Becoming Abigail

Now XII

The dog sniffed at the sphinx. At first, Abigail thought it was unaccompanied. But following closely, at the end of a long red leash, was an old woman. Abigail smiled as the dog lifted its leg and peed on the sphinx. The old woman waited patiently while the dog, a fluffy pink poodle, took care of business. All the while she stared at Abigail, though she said nothing. When the poodle was done, they shuffled past, the old crone and the dog, each leading and following alternately.

Overhead, a plane traced light across the dark. Abigail read in Reader’s Digest that all plane landings were controlled crashes. Like the way we live our lives, she thought. Bumble through doing the best we can and hoping that some benevolence keeps us from crashing. Lighting another cigarette, she wished the plane bringing her and Peter to London that day had crashed.

She felt a raindrop on her skin and looked up into the night. She couldn’t see any rain clouds and there had been no mention of rain on the weather report. She would have remembered. She always checked the weather before she went out. Smiling to herself, she realized how stupid it was to check the weather before coming here. Another raindrop fell, triggering old memories.

There was a time, it seemed to her, that she lived purely for the pleasure of rain. The way it would threaten the world gently, dropping dark clouds over the brightness of an afternoon, wind whipping trees in dark play. Then the smell; carried from afar, the lushness of wet, moisture-heavy earth, heralding the first cold stabs of water that seemed to just be practicing for the torrent that was about to come. And she, sitting on the dry safety of the veranda, wrapped in a sweater, watching the world weep as the Beatles in the background, tinny and small in the soundscape, asked, Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Glancing at the sky worriedly, she wondered if it was really going to rain. So far there had been nothing more than the first few drops. Well, can’t worry about that now, she thought, as she lit another cigarette and blew the smoke into the empty eye socket of the sphinx.