That Dog Summer Day when it rained Cats and Dogs - Peter Jalesh (top 10 books to read .txt) 📗

That dog summer day when it rained cats and dogs

A short story by Peter Jalesh


I went to the public park today. There is a wooden table there on which, I thought, I could do some writing.
There were so many trees in full bloom. For me flowers in bloom mean kindness. The trees were moving back and force in the morning breeze spreading a vague fragrance on the landscape.
On the ground also, there were a flood of flowers. I thought of my mom, a flower lover and professional painter: she would have enjoyed such a wonderful place to please her heart and to dance.
As you go to the park in the morning you feel how the air descends as you walk and then how it climbs up as you bow.
As I sat at the table it felt like it was spilled out with lavender water, same as the scented bottles one could buy in supermarkets.
When I go to the park, if I wanted to write ten or so pages, I don’t have time to wait for the inspiration.
A young woman was sitting on a rock next to the water echoing the song she heard in her earphones. Her feet were all covered by the tall grass. She was like waiting for me to start writing.
I was also waiting from my thoughts to calm down. I wished I could put the scent of grass into my writing. Those days I was at that point in my life when I hoped to stay as long as I could within those real feelings – feelings that are felt - not just thought of.
My ex wife called those thoughts “pathetic nothing”. For my ex wife to feel anything else but what she called “those necessary feelings” was a definite road to delusion.
The last week I spent my time trying to imagine a simple story.
Then as I worked my mind to get into it the young woman came by and asked me for permission to sit at my table. “I am waiting for my boyfriend” she said. As she sat I knew that my day of writing of totally compromised.

*

For a couple of days I tried to get refuge sitting at that table next to the river. The rivers are all different though they carry all the same water, I thought stupidly. You could say that, in essence all rivers are alike. I remember many times in the past when this kind of faulty thinking kept chasing my mind.
The water in Apex River was muddy and almost violet in the morning next to the shore due to the sugar factory on the upstream. I saw horses and caws stopping by to taste the water and running away in disgust; the water smelled like a sugarless coffee I used to drink when I decided to please my diabetes.
The coffee shop still sells it for half a dollar. One would think where the shop is getting the profit to stay in business.
The shop also sells round apricot cakes for half a dollar each and a fancy birthday cake for $5 + ¼ dollar for an additional inscription.
I used to drink a coffee every morning until I decided to ignore my diabetes and any other syndrome and live free of such mundane concerns.
I changed that coffee shop for a French pastries shop. I’d sit down there for a half an hour eating a chocolate croissant and reading the local newspaper.

*

Later on in the day I’d move my headquarters to the town library. There was a young woman there, a beautiful woman that was the main reason I became a regular of that library. Her face had the shape of a pear. It was such a pleasure to see moving around.
I was surprised seen her wearing always the same white embroidered dress leaving her arms, shoulders and armpits bare.
In the evening, tired of writing, I used to walk around my neighborhood for a half an hour or so. Then I would visit one of those Irish pubs around my house – there were two clover decorated pubs - and watch there an European soccer game for a beer price and change.
In town at night you could see dozens of men and women clearing their throats with a cold beer.
The pubs serve also warm beer to old people. Often, as I looked out the pub’s window I saw an old woman getting into the nearby cloth store.
She was still wearing a faded beauty with sort of pride and arrogance. Most of the time she was dressed in black - a silk black blouse and a black skirt that covered her knees - and wearing also medium high hills black shoes that made her walk look like she was stepping on hot coals.
The warm breeze in the evening made one feel better than during the midday when one got hit by a hot humid wind coming from the ocean side and by the street dust. Within three hours after the dusk the town got deserted. It was like everything that moved called it a day and went to rest. No more voices, no more laughs.
House lights went gently to sleep behind blinds and rags. Deep into the night the warm breeze faded away and got replaced by the ocean coolness.

