A mystery

The papers kept piling up, and still there was no news. Zoe parsed every little note she received from the San Francisco branch office, but there was no secret sign, not even the tiniest typo or smudge, nothing personal at all. She was furious, and every night passing the growing pile of papers on her way out of the office had to stifle a wish to set the whole thing on fire. But she was a good girl and played along as if nothing ever happened. She didn't talk about San Francisco, she didn't think about San Francisco, and once or twice she forgot about it completely.

Avoid living next to dilapidated highrises

Alice's life was roadblocked by things falling on top of her head. When she was nine years old, she got hit by an icicle on her way to school. It had fallen off the rooftop of a five-storied building and gave Alice a horrible cut, a concussion, and a lifelong insterest in ice. She went on to become a nuclear physicist. Within a week of her graduation from univresity, she got assailed by a cigarette falling from the third floor balcony still lit. Her hair got badly singed in the back, but in the perpetrator she found the man who would eventually become her partner. They never married, but lived together for more than 47 years, when a flowerpot falling from the second floor window brought Alice's life to traumatic conclusion.

Smile

I met a woman from Cheshire today. She had a large smile and blond curly hair. We met at the planning meeting for our apartment building's community garden. She advocated planting hydrangeas and I voted for strawberries. They are not only beautiful and fast-growing, but also edible, moreover, nutritious. No matter how passionately I presented my arguments, her smile was bigger.

Photos

She never takes pictures. In fact, she doesn't even own a camera. She used to, once, but then it got lost on a bus or a plane or during the move. Whenever it comes up in conversation -- and it rarely does -- she always promises: "Next time somebody asks to see my photo album, I'll go out and buy a new camera." In other words, she believes that pictures are an imposition. At one point, she did own a single album containing mostly images of herself as a child. There was a picture or two of her parents and their dog who died when she was twelve; there were a couple of pictures of her ex-boyfriends -- the good break-ups; and a few of her married friends and their children -- those came in the mail with the annual Christmas greetings. Perhaps, the album got lost too or she forgot its location, because the photos from the last few Christmases had been piling up on top of her TV set. One day, a fire broke out in the apartment next door and all of her things got destroyed by smoke and water. She moved to a different place; her homeowners' insurance payed for the new furniture and clothes. The photo album? Who knows what happened to it. Maybe the fire destroyed it, maybe it got lost earlier, when she had first moved into that traitorous apartment.

Divine Travel

A freak accident occurred today at 3:25 pm on 101S between Wild Horse Canyon and Burnt Cork Road. A "Divinity Travel" bus transporting seminary students and future missionaries on their sightseeing trip of the California Missions collided with a cow. It is unclear how the cow managed to escape the barbed wire fence separating the pasture from the highway or why the bus driver did not notice the hazard. Witnesses report a lot of blood and prayer on the scene of the accident. One future missionary sitting in the front seat broke an arm. The search for the cow's relatives as of now continues.

God

With age, God developed a severe case of identity crisis. At first, he became convinced that he was not entirely real -- that he only existed within people's imaginations. However, after some years of soul-searching, he decided that imaginary existence was not altogether different from . . . well, that there was simply no other kind of existence. Then he also learned that he wasn't entirely sure whether he was a man or a woman -- after all he himself created woman, so at least some part of him must've been woman enough to conceive of one . . . But that was only the first symptom of complete personality breakdown. Some thought he was benevolent, others that she was merely omniscient, third pictured a tiny particle of an atom. Himself, God didn't know what to think -- especially since he depended so much on the opinions of others. God cried and shook his fists and had to be locked up in a mental institution for a while. He's still there, drugged up and tied to his bed, patiently awaiting discovery of some new behavior modifying psychotropic drug or philosophy.

Tar pits

The helicopter was circling directly above the tar pits, making the thick liquid bubble even faster. The air above the pits was rich with poisonous gases. It seemed milky white in the sunshine, clouding over the the black pools. The helicopter threw out a rope ladder, and a man in a business suit and holding a briefcase in one hand appeared at the top. The tar bubbled faster and faster as the helicopter hung over the easternmost side of the field while the man made his way down the ladder. The man seemed to be accustomed to such exercises and was on the ground in just a few minutes. We watched silently as he descended. We didn't yell out greetings or expressed our impatience in any way even though the whole show with the helicopter and the tar pits was completely unnecessary. All we needed to know was a "yes" or a "no" and that could've been communicated in a number of much simpler ways. It was a "no," we guessed correctly while he descended, and even though we had already reached a point of despair beyond the possibility of disappointment, the rage was still there. There was this man in his business suit and with his shiny black briefcase standing directly between us and the side of one of the largest tar pits in the field. The tar pit, the man, and our rage. We didn't really have to think about it, we acted as though we were a single body.

