Chapter Seventy-Nine
I think it was spring. That’s what the calendar said. Of course there was a chance of snow Thursday through Monday, whose graphic I first misinterpreted as lightening instead of snowflakes. Did I say I still had 20/20?
“So I’m going to go around to all the Catholic churches and nail the 95 theses on their doors next Sunday.”
Joe cuddled Snuggles up by his face in the moment of silence that followed.
“Uh…”
“What?”
“You know that was Reformation Day, right?” Carrie asked him from the other room.
“Oh, yeah… Ha. KSDK reports – ‘Confused man arrested for vandalizing churches on wrong holiday’.”
Maybe confused on account he had just spent an evening baking brownies with Jaya and watching “The Guns of Navarone”. Twitterpation will do that to a chap. They had plans for their first dinner date in New Town that night. He also had a lunch date with The Bear. Mentioned something about driving out to California with Aristotle… Busy, busy man.
“Where’s Madeline?”
It was time for Joe to tote the felines back to Rose’s apartment. Stinkerbelle had done plenty of damage already. Dark red scratches on Linnea’s arms. Puck waved around his magnetic wand attached to a pile of paper clips. Some of those paper clips went inside the wood house Mom had put in the Puck and Grandma Box. She had attached a light bulb apparatus inside it to make the cottage glow.
“Look at those paper clips, Mom,” Puck grinned at me, opening the door to the back of it where he had stashed the clips by the bulb. “Looks like they’ve got some big work to do in there, doesn’t it?”
Rose was in Jamaica. We hoped. Grandma Snicketts needed more groceries. Naturally Dad, Mom, and/or Carrie-Bri bring them to her every week or every other week whenever she calls with a new list. So Puck and I joined in on that fun. In roaming the aisles… we’d never actually made a cat toy purchase for Crackers in her eleven months of life. So when we found this fat dalek-shaped sapphire blue “fuzzi squeaki spungi chewi floati squishi velveti bounci smooshi” stuffed-with-catnip “sprong”, we couldn’t pass it up.
Snowflakes fluttered in the sun. We were in for strange weather. Carrie fixed a chick pea cilantro avocado spread on toasted whole grain French bread for lunch. Again, I ate. Francis, still feeling a little low and tired from the week, collaborated with Puck for soft pretzels in the microwave. Francis and Carrie were napping on the couches an hour later or whatever. Puck carefully affixed jeweled cross stickers to his cottage. A dollar find at “the bad place”…
“The crosses should not be like that,” he told me, with judgment. “Because the presence of God… they shouldn’t be fancy, because in the presence of God, because they’re in the presence of God. You’re not supposed to have fancy crosses. Because that’s what God died on.”
“Well, I think they do that out of respect…”
“Well, I do not.”
Joe drove back for a run before dinner. Carrie poured red, green, and white tortellini into boiling water.
“I dare you to eat this,” Joe told Puck, holding up a raw cabbage leaf.
He ate it. Joe, not Puck.
“Puck, you want to read for a little bit?” I asked, sensing some extra energy rolling.
“No, thanks. I’m just gonna daydream for a little while about the noodles I’m going to be eating.”