Antipodes.

Last Friday started off very brutally and ended with a happy surprise. Now you get the title of this post. You don’t need to read this if you don’t want to, it gets graphic and I just need some sort of outlet. Warning: there are no Little Pixies that Rule the World in this post, nor are there references to Boo, my awesome Cat who talks like James Mason.

Early in the morning, I heard noises in the entrance hall and staircase of my building. People going up, people coming down. Stamping their feet. Running. Then I heard an engine running outside my bedroom window. Newspaper Guy comes around 5 a.m. It wasn’t him. So I looked out the window and saw an ambulance, a cop car and a fire engine. I instantly freaked out. About 5 minutes later, one of the firemen took out the gurney from the ambulance and laid a blanket and pillow on it. By this time, I had gathered something had happened to my upstairs neighbor, as he had undergone surgery a few weeks back. I thought he wasn’t feeling well, and that he needed to go back to the hospital. I just did not expect to see him like this. The ambulance tech was practically jumping up and down on him, trying to revive him. He was not responding, and I’m guessing they had been trying upstairs too. He was grey, he was dead, and I lost it.

Why did I stay at the window? I couldn’t look away: I’ve known this guy almost 4 years. We spoke 3 days before in the garage. He was my neighbor. With all my might, I was willing him to open one eye: to turn his head away from me, to breathe, damn it, breathe! He was not my best friend or a member of my family, but his death hurt me deeply. And the image of him, dead on a gurney outside my bedroom window, will haunt me for a long time to come.

I had my day planned out, but couldn’t just carry on as if nothing had happened. I had to leave. I was crying, pacing alone in my living room, wishing I had not seen what I had seen. So I called my friends and left. I spent the day with them. It made me feel better. When I came home, The Man told me he had an errand to run and he’d be back in an hour. When he returned, he asked me to close my eyes and sit on the sofa. He gently placed something in front of me on the floor. When I opened my eyes, there was a black basket with a fabric drawstring top, closed. When I opened it, two little blue eyes were staring at me from the depths of the basket. I closed it again. I started crying. I said to the The Man: “Oh no! Boo is going to kill him!” I looked again, and the two little blue eyes mewed at me. Two little beady blue eyes, in a furry little head with folded ears, the sweetest stripes ever and a spotted belly, and four thumbs on its little paws. We called our new little baby cat Ezio, in honor of the character in Assassin’s Creed, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The Man had been planning this surprise for over a month with a couple of friends of ours. I had held this little furball when he was two days old, and had fallen in love with him then. But he would never be mine, or so I thought…Now I fall in love with him every time I look at him. I know, it’s corny. But true.

Thanks for putting up with the corniness. When I post pictures of Ezio, you’ll fall under the spell too.

Last Friday started off very brutally and ended with a happy surprise. Last Friday was the first time in my life I cried in panic, in sadness, in surprise and in joy, all within less than twelve hours.