I’ve figured out why our fire barrel cactus is leaning to one side. It’s more than the fact that it’s stretching south, craving the heat of the sun after a month of chilly mornings. It’s because when you live in tight quarters in a yellow ceramic pot in a condo community, you can’t help but overhear everything and find yourself either numb to it all or straining to hear more as the soundtrack of life passes by.

For instance, the start of a neighbor’s engine before he heads off to work. The breezy exchange between snowbirds as they march ahead for a morning walk to the canal. The rhythmic alternate drilling of a diligent woodpecker and construction worker digging two holes: one in a palm tree thirty feet up; the other fifty yards over the western wall. That’s where still another village of town homes will soon rise on the footprint of an evacuated auto dealership.

In other words, our sly fire barrel cactus is eavesdropping as we owners prattle on about another trip to the local gym. Grab our keys and water bottles (gotta stay hydrated in the desert). Fling the bags holding our laptops over our shoulders to feed our writing fetishes. Dash out the door and coo about the much-anticipated arrival of a kitschy book-themed tablecloth (just released from an Amazon box), designed to attract attention at the upcoming 7th Annual Local Author Book Sale.

Enough of this gibberish. Tom and I will be peddling books on Saturday, February 1 (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) at the Civic Center Library in Scottsdale, Arizona, with about a hundred other writers and countless readers … while our cactus holds down the fort and listens for the drum of desert gossip.

https://scottsdale.libnet.info/event/3194651