ON A CELL PHONE, THE ADDED FEATURES (PLATFORMS, SHORT STORIES, YEAR AHEAD, ETC.) CAN BE ACCESSED FROM THE TOP LEFT HAND CORNER (STACKED LINES). ALSO, THE ‘TRANSLATE’ & WORLD CLOCK WILL APPEAR AT THE BOTTOM.
在手機上，添加的功能（平臺，短篇小說，提前一年等） 可以從左上角訪問（堆疊線）。
*** All times / dates: Please remember that all time references (e.g., “dawn”) are PDT – Pacific DAYLIGHT Time zone. You can refer to the World Clock in the sidebar for more listings or Google ‘time zone converter’.
Email: suningem@gmail.com
Tim’s YouTube links: Unveiling Astrology
Unveiling Astrology Part 2)
START NOTHING (ALL TIMES ARE PACIFIC DAYLIGHT): 10:33 am to 1:55 pm Sun., 9:11 pm to 11:43 pm Tues., and 10:10 am to 11:41 am Fri.
PREAMBLE:
We should all avoid starting new projects or relationships now to July 23 (technically — the effects might last a bit longer). Mistakes, indecision, delays, supply shortages, confusion — these fill the weeks ahead. On the plus side, during this time a former “prize” that you didn’t quite grasp in the past, might return to give you a second chance. As part of this influence, a former spouse or flame might re-appear.
WEEKLY FORECAST:
ARIES: March 21-April 19
The weeks ahead focus on your domestic situation, Aries — home, family, food, garden, mother nature, security, real estate, napping and contemplating. This is still a very fortunate area for you — but the main thrust of good luck ends next week (June 29, PDT) so you’d better hurry to take advantage. This area will also be “bothered” by indecision and delay June 29 to July 23, so avoid brand new starts. Same period, old flames — and more importantly, former homes or “situations” — might return. Money still flows to you — reduce spending. A nice streak of romance keeps you hoping, happy. Sunday morning’s for work (it gets done easily) but this pm (PDT) brings relationships and opportunities to the fore, through Tuesday. Some good stuff here, esp. with a friend who’s intellectually “on your wavelength” Sunday. Any “rejections” will be rooted in your own wants and attitude. Secrets, valuable information, research, heightened intuition, major finances and sexual temptations arrive Wed. to late morning Friday (PDT). Be cautious, Aries; many obstacles and “traps” litter this interval — alienation Wed., illusion/deception Thurs., and a jumbled Friday — but maybe a lucky break Fri. morning (afternoon, early evening Europe). Other lands, foreign people, higher learning, far travel, law, media and philosophy draw you Friday pm and Sat. — in good ways!
TAURUS: April 20-May 20
You switch from a possessive attitude to one of sharing information and opinions for the weeks ahead, Taurus. Expect an increase in trips around town, paperwork, and calls/texts/emails…BUT realize much of what’s discussed or put on paper will be wrong, confused or unanswered, next week to July 23. (Read PREAMBLE for more.) This period might bring back an old friend, even a former love. You remain assertive, brave, maybe impulsive, all week. It’s only the small start, but going forward your income will change, and will lean heavily on your career success — now to 2032/33. Early Sunday is romantic, creative and rewarding. But after 2 pm PDT — and through Tuesday — you’re faced with chores. Might as well tackle them, but watch for clues, small obstacles. Relationships, fresh horizons, public appearances, opportunities or opposition fill Wed. to midday Fri. Lots of snags and potholes here, so advance cautiously, be realistic, esp. Thursday. Diplomacy wins, and a final prize could come Friday morning/midday. Friday pm and Saturday open the door(s) to heightened intuition, valuable information, major finances, and lust. Your luck is high and strong here, but avoid a Friday pm disruption. (It really masks an opportunity.)
GEMINI: May 21-June 20
You now (Sunday) switch from personal charisma and energy, to a more practical, money-oriented few weeks ahead, Gemini. Your financial good luck is strong until June 30, but Mercury retros June 29 to July 23. This can cause confusion, delay and mistakes. It can also bring back a money opportunity you missed before, and/or a casual, “sometime” lover. Continue to avoid bad people and bad places. Casual friends are gracious, welcoming; deep friends take a little longer to develop. Sleep in or rest Sunday morning. But shortly after noon (PDT) a creative, romantic and “winning” influence enters, to last through Tuesday. There is definitely some romance here, but results seem elusive. Tackle chores Wed. to midday Fri. Eat, dress sensibly, and be careful around chemicals or heat. NOT a good time to paint, but okay for buying furniture or other “dry” decorating/repairing. That work might result in good $, or a pay raise. Relationships fill midday Friday (PDT) through Sat. Either disruption or a sudden attraction Friday, but good stuff otherwise — partnering, relocation, public appearances, opportunities, fresh horizons — a fortunate interval.
CANCER: June 21-July 22
A month of weariness ends now, Cancer. The weeks ahead point to a rise in energy, charisma and clout to an annual peak — but not in effectiveness, as June 29 to July 23 brings confusion, delays and mistakes. So use your new energy to give ongoing projects a push, or to seize former opportunities for a re-try. Someone might pursue you with words, calls — but little physical “push.” You’re personally happy, friendly and lucky until June 30, when a year of huge money luck starts! Friends might be aggressive, ready to stir up a bit of trouble. Joining them can affect your prestige, rep. Sunday morning (PDT) is active, talkative, contains an errand. But this afternoon through Tuesday brings a down-home, family-oriented influence, with mixed luck. Background or private or gov’t-related things succeed later Sunday, but career, other ambitions meet obstacles Mon. and Tues. Romance, creativity, sports/games, charming kids, beauty — these fill Wed. to midday Fri. Some confusion, some pitfalls here, especially Thursday, when deception (or self-deception) hovers — but a potentially splendid end, perhaps even a pay raise or a new, better employment level. Love? Not so much, despite the romantic influence. Tackle chores Friday pm though the weekend — success, lots accomplished. (But take care with electricity, computers Friday (around suppertime PDT).
