Wings

"I'd be happy with Italian," I said to Sra. Altadonna, "But what I really want to study is Norwegian..."

"Norwegian?" She says, and, oddly, she reverts to some midwestern accent from her youth. "I haven't used Narwegian for... perhaps twenty two years. I don't have books, or..."

"I have a dictionary. And a phrasebook. A newspaper a friend brought my home from a cruise. An anthology - and a workbook to go with it. And Teach Yourself Norwegian, and the Hippocrene Beginner title. And casettes..." She must have seen the light that was just allowing itself to shine in my eyes.


I took Tidbit for a walk and went up to a field where we used to fly kites, where I laughed one day at my first childish love. Stephanie told me that with my short legs, I don't really have the figure or the grace for running dramatically across a field. But the whole way down I didn't think of falling.

I was quite conscious of the grass beneath my feet, of Tidbit's muscles moving and rippling beneath her greying fur, of my own arms, smooth and firm and white. At the beginning I could, out of practice, distinguish the sounds of separate cicadas on branches spread against the sky, but as I ran they blended into a single sound which grew in gently, almost lazy intensity like the waves of the ocean.

Looking at the dark and stormy sky, it might as well have been a clear blue day.


I am aware that I am quite mad...