim Fiore was in the market for a used limousine. Having volunteered to help the activities coordinator at his 55+ community arrange day trips, he was thinking, why use a van when you can take people around in style? Right after I left NC, he was flying to the West Coast to visit his daughter, then heading down to buy a limo in Los Angeles and drive it home. (This guy!) Unfortunately, that limo was not as advertised, and he ended up coming home on the red-eye.
But a few days later, he saw another limo for sale in Philadelphia, and he called and asked me if I was free on Tuesday night, and could he stop in for a visit on his way home.
I was, and he could. I spent the next two days trying to figure out where he would park it and then for the first time in history, there were three contiguous spots open right across the street from my house.
Jim Fiore’s less-than-24-hours-in-Baltimore included crab cakes at the bar at Pappas in Parkville (no one yelled at us about anything, go Baltimore) and breakfast at Chuck’s Trading Post in Hampden (he explained day trading), a couple of dog walks with Wally, a few bottles of wine and a second Scrabble game. If there’s anything rarer than a guy who will play Scrabble with me, it’s a guy who will play Scrabble with me twice. There was some hanky panky, which I feel I can’t avoid mentioning if you’ve read all this way, but that’s all I’m going to say about it. On the way out, he repaired my non-closing front storm door, which was not an easy fix but he did it, and also re-hung the dachshund picture in the powder room so it doesn’t come crashing down every five minutes.
The one thing he didn’t like about our fair city was driving the limo all the way through downtown to get to 95-South, and I had to admit to him that it was not the fault of Google Maps, it’s just the way it is. I’d send him my essay about it, but I suspect he’s a little behind in his reading of the oeuvre. He also didn’t like missing the day trading opportunities created by the brief stock market surge created by the announcement of Trump’s tariff delay because he was on the road.
And that is our story so far. What will happen? I don’t know! It might just be a good spring break story. Without a doubt, as everyone who has met him agrees, Jim Fiore is a nice guy. Fun. Spontaneous. Generous. Intelligent. Good-looking. Helpful. Kind. He wants to travel and so do I. All three hormones I have left certainly perked up these past few weeks.
Shall we say… to be continued?
Classic Marion Winik!! Loved all the stories.