LEO: July 23-Aug. 22
Retreat from the bustling crowd during the weeks ahead, Leo. This is a time for introspection, for seeking advice, and liaising with gov’t, head office or institutions (hospitals, universities, banks, etc.). (You can solve or dismiss an old problem wth gov’t and others.) However, avoid one activity: don’t make plans, private nor involving others. A period of confusion, indecision, missing elements and delays starts next week and lasts to July 23 — plans made now ’til then will be abandoned — by you. Instead, enjoy your “time off,” your rest and quiet. (It’s like leaving for your vacation just before, and while, everything is going to screw up at work.) This rest, until July 22, is very important, as July will start a year of incredible good luck and renewed confidence, esp. in romance, creative, sports and child-raising pursuits. You’ll want to be fresh and well rested for this 12 months of great progress. Sunday morning is for shopping, casual hugs. This afternoon (2 pm PDT) through Tuesday brings conversations, paperwork, short trips — mostly good Sunday (esp. w/spouse or “friend”) but watch out for illusion, impractical ideas late Sunday night onward. (Remember: relax!) Home, family, real estate, mom nature and security become your main focus Wed. to midday Fri. Love seems protected, but ideas, opinions can cause confusion, dissension Thursday. Possible dispute and friendly solution Friday morn (PDT). Friday pm, Saturday, bring romance, beauty, joy.
VIRGO: Aug. 23-Sept. 22
You’re going to enjoy the weeks ahead, Virgo. Flirtations, rising popularity and social joys, optimism, entertainment — these will accompany you for four weeks. These same weeks (technically June 29 to July 23) will stymie you if you start new projects, but will reward if you either remain loyal to ongoing projects, or welcome people, situations, opportunities from the past. A former “light love” might return. (And might want to share living quarters.) Avoid law suits for one more week. Your money picture looks good. You have lots of energy (and someone notices) Sunday daytime (to 2 pm PDT). Pursue money, buy/sell, hug a casual lover or read to memorize, Sunday afternoon through Tuesday. But don’t “go too far” — Sunday’s good, but Mon./Tues. bring indecision/illusion and practical barriers. Paperwork, errands and communications fill Wed. to midday Fri. This interval ends successfully, but there are a few bumps getting there — emotional “pull back” Wed., illusion or deception Thurs., and a possible wee dispute early Fri. morning (PDT). Head for home, at least in your heart, Friday afternoon through the weekend — a positive, renewing experience.
LIBRA: Sept. 23-Oct. 22
During the four weeks ahead, Libra, you will be tested, observed by higher-ups (or by the public if you run your own company.) Your ambitions, work, prestige relations and worldly standing will be in focus. Some of you have reached new heights in the past year: now bosses watch to see if you deserve recent boosts. It won’t be easy, as next week starts a period of confusion, delay, missing supplies and indecision lasting to July 23. Be brave, be steadfast, and do the work. Some of you have not “climbed the ambition ladder” in the past 11 months — in your case, the upcoming period of delay and confusion can, very probably will, bring back a formerly missed opportunity to advance upward — grab it, you only have weeks to do so! A “partner” is still “hiding.” Your social life is affectionate, fortunate. Lie low, rest and contemplate early Sunday (to 2 pm PDT) — all’s well. Sunday pm through Tuesday, your energy and charisma surge upward. Use it to get things done, NOT to start new projects/situations. Love’s good Sunday eve, night. Monday holds a practical barrier. Tuesday can bring confused communications, or an open doorway “upstairs.” I’d pick the latter! Chase $ Wed. to midday Fri. — buy/sell, pay bills, study, and/or hug a sometime lover. It’s a topsy-turvy interval, with some alienation Wed., love both secure and doubted Thurs., and final success Friday. This afternoon through the weekend brings errands, reports, communications and paperwork — successfully.
SCORPIO: Oct. 23-Nov. 21
An enlightening few weeks lie ahead, Scorpio. This week and a bit of next (to June 29) give a extra boost to international affairs/travel, legalities, philosophy, media, higher learning and gentle love — areas that have been blessed for you since June 2025. A period of delay, confusion and mistakes starts soon (June 29, technically, tho’ you might start experiencing it earlier). This counsels against starting any new project or relationship. So, refer to the past for direction. E.g., if you want to travel internationally, chose a place you’ve visited before. An old flame, a quite sexual one, might return. (If single, say yes.) Early Sunday is happily social. By afternoon (2 pm PDT) a weariness will slowly overcome you, lasting through Tuesday. It’s life/nature, nudging you to contemplate, to self-examine and to rest — a good idea, because you’ll want extra energy for Wed. to midday Fri., when the Moon is in your sign. This can lead to dawning attraction, even new allies. But old allies are better, now and in July. Your ideas might encounter some push-back Wed./Thurs., but you might also receive praise from a boss, for your past efforts. After a wee dispute Friday, another opportunity or bonus “awaits.” Don’t delay seizing it. Friday afternoon through the weekend brings a mild good luck in money, possessions, and sex.
SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22-Dec. 21
The weeks ahead focus on secrets and investigation, on medical and lifestyle choices, major finances, sex/lust, commitment and consequences, Sage. My advice: make NO commitments, no agreements or contracts. Be wary of investments. DO investigate, do let your intuition rule your logic, and do pursue a formerly missed investment, or a second chance at intimacy. (A former sexual “partner” might reappear.) All this, because a period of confusion, mistakes, indecision and delay starts June 29 and ends July 23. So start nothing brand new, but do support situations from the past, and ongoing projects and relationships. Work remains intense (but this is the last week of this). Your ideas gain favour, and a spark of “gentle love” might appear. Sunday morning (to 2 pm PDT) offers an ambitious opening. But this afternoon through Tuesday brings celebration, fun, friends, popularity, optimism and entertainment. It’s a bad interval for doing practical things, and one you meet while socializing will NOT make a good mate. But have fun! Retreat, lie low, rest and contemplate Wed. To midday Fri, — but don’t make plans or appointments, as they will change. This interval is also studded with various obstacles (including self-deception) but ends with good luck and a feeling of belonging. Midday Friday starts a successful weekend of personal power, energy and charisma. Still, start nothing brand new!
CAPRICORN: Dec. 22-Jan. 20
The weeks ahead highlight relationships, relocation, fresh horizons, opportunities, and opposition. In all of these, do not start anything — instead, support ongoing projects/relations, or reprise those that return now from the past. (They/it might be very big, major opportunities, relations.) A former partner or lover might reappear. Your sexual intimacy, if it occurs, will be affectionate and “easy.” (No insult intended.) Sunday morning (to 2 pm PDT) will be mild and profound: write down your thoughts. Be ambitious this afternoon through Tuesday — nothing’s easy (except a money-work discussion/idea late Sunday) — but you’ll grind through it, and accomplish something. Your popularity rises Wed. to midday Fri., as social delights, optimism and flirting lift your heart. Again, obstacles and problems show everywhere, but if you ignore practical goals, and only chase fun or “romance,” you’ll end happily. Retreat Friday afternoon through the weekend. Rest, recharge your batteries, contemplate, liaise with gov’t or head office — but make no future plans — they will change.
AQUARIUS: Jan. 21-Feb. 18
A bit of drudgery faces you for the weeks ahead, Aquarius. Lots of work, some health concerns (lighter ones) and machinery. Usually, this would be a good time to repair or buy machines, but NOT this time, as Mercury retrogrades until July 23, causing mistakes, lemons, poor quality, misconceptions, confusion and delay. Don’t start anything brand new before that July date. Instead, support and protect ongoing projects, jobs, or reprise one from the past. Remain gentle on the home front — friction here should dissolve next week onward. Partners, spouse, even the public, will greet you with grace and affection. (However, this is not a good time to start a new relationship.) Sunday before 2 pm PDT offers insights, secrets, investments, lust — all favourably. This afternoon through Tuesday brings mental expansion, profound thoughts, law, far travel, philosophy, media and gentle love. But other than Sunday, these themes have a hard time expanding, let alone existing. Caution advised. Be ambitious Wed. to midday Fri. Again, not the easiest interval, but you can make headway, and might end with a prize, a promotion, praise from the boss. A long-term relationship grows more secure. Friday pm through the weekend finds you happy and optimistic, social and flirty. Re-connect with a group you liked.
PISCES: Feb. 19-March 20
A month of love begins now, Pisces. Love of a person, of kids, of good food or flowers, sunsets or oceans. Your creative and speculative abilities rise, and nature kisses you with beauty. However, do not seek new lovers, nor start any projects, esp. creative ones, before July 23. If you’re single, an old flame is very likely to reappear (or answer your call). Judge this by how/why it ended. It could be a great bond. But many of you have already found a love partner in the last 11 months. June is your last chance for awhile. Drive defensively, and re-read any communications before sending, to make sure you aren’t too forceful. Your workplace is dotted with friendly, even affectionate co-workers. Sunday early is made for relationships. But by 2 pm PDT (11 pm in W. Europe) the emphasis turns to secrets and research, big finances, lust, lifestyle and medical decisions, lasting through Tuesday. Avoid new commitments here — consequences would not please you. Wednesday to midday Friday brings intellectual enlightenment, far travel, higher learning, law, religion and gentle love. Only grasp or engage any of these that you have already started or studied in the past. This interval contains mixed luck, but seems to end on a bright note — maybe even with a glorious understanding, a “eureka,” or a love tap. Midday Friday starts a weekend of worldly status, ambition, prestige relations — and is the first smooth set of days this week.
THE END.
AFTERAMBLE:
A tiny story:
Then dramatic Spring came, with her flounces, her breezes and whistling winds, her sky weeping, whipping blankets of rain like a maid shaking sheets, the sadness of grey like a platform that people’s moods stand on, but from her shoulders and her elbows, her armpits and her secret place spring new shoots, green and eager — and from her feet, her knees, minerals.
This was the Spring who strolled into the meeting, as confident as life is life. What’s your name, the chair asked her.
Summer, she said.
No, I’m Summer, said another.
Summer is what I will become, said Spring. I am Spring; I always look forward, I always am what I will become.
Then meet me belly to belly, Summer said, and we will fuse together. Our boundaries will weaken, and our pleasures grow, until the coldness comes.
Cold? I come from cold, said spring.
A bigger story:
CLAIRE ONE
A Story by Tim
1960: Outside in the bright April day, the hair-flattening wind pounced on the tall old house, shaking it so the walls creaked. Claire (10, thin, wiry and tall, with the rough knees of a tomboy) imagined the wind roaring up wet alleys and moldy walkways, clearing away winter’s stench like a woman with a boisterous broom. She meandered lazily down the stairs, from the empty third floor (where she liked to be, staring out the window) to her second floor bedroom, leaning against the wind-breathing wall, hearing and feeling the muffled roaring and whistling. Her bedroom stood at the end of the corridor, across the narrow hall from a room with a bath and sink, and a separate tiny toilet room. Beside her bedroom was a small rented suite, entered through a door with an angled top half, to fit under the stairs. At the other end of the hallway, door always closed, was the big room rented by the huge lady, the room that looked over the street far below. The fat lady came from Clair’s Mom’s work. Clair’s Mom said she was a friend “helping out” by renting the room. And under the third-floor stairs, with the angled door top, the small suite was occupied by two men who were now arguing loudly. “You fucking cunt,” one said to the other. “You fucking cunt. We gotta go there right now and get it, or your ass is fucking grass. What the – you cock sucker! Didn’t you think I’d learn about this? You think I was stupid? Let’s go! Let’s fucking go!”