*

After such a beautiful spring the summer arrived all of a sudden, like a prairie fire. Nobody remembered such hot summers ever around here. Never…
First the flowers dried up. Then leaves dried up. Then the grass… The ground looked like scorched. Just a dozen days or so did it.
You could feel the morning coolness only under the big fan running in the nearby pub. If you got out buying the newspaper you had to make a detour through the public hallway if you wanted to come back alive to the pub.
I noticed that what people say that “during hot days one’s heart rhythm and mind moods change for the better” is not true.
That summer I was still in love with my ex wife that I didn’t see over a decade.
In fact, I was still vividly in love with all the women I slept with during life time. It felt like the only heartache I had was about women that I could have sleep with if I behaved wisely. I was so near to get their attention and yet I didn’t succeed to go further than watching their smile as a likely consent. Those women – every one coming across in my memory – looked to me like a gift from God.
I would miss those women more than those that I went to bed with. I am sitting now at my reserved table in the pub trying to write something intelligent, holding my sweating neck under the big fan.

*

It looked like my whole week has glided in sweat. Then to my surprise I saw the beautiful old woman entering the pub. Her face skin was a mix of pink and sun tan, due to I presume of her embarrassment to see me there and also her amusement.
She’d sit at her table and place her head under the big fan that ran on the other side of the pub and give me a stare. I knew what she was doing and intentionally I wouldn’t turn my head to look at her.
“Thank you for being discreet” she shouted once. “Thank you kindly”.
Next day she came to the pub very early morning. She wore under her embroidered leather jacket a pink blouse that matched her pink cheeks and her pale pink shorts.
That day she sat on the other side of the bar. The waitress brought my coffee and whispered in my ear: “The woman that sits over there told me that she saw a man following her. She is afraid to go home alone” she mentioned.
I went out of the pub and to my surprise I saw a man that was looking intensely inside the pub, trying with his hand to protect his eyes from the blazing sunlight.
He shook his head as he saw me. As I tried to approach him he ran dry and fast as he could.
The old woman was waiting for me behind the entrance door of the pub: “I wonder if he wasn’t my ex-husband” she said. “I got a restriction order against him twenty years ago. Love is blind to the law, you know… Husbands are better stocker than strangers… Though you never know…”
“I am sorry I talked to you about my private life” she said before going back to her table.

*

Today the old woman is sitting at a table next to the window, five feet further from my table, her head bent, eating in a hurry her usual dish - salad and omelet - with her hair hanging down like a round curtain around her plate.
She is wearing the same leather jacket, painted thin white stripes mixed with red dots and blue stars imitating in an abstract manner the American flag. The waitress told me what was her name and then more: “She was a famous actress; a very beautiful woman; more beautiful than Liz Taylor: her name was Venice Chamberlain…” She even mentioned that she lived two blocks north from the pub. “If you walk by you could see her singing and dancing. People think she is nuts…”
Until yesterday it seems I was the only one who’d be tolerated to sit at a table in the pub for a whole day and pay a few dollars for a coffee and a glass of water.
All waitresses knew that I was a writer and that I got permission to sit in the pub as long as I wanted.
If you take a table next to the window and watch the street for a long time you could see sort of all kind of men and women passing by. I liked to watch them: men and women at all stages of life and illness. They’d all move in a hurry to fulfill their destiny.
Sometimes when I wouldn’t have any desire to write I just sat at my table and watch the street making some small unintelligible notes on my notebook like this one: “Next time you are going to dream try not to feel hungry. If you are hungry who’ll be there to boil an egg for you – three minutes boil - and help you eat it with fresh ground pepper and sea salt?” or the next one: “One’s dreams are made out desires and fears. Don’t just get stuck in a dream that looks bad. Try to get out of it. The easiest way to get out of dream which is bad is to call me. I think it should be a discipline in the high school curriculum called “How to dream well or to avoid dreaming bad dreams altogether”.

*

The waitress would pass by, replenish my glass with icy water and smile.
I saw today the old woman dressed in red, red purse to match it, her hands holding a sticky sugar cotton stick.