Can I Be Rare, Too?: KJ Hannah Greenberg Short Story Series, #5

Milk Thistle and Fenugreek

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While I’m the recipient of Happy Springs’ Senior Citizen Prize, I can’t comprehend why my art’s heralded as precious. Five year-olds can knock together found objects. True sandbox pals attribute value to most refuge, even stuff, which after being turrets and moats, is tossed aside as bottle caps, lost memory sticks, broken rubber bands, and paper clips-gone-wonky.

When my neighbor, Jim-Jam O’Neily, complimented me on how well I depicted local government corruption in my collage of toothpicks, orange peels, and tinker toys, I shrugged and walked away. I left him with some blue-tack over which to cogitate.

My fabrications are my means to politely repurpose my daughter-in-law’s leftovers. I figure I’m doing her a favor by transforming her kids’ food scraps and mismatched playthings into work I can sell for cab fare. It’s not my fault folks are dumb enough to buy it.

It is my intention, though, to make such art. The gallery owner gets his per cent, my grandchildren get excused from some of their chores, I make pocket change, and I am able to surreptitiously rearrange my son’s home.

Nonetheless, I ought never to have received acclaim for such poppycock. I wager every house, on every street, in every neighborhood, has tons of rubbish suitable for wall decorations. Besides, prestige causes problems.

Once, the so-called weight of my civic handiwork became the Green Party’s basis for hounding me. They wanted me to run, on their platform, for Congress. I wanted to continue spending my hours with my children’s children, with my mahjong ladies, and with my taekwondo class. Politics is the stuff of idiots.

Unfortunately, my family, who delights in elevated social standing, insisted I give it a go. Tanya bribed with a cake covered with indigo fondant. Robert reported how his coworkers’ jealousy made him feel virtuous. Susie-Q took lots of pictures and downloaded them to the Internet.

I snapped back about the red-letter day when I’d: show Robert’s boss where Robert had buried chipmunks and baby squirrels, tattle to Tanya’s husband about the beefcake magazines she hides in their master bathroom behind her tampons, and charge Susie-Q royalties based on hits per picture. Robert and Tanya backed down. Susie-Q, though, made up for their yellow-bellied inanity, that is, for their combined pusillanimousness, by hiring a slick PR dude to shadow me.

Kevin Brown was a nice eyeful, but entirely stupid. He derided my need for milk thistle and fenugreek, claiming I ought to augment my life insurance policy instead of chocking back herbs. He mocked my practice of yoga, too.

I had him help me with a beginner’s poomsae. When I accidentally kicked him in the head, he quit and billed Susie-Q for a year of chiropractor visits.

Shortly thereafter, I painted my nails violet and made a trip to Vegas with the gallery owner. He wasted his winnings on women. I redoubled mine by trailing after slot machine champions. In most situations, there are persons who abandon good stuff just ‘cause they think it’s junk.

It Depends

I refit a scourge into its slot in the wall. Business is booming. Only three more weeks of work at Kitty Kontroll Kastle and I’ll have made enough to take Howie on that trip to Koshkonong, Missouri. He wants to photograph sinkholes.

Scrolling through today’s appointments, I see Sherman Pletcher is next. Sherman pays large sums to watch me file my nails and ignore him. Given the holiday season, I think I’ll add something to our routine, gratis; I’ll apply pink enamel to two of my claws.

An hour later, a shivering, sweaty Sherman leaves the premises. He tips me double the usual amount and promises to tell his coworkers about my business.

I take a thirty-minute lunch break, during which time I call my married daughter, check in with my stockbroker, and feed the fish in the lobby tank. The bucktooth tetras are looking swollen and the largest goldfish has gone missing.

No matter. Johnny Smith is next on my schedule. He almost always brings along surplus from his pet store. Today, too, he does not disappoint.

Johnny’s gig is hair. He has facial scruff that rivals no one’s, but the stuff that sprouts from his head is abundant enough for three or four fellows. Last week, we did a relaxed fishtail. I am going to surprise him with a ponytail plait this time.

Mr. Smith, too, leaves as a satisfied customer. I have no idea what I’ll do, though, with the basket of kittens, which was his tip.