Claire froze in the hallway, then slipped back into the stairwell. But no one came out. A bottle crashed and smashed.
She flitted quickly to the landing, to run downstairs. It was Saturday, and she could run to wherever she wanted. But the huge lady from the front room stood puffing, two steps from the top, blocking Clair’s way. She wore a blue print dress. Despite her round face, she had a blocked, blunt, angry look that never went away. Her cheeks were pink and soft, with gray fuzz on them. A moustache sooted her upper lip.
“Oh!” Claire said, as she almost collided.
“Oh, sure,” the fat lady said.
They stood looking at each other. Claire looked at her because she had so much flesh, as if she harboured some secret about abundant flesh. She was big and huge, with arms and legs like pink-mottled monsters. Clair did not know what this friend of her mother’s wanted or what she really thought. She only felt the woman’s distaste and anger, and saw the vague red/pink shimmer around her head and shoulders. Today it was pink, though she was sweating. Clair wondered why it wasn’t red if she was sweating. (She had begun to suspect the shimmer wasn’t a physical indicator. It puzzled her. She saw it around other people, too, but didn’t ever mention it.) The fat lady’s distaste and anger offended her a little, but it also nudged Clair’s curiosity. Maybe she was curious about Clair, too, because she stood as quietly as Clair, looking bluntly back at her.
“Take these to my room,” she said. Lifting her big arms from the dead-hang they’d been in, she held out two bags. Clair took them; they weren’t heavy, about the weight of five pounds of potatoes. She went quickly along the hall to the huge lady’s room, and tried to open the door.
The huge lady walked down the hall. “Yes, I had a lock put on,” she said as she waddled up to stand behind Clair. She stared at Clair a moment, harshly. “A lock to keep people out.” She breathed heavily, keeping Clair almost pinned against the door.
“Here’s my key.” She pulled her hand from her dress pocket and dangled a key ring. Clair took it wordlessly. This was new to her. The huge lady had never instructed her to open her door. Nor had it been locked before. Clair knew that, and knew what the room looked like, because she had been in it before, when no one was home. Her friend, Alice, had convinced her to go in, and they had fingered the huge lady’s do-dads, and looked at her two photographs. Alice had said, “Hey, look!” and spewed hair spray in Clair’s eyes, and Clair couldn’t see for a few minutes, and Alice ran away.
She opened the door without losing the bags.
“Do you want the bags inside?”
“Just get in.”
Clair felt guilty about entering the room; felt that she should pretend she had never been in here before. But looking around in surprise would be phoney, like acting.
She took the bags to a counter where a hot plate sat.
The huge lady closed the door.
***
Ten minutes later, Clair ran out the door of the big lady’s room, down the stairs to the main floor where her mother lived. Her mother worked Monday to Friday, then sat, most nights, curled on the couch with a Frank Yerby plantation-slave-romance paperback and a chocolate bar. Today she was doing laundry, her white arms red and steaming in the enclosed back porch. Clair was never asked to help. Her mother would rather work alone.
She went past her mother, out the back door, down the wooden steps, and into the back yard. She looked up at the old house, towering three stories above her. She shouted in the wind, in her mind, “Go away!” to the two drunken men in the room under the stairs. But she had nothing in her mind to say to the huge lady. Her colour had changed, for a few minutes, in her room, the shimmering colour, to a sort of thin, flickering blackness. Clair looked up, to the far-away peak of the roof. There was a pigeon’s nest there. She saw the huge woman, floating just above the roof peak. Her hands felt that hot, wet flesh, so she bent down to rub them in the cool damp grass. Her eyes found two dead baby pigeons, goose-pimpled featherless grey bodies and bare heads, with large swollen closed eyes. A grey, wet “something” seemed to surround them. Not a message, but an impression, as if the greyness…
***
Clair knew something was happening to her, because in the last few months when she went to the corner and shimmied up the black iron street-sign pole, then hung onto the two metal signs at the top, 4th Ave. and Clever St., and pulled herself up the pole, then slowly let herself sink, then pulled herself up again, her legs grew weak and an unfamiliar sweetness swept up through her legs and her thighs and tummy. She liked it so much she did it whenever the urge occurred, or whenever she remembered, which was about once a week or two. But when a man came along and looked queerly at her last week, she stopped doing it, and hadn’t done it since.
She didn’t really think about it. Nor, as she stood in the back yard, staring at the dead pigeon babies, did she think about the fat lady and what happened. She forgot about her, forever.
***
“Sit down a minute,” the huge lady had breathed, closing the door of her room.
There were only two places to sit, other than on the bed. One was a large, upholstered cushiony chair, the other was a bare, wooden straight-backed chair. Clair chose the bare chair, and sat straight.
The huge lady bent, struggling, legs apart, to put the potatoes in a small wooden door that, Clair knew, had a wire mesh to the outside. It was a cooler; there was no fridge.
The lady propped herself to full height, then put the cans in the cupboard.
“Want a pop?”
“No thank you.”
The big lady sighed.
“Come here. I want you to see something.”
Clair stood. The fat lady shifted her dress up her back and sat on the edge of the bed and watched Clair. Slowly she pulled the dress up to her chest, so her huge brassiere and the massive trunks of her large legs showed. Big pink splotches blossomed across the white curdled flesh. Clair froze.
“Are you stupid? I want you to help me. Help me, damn you.”
“What?” Clair said.
“Can you see my underpants?”
