PUZZLED<= o:p>
By Adam Lov= ingood
Copyright 2= 004
Harry had seen the Acropolis splendid in the scorching Greek sun allowing no crevice or curvature to hid= e in shadow or fading light. And last week for the first time, Harry had gazed u= pon the cast iron magnificence of the Eiffel Tower with its commanding dark presence of crushing iron defying gravity, sweeping heavenward and drawing = the human eye and spirit inexorably upward. Perhaps his favorite vision of late, and the one Harry carried with him every day now= , was that of the grandeur of the Huan dynasty palace= in the soon-to-be-submerged Three Gorges Valley in China. Although the thought that it would soon be lost pained Harry deeply, he was grateful to have see= n it before the structure became the world’s most wondrous coral reef.
Today, Harry will see Stone= henge; first he must construct it. It took the Druids or Celts or whoever many yea= rs to align and arrange the monolithic rocks on Salisbury plane, but it would = take Harry a mere few hours. Sitting at his kitchen table - his puzzle table - in his efficiency, rent-controlled apartment where Harry had lived for twenty years now, his hands quaked with nervous anticipation at what they would so= on create. He imagined that, if able, his eyes would also quiver with exciteme= nt at the sight they would behold.
When Harry completed a puzz= le, he was transported inside it. He knew it would sound strange to most anyone, b= ut, as soon as Harry slid the last piece into its pre-destined place, he was th= ere, wherever there was.
It had been fifteen years s= ince Harry’s accident. Walking against the light at a busy intersection, f= lesh and careening metal had mixed; he had lost but not his life. Harry could wa= lk with the assistance of a cane. He had been out of work for so long in recov= ery that he was rendered unemployable, but, and it was such an important but, he was alive. His disability income provided subsistence and Harry felt lucky.= He was better off than those living in the garage alcoves that he passed on his rare forays to the market or laundry. Unlike many people with injuries simi= lar to his, Harry wasn’t in pain despite the damp cold of Northern Califo= rnia. He was lucky indeed. And he had his puzzles.
Sliding the box lid from it= s snug resting place, Harry gazed upon the hundreds of shapes inside. Some were up= side down shamelessly baring their grayish brown backside. Others were solid col= ors and the toughest to fit; many were tan and green and blue telling of their special role as border pieces connecting stone and grass and sky. The pieces slithered in the box with curves and undulations, became serious with smooth lines and acerbic with sharp corners.
He scanned all the pieces w= ondering which would be the very important first piece. Unlike many puzzle aficionad= os, Harry refused to give in to any pretense of rules like always start with the lower left corner piece. Chaos presided inside the puzzle box and Harry fou= nd it attractive. Granted he was imposing order upon the chaos by forcing the scattered pieces together. But the idea that such ordering should be govern= ed by rules outside the ordering itself struck him as overkill at best and rigidity at worst and rigidity was the death knell of creativity.
Harry closed his eyes and l= owered his left hand into the box. Since Harry was right handed, his left hand wou= ld not fall into some predetermined pattern of selection going to the right si= de of the box or always to the upper corner. His left hand dove quickly moving pieces aside to go to the cardboard bottom to snatch up a piece that, when = he opened his eyes, Harry saw was clear royal blue sky that made him feel joyf= ul. Harry placed the piece in the upper northeast quadrant of the table. If his table were a Mercator map of the world, Harry was placing the piece at approximately 45 degrees longitude west and 40 degrees latitude west.
Eyes wide open, he reached for the next piece. Harry retrieved a solid tan piece, part of o= ne of the lentils facing the sun no doubt as the piece had a lighter color than most of the others of the same pedigree. It was odd that he could almost he= ar the actual construction of the monument with hammers thudding against the r= ock, fashioning the stone into the vision of the ancient architect. Thud, thud, = thud the hammers struck. But Harry realized that he needed = to adjust his imagination because the thudding did not sound like hammer on st= one but more like a cloth-wrapped hammer on wood such as one might encounter at= a furniture manufacturer. Try as he might though, he was unable to reign in h= is unruly imagination.
“Mr. Otter...Mr. Otte= r...it’s Ms. Allen, Mr. Otter.” Harry sat up i= n his kitchen chair with a start. Who in the world was Ms. Allen? Thud, thud, thu= d, Harry heard again the furniture hammer against wood and recognized it as the unfamiliar rapping of a human hand on his front door. He apologized to his imagination for scolding it and reached for his cane. He didn’t know = any Ms. Allen. There were five other units in Harry’s building but they a= ll housed such transients that Harry didn’t know any of his neighbors. <= /p>
“= Just a minute. I’ll be right there,” Harry yelled at the door to give himself more time. Not sure why, he threw a dish towel over his puzzle space before rising on his cane. Looking around his living area that now appeared cramped at the idea of sharing it, if but for a few moments, with a second person, Harry opened the door to his bathroom and pushed a few stray items into the closet with the tip of his cane. Harry gnawed at his mixed feelings of excitement and dread.
