Three Women
Since
I was an hour early that pleasant September Thursday, I chose to sit on the
thick stone-and-cement wall near the entranceway to watch the students come and
go. A woman with a book bundle stopped to say to me, "Hello. Are you in my
poetry class?"
I
said, "I haven't been a student for many years now."
"Oh.
You look like someone else. Can you help me anyway?"
"With what?"
"I
have to see a place to live and I don't know where it is."
She
handed me a piece of paper with an address on it. "I got some time to
kill," I said. "Let me take you there."
Off
we went, northwesternly.
"It's
an apartment?" I asked.
"Actually
it's just a balcony apparently. Winterized."
"That
must be small."
"Housing's
tight. It's a start."
We
got to the address. We'd travelled far. Police tape surrounded it.
She
saw me looking. "There was a murder here recently. That's why the
balcony's affordable."
"A
murder house," I said.
"Murder
balcony," she replied with a smile. "Okay, so, thanks for showing me
the way. Would you like to come over to my balcony some time?"
"I
don't see why not."
She
gave me her phone number.
Time
had flown, and I had to get back to the university, so I got onto a bus. I sat
near the front door because I didn't have very far to go.
I
pulled the cord for my stop. As I was getting out, the driver said, "Hey,
you have to use your card."
I
said, "What card?"
She
said, "You have to have a card, to get on and to get off."
I
showed her my monthly transit pass. "I have one of these. Is this
it?"
She
said, "Oh, those are being phased out. You'll have to get a new
thing."
"But
this is okay for now, isn't it?"
"Yes, but not for long. You remind me of my father."
"Do
I?"
"The
way you talk. Get a proper pass, man. Get with the times."
"I'll
get with the times as soon as possible, thanks."
I
continued on my way back to the university. She was waiting for me, and I was
late, but all I received was a tease.
"You're
late," she smiled.
"I
was helping a student out."
"I
hope you can help out an ex."
We
went into the building. We knew where we were going. Our bodies were touching
with ease. Up some stairs, across a hall, down stairs,
another hall. Then we rounded the corner and saw construction guys
standing around. We took it in stride, casually, like it was expected. We turned
around and walked away.
"That's
out," she said. "Where can we go? I'm really on edge."
"I
think there's a place off the West Hall. Let's go see."
We
talked as if casually. I told her about the woman who thought I was my son and
about the woman who thought I was my father. She said, "I guess you're
ageless like an angel. Mine. Not theirs. They haven't seen you naked."
We
got to the place I had in mind. We looked into eyes and listened. An electrical
hum came from a circuit board. There was nothing else to be heard. She nodded
and said, "Safe. We're safe, darling."
"The
student was going to live on the balcony of a murder house."
"We're
safe."
"They're
going to be discontinuing transit passes soon."
"Worry
about that later."
I
nodded. I knew what she meant. Time is packed full of incidents. I kissed her.
*
What
Closes on Saturday Night
I happened to overhear a conversation in
Riverdale while I was waiting for the streetcar at Broadview and Langley.
‑June!
‑Marie!
‑Out
for a walk, eh?
‑Yes.
Nice springish day. I see you brought out your
Afghan.
‑He likes the weather. Makes 'im a bit frisky, though.
Extra discipline is needed.
‑I'll say! Well, you're lucky to have
a purebred.
‑I've heard the opposite.
‑Really?
What's yours anyway?
‑He's
half Somali and half Indonese. Say
hello to June, Ali.
-As-salāmu ʿalayki.
‑Such manners! Waʿalaykumu s-salām, Ali.
‑As I was saying, he's always getting
into trouble. He can come out of his cage any time he wants, but he likes
sleeping in there.
‑Oh, did you hear about what Patrick's
getting?
‑Nancy's
wife?
‑Yes! They're getting a rescue one!
‑Oh.
‑A Syrian! Missing a leg!
‑I see.
‑What's wrong? Do you have something
against humanitarianism?
‑No, it's just that the Internet says
that a lot of these rescue ones, well.... They're intentionally maimed.
‑What?
‑Because they've become status
symbols. So the bourgeoisie can show they care so very deeply.
‑That's awful!
‑Black market's
involved. Criminal gangs.
‑I'll have to look that up myself.
‑Such awful cruelty....
