I’ve only known one woman named April, and that was April Hartford, the sister of Laura Hartford who was mainly known as Arrot. April was a sweetheart, though I had only known her a few hours, I reckon, and that was 40 years ago.
I know it’s a story I had told before. Jet Watley gave me tickets to Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. Jet wasn’t going, and my friends Mike Weinert and Arrot were heading to Manhattan to pick up April at Penn Station, which is located right below Madison Square Garden.
The plan was for the four of us to attend the circus. April made two friends on the train from New England, two freunds from Germany. She wasn’t into the circus and so we gave the tickets to some kids who really wanted to go. They offered some money but we just gave them the tickets to their surprise.
We caught the Path train back to Hoboken, and of course, we wound up at Maxwell’s. We fell into our routines and overlapping groups of friends. April proved to be quite popular, much to Arrot’s surprise. She looked radiant, and men were swarming around her.
Arrot was distressed, though, since April was only 14 years old, though she did look sophisticated and passed for being a few years older. The powers that be never found out and we quickly moved to Mike and Arrot’s basement apartment, where, after smoking some opium, we wound up asleep with limbs entwined.
One of the freunds fell asleep with his head in my lap. Nothing came of it, neither literally nor figuratively.
Now I am home. Bill is eating pasta and pesto three feet behind me. Mike just called, waking up from a nap. He implored me to help him with his phone bill, and luckily for him, I was able to since it was not that much. I almost wrote that he begged, but Mike didn’t. He asked, sounding reluctant, while I was at work and I told him I’d take care of it when I got home.
I got home a little after 6 PM, which is when his phone service was cut off. Six minutes later, it was restored. And an hour after that, he woke up from his nap and groggily called. Too sleepy for anything resembling a meaningful conversation, I told Mike to call me when he wakes up.
Bill is going to sleep soon. Local driving tomorrow but still requiring an early start. Harry Potter is on. It’s been on quite a bit these days. 25th anniversary. I don’t mind, I’ve seen them a few times already. It’s like comfort food. Familiar enough.
I saw the first one, and it was the only one I saw in a theater. I went in 2001 with Annemarie, Rex, and Earl when I flew out to Arcata in a moment of bravado, since everyone else was reported to not fly that often after the 9/11 attacks.
April 30.2026
The Google Gemini Rewrite as a Sarah Vowell essay
## The Taxonomy of April
I have known exactly one April in my life. She was a Hartford—specifically the sister of Laura “Arrot” Hartford—and for a handful of hours during the Reagan administration, she was the center of my personal solar system. It’s a story I’ve told before, the way some people recite the Gettysburg Address or the tracklist to *Purple Rain*, but it bears repeating if only for the sheer, messy geometry of it.
It started with a gesture of inexplicable kindness from Jet Watley, who handed over tickets to the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. This was back when the circus was still a viable cultural currency and not a depressing metaphor for the federal government. Jet wasn’t going, so the mission was clear: Mike Weinert, Arrot, and I were to head to Manhattan to intercept April at Penn Station—that subterranean labyrinth of regret located directly beneath the Garden—and then ascend to witness the Greatest Show on Earth.
Except April, having spent a few hours on a train from New England, had already acquired a pair of German “freunds.” She wasn’t particularly interested in acrobats or exploited pachyderms. In a moment of communal altruism that I find frankly suspicious in retrospect, we handed our tickets to some wide-eyed kids. They tried to pay us, but we waved them off like benevolent, penniless aristocrats.
We retreated to Hoboken via the PATH train, ending up, as one did, at Maxwell’s. April, despite being only fourteen, possessed the kind of effortless, terrifying radiance that acts as a tractor beam for men in rock clubs. She was sophisticated in that way certain teenagers are—the kind of poise that makes adults feel like they’ve forgotten how to stand up straight. Arrot spent the evening in a state of low-boil distress, watching the “powers that be” fail to notice that a middle-schooler was the most popular person in the room.
The night ended in the basement of Mike and Arrot’s apartment, a scene that sounds more illicit than it actually felt. There was opium, and eventually, a communal collapse into sleep. We were a heap of tangled limbs and flannel. One of the German freunds fell asleep with his head in my lap. I can report that nothing came of it—not literally, not figuratively, not even in the vague, poetic sense. It was just a quiet, grainy snapshot of New Jersey bohemianism.
—
Fast forward forty years. It is April 30, 2026. The world has changed, but the mundane persists.
Behind me, Bill is eating pasta and pesto. The air smells like basil and domesticity. Mike just called, having drifted into a nap and woken up in a panic over his phone bill. He didn’t beg—Mike isn’t a beggar—but he asked with a specific kind of reluctance that suggested he’d rather be doing almost anything else. I told him I’d handle it.
I got home a little after 6:00 PM, which is precisely when his service was cut off. By 6:06 PM, I had summoned the digital spirits and restored his connection. An hour later, he called back, sounding like someone who had just been dragged out of a deep-sea trench. Too groggy for a conversation about the soul or the economy, I told him to call me when he actually joins the waking world.
Bill is heading to bed soon. He has a day of local driving tomorrow, the kind of early start that requires a certain Stoic resolve. On the television, *Harry Potter* is playing. It’s the 25th anniversary, so the boy wizard is everywhere, a permanent fixture of the cable landscape. It’s comfort food. It’s familiar. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a heavy blanket.
I only ever saw the first one in a theater. It was 2001. I had flown out to Arcata in a fit of post-9/11 bravado, an “I’m-not-afraid-of-the-sky” performance meant to prove something to myself or the terrorists, I’m still not sure which. I went with Annemarie, Rex, and Earl. We sat in the dark and watched a child discover he was special, while the rest of us were just trying to figure out how to live in a world where the buildings didn’t stay up.
Now, it’s just another April ending. The circus is gone, the opium has cleared, and the phone bill is paid. We’re all just waiting for May.