Opening the door by inches = Harry saw a short, dumpy pale woman in a yellow flower-print sun dress slowly revealed. Neither spoke at first. “Mr. Otter? I’m Ms. Allen. I = live upstairs? Upstairs from you?” she said as if she weren’t sure if she did indeed live upstairs but needed confirmation. “Yes. I see. I’m sorry, but I’m quite busy. You see, I....I work at home. We= ll, it was nice to meet you. ‘Bye, now.” Harry began to close the d= oor.
Ms. Allen presented a meaty= hand to stop the door. “I don’t mean to be a bother, Mr. Otter. I know you’re a busy man, but it’s just that my freezer is on the blink and they won’t be able to come to fix it ‘til tomorrow and, it’s just awful, on account of I bought a buncha= meat for a barbecue this weekend and I’m afraid the meat’s gonna go bad sitting there with no cold overnight and= then I’m out all that money I spent on it and that’d just be more aw= ful and the worst part would be my guests on the weekend are expecting a meat barbecue and then there wouldn’t be no fit meat to serve man nor beast and I just don’t know what to do but ask for someone to show some hum= an kindness by letting me share a freezer over a night or two so the meat won’t go bad. Would that be okay do ya think?”
Harry stared at the beet re= d lips that were spewing more words than he, a mere mortal, could comprehend. He waited a moment for Ms. Allen to collapse at his doorstep knowing that such= a monologue must be physically exhausting, perhaps even life threatening. She didn’t collapse though and Harry realized she was waiting for him to = say something in response. “I..I...what about your meat?”
“It’s gonna go rancid, Mr. Otter!” Ms. Allen exclaimed rising up on the tips of her rust painted toes on the last syllable. “= ;I have to share a freezer, Mr. Otter. It’s an emergency. If it wasnR= 17;t no emergency I wouldn’t ask you or nobody = else but it’s an emergency. You see I got these guests...”
“Right, Ms. Allen,= 221; Harry interjected so quickly that he startled himself, “right you are.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. O= tter. Thank you so much,” Ms. Allen turned to leave but continued her thanksgiving, “I’ve always said you were a kind man. I’ll= be right back with it. It’s waiting just inside my door. Only take a sec= ond. You don’t know how much you are helping me out with this with the gue= sts coming over. My guests are going to thank you too.” Ms. Allen’s words were now fading and wafting down the stairs as she ascended. And Harry had no idea to what he had agreed and why she seemed so grateful.
Harry, thinking the encount= er was over, began to close the door when he heard someone plodding down the stair= s as if laboring under tremendous weight. Step by labored step, the figure came closer to Harry’s landing and to Harry. Clomp-click-scrape-clomp the sounds approached, and Harry transfixed watched and listened to see if the fireplug of a woman was bringing him her piano.
As she descended back into = sight, Harry could see that Ms. Allen was burdened with perhaps two dozen plastic grocery bags. Some were hanging from her neck and wrists, others were dragg= ed behind. Red-faced and sweating, she turned the corner from the stairs onto = the landing, smiled and spoke in breathless bursts, “I know..... it looks like..... a lot bu= t you know..... meat really cooks down..... a lot and you’re...... supposed to have so much.= .... like a pound per person.... and when you have a lot...= .. of guests coming over......you don’t want nobody.....leaving empty....and telling people....you = ain’t no good host.”
Ms. Allen trudged over to Harry’s door and unburdened her squat frame of what had to be well ov= er a hundred pounds of meat that hit the floor with an icy thwack. Watching the scene unfold in the first floor entry hall whose towering thirty-foot, beaux-arts ceiling now seemed too low, Harry was reminded of his childhood = cat who would bring all manner of dead thing from the outs= ide world and lay it at his feet as a sacrificial offering to its god.
“Now I don’t wa= nt you to have to go to no trouble so if you’ll show me the freezer I’= ll pack it all in all nice and tight and out of the ways so it don’t cau= se you no trouble or nothing until my guests come over this weekend and then I’ll lift it all out and take it back to cook up for all my guests. I don’t want you to have to lift nothing or nothing like that in your condition. And I don’t want you to have to go to no trouble or nothing like that. You doing enough just keeping it for me until the weekend. That’s so nice of you, you just don’t know. So it’s in th= at alcove there?”
