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

She was kind of nothing else but a memory of hers childhood. She would move around the pub’s window where my table was placed, she’s put her purse down and prop her butt on the top of the fire hydrant and lick her sugar cotton stick and then wait for minutes watching the street traffic, like waiting for some thing to happen.
Then suddenly as if her mind commanded her, she’d leave the place smiling broadly. I never thought of her as being senile or retarded. Such people don’t exist.
Today she came back to the pub and sat down at her reserved table. She looked at me once in a while. It was as if she didn’t see me.
Today though another old woman came in, took her by hand and they both hurried away. The other old woman seemed very agitated. I remarked for the first time in my life that old people make longer shadows on the walls as compared to young people.
I was suddenly and I felt lonely. When the pub gets quiet you could hear the flies buzzing around. They wouldn’t stop buzzing until six in the evening.
The waitress would put on table next to the kitchen small plates with a thin layer of olive oil and drops of honey to trap the flies.
Not knowing it I dipped one day a slice of bread in that mix and eat it. The waitress couldn’t stop from laughing.
From the way it tasted I thought it was sort a luxury treat for flies. The traps didn’t work very well.

*

The old woman – Venice As I was told - came in late today. She passed by my table with her head down and sat at a table in front of the farthest window.
As the waitress fixed her plate she glanced at me. The woman’s cheeks looked blistered and freckled and so were her lips.
She wouldn’t care to put some cream on her face, I thought. Then I thought that if she was friendly I’d have done some doctoring on her skin with lemon and cucumber and milk as mom used to do.
Thoughts are swarming around the same naïve subject: how is possible that Venice, so beautiful in her youth changed so much.
Where was that beauty vanished? Also I had that thought that I might have changed too. I couldn’t feel it or notice it as I looked at myself in the mirror.
After she left the pub I went to see where she lived. When she saw me coming she began singing and dancing as if she was living happily in her own world.
As I got home I had the strange feeling that missed her. I missed her also when I saw her in the pub next day, eating her omelet mixed with hot pepper and ketchup.
I got choked up by worries that one day she could leave the town and that I would not see her ever again.

*

Before going to the pub this afternoon I saw my neighbor cooling her feet in a porcelain wash basin.
The sun was glowing through the open blinds. Just a week ago the weather was still bearable.
I wished I was still married with my “braided wife”. Jewish women are braiding their hair out of concern of been seen as they look when they go to sleep and spread their hair on a pillow while waiting to be taken and held in a man’s hands and loved.
I went into my house and kept peeking through blinds at my neighbor’s legs. I noticed that her feet were swollen…
As I kept looking at them she pulled them back into her pants. She must have “felt” that I was staring at her because she covered her shoulders and got in a hurry back in her house.
Then she came back wearing a tuck blouse and a skirt. She began washing her feet again by pulling her skirt up. It was as if she was saying “I know that you are looking at my legs. Ok, look… I’ll show you more…”
I watched her again today. The left side of her upper was like bleeding. A girl friend of hers came over. They sat together on the veranda and gossiped for hours. I heard her saying that mosquitoes may have taken a bite of her lip.
Everybody though knew that every night a new man would come at wee hours and bite her lips. Difficult to lie in bed on a blazing night… I also noticed a love bite on her neck.
We had a short conversation that morning. She told me that it wasn’t gentlemanly to ask her “what was that bite on her neck”. “I didn’t ask you anything” I said. “If you are a writer as you think you are, she said, you shouldn’t be so fresh… What do you expect from a construction worker then?” She always smelled of sweat. Women that exercise her profession seldom wash.