The huge legs and fat overhang of her stomach almost made the white panties disappear, but Claire saw part of them, a tiny white slimness in a blossom of pale perspiring flesh down there. She looked away. She said nothing.
“Help me take them off. I can’t reach.”
“No, I think you can,” Clair said quietly.
“Come here,” the fat lady said with a wooden, blunt but forceful voice. Clair turned and saw the lady was carefully looking at her, holding her dress chest-high. Clair saw the blackness shimmering around her.
“Touch my leg. This one.” She bent it forward.
Clair stayed frozen.
“Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be a woman?” the huge lady said angrily, glaring at her. “You’ll be a woman soon, but you don’t have a clue. You’re queer and dreamy. You’ll never grow up if you keep acting stupid like this. You’ll never learn if you’re such a coward.” She kept her dress lifted.
Clair saw the blackness thickening around the fat woman’s head and shoulders, and a deep, dark red beneath it, closer to her skull. For a moment, she forgot the big lady had hair.
“Come, quit being a stupid ignorant girl. I’ll show you what a woman looks like. What you’ll look like when you grow up. Pull my pants to one side, and you’ll see.”
“No,” Clair said hesitantly.
The huge lady lowered her arms and let her thin cotton dress fall back onto her thighs, covering her knees. She looked at Clair. “So, you’re a coward. I thought you were braver. I thought you were growing up. You think you’ll tell your mother? Well, genius, your mother asked me to show you. She asked me to do this. She couldn’t very well show you hers, could she? So she wanted you to feel in here and see what this is, and what it does. We’re worried about you. You need to grow up. You wander around like a ghost, we’re worried about your mental health. Do you want me to tell your mother you’re insane?”
Clair didn’t move or speak. She’s giving up, Clair thought, as, slowed by her bulk, the fat lady lowered her bulk onto the bed and its pink terry cloth bedspread. She put both fists on her thick knees, and said, as if she were Claire’s advisor, speaking slowly and calmly: Your mother has told me a few times how she’d like to be free of you. If I said you were insane, that would go a long way in court to have a judge put you in Juvie or a foster home.”
Dust floated in the bright, sunless air.
Clair breathed and stood, ready to leave. But suddenly the huge lady turned completely, her back to Clair, lifted her dress high, right up around her neck, so she was naked except for the straps of her brassiere and a white line of panties rolled into string by her flesh. She purposely fell on the bed face down. The bed groaned as loud as a stepped-on cat. Her huge thighs and the jelly bowl of her buttocks jiggled as she hit. Then she lay still, only her backside showing.
“Come closer,” she said quietly, through the bed cover, her breath weaker. Clair, feeling a bit safer, and curious, stepped toward the bed to look down at her.
“Take them off…take them off…” the huge lady said. “Then you can play with me all you want.” She said quietly, “You can do anything to me, I won’t see, and I won’t say anything. Touch me. Even where I poo…” After a silence, she said, “Do you want to see my bum hole? Do you want to see where it comes out?”
Clair put a hand on a slab of the big, white-pink bum. It was moist and hot.
“Yes, put your hand there. No there. Closer. Closer, please…See what you want. See what you want, open my little door,” the fleshy lady said slowly, puffing and spreading her thick legs a little apart. Dust roiled in the soft, bright air. Claire slowly withdrew her hand and backed away, until the wall held her.
Moments later — or minutes? — the big woman rolled over, sat up and smoothed her flowered dress. She looked angry and disgusted. She stared at Claire in a way that was meaningless to Claire.
“Tell those fools to come in here.” Claire knew she meant the men under the stairs. Clair didn’t really know why the men were in the house, not how much rent they paid, nor if they even paid, nor who invited them in. She supposed her mother had rented the room out last week, but her mother said nothing, and Clair just avoided them. She went out and knocked on the men’s door.
“Yeah?” came the disemboweled reply, like a question from the inside of a cave, or spoken into a jar. But Clair didn’t answer. She turned. The huge lady hadn’t come to the hallway to speak for herself, or even to her room’s door, which stood half open. Clair found that odd, though she couldn’t quite grasp why. She couldn’t quite understand what went on between adults.
“What?” One of the men bent over in the triangle-loped doorway, peering at her. His breath stank sharply. He was older than Clair’s Mom, and had a grisly grey stubble on his cheeks and chin. He was fairly handsome.
Clair pointed at the huge lady’s room, and backed away quickly to the landing, right up to the far wall of the landing, to watch and to stay out of all their paths. The man, perhaps not as drunk as she thought, swaggered rather than staggered down the hall. He reached the fat lady’s door quickly and shoved it in – all the way open, with his shoulder, quickly, without any thought. She hadn’t realized they were friends.
Then the other man came quickly out, turned and padlocked the triangle door and swept past Clair as if she didn’t exist, running lightly, swiftly and drunkenly down the stairs. He fell at the bottom, and stayed motionless for a moment on the floor below. Then he staggered to his feet and stumbled out the front door in drunken haste. The door slammed. A moment later the other man emerged from the huge lady’s room, lurched to the triangle door under the stairs, saw and grabbed the padlock, cursed, then turned and went crashing down the stairs. She heard yelling outside, then a couple of grunts and shouts, then a deep silence followed by a long, repeated moaning. She wondered what her Mom would think of this drunkenness. Maybe it scared her, and that’s why she didn’t throw them out. Maybe she owed them the room, because they’d paid the rent. Why was she washing clothes, as if nothing was happening?
Then, with a crash of boots and doors, the pursuing man came clambering up the stairs again. He was red-faced and sweating. He looked determined, he hardly glanced at Clair, he went straight to his door, yanked the padlock, then kicked the door several times until the hinges gave out. He ran in, started throwing things, then stopped. He came to the door, muttered to himself, then turned, looked at Clair.
