thunder and snakes

Thunder crashes like cannonfire across the corner of my building. We are in New York. It is early June and the rain pounds down. Light sparks through barely lifted windows. Sound follows the light by milliseconds. Cut to a girl pulling the covers over her head in the dark. Cut to a girl easing her foot into the shower. Then, umbrella in hand, she hesitates before the door.

Hours passing by are merely the head and shoulders dipping, rounding toward a computer screen until she’s back on her street and the man she met three weeks ago is there, only this time without his glasses on. Believe it or not, his name is Reefer, and that’s the truth.

The people in the neighborhood all have strange names and personalities that belong on a tv show. Measure, the barber, calls me “little sister” and insists he is too blessed to be stressed. Hatchet, that curmudgeonly old fruit-seller who lives on the first floor, hobbles out to the corner every day. His name means something. One day last winter this girl came home and said “hey” in the usual way, and he said, “hey yourself.” It wasn’t until I’d walked up two flights of stairs that it occurred to me that Hatchet was sitting in the hallway in his shorts with a hatchet on his lap while snow was on the ground outside.

But Reefer, first time we meet asks me if I have a boyfriend and if I want to see his snake. “I know what that means,” I said and walked on smirking. He laughed and wondered that I didn’t believe him. But then today he stops me again and introduces me to Prissilla – a small elegant snake slithering along the wrought iron railing of his brownstone. He offered me some reefer and some dinner, but I just went home. Apocryphal thunder in my ears and snakes before my eyes.