Taka taka taka taka
HOOOOOOOOOO
Taka taka taka taka
HOOOOOOOOOO
Taka taka taka taka
HOOOOOOOOOO
Jenn had come down from the rooftop greenhouse at 1 am, sunk
gratefully into bed and straight into a deep sleep. When the train passed
through the city at 4, even dead to the world, it still had the power to send
shivers down her spine. She dreamed of winding through a life, all its
victories and failures, but as if she were a patron walking through an art
gallery, only seeing and never touching.
It was the best night’s sleep she’d had in a long time.
Huffing, Jenn blew another strand of hair out of her face.
The three dogs she was walking all yanked her in different directions, and she
wasn’t having too much luck corralling them down the main path in the park. One
bounded back to her, running in circles around her, and she sat down hard, tangled
up in the leash and completely immobile. The dog, Al, slurped its tongue up her
stunned face, and in that moment, all Jenn could do was laugh.
On the ground, in the midst of boisterous laughter, the
blind man found her. He was eerie, in the way his wizened figure cast shadows
through the gloom, but a plug had been pulled inside of Jenn, and even his
spooky silhouette couldn’t stem the rising tide of slightly hysterical hilarity.
He muttered something, his voice rustling like dead leaves in
the wind, but she couldn’t hear him over the sound of her own voice, bright and
sharp in the muted fog. He trembled violently when she didn’t acknowledge him, and
then shouted, “So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you…” He trailed off
threateningly, looming as best he could with his diminutive height. That
finally shut Jenn up. Suddenly serious, she looked up at him from her place on
the cold, wet concrete, still stroking Al’s head.
“Thanks, sir, but I make my own luck.” Jenn untangled
herself from the leash, stood up, and in five paces had left the man behind in
the fog. The dogs were docile the entire way back to the vet.
“Jenn?” Dr. Green poked his slightly glistening, balded head
through the crack in the door. Thwack!
“Shi- shoot! Yeah, Dr. Green?” Jenn stood up from where she’d
been putting food in the last cat’s cage, rubbing her head.
“Jenn, am I crazy?” He looked slightly perturbed.
“Not that I’m aware of, sir.” She answered quizzically. He had
a lot of idiosyncrasies, sure, but he wasn’t quite off his rocker. Jenn thought
his quirks made him interesting, anyway, now that she was used to them.
“Well then, I must go see the otolaryngologist.” He was
quite sure.
“Sir?” She was not.
“Oh, nothing for you to be worried about, dear, there’s just
this ringing in my ears. It started at precisely 12 ‘o clock today, and it hasn’t
stopped since.” His faintly perturbed look had reappeared. For the second time that
day, Jenn was overcome by the urge to laugh. “Are you quite finished? I might have
melanoma in my middle ear, and you are laughing!” It was the first time Jenn had
seen him peeved.
“No sir.” She had tamped her laughter down to the occasional
giggle. “It’s just that… your ears aren’t ringing. It’s the bells at St. Mary’s.
They normally ring on Wednesdays, but today they haven’t stopped tolling. You’re
free from middle ear melanoma.” She cracked a grin, amused at herself. “It does
remind me of that book by Hemingway, though.”
“The bells at St. Cecilia’s, dear?” He was back to his
normal absent-minded contemplation. “Yes, yes, of course. Say, did you see that
scarlet woman?” Jenn startled to attention, shocked to hear the amiable Dr.
Green use that term, and more than a little irritated by it.
“Excuse me?” Her tone was biting. He startled, now, and then
realization slowly dawned under her frosty gaze.
“No no no no, my dear, that’s not what I meant! Not the
euphemism! An actual scarlet woman!”
He gestured wildly.
Placated but now confused, Jenn answered the best she could.
“Well, yes, Scarlett’s my next-door neighbor, so we’ve seen each other in
passing. Why?”
“My dear, that’s still not quite correct. I mean the woman,
dressed all in scarlet, who’s wandering around downtown. She’s asking all sorts
of funny questions, she sounds like an uncertain fortune cookie. But anyway,
what reminded me was that bit you said about Hemingway. She just stopped me on
the street this morning, and asked, cool as you please, ‘For whom does the bell
toll?’”
Unbeknownst to Jenn, for the second time that day a shiver
traveled down her spine.