Vyacheslav Olegovitch is slotted for two in the afternoon. Vyachi is a self-made man. His millions bloom from his gym franchise. Vyachi seeks my services because it gives him a kick to pay to teach someone how to improve their strength and endurance. He’s pricy when working in his own empire, costing more than four hundred per hour for personal training, but he’s generous in private. That dude decided that teaching me calisthenics would be his annual charitable act.

I’m cool with a Ukrainian hunk giving me money to keep me in shape. However, since I my establishment is drug and alcohol free, Vyachi never gets varenukha here. On balance, I supply that muscle man with a hot cup of water-based sbiten every time he visits.

When Vyachi leaves, I am sweating and shaking. I didn’t think a woman of my age could sustain a plank so long, let alone complete more than one hundred lunges.

Alan Kieven is next, luckily. Alan seeks nothing more than hearsay. To that man-boy and would-be international blogger, there is nothing sexier than canard wrapped up in a rhetorical basque.

Over the years, thanks to Alan, I have learned all sorts of impressive sayings and have added a full college degree’s worth of vocabulary to my brain. Of course, I accommodate him when, once in a great while, he asks to try on blindfolds or to practice putting handcuffs on the edge of my favorite chair. Alan is an easy and mentally stimulating client. I ought to pay him.

Leland Brown, a pastry chef, too, is a regular. He unfailingly books appointments, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday for the hour between the end of his shift and his commute home. Leland’s joy is puff pastry. He actually showers money on me to eat those delicacies fresh from his bakery. Leland asks only that he be restrained while I inhale his glorious calories. He says it’s worth my inflated price to witness someone appreciate his creations.

I don’t think a bulimic would be able to relieve that man. Even though I’m relatively healthy, in general, and normal in my eating habits, more specifically, my blood sugar takes a full day to stabilize after each of his visits.

Around five, I take time off for dinner and to shop online. Every other day, I have Meat and Herbs drop off groceries to my apartment door. I also use the Internet to make sure that dry cleaning, newspaper delivery, and other sundry tasks get completed; it would be horrible for Howie if my long work hours cut into my domestic duties.

Evenings are my busiest time since most of my clients are office workers. Often, I get home after midnight. Uber’s private car hire has been a boon to me.

Wayne Matly, for instance, has booked, and put a deposit down on, all of my weekday seven o’clocks for the next three years. He says that talking to me is cheaper than therapy and that I am a lot prettier than his former analyst. Wayne claims that venting after work, but before getting home, has saved his marriage, and has made him a better dad.

He insists, nonetheless, that I stay completely covered while he exorcises his feelings and that we talk near the waiting room fish tank rather than in my office. That arrangement suits me as long as he clears the premises at least five minutes before my eight-thirty, Randolph Dans, shows up. Wayne often forgets about time when we’re together and it’s important to me that I get into costume before Randolph, a traditionalist, arrives.

Every other week, Randolph is followed by Ted and Ned Kadlec. Teresa and Natalie, as their mother named them, are shy twins. They hire me to teach them how to enliven their marriages. So far, we have gotten as far as how to unbutton the first three closures of a business shirt.

The trouble with the twins is that they are conflicted. Whereas they say to want to learn spice from me, half of our time is given over to their jib jab. Those sisters get so intensely caught up with each other’s lives and with their imaginings of how the human body works that I often have to stop our lessons. These days, I’ve accepted that they come into my shop as much to connect with each other as to pick up skills. I make sure the coffee pot is running before they arrive.

Once, I asked Ted and Ned how they manage to take so much time, on a regular basis, away from their busy households. They shrieked and giggled in answer, saying that their husbands thought they were enrolled in a dance class and that because their men feel guilty about having accomplished wives stay home to raise kids, their recreation plans never get questioned.

My eleven o’clock is sometimes filled by Bao. He’s a performance artist. Mimesis, he lectures at me, is all about subtleties. He’s offered me street status and nickel bags in exchange for my consent to filming our interactions. In response, I always offer him the door.

There are times when he doesn’t whine or wheedle about not being able to capture our activities for an audience. When he arrives high, I merely have to share with him any available YouTube home repair shows. He’ll stare contently at my smart phone’s screen for the better part of his hour.

