Two Old Women on a Roof

Two old women are sitting on their roof looking out over the neighborhood, smoking cigarettes and drinking rum. Normally they reminisce about the past, because that’s what you do when you’re old and you only have a few years left. Anytime a new memory pops up in their minds, they pounce on it. They clap their hands together and open their eyes wide and douse themselves in honey to better stick themselves to that memory and absorb all its color until the ants come crawling, and it’s all forgotten again. But these old ladies aren’t reminiscing tonight. They’re talking about the future. They’re planning it well, tipsy and shivering slightly, blowing smoke at the moon.

“I’ve never made a bucket list.” said June

“Well it’s not really something you make, per se. They’re just things you want to do that you keep in the back of your mind.” said Leonora.

“You don’t write them down?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you still have one?”

“Oh sure, they’re not in any particular order. Like... alright, let’s see. The first one to come to mind is going to the beach and collecting sea shells.”

“You’ve never done that?”

“I’ve never been to the beach.”

“Let’s go then! You ain’t gonna find any here in Nebraska.”

June stood up, taking no care of the danger where she stood and that possibility of falling off onto the driveway. Then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put this old woman back together again. She grabbed Leonora’s hand and pulled her up. They both flicked their cigarettes into the air which soared and swerved like drunken fireflies on the cusp of a DUI. 

“You mean tonight?” Leonora asked.

“Of course tonight. Why not tonight? Why not do everything we can possibly do immediately? You know death is combing our hair and caressing our clit, trying to make us wet, the old bastard.”

“June!”

“Yes, and let’s talk like.. dirty fuckers! Fucking cunt… shits!” She laughed.

“I’ll make my bucket list as we go along. It’ll be the world’s first spontaneous one, created from scratch and kicked over all in the same week or month or however long it takes or however long I’ve got. But, first and foremost- seashells on the beach. Now, does it matter which beach?”

“Well, I was thinking somewhere on the pacific side.”

June rubbed her tongue around the inside of her mouth. It felt dry and her lips were starting to stick together.

“Let’s get inside and buy the tickets.” she said.

They crawled back through the bedroom window and packed up everything they felt was important in their drunken state for the collection of seashells on a San Diego Beach. They packed a noodle strainer to strain the sand, and a crab claw cracker in case they found any crabs. The tiny stranger was still dirty in the sink but they decided not to give him a bath. There simply wasn’t any time and they were too excited. 

“We’ll give you a bath when we get back” June told him, trying to speak and breathe through her mouth since such an odorous smell wafted off of him.

“And when will that be?” he asked in a rusty voice like a trombone washed up on the shore on Vanuatu. Or at least that’s what June pictured as she only had beaches on her mind now. 

“It might be never! She yelled. “We might die of old age on the plane. And then they’d have to turn it all around and ruin everyone's trip because of our selfish dying. So you see, the longer we stick around here talking to you or giving you a bath in the sink, the less time we have. And I don't want to go out of this world ruining anyone’s day. You said you’re immortal, in which case you are certainly old enough to wash yourself.”

The tiny man in the sink picked up a dirty plate and covered his face with it, as if covering his guilt.

“I just said that so you’d both be intrigued by me and let me in. I'm really only 39 and I'm sure I'll die just the regular old fashioned way like you two ladies when my time comes.”

    “Ha.” 

June heard Leonora laugh in the other room. Leonora knew that the immortality thing was a lie when the tiny, smelly, stranger first showed up at their door. She let him in anyway. Why? Because she’s old, so why not?

“Where are you going?” the little man in the sink asked them. June responded by making dolphin sounds.

“Oh I see. The beach! I love the beach.”

Louder this time, and with more excitement, Leonora said “I’ve never been to the beach!”

Leonora didn’t have any beach clothes. So she just packed some shorts and sleeveless shirts. She packed a framed picture of her late husband dressed as a packet of french fries. It was Halloween that day but she liked to pretend it was just some regular day in March or July. One thing she never liked about him was his lack of spontaneity, and as much as she loved him, she never felt she was courageous enough to be spontaneous for the both of them. And so that characteristic which might have blossomed in another life or with another man, or even by herself, slowly became an impossibility, like the immortality of a tiny vagabond stalking through the the cornfields of Nebraska and showing up at house of a couple old ladies for no reason other than to adhere to his own bucket list.

“Are you going to be ok while we’re gone?” June asked the little man, but he was already asleep. She tousled his matted hair then wiped her hand on the kitchen towel. Once they finished packing, June and Leonora slept off the alcohol for a few hours to sober up.

“Are we still going to want to do this when we're sober?” asked Leonora.

Almost angrily, June replied “I sure as snakeshit will! Alcohol may give me ideas, but it's not the impetus for my resolution or courage.” Leonora just nodded, knowing she didn’t feel the same way. But as long as she was with June, everything would be alright.

As soon as they finished packing, they passed out. Leonora has a history of sleep paralysis but was fortunate enough not to experience it that night as they woke up early after only a few hours of sleep. They drove to the airport. on the way there, their hearts palpitated with excitement. They were probably hungover but couldn’t tell because at their age, everything ached and felt wrong anyway, hungover or otherwise. 

