On Wed. December 11, in the early evening, while still at work, I received a 3-part text from Bob. I always know these “3-parters” are something of extreme interest, because not only is Bob sending me something rather lengthy, but he’s sending it as a text rather than an email, meaning he wants me to see it right away. I guess I have to explain here that I have not entered the world of “Smart phones”, and my phone is rather dumb. Dumb doesn’t even begin to describe it, but that is another story. People laugh at my phone, I, on the other hand, am quite proud of it. It works, which is more than I can say for the people around me whining about their so-called “smart” phones. This particular text that was coming through, because of its length, I expected to be the fall-out from what had gone on the prior day with Frank.
So “part one” came in at 5:23 PM. (I’ve combined the 3 parts here for readability): “Niko just had a white bird encounter coupled with lights in the apartment, and as I am writing this, drums and rattles just started. Going to go take care of lights now. Drums are right above us. We are in stove room. Bird is huge. Landed on rock in creek. Niko sat and put his head down and listened. Drums are right above us in the bedroom, rattles all around. Really weird. Niko and Red keep looking up. Niko whining. Have fun at party.”
Here, Bob is talking about our office holiday party, which was being held this night, Wed., Dec. 11. I am winding up my work-night early, getting ready to drive to the party venue, which starts at 6:30 PM.
Me, back to Bob, at 5:31 PM: “Wow, what do u think it all means?”
I don’t hear back from Bob right away, so at 5:38 PM, I text back to him: “Any more happening?”
Bob, 5:46 PM: “How much more would you like?!! If you were here you would think that enough. Just finished turning lights off, as I walked downstairs, loud drum beats, lights back on.”
(This was in the apartment, as he was going downstairs and leaving, the lights came back on again, while he was there. Not the first time for this.)
By now it was time for me to get going to the company “Holiday” party. When I arrived at this chic country club that was all “decked out” for Christmas, I ducked first into the restroom, and texted this to Bob at 6:26 PM: “Do u sense unhappiness? Were they looking for Frank do you think?”
Bob 6:27 PM: “No, I think it is about Niko.”
But by now I had to enter “party mode”, and more or less forget this whole crazy thing going on at the house, but it was in the back of my mind all night. What was going on? What was the message? Were they concerned about Frank? Mad at me? Concerned for Niko? I could only hope that the concern was for Niko, because for sure, the day before, I had felt terrible for what Niko had had to go through. Bob says he never witnessed that behavior between Frank and Niko; I think it was just escalating, and I think also that Frank had some kind of issue with me as well, otherwise, why would he have turned on me like he had? Niko was trying to protect me, it seems, and was taking a beating for doing so.
I excitedly drove home from the party hoping that somehow, something was revealed. I was not to be disappointed. I will describe (and have a picture of) what I found in the next post.