Private Eye

When we stepped out on to the porch we stepped into a world of ice, white sky, and creaking branches. We heard the world breathing. Sight had become a vestigial appendage. We sensed the world's dimensions by echo-location. In the weeks since the first ice storm we'd had two more. Limbs and twigs cluttered streets and anyone with any sense avoided walking under trees.

I told the Eye we'd better consider crawling to get from A to B, but Eye scoffed, pointing to his Vibram soled boots with an arch finger. Fine, I said. We'll chance it. Don't come cryin' to me if your ass breaks.

I thought maybe the thing to do was find a cache of sand somewhere and strew it ahead as we bestrode the sidewalks and parking lots of Amberlack, but that good idea was faulted with the lack of a known cache of sand.

Eye and I were pursuant of a very small and bent over old lady who had taken off from her senior apartment the day before and hadn't been seen since. It was feared she'd slipped, and possibly hit her head, or simply couldn't get up, and thus was in danger of death by freezing. However, there was hope; she was known for her persistent attempts to escape from her daughter-in-law's well meant supervised habitation to a senior center in Avram Heights. It had, as we knew, because the old lady told us each time we apprehended her, a pool table, where a cute little asian man smiled at her as he banked his shots, his white socks shining love at her flower heart. So she said. We didn't share this with Norma. We had a bread-buttering routine, a cycle, a round, a ritual, one of many among a constellation of regular escapes and apprehensions.

We found the senior village a rich well of minor troubles. It was our specialty.