Next: Just Desserts
The sun shone from its 10 o’clock position in the morning sky. It glinted off car windshields, warmed the pavement, and heated Buddy’s T-shirt like a soothing compress. His anger had rendered the air inside the Looner Module unbreathable, contaminated with malignant spores that infected his lungs, reminding him of his childhood asthma.
He had to get out of there. Recuperate.
“Sort things out,” he decided. Not only with Leanne, but with life in general.
“Stop with the obfuscation,” he growled. With Andrea too.
So he’d cruised Oak Street, until he hit upon an open cafe, Nic’s. The day was unseasonably warm, and he decided to sit in one of the wicker backed chairs fronting the sidewalk just outside the cafe’s plate glass window. It felt good, sitting there, eyes half closed, legs stretched as far as possible, but not far enough to trip up anyone passing by. The interlude was… Restorative, he figured. As if he could simply drift back to some semblance of normal, whatever that might be.
Perhaps you don’t really want to ‘get back to normal’.
The thought puzzled him.
Not even a ‘new normal’?
Buddy tried to calm himself, to still his troublesome speculations by slipping into an immobilizing trance. But his doubts persisted, a species of pollen that settled on his skin and made him itch. Not that he wanted to be abnormal—at least not in any obvious way. His modus operandi had always been to hover on the periphery, like a hummingbird on silent wings.
How angelic!
Perhaps the place he wanted to be was shooting for normal without ever actually getting there—the guy on the tight rope, whose ideal of equilibrium was a state of constant refocusing and correction…
Off to his left, clinking, crinkling sounds? And the low hum of a haggard voice. Buddy opened his eyes and tilted his head toward the intrusion, filling in the lyrics to the murmured song as he took in the scene…
Hey, I put some new shoes on And suddenly everything is right I said, hey, I put some new shoes on And everybody's smiling, it's so inviting
But it wasn’t Paolo Nutini sashaying down Oak Street’s sidewalk to the upbeat tune; it was a tramp, a bulging garbage bag full of cans and bottles slung over his shoulder, two-stepping as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Buddy smiled at the man’s ecstatic meme.
Then laughed out loud, looking at the man’s shoes.
Mine! he thought. “They’re mine!”
“Whuzzat? the fellow asked, looking down at Buddy, still swaying and shuffling to the beat.
The pants, too. And the jacket. Even the guy’s green bowler hat had once occupied a space in Buddy’s closet, part of that costume he’d got up for that St. Paddy’s Day party, and which hadn’t put on top of his head for more than a decade since—not even when he discovered it in the green garbage bag Leanne had packed for him.
“What’s yours, Mister?” the guy asked.
“Nothing!” Buddy flummoxed, “You just reminded me of someone I once knew with that tune of yours.”
“Yer welcome,” the man soft-shoed on his way. “Hope it was a good memory…
Oh, short on money, but long on time Slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine And I'm running late and I don't need an excuse 'Cause I'm wearing my brand new shoes
Cause you’re wearing my tossed-out shoes, Buddy chimed in, then thought, wherever you go, there you are.
Next: Just Desserts