Read Ebook: Any Coincidence Is Or The Day Julia & Cecil the Cat Faced a Fate Worse Than Death by Callahan Daniel

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 847 lines and 27235 words, and 17 pages

"Oh yes, yes," Prof. Sigger continued. "What can I do for you?"

Alona stared blankly back. "You said you wanted to see me in your office anytime before next Wednesday."

Prof. Sigger finally sighed, sinking a little in his chair.

"Did I say what for? I'm feeling a little low today," he said, hoping to elicit a small display of feminine attention.

"Oh," came the succinct and neutral reply. Prof. Sigger sighed again. "It was about my book report," continued Alona. "On..."

"Rush Limbaugh," interrupted Prof. Sigger.

"No."

"Coca-Cola?"

"No."

"I need to find my horoscope. I can't seem to keep track of anything anymore." He leaned back in his chair and felt his eyes close. That's it! he realized. That's why I asked her to my office! I have to find out if she would...

Somewhere in the pit of Sigger's abdomen, a latent piece of conscience manifested itself as a stomach cramp. He coughed and patted his belly. Then something lower than his abdomen began to draw his attention. He closed his eyes for a moment to clear his mind and focus on the art he had studied for years. With his intentions firmly aligned within , Sigger opened his eyes but found himself no longer in his office but in a basement alcove. Across the room sat a pimply faced teenager who was scratching his scalp under long strawberry-blond hair.

"Did you ever have one of those days," inquired Julia of her cat, Cecil, who lay in the crook of her arm and was pushing his head into the moving fingers of Julia's right hand, "when you think you've noticed something everyone else has missed?"

Cecil didn't respond directly, but instead rubbed the side of his cheeks against the spine of "Gravity's Rainbow" which Julia held lopsidedly in her left.

"Pynchon keeps bleating about the preterit, right?" Cecil, who began licking his paw and washing his face, did not respond. "-- and the elect who are out to destroy them, but he's the only one I see who's treating his characters badly. I mean, how can you go off on God for malpractice when you treat your characters like you treat cockroaches?" Cecil looked at her for a moment, and resumed washing.

"OK, listen to this: 'Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end.' OK, I can see that. But I don't throw you against the wall and call the universe evil, do I?" Cecil snorted a tiny snort through his nostrils.

"But as far as making trying to make sense of everything... I can see that. That's why I wonder sometimes. Like about Uncle Justin," she continued, as Cecil stood, arched his back, and attempted to find a comfortable position on her stomach, "who was a science teacher for twenty-two years, who gave up everything, because... you know..."

Julia shook her head and returned the book to its level reading elevation.

As a matter of interest, Cecil did not know, but was content enough to curl up again, feeling Julia's hand press against his fur, causing his throat to vibrate with greater volume. That is, until the book slipped from her hand and roundly thumped Cecil on the head.

"I'm sorry!" apologized Julia, but too late, and Cecil was off her lap, shaking his the pain out of his head, galloping into the bedroom to find his favorite orthopedic pillow. "Maybe I should read a shorter book," said Julia to herself. She waited for some cosmic act of synchronicity to follow, to confirm her judgment on some level above human interpretation. Yet the moment of truth that had evaded her ever since childhood continued to remain conspicuous by its absence. In lieu of enlightenment, a muffled argument began to emanate from the college students next door. The plaster made it all to easy to hear, in terms of volume, but reduced everything to disconcerting roars, in terms of clarity. As far as Julia could tell, the argument, which was building to the "throwing objects to accentuate one's point" phase, and concerned the doctrine of predestination versus free will as well as whose turn it was to run the dishwasher.

"Well," she said, tossing the hulking tome next to the library's copies of "Cat's Cradle" and "Waiting for Godot", "I didn't understand much of it anyway."

Old Zeke handed Justin his day's worth of mail and looked longingly at the cool shade under the porch, half hoping, half anticipating an invitation to enjoy a cool drink and a few minutes out of the sun. His state-of-the-art mail delivery vehicle, an old green Ford with busted air-conditioning, sometimes elicited sympathy from those along his route, but the ones with beer were the best. However, Justin just looked through his mail and then began watching the sky.

"You ever think about gravity?" Justin asked suddenly.

"No," admitted Old Zeke, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Justin sighed a little.

"You ever fall off a ladder?"

"Well," considered Zeke. Damned if this wasn't a round-about way to offer a fella a drink, but maybe after all this Justin would offer him a beer instead of that watery lemonade he made. "Yeah."