“We should actually try to relax, we don’t want to get so excited we have a heart attack before we even get to the beach.” June said.

“I was never very good at meditation.” Leonora said.

“I actually have a meditation cd somewhere in the car here. My hairdresser gave it to me on my birthday a few years ago but I never used it.”

June opened the middle compartment and asked Leonora to look for it. Leonora turned on the car light, squinted and dug around. Her numerous bracelets making a racket like windchimes in a tornado.

“Is it ‘Fireside Meditations with Jay Garber?” Leonora asked.

“Yeah that’s it.”

    “It’s unopened.”

“I always thought meditation was a waste of time.”

Leonora used her teeth and nails to open the plastic packaging.

“I’m not sharp enough for this. Nothing about me is sharp, or primal,” she complained.

“That’s cause you’re human, my love. We have the luxury of staying soft and pliable so we can let all the sharp tools do all the work while we relax and ponder the meaning of life.”

June reached into her beige purse which sat on her lap. She liked the way it had the perfect weight of a baby. It reminded her of her daughter when she was very young, 50 years ago. June even remembered the exact weight her daughter had when she was 2 years old before they took her to the hospital, and she always made sure her purse weighed the same amount to forever maintain that feeling of her on her lap- 24.8 pounds. A beautiful number. One that her daughter would never surpass. For 50 years she kept it exactly at 24.8 pounds, even if it meant taking out important things like makeup and coins, or adding unimportant things like rocks and 

“Seashells,” June whispered to herself and smiled.

“What?” Leonora asked.

“Oh, nothing. I’m just excited to collect the seashells. Here’s the knife.”

Leonora took the knife and carefully sliced around the cd case.

“Don’t get too excited, it’s my bucket list item. Not yours.”

    “Can’t we share it?” June asked bluntly.

Leonora realized she was being greedy. “Of course we can. In fact, I'm glad we can.”

Jay Garber’s voice was like someone whacking open a coconut with a hammer and then the juice being slurped up by a gluttonous seal. His punctuations were impactful, and every syllable afterward was the sweet nectar that poured from the impact. June tried very hard to stay awake but the two old ladies would soon realize that Jay Garber was not your traditional meditation guru. 

“Track 1” he would start, “first, we are going to relax every cell in your body. If this were a meditation CD from before the year 1665, when cells were first discovered, I would instead say ‘first, we’re going to relax every micro-spirit in your body,’ because I believe there was at least a small sect of people who didn’t believe in the one spirit, the one soul. They believed we carried billions, possibly trillions of mini souls within us and technically they would be right. What are cells aside from microscopic souls all working together to help you live, to help you work, to help you love and fight and think and even forget. To help you… relax.”

There was silence for 2 minutes except for the sounds of a crackling fire. You could sense Jay Garber warming himself up by it. June’s eyes began to droop but Leonora didn’t notice. You could sense the snow falling quietly outside the place the CD was being recorded. You could even sense the deer somewhere out there in that snow, licking the icy ground, and a fox quietly stalking it. You could sense beyond sensing when every micro-spirit was relaxed. 

“Track 2. Have you ever seen a whirlpool of tropical bird feathers? If not, picture it. Hypnotic isn’t it? Oh, before we continue, quick disclaimer. You should not be listening to this tape while operating a motor vehic-”

June died on Impact. Leonora was severely injured but still alive. For some reason one of the paramedics on the scene would always remember the smear of pink lipstick that June left on the steering wheel when her face smashed into it, since the airbag on her side failed to deploy. This was more common than people realized. There was something surreal about that brutal lipstick kiss, as if she literally kissed life goodbye. Leonora wasn’t unconscious but extremely disoriented and they immediately drove her to the hospital. She kept asking about June but the staff skillfully avoided the question while administering  drug cocktails and blood transfusions. They laid her gently on the hospital bed and she began to cry, not from the pain but from the death of her best friend (which she figured out on her own). She received many broken bones but despite her miserable state, nothing seemed overly life threatening. They let her rest and grieve until finally she fell asleep. Her mind and body were exhausted, which only made the sleep paralysis worse. She was in a hypnagogic state, and could see the busted face of June standing in the corner of the hospital room. The room began to fill up with sand while June’s contorted body grotesquely mobilized itself on broken bones towards her terrified friend. June held a large conch shell in her hands, holding it like a 24.8 lb baby. Blood smeared the shell and dripped off her arms. Leonora tried to scream but only low muffled sounds emanated from her half-sleeping mouth. June finally shuffled close enough to put the conch shell to Leonora's ear. Leonora could hear the angry voice of the ocean, each crash of the waves was a remonstrance. 

“I will send whales the size of planets to gobble you like krill,” the conch said, “for your disregard of the eternal ocean.” Leonora tried shaking her head, and the facial features of June remained still while the face itself began to bloat and turn purple like a corpse underwater. She stared blankly at Leonora, a mere messenger of the conch, a mere figment of a paralytic nightmare fueled by recent misery. 

“Your bones will be buried in the blackness of the ocean deep.” The conch continued.

“But,” Leonora tried to say. “But I’ve never been to the beach!”

Finally the conch shell shattered and Leonora woke up gasping and crying. A Nurse came in to check on her. She wore a puka shell bracelet and Leonora screamed.