Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Mad Departures

   He sat in the armchair by the window, looking out at the silver bit of moon hanging in the sky. His breath came out in short bursts from his mouth, fogging and unfogging the window with each exhale. She came over and ruffled his hair, disrupting his angst-filled reverie. "Why don't we go out tonight? To McGaffery's Pub or Angela's party?"

   "You know, I'm still made at you for all the melodramatic ways you've left parties this year since the fourth of July.", He replied

  "Pffft! Melodramatic? Name one time," She demanded, "I"m cool as a cucumber, Drama is a class I got a D in. Name one event, time or place you could remotely link me to so-called drama and festivities."

   "Okay for starters, December 10th at Jason's 80's party. Not only did you steal Jason's screwdriver from the garage-"

   "I maintain that the screwdriver was a party gift."

"No one gifts tools to party goers, except in the case of woodworking or graduation parties. Continuing on- you then used the aforementioned tool to remove the coat-rack from the entrance way. After which you departed the party with coat-rack plus many jackets belonging to all the blissfully ignorant party-goers. And your reasoning, if I recall correctly, was that you could not find your coat."

   She didn't have a retort, but instead left his side and crossed the room to put the needle onto the groove of the record, letting music flow into their apartment again. "You have to admit though, it had to have been pretty funny to see their faces when all the coats were gone."

   He laughed, "That part was priceless, you're right. But what about Martha's birthday?"

  "I remember it being a party with a lot of pizzaz. I had a great time, marvelous even.", She replied swaying to the beat.

   "Oh it was a great party, up until we were singing 'Happy Birthday' and just as Martha was about to blow out the candles you cried, 'Not this time!' and flung the entire sheet cake off the table onto her kitchen wall."

   She held up two fingers, "Here are the problems with that one: first that cake had hazelnuts, which we both know Martha is deathly allergic to. Second: that wasn't even a departure."

  "Hmm, well, yes in the end you could have handled the cake debacle more discretely, but it did save Martha. And no that wasn't a dramatic exit, but after throwing the cake you covered all the shoes on the floor-mat with your cake covered hands. Then you slammed the door and dashed out into the night."

  She held up her hands in self-defense, "Nobody likes to have cake hands. No one."

  "Fair point, but can you possibly explain away that night at Jeremy Atterton's house when we were celebrating his submission of his doctoral thesis on the quantum mechanics of quarks under the the influence of melodic sound waves."

  "That thesis paper...Jeremy did something revolutionary with that one.  Although he still won't admit it, I believe he was testing his hypothesis he posited in his paper by subjecting us to unique melodic structures to see what we would do when our bodies reacted in a quantum fashion."

     "Really? It was our bodies reacting in a quantum fashion, was it?  Let's see here, you ripped the leather covvering off half his couch, took off your top and swung it around your head then took his fig tree and threw it through the dining room window. We were in a bit of a state of shock at this point, but that didn't mean you were done. You jumped through that same window the fig tree had just been defenestrated from, then you lit the tree on fire and sang 'I'm the emerald queen of fig tree fires!' "

   "Elevator music will do a hell of a number on a girl when played outside of an elevator, "She winked, "Besides, Harry, the party was more than a little stiff, the air was just about filled with fabric starch. I was just breathing a little life into things."

  Harry sighed from his chair, closed his eyes for a moment and siad, "Caroline, I just wish you would fill me in on your plans to "breathe life into things" once in awhile. I want to be included..."

  Her eyes lit up,"Why didn't you say so? Let's go cause some mischief."

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