Again Harry was shocked by = so many words followed by silence and realized that she was looking at him followin= g a question that Harry hadn’t heard. As if not accustomed to waiting for recognition of her verbal barrages, Ms. Allen pushed past Harry with her baggage heading towards the alcove housing the refrigerator and freezer. “This is perfect,” she said eyeing the deep freeze that Harry h= ad purchased to make trips to the grocery less frequent, “Friggin’ perfect.”
Wasting no time, Ms. Allen = threw open the freezer lid and heaved bag after frozen bag of meat into the dark,= icy depths. After ten, Harry lost count amidst the furious activity of sacs fly= ing through the ether as if orbiting about the planet-sized Ms. Allen.
“That’s it.
Harry watched as Ms. Allen = ascended the staircase again with her voice trailing off like a train in the distanc= e. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they want to come down here= and thank you personally. I hope you’re home next weekend.” Harry b= egan contemplating the Doppler Effect as he closed the door to the irritation th= at was Ms. Allen’s voice.
After recovering from the s= hock of his encounter with the meaty woman, as he had dubbed her, Harry finished his Stonehenge and over the next few weeks would move on to the Taj Mahal, go south to the Pet= ronus Towers, and then head east a few thousand miles to the Sydney harbor and op= era house. Placid days metamorphosed into languid weeks and Harry forgot about = the meaty woman and her intrusion.
He may never have recalled = how his freezer came be so overcrowded had it not been for Officer Trumpet and his search for someone named Jim. Or was it John? Harry was not good with names= .
“I’m sorry to b= other you, Mr. Otter, but I was wondering if you might have seen this guy before,” Officer Trumpet thrust forward a picture of a slight looking young man wearing an ill-fitting blue blazer and an uncomfortable worried expression. The young man’s eyes were downcast and forlorn. Something about the figure made Harry feel lost, abandoned. “Mr. Otter?”<= /p>
“What? Oh, I’m = sorry...I..no..I don’t belie= ve so.”
“Are you sure, sir? H= e lived upstairs in 2A. Him and a Ms. Allen. We haven= 217;t been able to locate either of them.”
Someone actually lived with= the meaty woman. Now Harry understood why the young man looked so downtrodden. “I don’t really interact with my neighbors, you see. I work at home. I don’t see any of them very often. They are all so transient, = you know.”
“= Yes, sir. The nature of the city, I guess. Well, if you do see him or remember anythi= ng, will you give me a call? Here’s my card.”
Harry took the plain white = card with blue lettering, Arial type he thought. “Yes, of course. I will do just that.” Still clutching the card long after Officer Trumpet had g= one, Harry thought that he should have mentioned his encounter with Ms. Allen. A= ny sharing of information though would most assuredly have led to the officer staying longer, and Harry had work to do; he was half-way to the pyramids of Giza.
Contemplating golden sand a= nd shadow, Harry’s mind began to wander back to the photograph of the mo= rose young man: the mouth down turned, the eyes heavy, the shoulders slumped, the darkness of his jacket contrasting the pallid complexion. The image haunted him in a way that Harry found unfamiliar. Hav= ing filled his days with visions of light and hope and grandeur, the young man’s figure hovered as an unexpected dark cloud on a sunny day.
The fre= ezer. What about the freezer? How many weeks had it been? Three or four puzzles, maybe? He couldn’t recall. Should he get rid of the meaty woman’= ;s meat? He didn’t like the idea of having to explain its presence. But = then it was just meat.
Harry pulled himself up on = his cane and stood on shaky legs. His stomach tightened becoming leaden as a sense of foreboding surfaced. Before he changed his mind, he threw open the freezer = and grabbed all the bags one at a time and tossed them onto the kitchen floor b= eside his puzzle table.
Stacked to a height of thre= e feet, Harry opened the top bag and peered inside to see frost and aluminum with a minuscule sliver of greyish meat peeking out. <= span class=3DGramE>Rancid. A rancid grey. Had = the meat gone bad? What kind of meat was it? He didn’t recall whether the meaty woman had ever said. She may have at some point in the never-ending stream = of words. Was it pork? There was enough lying on his floor to reconstruct a he= rd of swine.
Should he dare? With a rush= of heat from his head to his fingertips, Harry seized the top bag, releasing the contents from its multi-layered prison. Again. <= span class=3DGramE>And again. And again. Metal= lic mounds grew by the front door. Shapes gathered and separated and rearranged= .
Feeling like a modern-day G= alen, a healer, an anti-butcher, he slid pieces into place with grace and confidence rarely enjoyed. He realized the results of the work of his hands and well-h= oned skills and shuddered. Looking down upon his completed work with horrified astonishment, Harry could here the hammering of artisans again. The thud-thud-thud of Egyptian slaves echoing through the small apartment was deafening. Harry covered his ears to shut out the sound, damning his overac= tive imagination. &= nbsp; &nbs= p;