The character is having an exceedingly ordinary day. Only not, because on this day she is having a party, which means it must be a special day, the way that McDonald’s breakfast must mean it’s a special day. The character claims she is having an ordinary day and yet there she is eating McDonalds for breakfast, metaphorically speaking, so it’s hard to believe her. Also her former love comes to visit her, which means it’s a day that’s not ordinary in the slightest. He comes to see her and he has the nerve to bring up that night on the balcony, or patio, or veranda maybe. Something about their hands almost touching, or their souls. Moonlight, and so on. The character becomes very upset after this visit, which is another reason to think that her day was not quite ordinary. Also it could be argued that the character is not even an ordinary person—she seems more exceedingly rich than exceedingly ordinary. She seems rich because she lives in Westminster. Not only that, but she wanders around through St. James’s park as if it’s her own back yard. Then she goes shopping on some expensive street for flowers. It may be Regents, but I want to say Bond. Surely not Oxford, as that would be too ordinary. Though one must consider that perhaps things were different back then. There are other people shopping there, too. At one point a plane flies overhead, and everyone watches. At one point they see a famous person is in a car. I want to say the person was a member of the royal family, but I can’t be certain. One of the people on Bond Street, I want to say, is crazy because he was in World War One. His wife leads him up Bond Street (Regents?) and eventually they get to Regents Park. Now that I say that, it makes sense that they would have been on Regents Street. When they get to Regents Park they sit on a bench, and the crazy veteran mutters to himself, or something.
While the crazy veteran is sitting at the park, a little boy approaches him, dressed all in white.
“Is there anything I should know?” asks the little boy.
The man doesn’t have any wisdom to impart on the little boy, so the little boy keeps on walking, and asks everyone in the park if they know something he should know. Nobody does.
He’s asking them because he is tying to find his father. Unfortunately, his father died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and therefore cannot be found. The little boy knows this, but still hopes to find some trace of his father in the form of a sign. That’s why he’s going all over the city looking for clues.
He doesn’t find that many clues but he does find a man who has had his hearing aid turned down since his wife died. When the man turns his hearing aid on for the first time in years, the first thing he hears is a flock of pigeons outside his window, making that sort of noise that could only be described as flock-of-pigeony.
The old man takes a liking to the little boy, and he starts to accompany
him on his mission to find his father. The go to everyone in the city with a certain last name. I think it was Black. I’m almost positive. The boy doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he keeps looking and looking until he finds his grandfather. He wasn’t looking for his grandfather; he was looking for his father. So this doesn’t help him much, in the end.
The boy’s grandfather isn’t such a great person, as it happens. He left the boy’s grandmother for no reason. Or no good reason, I should say. And by good, I mean what we commonly think of as good, not actually good. Because I’m having trouble remembering what good is.
Some time after leaving her, he had come across her sitting on the steps of the local library.
“Hello, my life,” she had told him.
He had been annoyed by the wittiness of this utterance, as he himself had never been a witty man. So he said something really mean to her; something along the lines of, “you suck at life.” After he said that to her, in an attempt to prove to herself that she doesn’t suck at life, the woman had returned her library books, which had been overdue for years. She had been meaning to do it all along, after all.
It was especially insensitive of the little boy’s grandfather to be so rude to his ex-wife on this particular day, because she had just gotten back from upstate new york, where she had watched her friend die. Her friend hadn’t even had the courtesy to allow her to grieve. That was the worst part. And then on the train back to the city some middle-aged creeper had started hitting on her and her friends. It had all been very emotionally draining—and now this. Her ex husband, coming by
the library to tell her how much she sucked at life. Everybody already knows they suck at life, without having to be reminded of it by their ex husbands.
The little boy, of course, does not know any of this because he has just barely found out he even ha a grandfather. I’m not sure why he never asked about his grandfather before.
One day, after this was all over, he and his mother were walking along the street when a man in a chicken costume grabbed the little boy.
“Death comes to all,” the man in the chicken costume said. The little boy already new this, of course, but it still felt bad to hear it out loud. So he started to cry. His mother was not pleased. In fact, she was very angry at this man in the chicken costume, for upsetting her son who had already been through so much trauma in the last couple years.
She couldn’t stay mad for long, though, because it turned out that the man in the chicken costume was her friend from high
school. He too had just suffered a great loss—his sister had recently died in a car accident. Since then, the man in the chicken suit had suffered a nervous breakdown of sorts, hence the chicken costume. The little boy’s mother took pity on the man, and offered to find him a job.
The job turned out to be really shitty, and his boss was a total bitch. But it was better than wearing a chicken suit, and eventually, he met a new girlfriend there.
When he met his new girlfriend, he felt that he needed to start flying. I mean hang-gliding. Or maybe it was parasailing. Or skydiving. Either way, he really needed to fly all of a sudden. But he didn’t want to fly by himself. He thought to himself, if I don’t fly with her I would rather not fly at all. In fact, if I don’t fly with her I would rather not live. I can’t remember whether or not she ever agreed to go hang gliding with him, but it makes for a nice short story anyway, I think.
The character is coming back from a long night of karaoke in New York. She's on an escalator. She's wearing red pumps, and has just met a really hot guy. His name is Hans, and he does a fantastic rendition of Desperado. That's why she fell for him--who wouldn't? But all night she's been really drunk, and she's been throwing up in her mouth a little bit. The ads for chocolate covered cherries are making her sick, and all she think of is how she hopes she can get to the top before vomiting. She wonders for a moment if she might be pregnant, but then remembers that she hasn't had sex for a year. But of course one must consider the vast quantities of porn she watches while wearing her red pumps and listening to desperado in her blue living room. A little boy dressed in white is going up the escalator next to her, and he says "Is there anything I should know?" She feels guilty for thinking about porn while little kids are around, so she quickly tries to think of something profound. "When in doubt, head East," she says--