*


That dog summer getting shelter in “The Widow’s Pub” became for me a wonderful daily routine. Though I changed my routine lately… I’d buy a Guinness and a glass of icy water on the side and rest my cheek on my elbow waiting for the inspiration to come.
Venice came in a little bit later. She took a sit six or so tables farther and watched the pavement while waiting for her omelet.
She had that habit to put her hat in front of her meal. I still couldn’t figure out how I could start a dialog with her.
It’s been nearly three weeks after she began coming into the pub. As usual she’d pass by my table and as we looked at each other she’d display a little smile. I smiled in response. That meant to both us a comfortable acceptance of each other and nothing else.
I would complain about the weather in my conversation with the waitress hoping to bring Venice’s into it. Again, today as on any other day, I had nothing to do but sit down under the fan, drink my beer and wait for the muse to give me a chance to write something.
The hot afternoons belong to the adventurous youth. No white haired people could be seen walking on the like coal hot oven streets.
Outside the pub it is so hot that one does not have enough energy to lift a finger.
Two days ago it rained for a short two minutes. The water on the pavement evaporated in an instance. People hoped that the rain would return. During the short rain the heat cooled down a little bit.
You could see flies flying around the melted dog shit. The hard hat construction workers also moved faster under the scaffolds.
I saw Venice leaving the pub and as she got near the exit she turned and asked me all of a sudden: “How are you doing?” and continued: “I would better ask, if you allow me, what you are doing every day sitting at the same table here?”
I told her I was a writer. She said that she used to be an actress. “Nice meeting you” she said as she left.

*

As she came to have her branch the next days she would say “Hello” go and sit at her table and avoid looking at me or address me.
To be accurate, one day she’d smile and say something about the “dreadful” whether, that she can’t go out wearing only a dress because her body was curvy and just a dress without a bra would not be respectful for a woman her age. I wouldn’t dare to laugh. She would go out and wave at me from the street.
Then again, she’d not look at me or talk to me for days. I thought that was odd.
One day we met at the counter. I remarked that she was wearing a small bouquet of pink flowers sawed on the jacket button hole.
She addressed me: “I don’t like to pick flowers. Those”, and she pointed at the little bouquet, “are plastic flowers. They don’t cry when you prick them”.
She told me that we kept talking for weeks and still didn’t introduce ourselves. Her name was Venice Chamberlain, as if I wouldn’t know. I introduced myself thought, as she raised her eyebrows in disbelief; I felt the need to tell her what my name was twice.
That day I wrote in my journal: “Real life is a lying companion. But you cannot put anything in its place. It teaches you that association with others is painful”.

*

The next day she approached me unexpectedly: “This morning I put my underwear in the balcony to dehydrate it and it got dried in 2 minutes. If the morning sun could dry so fast underwear it means that it could scorch a mountain of vegetables in no time. As I tried to pick my panties up I dropped them on the street. I don’t mind. Polyester panties are bad for the skin... Suddenly as you noticed it began to rain cats and dogs. I never saw such an ambitious rain. TV says that it rains at a speed of nine inches per minute. Minute or hour, I am not sure?”
She smiled incredulously as she continued: “I am sorry I told you such a stupid story. I should also tell you about my bra. It fell on the street also. I am always embarrassed because of my huge breasts. It is too late to have them my breasts trimmed out; that’s my curse, to have fourteen inch feet and the breast of a well fed caw”, she said and she laughed like a donkey.
Then she asked me if I wouldn’t like to take a walk with her. She wanted to show me her collection of Netsuke porcelain figurines depicting intercourse situations.
I watched her expression while talking about those intimate problems of hers. She looked so beautiful. “But, I am warning you; to know me well you’d have to make me feel comfortable a little bit. I am very shy” she said.
I didn’t know really what she wanted to say. I thought that she was saying that she was frigid or something. “I’m like a river that refuses to flow”, she said. “You have to remove all obstacles and find the proper direction”.

*

“Today is going to remain in my memory the day when it rained cats and dogs on that dog summer”, she said.
I had to admit that I never met a woman like Venice Chamberlain.
While she was showing me the bedroom I noticed her Netsuke collection aligned on the wooden bedframe like an army of sex warriors. “I collected 68 Netsuke miniatures, all different intercourse positions” she said. Did you know that there are 276 different intercourse positions? Of course you don’t. Also there are other multitude intercourse attitudes and sides that you wouldn’t call positions. You know what I mean… Like Sumo wrestling...”
Then she showed me her chef-master kitchen: she boiled a hot coffee for me. Then she fried two duck eggs: “Duck eggs are good for men. They help men’s virility” she said.
The way she walked from the dining room to the kitchen made her look pretty and young. She would talk all the time: “I had a dream in which we made love. Though the dreams set you free of