“I got him.” He stared at her stupidly. “The bastard took my stash,” he said almost politely, as if explaining something to a toddler. “But I got him,” he said again. Then his thinking deepened, his brow furrowed into a deep frown; he turned slowly and stepped heavily down the hall to the huge lady’s room. For some reason, the door hadn’t closed, and didn’t close behind him.
She heard arguing from the fat lady’s room.
“You tricked me, you fucking bitch – didn’t you? So now – now I have to kick his fucking head in.” She heard silence, then she heard, “You’ll never see another fucking day, you fat cunt, unless I… UNTOUCHED … my STASH.”
“Oh shut up. You’re drunk. Shut up.”
Now the sunlight had crept along the wall of the landing to touch her arm. She looked at her arm, warm, the little blonde hairs glistening in the sun, then looked up, at the huge lady’s door. She went downstairs slowly, and outside, to feel safe.
She saw the peak of the sharp roof, high and wild in the cloud-strewn cold April sky, and wondered about sitting up there. The wind moaned like a cat around the house’s sharp peak. It roared cold around the house and over her ears. From up there, she would be able to see the world bending in the wind, probably. But remembering the dead pigeon babies made her think of falling from the top of the roof. So she climbed the cherry tree in the back yard. She climbed to the very top, and wrapped her legs around the top vertical limb. It was as thick as a man’s arm, festooned with trembling white blossoms. She swayed in the exhilarating wind, and she could see everything, not over the rooftop but past its side slope. The wind pounced on her in gusts, and she delighted in fighting it, joyously holding tight and riding through each gust. She could see one whole side of the roof and every red shingle. She could see out and out, over the neighbourhoods of houses and trees, down the hill, over several hills and parts of the city, and out far beyond, to indistinguishable lands. She felt like a captain, conquering the world, an explorer on a boat, tossing in the waves.
Climbing down, she assumed a branch was there when it wasn’t, and she fell in silence, the branches rushing by her so fast she saw only one picture. She lay on the ground. She tried to call out, but only a whisper came:
“…help…”
She felt her mother, and saw the drunken man lifting her into the back seat of a small car. Her arm sang with pain. They set her wrist at the hospital, but her sight seemed funny. Her mother told her later she had fallen on a fence made of broomsticks; one had pierced her left eye. And when she fell, her mother told her, as a joke to make her feel better, she had landed on a garter snake, and crushed it.
The doctors operated twice, but the eye failed. For months after, even though she only had one eye, the soft, watery, subtle colours that had shimmered around people intensified, flamed as bright as the Northern Lights. She didn’t know if these colours were real, or a result of her smashed vision. Her eye now possessed a strange quality: it could see both close up and very far away. She could almost read a page of a book someone was holding a block away at the bus stop. She could see the text, even the letters and the kind of type, and the colour and texture of the fingers holding it; it all looked clear and plain to her, small black letters on a white page. Yet she could not make out the story; at moments it seemed to be about a ship sailing on a sunny ocean; then about a woman baking apples in a cottage in the English countryside; and then, some other situation that she couldn’t quite grasp, that teased her with wordless hints.
A week after the fall, she found the garter snake in the grass, crushed, right where she’d landed. The carcass was empty and light, glassy and stiff, bright and intricate with a hundred colours.
Puzzled and ashamed of her missing eye, especially at school, Clair became even more a watcher than a do-er. Everything – people, streets, the back vegetable garden – became colourful, but flat.
Several weeks later the first drunk, the handsome one, cornered Claire in the upstairs hall, with her back to the toilet room. Claire thought she had screamed but she wasn’t sure. She next saw the fat lady stomping down the hall, shaking the floor under Claire. Without a word she grabbed the man’s shirt and smashed him so hard with her fist he fell down and looked up at Clair accusingly and entreatingly, with tears in his eyes, as if Clair had dealt him the blow. He never bothered Clair again; he’d walk past her with his head down.
Days later, the big lady asked her to visit once more. Clair said no, shook her head, and backed away with the patch over her eye.
By summer, the big woman moved out. Within another month, her mother announced that she could not pay the mortgage, and they moved to a rental.
The rental building was filled with women who wore red lipstick and did most things men wanted.
At 12, and 13, 14, 15, looking in the mirror with one eye, she couldn’t tell whether she was attractive or not. She thought she might be if she could keep both eyes closed to slits so no one would know. She had wispy, blonde, almost white hair, and, she thought, a long nose. She didn’t flirt, and no boy asked her out.
CLAIRE TWO
In her early twenties, Claire discovered “meaning.” Life had a meaning; things meant something. The meaning was more important than the thing itself. Claire was exhilarated, and spent hour after hour talking with another girl about meaning, and even more hours alone, discovering meaning in Tarot cards and pendulums and books about magic and about the secret origins of an Atlantis super-race that seeded humanity. These were hippie days, 1970’s, and Claire found she could say things from the cards that made others open their eyes. Almost by accident, she began to gain acquaintances – not quite friends — by reading their fortunes. Her interests gained her a niche in the social current, like a salmon in the Pacific Stream. But she did not dress as a hippie, and she was worried about her strangeness, so she did not do drugs. Everyone called her “queer,” even affectionately. Her tendency to see stories very far away that she couldn’t read or understand, and another quirk that sometimes assailed her – to not know whether she had spoken or not – these also kept her from drugs.
Although the concept of “auras” was popular and people even took classes to attempt to see them, she never revealed the colours she saw. She dressed conservatively, with a blouse and dress, sometimes a sweater and jeans. She was terrified of the madhouse, and the tortures that took place there — extractions of teeth, electrocution and brains burned with paralyzing drugs.
There was one man, around 1972, a fairly good-looking man, Clair thought, trying to appraise his face as if he were one of her friends, judging him that way because she didn’t know any other way. She remained unsure whether he was good-looking or not, whether those shiny brown eyes and glossy hair and large nose were handsome or mildly misshapen.