Most often, I close up after Bao’s gone. Occasionally, I accept a twelve fifteen. Only one person is permitted in that slot. Her name is Annabelle Tanner.

Annabelle’s a street person. She pays me for her hour of warmth and for unlimited cups of Earl Grey, plus all of the leftovers I stash from Leland’s visits, with stories. She’s seen an alligator climb out of a sewer pipe, a cop give a drug runner most of a six pack of doughnuts, and the splat that used to be the person who jumped from one of our city’s highest buildings.

That wizened lady likes to try on my feather boas and six inch heels. We laugh together, too, as she pronounces her imagined uses for my chevalet and my sawhorse. Most of those applications are directed at the nasties that demand graft from the homeless. None of those visualizations include safe words.

When her session’s over, Annabelle helps me, while wearing the latex gloves I always insist that she don for her own protection, sweep up all manner of debris from both my office and my lobby. I wish I could afford to hire her, even on a part-time basis, to be my cleaning lady. I wish I could rent an apartment for her, or, in the least, cut through the red tape that keeps her from finding a spot in the nearest shelter. I wish, too, for world peace.

Sometimes, Annabelle eyes my stack of sleep sacks, mutters that it would be great if I could spare an old one, and that the bridge, under which she makes her home, is cold in the winter. If hydration was not a safety issue with such toys, I would gladly give her one.

Other times, she looks at my row of hobble skirts and asks if maybe I have an extra. Again, concern for her well-being makes me always answer no.

Tonight, at least, I have that basket of kittens from which she can make a choice. I give her the one she holds to her chest. I know that Annabelle’s baby cat will run away from her cardboard box and might, consequently, drown in the river. I can’t decide if providing Annabelle with a pet, anyway, is a kindness or cruelty.

After she leaves, I gently set the rest of the wee felines into a carton that I had punctured with holes. Howie will be surprised. What’s more, we will have to find a pet sitter for them while we visit Mammoth Spring’s karst system and otherwise gambol among the denuded peach trees of Oregon County’s December.

Evermore Blossoming

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Annually, for three decades, Örbrún and Geir met at Reykjavík Botanical Gardens’ manmade waterfall. Always, on the Wednesday before Maundy Thursday, Örbrún cancelled all of her elective surgeries and Geir locked up his office at Nói Síríus. Each time, Örbrún brought a thermos of jasmine dragon pearl tea, brewed overnight in the residents’ sleep room. Likewise, Geir continually brought chocolate bars filled with spicy pepper drops.

That year, as Geir rounded the corner where the pond would first come into view and the sound of squawking ducks and geese would first be heard, he saw a gaggle of school children with their teachers. There was no sign of Örbrún, though.

He walked passed the beds where the buttercups were just then pushing shoots through the still cold soil. In two months, the park would host a festival celebrating those blossoms.

Sometimes, Geir wished their tradition of love had been one of summer sunlight, not of springtime chill. However, his annual garden meeting with Örbrún could not be rescheduled. They experienced a special synergy of hearts and minds when they kissed during that season of ducklings, goslings, and yet unopened flowers.

By the time he reached the waterfall, the rain had renewed. He hitched his ullarsokkar higher and rebuttoned his lopapeysur. In a final, small gesture, he zipped his parka. Had it been early June, not late March, he would have been eating dainties with Örbrún in the green’s warm, dry café, Cup of Flora.

Eventually, Örbrún arrived. Her eyes flashed as they lit on Geir. His smile was still crooked. His cowslick still stood up near his left ear. His beard still grew as stubble. She reached to press herself to him.

When they paused to breathe, Geir regarded Örbrún. She was twice the size and half the vivaciousness that she had been when they were teens. She no longer bothered with jewelry or makeup, electing, instead, to regularly wear a uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. Nonetheless, in Geir’s esteem, there was no lovelier sight in the entirety of the garden.

Eventually, the two remembered their picnic. The rain was coming down was great intensity, but Örbrún spread the hospital sheet she had brought along, anyway.

Geir pointed to a purple crocus and said something about wishing to be allowed to pluck one for his beloved.

Örbrún pointed at a clump of Cetraria lichen and spouted something about wishing to be able to lay Geir down upon it.

He beamed as did she spoke.

She reflected his love.

