Could you imagine your last day, last moment on this planet?
Yesterday was a gloomy day, as gloomy as it could be. There were many gloomy days lately. Lisa knew that the new day, which was about to break, would not be cheerful either. And she felt, she knew, no, she was certain, that no matter what she will attempt today - she will fail. Failure was her middle name, as her mother used to say. Often Lisa was thinking whether she is a failure because it was her mother’s beliefs and expectations, or maybe all the way around, and her mother was right. And maybe it was time to prove her mother and herself wrong and make this new day a success after all.
She looked into the darkness of her window; she was suddenly interrupted by a familiar hooting “who-cooks-for-you”. The gray owl was laughing at Lisa again. “No one cooks for me, and no one ever did, you stupid bird” Lisa shouted back. But the owl was asking the question indifferently over and over again.
Like a bad omen she was there for weeks, just sitting on the birch tree and hooting in the direction of Lisa’s window, waking her up at an ungodly hour, interrupting the stupor of her sleep.
Normally Lisa would get up and find something to throw at the window; usually it would be a shoe or a pair, but not today. Today is a special day and Lisa enjoyed the owl’s company and her annoying hooting, which other times freaked her out.
Mornings were not her favorite time of the day. Like every depressed and heavily medicated person, Lisa’s favorite time was night and favorite activity was sleeping. Sometimes she thought it is funny to try to cure depression with stupor, induced by medication. After the years of indulgence, her mind was feeble of logic and stripped of almost the last drop of will.
She was off her meds for exactly two weeks. And it was not a good sign. It had happened in the past and usually she would end up in a Psychiatric ward of the local hospital with a mental melt down for months at a time. She did not mind those months, she knew the nurses and doctors; she knew how to manipulate them to her advantage. Doctor Cokato, nice Indian dude, had a name for it “borderline personality disorder”. But it did not bothered her too much, on the contrary, it sounded like something fashionable.
Lisa was thirty five years old: single, overweight (mild description of reality), spiritually and otherwise a broken young woman. She lived in a one bedroom cheap apartment that was paid by the government.
Her next door neighbor was a middle aged man, whose name she did not know, because everyone called him Loxy. And he lived there many years before she moved in. He had a Siamese cat with a simple name “Cat”. Cat was a house creature, and somehow one night, he decided to run for his freedom. He found it a few yards away, in the middle of the street, flattened by the wheels of a truck. It was the ugliest scene, Lisa has ever seen. During his life the Cat was white, fat and obnoxious, but, that day, on the street he was flat and brown-pinkish-red in color, with his intestines mixed with their content next to his fur.
Loxy was heartbroken. Usually he did not annoy his neighbors with visits, but those few days he was on Lisa’s doorway a few times a day, mourning his loss and adding to Lisa’s misery.
She was falling asleep while the sun was crawling over the horizon into a new day. Her eyeballs start to move rapidly behind closed eyelids and her fingers on her right hand slightly twitched as she was petting the, still alive, Cat in her dream. And then she ran with him through the green fields, dipping her bare feet into the silky cold grass beaded with the morning dew. Cat was running alongside, they were happy and free. With that feeling, Lisa drifted deeper into her sleep and the thread of her dream dissolved into shimmering dust and the dust disappeared into nothing…..
A loud impatient knock on the door woke her up. “Just a minute” she shouted from her bed, trying to prevent the next series of knocks that painfully vibrated in her head, bouncing from side to side. “Just a minute”, she repeatedly reassured to the early intruder.
“Lisa it is me” Loxy’s voice behind the door. “I got you a coffee…”
Lisa opened the door and let him in. To her dissatisfaction she noted that he had two cups nested in a cup holder. She sighed heavily. “Start my day with your misery, sure, why not” she thought, and that thought sounded surprisingly cheerful to her. In the back of her head she glimpsed of a fleeting thought that “misery likes a company”, that just had arrived with a coffee in his hands.
“I hope you don’t mind” bragged Loxy.
“C’mon, in… Not at all” she replied, thinking “Man, give me a fucking break with your fucking cat”
They walk to the kitchen. The table was littered with unrelated things: leftover bagel, dirty glass with dried white streaks of milk on the outside, a DVD with a few crinkled candy wrappers on the top, a spoon, appropriate but not a related object. Lisa extended her hand to move the mess aside, increasing the density of the chaos. Loxy pulled the cups from the holder, extended one cup for Lisa “cream and sugar, as you like” and put the cup holder on the table. “More mess” she thought with disgust, and then “who cares”.
She was silent and distant, pretending to be attentive while he was rehearsing his loss and pain over and over again… they finished the coffee in silence. “I would be going” Loxy said.
“Have a great day,” she replied. “Thanks for the coffee. Hey Loxy!” she suddenly remembered “I have something for you”. Lisa got up, went into her bedroom and appeared shortly back with her finest possession, the bronze statue of a Egyptian cat that her aunt Tina, archeologist, brought for her, from her conference in Egypt, when Lisa was twelve years old. Lisa never let the statue leave her side, but today she felt that her neighbor is in grater needs.
Lisa extended her hand, Loxy extended his and they both stood there speechless for a moment, glued by the bronze cat in the middle. They looked into each other eyes with compassion and gratitude and two pair of eyes started to fill with tears… just for a moment.
“Thank you” all he could say.
“Enjoy” she pulled out her voice from somewhere painfully deep, below her diaphragm.
She did not bother to lock the door when he left.”He definitely would be back soon”.
She reached across the table, for a pack of cigarettes, searched for a lighter… found one by the stove and lit the cigarette. The warm of the smoke in her lungs was pleasurably transforming into nicotine and was readily absorbed into her bloodstream.
Lisa tilted her head, closed her eyes and indulged into her usual daydreaming. Today she was in her red organza daydream dress, light and beautiful; she was dancing: with high jumps and low sits, wind was blowing her long mahogany hair in all directions and drops of rain, upon touching her skin, vibrated with sounds… orchestra music for her performance. Imaginary people were stopping and tilting their heads up in bewilderment. From their perspective, she looked like a red cloud bouncing on the wire, stretched from one skyscraper to another. And then she saw herself slipping down and falling… her dress did not reminded her a red cloud anymore, but of a red saltiness of blood diffusing in a fresh water.
Her cigarette dropped on the floor from her relaxed hand and it brought her back to reality.
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