She just couldn’t tell. He seemed to fall in love with her, as he lay/sat knee-crooked on her carpeted floor, discussing meaning and Madame Blavatsky and divination. But Clair wouldn’t let him open her thighs, though with some struggle he inserted both his hands flat, as if praying, between her legs. They tussled for some minutes on the dirty, colourful carpet. Initially Clair was too frightened to be aroused, but, puzzled by their silent struggle, by the strange, heightened image of her room, of herself, of him, of the world, of what he was, puzzled by the room and why they were in this silent, grim wrestling match, and not knowing whether he was good or bad, whether God wanted this or not, whether this was the beginning of love or not, these hands between her thighs – why was life hugely pressing on her this day and letting his tough shoulders and grunts exist? And why did he wear those pants, and what did those shoes mean? Was that her thigh? What did that thigh mean? The air itself puzzled her, and the dim sunlight in the room, they pressed upon her like a sensual but suffocating blanket.
She let the tussle continue because there wasn’t an immediate answer. Her physical fear faded, and she began to feel the old sweet climbing-the-street-sign-pole sensation crawling up her thighs and midriff. She wanted more of this sensation, but she was not sure she wanted to be a mother (with one eye, fat and abandoned with a large child). So she kept him suspended in her paralysis, until he gave up and went away.
In her twenties and thirties Clair became a popular café card reader. She started out modestly, but people kept coming, until the restaurant owner made them line up outside. The local daily printed a large picture of her, and a long article with a very short biography. “Madame Claire.” Shyly, she went to a television station and asked to be on tv. She showed them the newspaper article. The managing producer laughed at her.
“Well it’s a scam, isn’t it?” he said almost warmly, as if he admired her gall. “Something either happens or it doesn’t, so you’ve always got a chance to be 50 per cent right, and you sluff off your mistakes – Don’t you?” He winked, made happy by her passivity, Claire thought.
Before she even spoke, his disbelief had defeated her. But she pushed on. She said quietly, “Well if there was… if I said there would be a President named Bush, that wouldn’t be fifty-fifty, because there are so many other names.”
“A president, named Bush? How do you get that? Haw, haw!”
“Or bushy eyebrows,” she ventured. “I’m not sure. And it said, ‘father’ — ?”
He looked at her with a quizzical frown, his humour gone. “Okay, if a man named Bush becomes president in the next decade, I’ll hire you.” He stood.
She hesitated before leaving. She let her head fall in humility. “I think there’ll be a war…America is attacked…I saw tan coloured uniforms in a tent…with brown straps… I don’t believe it either, really, but…”
“Try radio,” he said firmly, holding the door open.
Crushed, she never tried again. She had the blind eye, and she knew it must look horrible on television.
After she left the CHYZ station, she went down the street until she found a restaurant with sidewalk tables, and she sat down with her purse. “Why did he laugh at me? Why does he refuse to see?” she wondered. She ordered lunch, and ate most of it. She watched a woman seated with a young teenage boy. There was something askew. It made Claire, in empathy, feel a kind of nauseous surrender to affection, a kind of illicit attraction. In the movements of the woman’s fingers, as she unwrapped a fajita for him, it was as if Claire saw a theatre, a small stage, and this woman’s fingers were spelling out a fate, the boy’s destiny, with the sensuous spider of her fingers. She just finished the unwrapping when two police cars pulled up at the curb. The woman looked up — too quickly, Claire thought — then she rose and said something to the boy. She looked about to hurry away, when one of the police stood before her. Reluctantly, she sat down. She pulled her purse off the table and held it in her lap as now two cops stood above her. They spoke briefly, then the woman rose and they escorted her to a car. She looked small, light as paper beside them. A third, a policewoman, had stepped in to talk with the boy — 12? 13? — but he ran to the car holding the woman, knocked on its window, and it slid into traffic. She stayed and watched as the boy and the female cop talked and she wrote in her notebook. She heard the cop offer the boy a ride, but he stood, glared at the policewoman, then left on his own. Within 3 steps, he was running.
When Claire rose to leave, she stumbled on the corner leg of the chair, throwing herself 180 degrees around and stumbling a couple of quick steps. Then her heart froze: anger, panic, and hate stabbed her instantly, fast as light. She wasn’t sure, much later, if the stumble drove her into the voluminous woman from her childhood, now showing white streaks in her hair, or if by some underlying motive she created the contact out of some deep curiosity. In any case, as her arm shot out to steady herself, she grabbed the fat woman’s shoulder, which slid like jelly under her summer polyester, and even as Claire pulled her hand back, her forward motion pushed her hip into the fat lady, and the woman’s huge knee forked Claire’s thighs, touching there.
Claire jerked upright immediately, as if she’d touched lightning. A huge pleasure swarmed through her body, as murderous anger scalded her brain. She fainted.
It didn’t hurt at all. She collapsed and then she woke, how much later she didn’t know. The moist concrete sidewalk was on her lips, so she tasted it: salty. She didn’t quite have the impulse to rise up. Moments later she was being carried/supported — bodies surrounded and half-lifted her along an outside corridor between a stucco wall and a wet, rotting fence. She guessed/realized she was beside the cafe.
“Bring her here. In here. Lay her on the couch.” She recognized the fat woman’s voice, but she didn’t move. She didn’t know, know anything. .
“Good, leave her there. I’m calling 911. Okay now, shoo. Go. Let her rest in peace.”
The door closed, with a few murmurs. Claire was conscious enough to realize the huge woman did not call anyone.
