Chapter 3: Dancing with Weenies

Nota bene`: Binx somehow evolves into Nick ...

"Father’s emotionally arrested. He’s still in his teens or prepubescent... as you are."

Emmy was in one of her doldrums. Earlier today, she stared

down, blankly, at her desk at the pieces of paper scattered about. Every size of notebook and index card that existed was strewn and tacked hodge-podge.   The worst of it was the old familiar markings glaring up in all their bold reds and blacks.  There was nothing of her voicing any new fangled joy penned in fuchsia, glitter mint, indigo, seafoam and grass greens.

  She was blocked, again, and moody going on glum.

 

"Emotionally arrested in my teens???" "So what do you, who has moved on several dimensions, want with an emotional adolescent??" Nick clamors, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"Because that’s where love began for me." She replied without missing a beat.

When Emmy looked up from her desk Nick was gone.

 

The Big Ben went off … reminding her to leave for town. She stands and reaches to silence the clanging and knocks the wooden kokeshi doll her father had given her that last trip to the Japans.

It toppled off the old baby changing table rolling to the back of her imposing black walnut desk.  She’d named it Bob Cratchit as the tall stature reminded her of ‘A Christmas Carol’.

The handles are not original to the desk. Nick replaced them one day whilst she was out running errands. He’d thrown out the precious pewter findings which were historically dated.

 

When Emmy returned that day to see what he’d done, she nearly collapsed. The desk had been a family heirloom and quite valuable. There he was. Bob Cratchit in drag. Nick had put up hand painted porcelain knobs.

 

As she edged closer, after catching her breath, she could see the diminutive Japanese ladies clad in a festive kimono delicately hand painted on the faces of the knobs. She thought she’d turn to vapor from her love that day. The tender gesture had her insides mish mushed for weeks.

 

She is thinking precisely of this as she walked the aisles of the pharmacy later that day. And suddenly she is dancing as though the feet of her cannot stop. She was this light.

She sees a young mother with a toddler and baby boosted in the shopping cart. The mother is singing and swaying while the little weenie spun about flouncing her hair. The baby plopped in the cart was unaffected.

 

This was when Emmy first heard the music. They were playing some oldies but goodies on the intercom. She shimmies over to this winsome sight and joins them in dance and song. She makes popping sounds and plays with the infant and swings his arms in dance. The baby was smiling when she left.

 

Before Nick, it had been many years since her heart released her body in abandon like that.

Today while she wandered the bookshop she felt male smiles and approach on her. Their artless come-ups closer to the ripe of her. As though they felt her warmth and sniffed the faint scent of her. … Emmy smiled at the remembering.

 

The ride home was a cheerful quiet. Emmy felt as though she could keep driving forever with this mirth filling her up inside. She wondered if women could sense the joy of Nick; the dandy of his essence. The love in the thought gladdened her. She parried further reflection on the matter.

She jostled at the turn into the dirt road leading to her utilitarian dwelling. As she took the slope, Emmy couldn’t make out her little house quite yet. Sometimes, in her distraction, she lost track of all time and space. So greedy was her imagination’s claim.