Missed Connections in Portland

 Her Two Cents

I’m a bit bummed I haven’t been able to locate parts 1 and 2 of this story because this following segment has really captured by attention. The characters’ ability to shift the setting based on their thoughts and words reminds me of Matt Ruff’s first novel, Fool on the Hill, and one of his follow up stories, Set this House in Order. While Ruff lives in Seattle, and it’s highly unlikely that these words are his, I still think it would be kind of wild if well-known, traditionally publshed authors released little snippets of their work anonymously on MCs. 🙂

Squirrel Whisperer (pt 3)
Missed Connections in Portland

The trees, so far below us a moment ago, are swiftly catching up. Or are we heading for them? There’s a lot going on right now and it’s hard to keep track. Most folks might rank a likely fatal free fall back to earth at the top of the list, but most people don’t have you to think about, and you, you, you… you’re still holding my hand, whoever you are, and you smell good, and you laugh at my jokes, and I’d love a chance to laugh at more of yours, which brings to mind the air, which feels like wind, but it’s not the wind moving around us, it’s us cutting through the air, and that’s not good, it means no more jokes, or at worst one more bad punchline, so… suddenly, thinking about you makes slamming into the ground important, seeing it from that side, and I need to stop this pretty much right now.

“I was waiting for hummingbirds,” you say. “Parrots? In these parts? Hmm.”

The wind sculpts your hair into a psychobilly forward swoop, and my heart flutters in exactly the way a grown man’s body does not flutter when racing toward the earth from a great height. “Yeah. A hummingbird would make more sense. Given the degree of suspension of belief we’re already accepting, anyway. But the parrot was unexpected, which is probably why I said ‘quite unexpectedly’ in my narration, a moment ago.”

“I noticed that. That you narrate things. You do know you’re doing that aloud, yeah?”

“Am I? So you heard the bit about the handholding and the flutter and all that?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh. Um.”

“Fear not, boy. You amuse me, and my amusement circuit flows directly to my heart.”

“Oh, good.”

“You said that in Kermit’s voice.”

“Kermit is my spirit animal.”

“Sushi is mine.”

“We should do something about this fall.”

“Already done. Look again, boy. We’re not falling. It was a metaphor you put into your narrative.”

I note that we’re sharing a teeter-totter seat, on the downstroke. You point to the other seat, across the fulcrum, and there sits an abnormally large beaver, exuberantly waving her arms in the air as she swings up, tail rattling against the back of the plank. “I didn’t expect that, either.”

“No one expects a giant teetering beaver, any more than anyone expects a giant surly parrot. But this is an unusual thing.”

“This?”

“Us.”

“Us? We’re an ‘us’?”

“Do you dare defy the fortune cookie, sir?”

“No ma’am.”

You grin, and pull your hair from my face. “Sorry. I try to control this willful thatch but it seems to like you.”

A pair of hummingbirds emerge from under your cloudy bouncing hair, the male a brilliant green, the female a rich russet. They hover, stare, then blink away. “Now that I did sorta expect,” I say.

“It happens. They come and go. What say we mosey on back down the hill and rustle up some ice cream?”

The beaver disappears in a puff of sugary pink fluff. Where she sat, an unbroken fortune cookie rests.