The next day, late in the day, she dressed and left the fat woman’s apartment. She was sore front and back. She had been naked. She had watched the fat woman shed her sheet-sized dress, and pull her fat, heavy breasts from her big bra, her big, lumpen flesh with the roseate blushes all over her, jiggling and embracing, pulling Claire down into those arms, and that red, moustached face, Claire letting her summer dress drift up, letting her thighs wrap around one of the woman’s tree trunks, and thrills coursed up and down through her legs and feet and thighs and belly and the slit — and her legs writhed and it all trembled, in rushes of pleasure and desire, hatred and fear.
She found another cafe, farther from the big woman, and sat to remember. Dressing — it had been 2 o’clock — 3 now — and the sun in the little apartment had been almost too warm. The woman had lain on the bed on her back, legs spread, her gnarly vagina wrinkled and wet with curled white hairs, almost hidden by the sack of her stomach and the press of her thighs, eyes closed — repulsion at the memory rose in Claire; her mind shrank with self-disgust. The apartment had been small and older, grimed at the edges, and the furniture stood with stark resentment. Now, in the 3 o’clock sunlight, she felt alone, twisted, unclean, repulsive to mankind — yet she remembered. She had plunged into it with grim enthusiasm, determined to feel every sensation, to experience every debasement. First, the fat lady had done humiliating things to herself, perverted things, with Claire as her audience. Until Claire, knowing this was a turning point in her life, somehow, began to simmer with various desires, all of them requiring her to take off her own clothes, her summer dress, and she let her breasts hang free, proud of them for the first time. Then the woman used things, things that sometimes gripped Claire’s insides, or her stomach and chest, with a strange, saliva-producing, dark pleasure.
Now, leaving the cafe in the last half of the day, a bit of sunshine warming her left cheek, deciding in which direction to walk, the repulsive, unclean feeling left, though her backside still ached. But a rare, fresh feeling, like a crisp spring wind, filled her.
She never went back, although at times she was tempted to, and when she was tempted she also felt cruel. But it was a sin. She stared at the memory of that day with horror and repulsion, yet it seemed to have a string attached to her body that kept pulling her toward that apartment, that huge woman.
In any case, she told herself, I have had the complete thing. I know sex.
Is this love? She asked herself, another day.
A month after the TV producer laughed at her, she ran into her mother on the street downtown.
She said, “Hi.”
Her mother said nothing.
She waited, almost a minute, as her mother stood, feet apart, the breeze lifting tendrils of her grey hair. Her worn, much-washed clothes announced her poverty.
“Are you doing okay?” Claire asked.
“You don’t even know where I live,” her mother said.
Claire imagined where her mother might live, and worried for an instant that she would invite her there: she felt repulsion, that it was dim and dirty, that it would be as disgusting and gruesome as the fat woman’s room, or contain the same horrors.
They stood there for a few moments facing each other, but they were looking at things on the street, not each each other.
“I do love you, mom.”
“Of course you do.” She watched Claire for a second. “Something’s wrong with you.”
Claire imagined herself laughing, yelling “Goodbye!” in a high voice, and running away.
“Goodbye,” she mumbled, and walked away.
Of course, she had read books, so she knew of a mother’s love, unconditional, unwavering. But she couldn’t remember her mother’s love. She had never said the words. Once — it stood in Claire’s mind like a shining gold picture held by an angel — once when she fell, her mother said, “My poor little lamb.” That was all she could remember, and she treasured it.
CLAIRE THREE
As years passed, Claire laboured on with her job, card-reading. She earned enough to buy herself a new compact Mercedes on her forty-fifth birthday. That was the year her mother died. She had listed Claire as her emergency contact. Claire visited her in the hospital. She lay on her back, thin and long. She had said she didn’t want any visitors, but Claire said she was her daughter so they let her in. She had pneumonia, and the nurse said she was recovering and would be moved out of intensive care that evening, but they wanted to check her heart. Claire softly grasped her hand, but her mother pulled it away and slid it under the blanket. “I don’t want germs,” she said. Claire went to the hospital the next morning, but they told her she had died.
At night, sometimes, she would dream – or in the café, sometimes in the middle of a reading, she would daydream – sometimes – rarely, actually, and less as the years passed – that she was throwing herself on a bed face first, holding her dress waist-high, showing her bum and saying, “Touch me. Touch me.” It made a sweet sickness crawl up her thighs and into her stomach.
The casual friendships of the hippie days having sloughed off years before, she tried making friends with some clients. But everyone saw her as a valuable source, not a heart, not a human being.
After she bought the Mercedes she saw the shimmering around people less and less. It was as if the bright new car blinded her. And often when the little images would come, in the past, when a person sat down in her restaurant booth, or the images that came like tiny light kisses on her mind – an image of London, say, and she would say, “Have you been to London?” and the client’s mouth would drop open – she knew that just telling such things earned admiration, but she began to dimly realize that it prevented friendship, too. At some point, the images came less and less. She became impatient with her clients, and nervous, and sometimes when she saw the cards she couldn’t think, didn’t know what they meant.
When she reached fifty, food began to bore her. She became impatient with eating, as if she had something else to do. She ravenously devoured five or six newspapers a day. Then newspapers bored her. At fifty-two, she thought: “I am terribly alone.”
***
She sat on a rock about twelve feet below the shoulder of the San Juan Road. Below stretched the hazy vastness of the valley. Her feet were on another rock. She was reading a yellowed discarded newspaper about a hundred feet away in a gully, where it had been thrown. She made out the letters, but she couldn’t catch the meaning, the story. This time, she thought, she would stay until she knew. It had to be something about a friend, or love.
The police arrived. Her arms and legs were like sticks in burlap. She had lost all her flesh.
When they asked her questions, she just waved her arm wearily at them. She was so light, one of the cops lifted her up like a bundle of dry firewood and carried her up the steep, tumbled rocks to the road.
They fed her intravenously in the hospital.
Later, she went home, and forgot to eat until she disappeared.