Swimming

I've never been the one for testing the water. Why bother? It's always going to feel cold at first, but if you just keep moving you'll warm up fast enough. I run in -- chest lifted, knees reaching up to my chin -- at full speed, splashing everyone around me on my way. Except on the Ocean Beach there's rarely anybody to splash. I run and I dive in, head first -- to wait is only to spread out the misery. Why be miserable if you can have fun instead? I've never understood that. She is like that though. She'll take an hour going into even the steaming bath water. "Don't rush me," she says. She is not a swimmer. I am not a swimmer as well, but at least I can make a great show of it. "And why should I be a swimmer?" she says, "It's bad for your skin." Which is generally true, and it's a good question.

Clothesline

She is never shy. If, during a conversation with a man she admires, her gaze happens to wander off his face it is not because she is afraid to meet the scrutinizing stare of his soft gray eyes. She looks away because she happens to notice clothes drying on a third floor balcony of a neighboring building, a pair of jeans and a casual blue striped shirt. "Look!" she points out the clothesline to her interlocutor, "Isn't this quaint, in this day and age?" He follows her gesture and notices a flock of pigeons perched directly above the freshly cleaned garments on top of the brick building. The sky is deep blue. The shirt is billowing in the wind. Unfathomably, the small bodies of the doves and the abruptly leaping movement of the striped cloth cloud his eyes with tears. She who is not shy chooses not to notice his emotion and continues to stare at the brick wall.

Double life

I bought him a little yellow book as a gift. The grill had been long fired up in the back yard by the time I showed up. There were a lot of people at this BBQ in honor of his promotion: his friends from the bank, the sailing club, neighbors. His wife was serving drinks. His son was also there shadowing his parents, passing the paper plates and picking up empty beer cans while pleasantly smiling at all the guests. It was very strange to realize that none of these people who knew this man as a successful banker and a happy head of family had ever read a single line of the wildly sensual poems he composed in his spare time. He had succeeded in creating a perfect double life for himself. I gave him my gift, ate a hamburger, and waited for some sort of a sign that he wanted to talk in private. He didn't. So I cornered him when he went upstairs to pick up more cheese from the fridge and told him I wanted to talk about poetry. "Sorry," he said, "I thought I could do it, but I really can't. I'll just see you back at the bookstore, alright?" So I left. It's really too bad, this guy has a gift with words, if only he could make time for what is truly important!

Penguins

The third time my computer crashed today was when I clicked to open an email from the woman I'd been secretly in love with for the past two and a half years. The window lit up my screen for a moment long enough for me to catch the words "tomorrow" and "penguin" -- and then the machine took a deep sigh and powered down. I was left just sitting there, staring at the blank and dusty monitor. I got up and took a couple of turns around the office, counting to 105. A lady in the cubicle next door was having a coffee, so I had a cup too. I told her about my plans to go to the zoo tomorrow. Then I came back to my desk and hit the "on" button again. I played with my fingers while the computer tried to untangle its own internal mess. Finally, I was able to run the email program. My heart was pumping. But it turned out to be absolutely nothing. She wanted to have dinner at the zoo tomorrow night, and she was also very excited to see the penguins again. That was my fate. I loved her and she loved the penguins.

Tetris

The other day, I saw a woman playing tetris at a concert. Yes, yes, in our club; I was running up and down to the bar to get the drinks, and she was sitting on the stairs playing some sort of a game -- looked like tetris to me -- on her treo. Can you believe it? I almost tripped on her purse, too. She wasn't very old or anything, and I think she was there with her boyfriend or husband or whatever. And we had an awesome band that day, this Norwegian girl, she was rocking, and she had this really cute accent and pony tails. People were going crazy. And this woman was just sitting on the stairs for close to an hour; at the end I had to ask her to leave. Yeah, it just got to me, you know? The place was getting really crowded and there was this woman in the middle of it all bored out of her mind. I say, she shouldn't have come there in the first place, but if she was already there, she should've just got over herself and tried to have a good time, you know? Makes sense to me!

Bread-and-butter

Minna always started her day with the bread-and-butter test. She always suspected that the method affected the outcome. Is it ever possible to have a good day when you go to work hungry? Forty-five minutes in the car on a single cup of coffee -- only to find that the last remaining office banana had been half-eaten by the ghost of an intern who roamed around the building from 12:31 am until 5:59 am every single morning. Minna drank more coffee and organized meetings about work loads and schedules and courteous office behavior. On good butter-up days, she watered the flowers in conference rooms and hallways and ordered take-out lunch for everyone, including the ghost.

