tuckova

there is absolutely nothing seriously wrong. there is nothing wrong, in
fact, at least not as far as i know. actually there is nothing
that i know. it’s just the hint of something and i am all over the
place with worry. a hat on the table, we all know what that means. and
worse, certain words that cannot sound good no matter what. even benign
has in it a note of evil, an assonant hint of the evil it does not
(ostensibly) possess.

we smile, we joke, he admires my socks, they are splendid socks. that’s
something i know, see, is that i have a splendid pair of socks. they
are lucky socks, i washed them last night so i could wear them on the
plane, so i could give the poor security guards something splendid to
look at when i have to take off my shoes. so he admires my socks and we
talk
about where we were ten years ago: he had more hair and i had fewer
wrinkles. but we are the same, i am nervous and he is reassuring and we
talk about his typewriter, which i tell him we would find maybe in an
antique store in america, and about his funky little television, which
you don’t see a lot of televisions this fancy in offices. what politics and money hath wrought. i am almost comfortable,
see, between the socks and the jokes about technology.

look, i’m okay, it’s nothing, i’m fine. people have awful things
happen to them all the time and this is not awful. some people don’t
have time for the luxury of dread, the hours of wondering and the
overplayed scenarios, the eyes peeled open in the dark. what if what if. and that is all this is, the
luxury of overthought. except that: this is nothing. you lose your
rabbit’s foot and you walk across the street with more caution but you
should have been cautious in the first place. or maybe caution itself
is what gets you into trouble. maybe you’re looking for the wrong
thing. six percent of americans they say, maybe even twenty-five
percent, and they don’t even know; and what i do not know could fill a
vaccum.

and afterwards i step into the street and cross at the green and walk
downtown and buy some new CDs, new to me. my ideas of what is unlucky
are ridiculous cliches that even i don’t take quite seriously, but my
ideas of luck have always been personal and it’s easy to turn it
around. in the evening i make spinach and pasta and Squire Tuck eats the
spinach and even doesn’t flinch, it’s good because it’s good for me, he
says, and this is surely a sign of good things to come, of right
decisions made. right? of course it is.