By the time they left the garden together, their wedding bands glistened from water droplets. Smiling, they thought about their exchange of promises, formalized in that garden, so many years ago.

Didn't Kill 'em: A Musical Confession

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Didn't kill 'em.

Oh girl.

He didn’t take the trash out, again.

Make you sweat.

He’s not reliable.

Here and now.

Marriage was supposed to make it better.

Dangerous.

You listening to me?

Close to you.

And I’m pregnant!

Hold on!

Two months. Didn’t tell ‘em yet.

Vision of love.

You’re right. He’s okay. I’m not pregnant; we are.

Cradle of love.

That’s cooking. I think I’ll tell ‘em when he gets home from work.

Don’t know much.

You will, soon. Think Tony’s going to propose to you?

If wishes come true.

You deserve a good man.

Do you remember?

George? Ha! Dan, too. Tony’s beats them all.

Love takes time.

Say ‘yes’ when he asks.

Girl, you know it’s true.

Can I be in your wedding party?

What it takes.

I’m your best friend.

Forever.

Okay, I’ll tell Ramon. I’ll forgive him the trash cans, but just this last time.

Price of love.

I really wanted to kill ‘em. Such thwarted tenderness. Such a waste of a good morning.

Here we are.

Credit’s yours. Ramon owes you.

The king of wishful thinking.

For sure, but we had fun making this baby.

Free fallin.’

Hush. You’re embarrassing.

The humpty dance.

That’s going too far.

Can’t stop.

I can. Should I leave now?

Just between you and me ....

Yes?

Another day in paradise.

"Stop! I love you, Sis, but some things are private.

Epic.

Private.

Two to make it right.

Agent 5764’s Soured Mission

Jeremy was believed to be in so deep in that no one, not even 5765, could find him. Turns out we were mistaken. Jeremy proved to be a turncoat hedgehog of the worst sort. He was working for the international cadre of felines!

Chief, Code Blue. Willy, Wally, Sally, and Tali slipped from position. We’re in trouble. Over.

5764, I read you. Over.

Alley cats sighted. Over. Moggies seem to be more effective in neutralizing agents than in neutralizing falling acorns, pinecones projectiles, or visiting dignitaries. In 2010, a clowder deactivated Koningbed. Whereas one of his littermates assumed his station, an accident, involving a hungry Irish Setter, took her out.

Code Bluish Grey. The cats found Willy, Wally, Sally and Tali. Over.

5764, deny all knowledge. If captured, you’re obliged to bite that pill. Instant death. Over.

Bunnies and gophers! If I hadn’t been delayed by jock itch, we’d still have a prickle of assistants. I don’t want to die. I can’t; someone has to make sure that Tali’s family receives his pension. He worked for the Service for half of his life.

I loathe Jeremy. I loathe this clime’s heat, I was, from the get go, distracted by the fungus sprouting on my personal parts. 

5764, do you read? Over.

I read. Over. This process, which Big Fur is chaperoning, of making peace between Hola Valley Spore and Jordanian Dust Mites, is getting expensive per agents’ deaths.

5764, stay out of sight. Over.

I ought to have read the briefing paper prior to boarding Big Fur’s aircraft. Instead, I had my snoot on the bulletins about dirty bombs. While the locals seem to favor IWI Tavors, the rebels prefer Molotovs crammed with nails and stones.

Ten prickles’ worth of soldiers, plus additional squadrons of field-savvy fighters, allegedly, secured the streets. My team was to provide backup and to secure select sidewalks.

Intentionally, we sacrificed a few parakeets to the cause. Those second class citizens hadn’t observed any cats. Rather, it had been an insurgent rock hyrax that did them in. That critter must have had rabies to try to eat friends of hedgehogs.

Inhaling, I evaluate the goings on. The enemy’s Special Forces are in cohorts with Jeremy’s league. There is no other explanation for the demise of Willy, Wally, Sally, and Tali. Those operatives had had the best, most reliable intelligence.

What’s more, half of an hour ago, when Big Fur’s motorcade started, Sammy and Pammy were parked in front of a hospital. They, too, failed to sight the dumpster cats. They, too, had been switched off.

Sammy and Pammy remained wormy while standing guard. A nasty parasite, found only in these lands situated between the Mesopotamia River and