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| photo credit: thememoirs.com |
In a quaint apartment complex located right down the street from the elementary school live two senior citizens, Elvira and Reginald. Reginald lives at apartment #103 and Elvira lives at #203.
Reginald lives alone except for his two full-sized cats that crouch in his flowerbed when he isn’t looking and mark it for territory when he tells them to scram. Once in a while he takes his fishing gear and walks over to the neighbor’s man-made pond when he isn’t home and catches catfish for supper. He plays old Louis Armstrong records on his record player and prowls his living room, pretending he is at a dance, and eventually taps the shoulder of the coat rack. His favorite color is alizarin crimson.
Elvira is a widow who lives with one canary named Spot and occasionally houses a lizard or two, depending on the weather. If the weather is warm, she will find them basking in the sun, lying motionless on a rock in the yard, and so with her nifty nimble fingers, she catches them and houses them in a plastic tank for three days. She releases them after three days because of an old habit her mother imprinted on her since she was a child. Supposedly it was a courtesy; otherwise she would end up with dead lizards. Her favorite color is aquamarine.
Together, Elvira and Reginald are 129 years old.
Reginald remembers the first day Elvira moved into the apartment above him. He was filling out the crossword puzzle for the Sunday newspaper and sipping his coffee when a U-haul pulled up next to his apartment. He dreaded the idea of a new tenant, fearing a new pipsqueak fresh out of high school was invading the apartment above him simply to hold loud parties with loud friends and scare his two full-sized cats. Instead, a woman in an aquamarine blouse with gold sequins and milky white buttons slipped out of the truck, and to Reginald’s dread, a young whippersnapper joined her from the other side of the truck.
Standing up from his camel colored chair, he walked over to the window and caught a glimpse of the strange woman with her mouth open in a smile, flashing a perfect set of dentures and red painted lips. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sixties-styled sunglasses connected to beaded strings, nor could he hear her husky voice, mature with age, order the young boy to carry her bags up to her apartment door.
Reginald walked slowly back to his washroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Shaking his head he reached for his comb, gnarly with age, and ran the teeth through his wispy hair. He glanced down at the stain on his checkered bowling shirt and shrugged his shoulders. Hearing a rustling outside the window, he slid open the window and waved Fatty and Lump away from the petunias underneath the sill.
That’s when their eyes met.
“Hello,” the strange woman said from outside, gripping two boxes in her slightly plump arms. Reginald could still see how red her fingernails were. “Those are lovely flowers.”
And she escaped before he could say anything more.
Elvira and Reginald - Part 2
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