As in:
Chellis and Gardner heard the last of Flavian’s chuckle, and then the slight squeak of the door opening, and then the exclamation “oh my God!” from Flavian.
And then there was a conspicuous silence.
Chellis and Gardner looked at each other, just the way you might expect them to look at each other hearing such an exclamation from their housemate. It was the ‘hmmm, whatever could that be?’ exchange of looks.
“Well,” Astrid asked with her discernible Venezuelan accent, “aren’t you going to invite me in?”
With that Gardner’s and Chellis’s faces became unlocked, and reconfigured into looks of half-terror and half-delight.
“Oh shit!” they each mouthed to each other, knowing for certain that prompt intervention was required lest Flavian pass out again, or something worse.
In such tenuous and perilous moments as this one, it is possible for God to hide behind the furniture with lessor friends, and just giggle along with everyone else as the experiment unfolds. And then there are small and large miracles of intervention. They never quite happen just the way the saints transcribe them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen, because sometimes the physical evidence is overwhelming.
And here the evidence would come from Chellis, or from inside Chellis, and it would emerge through the purple fog of her hangover like the floodlight on a locomotive.
“Oh my God, yes!” she shouted as she rose from her chair and rushed to greet Astrid. “Oh my God. We were just talking about you! Come on in!”
With that she gently pushed the frozen Flavian to the side and led Astrid into the house.
“We were talking about the water in the sinks! And the toilets!”
“Yes we were,” Gardner said, playing along. “We do this every Sunday, because water’s so important..”
“Shut up,” Chellis told him.
“No” she continued, “we were talking about which way the water turns. You know, the Coriolis Effect.”
“And, you know, just how effective it is…” Gardner cluelessly elaborated.
“The way it turns,” Chellis continued, as she gently pulled Astrid into the kitchen. “See look, the swirling motion, see how it spins like that, like counter-clockwise.”
“Yes,” Astrid said. “I know what you’re getting at.”
“You do?” Gardner asked, only to get a smarting pinch on his buttock from Chellis. “Ow!”
“Yes, of course,” Astrid continued. “It’s very true. Where I’m from, it all spins the other way.”
No comments yet.