catfish 35

 I suppose it could have been worse, but it could have been better.  The United States, with all its riches and technologies has no far had more deaths than any other country.  The bad part of the disease percolating at a low level indefinitely is that it is mutating all that time and likely there will be a strain that the vaccines won't work on.  

The dilemma over the filibuster is pretty exciting to me. and what is Old Joe Manchin thinking talking about bipartisanship?  Is he part of that UFO fad?  

But soft, it is a summer morn and the balcony calls for me so here is the latest on Catfish. 

It was my full intention when I got back to call the realtor guy, but I didn’t have his number.  Damn Gina had all the paperwork.  But there had been a For Rent sign on the lawn, and I was pretty sure there had been a phone number on it.  All I had to do was walk out there, and that’s what I started out to do, but as I was on my way I got to thinking.  I got to thinking about all the effort I had put into Gina and this would be throwing it all away by dumping the new apartment.  And I got to thinking about that Darling stuff too, how we had called each other that, and how good it had felt.  And then I got to thinking about that Denise thing.  Shit, what a kibosh that would put on everything. 

 Well who knew?  Ron did, but he didn’t move in the same circles as Gina, and Itch knew.  He’d said his lips were sealed, but he was always behind that bar, and you had to talk about something, and there was that thing between him and Gina.

 Shouldn’t make a move when you don’t know where you’re going. I knew that.  But there I was that afternoon at Gina’s apartment ringing her bell.  She was going to find out sooner or later, and probably it would be better if I just came out with it, or something like it.  I’d been lonely, I was drunk, she’d reminded me of Gina, the way she tossed her hair, I was drunk, I had missed her so much, I was like a crazy man, and then she had tossed her hair just so.

 Needed a little work, I knew that, but I’m a good improviser. Looking into her face I could probably come up with something,

 No answer at first.  Well I had to carry this through, didn’t want to spend the night in the bunkhouse tossing and turning and worrying.  Pushed the button again, pushed it long and pushed it hard, and there she was in a bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head, and though I couldn’t tell from behind the door, she was be misty and smelling of sweet bathroom stuff.

 “Gina,” I said as she opened the door and she was as misty and perfumey as she had looked from the other side of the door and I had trouble remembering the first part of my speech.

 “Darling,” she said and her arms were around me, those sweet soap perfumey moist pink arms.

 Well shit, the speech could wait.  “I’m so glad you came,” she said leading me upstairs into her apartment. “I was afraid that you were mad at me.”

 “Gina, I could never be mad at you,” I answered, though I was a little disappointed that our entrance stopped at the kitchen, just a doorway short of her bedroom.

 Still she was magnificent in her soft robe, black curls rolling down from her towel turban, giving me that sideways glance.  She let the shoulder of her robe drop a little, I dived right in and she let me nibble a little bit, but then she had my chin in her hand and was looking down at me.  “So then what is it that I’ve heard?” she wanted to know. 

 “Heard?” I asked, coming up from the moistness of her shoulder to the dark of her eyes.  Damn, how had this gotten out so fast?  Itch, it had to have been Itch, that son of a bitch.

 “It’s all a bunch of shit,” I’d start out with that.

 “Really?  So you didn’t put down that deposit?”

 Deposit?  Oh yeah that.  “Absolutely.  I did not do that.  Not a penny.  Not a red cent.  Never even thought about it, never crossed my mind.”

 “They called me this morning.”

 “Those chiselers, those fuckers, they have a lot of nerve.”

 “They fixed that flue thing.  It was just a bird’s nest, they poked it out.”

 “Poked it out?”

 “Clean out, no more birds, no obstruction, fireplace works now, what they told me.”

 “What happened to the birds?”

 “Flew away I suppose.”

 “They didn’t have any eggs?”

 “I don’t know.”

 Felt kind of bad for those birds.  Stupid I guess, birds are birds, they get along like the rest of us, shit happens to all of us.

 “I think we, I think you, should take it.”