"How long did it take you to fall?"

Well hell, muttered Old Zeke under his breath. Maybe all those stakes he was driving in had given Justin a touch of the sun. The thought made him consider hauling Justin back to town, although the truck might finish the job the sun had started.

"A second or two," Zeke replied. But before he could load Justin into the truck, he figured he would have to collect a few things from the house, and maybe from the fridge he'd collect a few drinks...

"That thing up there hasn't fallen a foot in ten minutes or so."

Maybe Justin had a small bottle of something tucked away under the... "What thing?"

Justin pointed.

Zeke shielding his eyes with his hands and looked up. "Oh, that weather balloon?"

Justin's expectant face seemed to droop. "That what it is?"

"Yep. Looks like it's almost out of helium, the way it's floating so low. Launched 'em myself thirty years ago in the Army."

"Oh," muttered Justin "Be seeing ya, Zeke." He turned back to the porch.

Damn, thought Zeke, plodding back to the truck, if I told him it was a flying saucer I might have got a beer after all. Coincidentally, a gust of wind took the balloon higher into the sky.

Alona ran out of the elevator, trying to hide her face in one hand and hold her overstuffed bag in the other. She kept wiping away the tears just to get through the already crowded lobby, where young gossip-mongers waiting vigilantly for fresh news.

The tears had started when Prof. Sigger had somehow sneaked passed her as she was searching in her bag for her paper. How anyone that old and lazy could have slipped out without a sound was a mystery to be considered after the wave of rejection and failure had passed -- and after she made it to her car. Wiping her face with her sleeve and pretending to look as bored as everyone else, Alona hoped that even if her roommate were around, she would be fooled long enough to prevent her from starting any more rumors. Unfortunately, Alona decided this just after her roommate spotted her across the vestibule, noted the tears and false-face anxiety, and immediately deduced out loud to several of her closest acquaintances that Prof. Sigger had made a move on the all-too-innocent waif. The rumor spread across the hall and up the elevators by the time Alona was weaving through the cars that stalked the parking lot for open stalls. It seemed nearly everyone in the building had heard a whisper by the time Alona reached her father's rusting Gremlin.

She made her way to it without getting hit by the over-anxious drivers, unlocked the driver's side door, threw her bag into the back seat and herself into the driver's. Then she let go and sobbed and sobbed, hoping that if she got a "C" in Freshman Comp that it wouldn't turn out to be the excuse her parents needed to stop paying her tuition. They wanted Alona to work in the town's newly renovated theater, an investment in which they owned a small percentage.

Alona's sobs lasted for some time, and she knew, just knew, that her water-proof mascara had run, so she opened the glove compartment to find a Kleenex. Out fell a letter.

Her sobbing stopped as she picked it up from the dusty car floor. "Alona" was written, almost scribbled, on the cover. In Kurt's handwriting. She hadn't seen him in weeks, not since he began playing regularly in the band. She couldn't help picturing him the last time he was in her car, brushing back his long hair and scratching his hand in that nervous way of his.

"You're breaking up with me?" he asked, staring vaguely at the floor-mat.

She had nodded. What else could she do? Even she had finally admitted that he was just a good-looking loser. Sure, he could play the guitar and write songs, but she wouldn't be able to face her parents once they found out his most popular ballad was titled "Love Turds".

"This sucks," he muttered. Somehow, that had helped her keep her resolve, although in the weeks that had passed, her memory of that lonely quality of his, the one that had attracted her to him in the first place, had grown to almost god-like proportions.

Alona sighed and opened the letter.

Alona,

O.K. I've had time to think about us. You shouldn't have broken up with me, but you're still cool, O.K.? I mean, even if you dont let me go all the way with you, your cool. So, like what I'm asking is should we get back together?

I know you don't think your parents will like me. But I'll grow on them. I'll write them a song that they'll like. Like 'Love Turds' but with different lyrics.

Any way, that's not what I wrote about. I mean, youre cool and all and I want to get back together with you but there's something else going on.

I'm probably going to loose my dayjob at Osco. Doesn't matter. Screwm all. But I think I know what's been in those weird boxes Osco orders that end up in Denny's car! Something big is going to happen and I think that all of those freeks who picked up the white lab coats are in on it. You remember them? Anyway--

Denny let it slip that some of that stuff was going to Seltzer or Sesame, or whatever. This all adds up! I'll let you know as soon as I can find out what's in them! Then I'll see if Tom if can get off his butt long enough to come with me to search for Seltsame -- Call me tonight after eight.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet