A Lousy Day and a Mystery in the Dark

Originally Posted Thursday, May 22, 2014

Yesterday was a lousy day.  That line may fly as a first sentence for a short story in a university creative writing class (I don't know), but it would surely not do as one for an ongoing blog on the internet.  Unless, that is, you did this (only better), this being making the reader aware that you are aware that it is a bad thing to do.  It is a clumsy trick, perhaps. . . but yesterday was a lousy day.  I suspected it would be when I made coffee.  The top of the coffee pot would not go on properly.  I worked with it for many minutes, taking the O ring off twice, cleaning the top, replacing the O ring, but the when I tried to screw it back on, it was way too tight.  Cuisinart.  That is who makes my expensive coffee grinder/maker combo.  And yesterday it did what it too often does--leaks coffee all over the countertop. I don't know why I didn't watch it more closely.  Lazy, I'd guess.  But I caught it in something like good time and did not have coffee dripping onto the floor.  I even got about half the coffee into the pot. Still, I had about a five minute clean up using half a roll of paper towels and a sponge.  That's the way I began my morning after a restless night. 

I dragged at work all day.  I looked like shit and was grumpy.  My famous charm had left me, I guess, in a meeting of the foremen, for when I made a joke about one of the others who was late, my colleagues acted as if I had just pooped on the table.  My boss gave me a look of warning. 

After a long day, I left work for the gym.  On the way there, I noticed my mother had called me.  When I called her back, she had a question about her iPad. 

"How do I get the camera on my iPad to work?" she asked me. 

"How'd you do it when I was there for dinner on Sunday?" 

"It won't come up.  All I get is that video camera.  I can't get it to quit taking video." 

I went through some instructions with her.  Turn it on.  What do you see? 

"Push the button at the bottom of the iPad."

"What button?" 

Jesus Christ.  "The on/off button." 

"Which one?  Oh. . . O.K."

"What do you see?" 

"I see myself.  Why is it taking videos of me?"

It was hopeless.  "I'll stop by after the gym," I said. 

"O.K."  Her voice was happy. 

I looked at the clock.  It was six-thirty.  I wasn't going to the gym.  I wouldn't be eating dinner until nine if I did, and I only had two yogurts and some pretzels to eat all day.  I drove to my mother's house instead. 

When I got there, she was in her yard talking to her across the street neighbor.  After hellos and goodbyes, she walked up the driveway and got her iPad.  I turned it on.  Everything looked normal.  I turned on the camera, took her picture, and showed her.

"How'd you do that?" 

I showed her.

"Why is that video button on there?" 

"It's just part of the display." 

"It wasn't there before."

"Yes it was."

"No it wasn't." 

"O.K.  Well, it's there now."

"I don't know how it got there." 

"O.K." 

The "video" she saw, I'm sure, was her looking at the camera display.  She had hit the button that turned the camera around. 

"I guess I won't go to the gym.  It is late."

"What time is it?"

"Your iPad has a clock."  She was holding it.  She looked down.

"No it doesn't. . . oh, wait. . . 6:59.  Ha-ha. . . ." 

"That's what you always say," I told her.  "Your first words are always, 'No it doesn't. .  . oh, wait. . . .'"

"What are you going to do with an old lady?" she said grinning.  She was leaving on a trip for NYC on Friday, so we talked about that and about the friend she had signed up for the trip with who was not being friendly now at all and how miserable that would be, and I told her not to take any shit and just slap her upside the head if she kept it up.  It might not have been the right thing to say to my mother, not a good thing to put into her head, for she has a temper sometimes and does not take much from other people. 

We hugged and I told her to have fun. 

I went to pick up Thai.  It was almost eight when I got into the house, tired and lacking physical exercise.  I opened a beer and put the food on a t.v. tray and turned on the television.  "Darjeeling Express" was just coming on HBO.  I hadn't seen it since it was released, and I love Wes Anderson movies, so there was that.  When it was over, though, I felt it was perhaps his least successful film, but maybe it was me. 

I cleaned up the kitchen and threw away my food containers and went to answer emails.  There was nothing good there.  A model wanted to know when she could get her print.  A girl I might shoot with this weekend was complaining about her ex/boyfriend.  One can never tell.  I took an hour then and cooked up an image to send to one of the recent models I had shot with, then I turned down the lights and headed to bed.  I brushed my teeth and came out of the bathroom and something came whooshing through the room startling me.  I had forgotten that the cat was in the house.  She hasn't been in at night for so long. . . . I asked her if she wanted to go outside for the night, but she was uncertain, so I left her in.  In bed, I opened up my iPad but was too tired to read, so I texted the maybe model with the ex/boyfriend.  Just now, I can't remember where that went, but it seems we are still on for the shoot.  I don't think I was a clever writer, lacking verve and panache.  Or so it felt.  And so I said goodnight (it was fun, at least, to have someone to say goodnight to), shut everything down, and went to sleep. 

Sometime later, I was awoken by something hissing (?) and a thumping on the wall.  WTF???  It sounded as if a large animal was being killed by another animal. 

"Hsshh (thump), hssh (thump). . . hssssshhhhhh (thumpthumpthump)!" 

It went on and on.  Where was it?  It sounded like the "hssshhh" was coming from outside.  I was too asleep to get up to look.  So I lay there, eyes closed, listening to the sound of dying, I supposed.  I would look for the carcass in the morning.  I thought about what the plumber had said about the graveyard under my house.  A lot of skeletons.  I guess you can accumulate a lot from 1926 until now. 

Then there were the final weak death throes.  Then silence.  I fell back to sleep. 

In the morning, I woke too early and felt it.  I haven't had a good night's sleep for days, and I knew how this one would feel.  I put my feet on the floor and looked around.  There was the cat.  I went into the bathroom and. . . checked my email, etc.  Yea, I took my iPad.  Then I walked into the kitchen and fed the cat, put on my flip-flops, and went outside to see what I would see. 

Nothing.  Not a corpse, not a sign of a struggle anywhere.  Nothing.  "Jesus," I thought, "what if it was under the house?"  Could there have been a fight for life in the dark there?  I imagined something like a boa constrictor grabbing a possum.  Nothing made any sense.  It is just another of the many mysteries I encounter here on a monthly basis.  Haunting, really. 

I went back inside and grabbed a paper towel.  My nose was running and my throat felt sore.  I was certain I had a low-grade fever.  Great.  I knew it was the Thai food.  This happens too often after I eat there.  I keep swearing never to go back.  I imagined the cooks blowing their noses into their hands and wiping them on their aprons.  I was certain of it.  Those are the only sort of certainties I have.  There aren't any good ones, though I would like for there to be. 

It was pleasant, though, to say "goodnight," even if it was only to someone reading a book and checking her iPhone.  There is potential there, I think, a more human version of "Her."  It is something I may wish to further explore. 

But that will have to be for another post.  I am sure I have gotten on your last gay nerve here by now. 

Good morning :)