Lucy On: Reading

This afternoon I lay on the back deck enjoying my break watching the neighbors across from us huddle in the corner of their balcony like the world was going to end as the husband puffed morosely on a cigarette and gazed at the concrete.

Adria didn't like him much. He only came out of his house to smoke and he wasn't very clean. His beard was all scruffy and never shaved and he wasn't very warm. He never said "hi" when Adria did. He would just stand there inhaling toxins and shuffle his feet a little and go straight back inside. I didn't like him much either.

Adria sat above me on the porch swing reading her new novel, The Weird Sisters by Elanor Brown. She told me she used to read a lot more when she was younger, but now she more often reads the newspaper or a news magazine or something. She doesn't have the patience to sit through a book and just read to read so much anymore, she said.

She still likes books, don't get me wrong, but she will skip around. It's like she collects them. "You should just have folks like Tolkien and Margret Mitchell and Joseph Heller and Harper Lee and all them in your house someplace, I don't really care where, but they should be there. Even if they are on the back of the toilet on top of a pile of Playboys or Field and Stream, but you know Lu?" she said, one day.

"Yes, dear, I do," I said silently.


 .......

She hadn't even finished the first page when I heard, "Damn, this chick is good!" I stirred. my ears flopped in the breeze.

"How old is she?" I heard a siren blare somewhere in the distance and sat up and looked at her.

"Yes, I'm aware." she said idly. "Somebody's in trouble, but it ain't us. I know how old you are. Go back to sleep."

I could hear her flip over to the back cover judging by the paper scraping her lap. "Forties. At least. Damn.  I was picturing younger by the writing style."

And she ambled inside to heat up lunch muttering about Brent Tarelton and The War and Tara.

Inside my head I thought of the only use for the word "war" I knew: "War is over/ If you want it/ War is over now, and so was break. Back to work!

Love,
Lu