Cleo and the dream of Hosses

"Thanks for protecting the house from horses."

Celeste's words ran through my head as the dog started barking.

"It's OK, Cleo," I soothed, scratching between the perked ears. "It's just a guy on a bike."

A chain rattled on the street below and we both looked for the source of the noise. I imagined hooves beating on the pavement but there wasn't a buggy in sight.

"Should we go inside now?"

The Doberman ducked through the window that served as door, stretching from floor almost to ceiling, stopping short of the ornate crown molding 14 feet up. She came back and looked at me in the chair, and I rose. Grabbed the laptop. Ducked through the window.

I couldn't see the screen anyway.

Sweat rolled down my back as I stepped into the blissfully frigid air of my friends' apartment in the Quarter, desperate for a nap, a shower, a nap in the strange little shower that opened directly into my bedroom. Anything to cool off.

I had spent hours meandering. The hardware store. A tiny little music shop on an alley. The lapidary. Café du Monde where a trumpeter played "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to a crowd of beignet gobbling parents and their powdered-sugary children. Past the Jolie-Pitt house, in honor of my sister. Bookstore after bookstore after bookstore, in honor of my addiction.

I bought sheet music in the two-story Beckham's on Decatur and a novel about Mata Hari. A signed copy of James Lee Burke's short stories in the Faulkner House. A Preservation Hall CD from the music shop.

I ducked into the gem shop to seek the only type of beads I'd ever brought home from New Orleans.

"Hey," called the man behind the counter, cordless phone pressed to his ear. "How many oceans are there?"

"I don't know... Seven? No. Sorry. Five?"

"Right, that's what they taught us – seven and five. Seven continents, five oceans. Can you name them?"

I struggled for an answer, "Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic..."

"Right, what's the fifth?" At my shrug, he started talking into the phone again. "She said 'five,' too."

"His son did a report for school and said there were four," explained a woman in the back. "It's driving him crazy."

"I swear there are five," I offered hopelessly. I couldn't think of the last to save my life.

"See, she swears there are five," I heard from the back of the store as I shrugged and paid for a mottle brown choker made of mottled bits of polished brown shell.

Back at the apartment, I laid my purchases on the bed and grinned, in spite of myself. I'd spent too much. I picked up my computer and made my way to the balcony to answer email, to think, to read, to write. I shaded the screen with my hand and tried to find the cursor in the monochromatic absorption of light that was my laptop. When Cleo gave up on the day, I was ready.

Inside, I punched a number into the phone. I waited through the first ring, the second, the third.

"Did you figure out the fifth ocean?" I asked the woman who answered.

"Excuse me?"

"Did you figure out the fifth ocean?"

The woman laughter tinkled gaily between her shop and my sofa.

"We didn't but thought it might be the Antarctic."

"Well, sort of... It's the Southern. Apparently, some people say three, others four and the rest five, absorbing bits into the main three."

Still laughing, she thanked me for calling her back. Outside, a horn blared and a man shouted angrily, "Go f*ck yourself," repeating the fulmination as the engine faded into the distance. Cleo paced nervously. I stood and listened for the clop of hooves. Content in our safety, we both seemed ready for a nap. I'd see Hoss later, if not horses. I needed my rest.


Tag: Vacation New Orleans