Friday, August 29, 2008

Hortense Eugénie Cécile

The publishing house that published Popular Mechanics was still awaiting the shamble leg man’s overdue payment, now totaling, with accrued interest, 27½ dollars and 3 cents. As he had no intention of reading the Popular Mechanics they kept sending him, regardless of his arrears, he made a note to forget that he was in arrears and owing the publishing house the amount stated on the invoice, the very same invoice he had been sent 4 times to no avail. Mornings like this one made the shamble leg man drowsy and indolent, so, doffing his make-believe hat, he bid a farewell to all thought of accomplishing anything of value.

That morning the harridan awoke to a teasing pain, her back having bent over double while she slept in a heap of old linen and sour memories. As she pried herself from bed, stirring, she noticed a bird twittering on the window sill, a cozen warbler. The cozen warbler was known for its trill chirrup and quisling distemper. She shooed the bird from the sill and went about her toilet. The harridan disliked sharp piercing sounds, as her childhood had been chock-o-block with them. The harridan, now unstirred, remembered a slattern named Hortense Eugénie Cécile who worked in a casinò in Ancona Marche Italy. She had long silken curls the colour of buttermilk and eyes so blue they seemed impossible. The harridan read about her in an Italian caricatore she found in the trash bin behind the Greek Deli. Hortense Eugénie Cécile lived in a room upstairs in the casinò, where she kept all her worldly belongings, a pale blue dress with taffeta frills, two pairs of socks, two blouses, one red one turquoise, a pair of patent leather clogs and a table lighter she’d pilfered from the dining room downstairs. Hortense Eugénie Cécile was known as the best kisser in the casinò, the other girls known for their attachment to sweets and backstabbing.

That morning after the harridan had made her toilet, she put on her favorite pale yellow dress, the one she’d found in the trash bin behind the Waymart, and set out to find the man in the hat, who the day before had promised to show her how to make curlicues out of toothpicks and common balled string. She passed the alms man, who was sitting cross-legged on his swath of cardboard, eyes darting to and fro counting the number of cracks in the sideway, then she hurried by the legless man, who was busy scouring the stump-ends of his legs with a wire brush, his face red as the night sky before a rainy day, then finally to the park behind the aqueduct where she was to meet the man in the hat at 27½ minutes past noon.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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