Butter Ball

Once upon a time, there lived a little Butter Ball. One day he decided to take a walk outside. "Don't go," his mother said. "You're so sweet and tender, somebody is going to bite off a piece of you." But Butter Ball didn't listen to his mother and insisted on going out. "Don't go," his father said. "You're too soft! Somebody is going to step on you and squash you." But Butter Ball wasn't easily scared, so he rolled for the door. "Go, go, if you please," his sister yelled after him. "But don't come crawling back here once you're all covered in mud!" So Butter Ball went outside, and . . . nothing happened. It had been snowing that night, and the streets weren't cleaned yet. Butter Ball rolled around the block and came home lightly covered with white flakes. Everybody was very happy, but he only wanted to go out again.

Pretend winter

Cold ocean wind slaps her cheeks red, and so the reflection in the bathroom mirror whispers to her that she is in love. She trembles in fear. The spring is coming; will she succumb to the fever and melt?

Two men

There are two men on our street who specialize in random acts of kindness. One cleans people's porches of unwanted take-out menus and newspapers. The other buys bouquets of flowers and gives them to strangers. For a while, the second man would leave single flowers on people's doorsteps; but then the first man would go around and pick them all up and dump them into a compost bin. So the second man had to adjust: he started wrapping the flowers in paper and attach little notes to the bow. The first man never touches the wrapped bundles with personal notes stuck to the bow.

A mattress

My husband went out to get the Sunday paper this morning and returned with the report that there was a man lying on the ground in front of the house next door and at the same time a few doors down the street somebody had thrown out a mattress and a box spring. "How strange, don't you think?" my husband said contemplatively. But we live in a big city where a scene like this is barely acceptable even as social commentary. I could see that my husband was trying to figure out a way of getting the man to use the facilities so randomly provided. He did not bother even to voice this thought. I finished my cup of coffee and went outside to look. The man was gone, but the mattress was still there. It is still here now or at least was a few minutes ago when I returned home from a friend's house. I examined it from all sides, both the mattress and the springs, and I have to say they are not in a very bad shape. I wonder why somebody would throw out things like that. My husband and I could definitely use something like this for our own bed. As it is, the garbage pick up on our street is not until Tuesday, so I hope somebody will get a good-night's sleep out of it yet.

Mr. Brewster and a little girl

Mr. Brewster was under a lot of stress at work, putting in long hours and skipping lunches. On Sunday -- his only day off -- he ate pork pie and fell asleep in the afternoon. He lay on his bed, face down, on top of a pie-filled stomach, and dreamed of a sunlit afternoon in the countryside. He was a little girl in a printed dress, all alone on a grassy patch in the middle of a forest. He, the girl, was absolutely happy and didn't need anything else in the world. When Mr. Brewster didn't show up for work the next morning, everybody thought he got sick. At the end of the week, somebody heard that he was in a hospital. In the following month two competing rumors circulated around the building: he was either dead or in a mental institution. But then one day he showed up at his desk again as if nothing had happened and, when pressed, jokingly told us that he'd been abducted by aliens. He was significantly leaner and worked up a nice set of biceps.

The art of floating in water

Every evening she stood in front of her ancient stove and concocted disasters. Two pimply toads and a head of cabbage boiled together with plenty of pepper and salt -- and Mr. Dashboard, the upstairs neighbor, falls down the steps and breaks a leg. Turnips roasted with a dead cat's tail, coated in olive oil and sprinkled with parsley -- and a tornado tears out that beautiful cherry tree on the corner, the one that was just starting to bloom. On special occasions like half-moons and particularly wintry nights, she'd prepare a disease for herself: a nasty cold or a mild bronchitis, so that she could lie in bed for two or three days and have a particularly good reason to pity herself. "Oh dear you," she'd say patting her own cheek after a nasty cough spell, "nobody in the world cares for you, nobody in the world loves you." When she felt better, she celebrated by baking a chocolate cake and feeding it to rats and rabbits. She could never keep her rats fat enough for business.

Fries

Marjorie's hand instinctively reached into the trashcan, where amidst the soiled facial tissues and paper towels shimmered a plateful of curly fries. Softly rounded, soaked in oil and fried to golden perfection potatoes were still warm, warm enough to flood the entire bathroom with their distinctly sweet and earthy odor. A few of them were lightly coated in ketchup. Marjorie could already see herself grabbing one from the top and stuffing it into her mouth. She already envisioned he satisfaction of feeling something crunchy and moist on her tongue. But the paper towels! The tissues! The trash can! She pulled out and slapped her hand against the sink. For the rest of the afternoon, as the ladies in the office tried to pinpoint the identity of the perpetrator who left a plateful of curly fries in the co-ed bathroom, Marjorie quietly enjoyed her own heroic abstinence.

Food

I watched her eat. She took two small bites and chewed them tentatively, then pushed her plate away as if she had detected a deadly poison on her palette and was anxious to throw up. When she returned from the bathroom, she didn't touch the food again. She picked up her cup of tea and held it in both hands, sniffing it once in a while and pretending to drink. Her date was chatty and didn't notice a thing.