*
It
seemed an ordinary Thursday allaround when Gary
Taylor arrived at work via helicopter onto the mid-Atlantic Anglo-America oil-rig where, for
decades, he and Stanley Wells and their crack team of scholars had been
secretly working on their Shakespeare-revisive editing.
He
dropped down his great daily bundle of ephemera, intended to be added that day
to the big-data linguistical load of their
numerological vertices, greeted his confrere Wells (busy at work with his
16th-century signage collection), and poured himself some coffee.
Then
it became an EXTRAordinary Thursday as the iron door
flew open as fast as an iron door can fly to allow ingress to some
sub-sub-editorial nobody shouting "
"What
is it?" asked Taylor-and-Wells.
The nobody replied, "Using our small-words
correlative theorem, which we know scientifically to be
one-hundred-and-ten-percent absofuckinlootly
accurate, I have newly-found a collaborator for both Julius Caesar and Henry
V!"
"Both
c. 1599," said
"Making
collaborator likely," said Wells.
The nobody said, "Here's my statistical
data," and dumped into the room several hundred pages of accurate numbers.
"You'll see that the small-words frequency is so high that to argue
otherwise would be foolish!"
Thus
"AND BUGS BUNNY" got added to the title page of both.
*
"Pay close attention, ladies and
gentlemen of the jury.
"Purely
by an almost impossible coincidence, the same four bystanding
witnesses were at the scene of all five massacres.
"It
was a busy day all in all.
"At
Bank A, the first witness testifies that the defendant shot no-one; at Bank B,
she says he shot three people; at Bank C, she says she witnessed him shoot one
person; at Bank D, now pay attention, she says he shot two; while finally at
Bank E, she says she witnessed the defendant shoot only one person.
"The
second witness provides the following counts. At A he shot three, at B he shot
two, at C he shot two, at D he shot one, and at E he shot two.
"Now
listen carefully.
"The
3rd witness says that at A he shot 1 more than the 1st witness's count; at B he
shot 1 less than the 2nd witness's count; at C, 1 less than the 1st witness's
count; D, the same as the 1st witness's count, at E 1 more than the 2nd
witness's count.
"4th
says A's'V's=1's, B's'V's=2's+2,
C's'V's=3's, D's'V's=1's-1,
E's'V's=1's+1.
"How
can there be any convictions based on such confusions?"
*
Little
children have their wisdom, dogs and cats have their wisdom, and the bar flies
at the Colonial Tavern have
"It's
true but you don't hear about it. The Mormons, the Utah Mormons, they're dying
off in droves, like, decimated every ten years. It's a disease they get when
they're kids, when they're baptized, immersive baptism I think they call it.
But the thing is what's in the water, because they consider it holy water. Apparently,
this is like that homeopathology stuff, the water is
really old, it's supposed to be water old Joe Smith bathed in so long ago
before he got killed. And ever since then it's been the water for all the
baptisms. Now I don't have to tell you what happens to water when it gets old. Pathogens, diseases. So all these Mormons are getting
diseases no-one's seen since the 7th century. It's all hush-hush though.
Apparently the Mormons would be all killed if it became generally known. And
the thing is the Mormons won't stop using the old water even though. They don't
care if they die out, 'cause they got their own piece of heaven. Thirteen hundred year old water. Kinda
disgusting ain't it?"
*
We
stopped in the hallway out of breath. What had we been running from? you ask. Listen carefully and you will understand.
I
said to my fellow cub investigative journalists, "What have we been
running from? Sure, we came here as cub investigative journalists, from the Big
City to the Pacific Northwest, to investigate some strange occurrences that
have been taking place ever since marijuana was decriminalized thus causing a
great clear-cutting to be taking place in this verdant clime, intrigued by what
some small-town hick leads had told us were some strange sightings and some
even stranger diseases. But can we not be something brave and face that which
is pursuing us?"
Trebilcock, our youngest, said, "Whatever it
is had been trying to kill us for four days?"
I
agreed with, "Yes."
The
world turned. The floor of the hallway became a slope. Soon the hall wall had
become a floor, and soon after that the ceiling was such. We tumbled a whole
180 degrees and found ourselves covered in floor-filth from head to toe.
We
looked at one another in some amazement.
I
said, in understatement, "This was not at all what I had expected to take
place."
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