The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2001, Síða 25

Vol. 56 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
107
A Thousand Rainy Days
by David Jon Fuller
For all that people say that the autumn
air is crisp, refreshing, brisk, et cetera, the
fact is that when the weather is wet, it is
miserable. It doesn’t lift you up the way the
first spring shower does, nor make you feel
alive like a summer thundershower. It just
makes you sodden and cold, and see the
point in central heating. There was one
such day that stood out for me. It was
September, and raining; I bitterly wished
that the underground concourse at Portage
and Main extended all the way to my apart-
ment. I was walking home after class—my
notes were getting wet—when 1 saw a
woman walking barefoot in a puddle. It
was right in the middle of a back lane,
where the two halves sloped and met in the
middle. I suppose she liked the depth.
She had a long, black skirt hiked up to
about her knees, and the puddle-water was
just above her ankles. I started to edge
around the puddle. (I got wet anyway; I
had to squeeze past a maple growing next
to somebody’s garage.) She had great legs
(if a little on the pale side)... not that I was
looking, of course. She also wore a loose
white sweater, the sleeves rolled up to her
elbows. The tendons in her arms rippled as
she adjusted her grip on her dress. She
casually flipped her long, dark hair out of
her face and looked at me.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
“Me? Nothing,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever seen somebody
walking in a puddle before?”
“Well,” I said, edging past the tree, “I
suppose
Suddenly, one of the tree’s branches
sprung out from behind my back and
whipped my notebook out of my grasp.
Before I could say, “Djo—!” she sprang
forward and caught it. I began to thank her
when I realized how much the action had
cost her. Her skirt had hit the puddle, and
the edges were soaked.
“Oh, I’m sorry—er, well, thanks,
though, I . . . yeah.” There was a long
pause. “Would you like some tea?”
She blinked twice. She had brown eyes.
“Sure,” she said.
She sat serenely in an old kitchen chair,
wearing a pair of sweats I’d dug out of my
dresser. Her skirt was suspended from the
ceiling, drying above the radiator. She
wrapped her fingers around a mug as I
filled it with Earl Grey.
“I like your place,” she said. “You can
see a lot from this window.”
“Yeah. Especially when the sun sets.”
“That must be nice,” she said, sipping
her tea.
“It is,” I said.
She poured some milk into her mug and
cocked an eyebrow at me, offering the car-
ton.
“No, thanks,” I said, taking the sugar, “I
drink it black. Or, I mean, brown, I guess.”
She smiled. I did too. “Do you always walk
in puddles when it rains?”
“No,” she said. “Sometimes I wait ’til it
stops.”
“Oh.”
“I’m from Toronto.”
“I see,” I said, nodding conversationally.
“That’s why.”
“Oh.”
The conversation stumbled to a halt.
She leaned forward conspiratorially.
“Actually,” she said, “the real reason is, I’m
part mermaid.”
I blinked. “But you don’t have a tail,” I
argued.
“Is that so?” she said raising her chin.
“You wouldn’t have legs, you’d be part
fish.”
“Ah, but I’m only part mermaid.”
“There’s no such thing. Mermaids are
aquatic women, each with a tail instead of
legs, and they don’t wear . . . ah, bathing
suits.” She said nothing. “I’ve got a book