She watched closely as I repaired a faucet in her kitchen, and then seemed relieved that at least I was sufficiently dextrous, and agreed to take me on as a “patient”.

I’m reminded of Igor Kipnis here. He had always tended to overweight, but for a while had so much extra tonnage that his fingers became too fat to play harpsichord.
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*Now difficult to learn much about, but having some net presence due to a really crude limerick penned by Peter Warlock, who was steamed when she displaced him as the editor of Peter Curwin’s small-circulation but influential British music journal, The Sackbut.

I had been gassing about out friend Domenico, and probably in particular about his creative flowering rather late in life. I may have said something about Longo versus Kirkpatrick catalogs, Valenti’s questionable practices—I don’t recall now. After a moment or two of this, one of the adjacent couple seated a bit after us was provoked to complain: “EXCUSE me! I feel as if I were listening to a lecture on Scarlatti! Could you keep your voice down!?”

Of the many possible rejoinders I don’t recall what served, but we reached an uneasy truce, with Frank wanting to know what in hell was going on.

Of course for the rest of the meal I couldn’t help overhearing about every word of the conversation the interrogator was having with his date, who was commiserating about problems she had been having working out issues with her father, in her sessions with her therapist.

It was all I could do to restrain myself, particularly when they finished their meal and were leaving, which then afforded the perfect opportunity to wish her the best in psychological catharsis, and thank them for providing such sustained food for thought.