Apagão

A blackout in Beautiful: a brief story

We walked down to the supermercado and got some vinho verde, cheese, chips, cucumbers, tomatoes, oat milk, lettuce. We carried it home in our own sacks, stopped at the churrasqueria, say hi to Carlos and Elena.

Home at the moment is a sort of incubator for hurt/damaged chickens: I Dream of Jeannie came inside to roost after she’d been plucked bald-headed and bare-backed during the Peaky Haskells reign of terror in the coop. After more than six months indoors Jeannie once again has a full head and back of feathers and spends her days in the yard with her namorado Jackson Pollock and her nights in her cat-shaped house or roosting on the headboard. She loves to sit next to the h watching TV and grooming herself.

the infamous yellow chair. Alphonse and Jeannie’s buffet on the floor

Alphonse joined us four days ago, when we found him outside the door looking almost dead from his injuries incurred during a fight that I knew right away was instigated by Sette. It was touch and go but he is a sturdy four or five year old and a natural born leader, and has responded well to being indoors, safe and warm and dry and fed and with cute little Jeannie to practice staring at with his damaged eye.

mosquito netting tied up above the bed. Jake’s shrine on the desk. Candle on the windowsill

She stands near him to reassure him and he has hesitantly started to eat and drink again, and walk around the apartment, following her. Today he made a lunge at her neck, she yelled and he stopped. Okay if you are feeling randy enough to make a pass at Jeannie you might need to go back to the Secret Garden tomorrow, I tell him. He stands there thinking about it for a good ten minutes then the h picks him up and puts him onto his down blanket for the night and he is instantly asleep. Poor sweet guy.

I was just sitting down to eat dinner and getting ready to watch Love Is Blind the Reunion episode (I’m addicted to this show) when the whole apartment went dark. We are better set up than most for a blackout, given that we lived in Brokedown Palace for eighteen electricity-less months.

I spread some of our many rechargeable lights around the apartment, and a few candles. It didn’t take much to light up this small space. The h strapped on a headlamp. I opened the shutters to see if it was just our house or the street, and the entire street was dark but as I watched, the apartment building across the way came into view, window by window, as people lit candles and shone flashlights out into the night.

We heard an owl call, call again. Then again. We went outside and were able to locate it, tucked high up under the umbrella top of the Monterey Pine that parasols over the Garden House. The h’s powerful flashlight picked the owl out easily, a large fellow sitting on a branch in a classic head turned pose, the “horned” tufts of his ears clearly visible.

I went for a walk through the dark streets. I liked the way the windows flickered with warm, shadowy candlelight. The sky was crowded with stars. There weren’t a lot of people out though I encountered a number of folks here and there standing on the sidewalk speaking to someone who was inside, leaning out their window for a chat.