My favorite 3 words in

the English language are

`I don't know`, because 

everytime I said them, I learn

something new. T.L.

To watch the amazing 5 minutes performance go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJ6aUB2K4g

I knew exactly what love looked like – in seventh grade

Even though I hadn’t met love yet, if love had wandered into my homeroom, I would’ve recognized him at first glance. Love wore a hemp necklace.

I would’ve recognized her at first glance, love wore a tight french braid.

Love played acoustic guitar and knew all my favorite Beatles songs.

Love wasn’t afraid to ride the bus with me.

And I knew, I just must be searching the wrong classrooms, just must be checking the wrong hallways, she was there, I was sure of it.

If only I could find him.

But when love finally showed up, she had a bow cut.

He wore the same clothes every day for a week.

Love hated the bus.

Love didn’t know anything about The Beatles.

Instead, every time I try to kiss love, our teeth got in the way.

Love became the reason I lied to my parents. I’m going to- Ben’s house.

Love had terrible rhythm on the dance floor, but made sure we never missed a slow song.

Love waited by the phone because she knew if her father picked up it would be: “Hello? Hello? I guess they hung up.”

And love grew, stretched like a trampoline.

Love changed. Love disappeared,

Slowly, like baby teeth, losing parts of me I thought I needed.

Love vanished like an amateur magician, and everyone could see the trapdoor but me.

Like a flat tire, there were other places I planned on going, but my plans didn’t matter.

Love stayed away for years, and when love finally reappeared, I barely recognized him.

Love smelt different now, had darker eyes, a broader back, love came with freckles I didn’t recognize.

New birthmarks, a softer voice.

Now there were new sleeping patterns, new favorite books.

Love had songs that reminded him of someone else, songs love didn’t like to listen to. So did I.

But we found a park bench that fit us perfectly

We found jokes that make us laugh.

And now, love makes me fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies.

But love will probably finish most of them for a midnight snack.

Love looks great in lingerie but still likes to wear her retainer.

Love is a terrible driver, but a great navigator.

Love knows where she’s going, it just might take her two hours longer than she planned.

Love is messier now, not as simple.

Love uses the words “boobs” in front of my parents.

Love chews too loud.

Love leaves the cap off the toothpaste.

Love uses smiley faces in her text messages.

And turns out, love shits!

But love also cries.

And love will tell you you are beautiful and mean it, over and over again. “You are beautiful.”

When you first wake up, “you are beautiful.”

When you’ve just been crying, “you are beautiful.”

When you don’t want to hear it, “you are beautiful.”

When you don’t believe it, “you are beautiful.”

When nobody else will tell you, “you are beautiful.”

Love still thinks you are beautiful.

But love is not perfect and will sometimes forget, when you need to hear it most, you are beautiful, do not forget this.

Love is not who you were expecting, love is not who you can predict.

Maybe love is in New York City, already asleep;

You are in California, Australia, wide awake.

Maybe love is always in the wrong time zone.

Maybe love is not ready for you.

Maybe you are not ready for love.

Maybe love just isn’t the marrying type.

Maybe the next time you see love is twenty years after the divorce, love is older now, but just as beautiful as you remembered.

Maybe love is only there for a month.

Maybe love is there for every firework, every birthday party, every hospital visit.

Maybe love stays- maybe love can’t.

Maybe love shouldn’t.

Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to,

And love leaves exactly when love must.

When love arrives, say, “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.”

If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her.

Turn off the music, listen to the quiet, whisper,

“Thank you for stopping by.”

I sat in my office, nursing a glass of hooch and idly cleaning my automatic. Outside the rain fell steadily, like it seems to do most of the time in our fair city, whatever the tourist board says. Hell, I didn't care. I'm not on the tourist board. I'm a private dick, and one of the best, although you wouldn't have known it; the office was crumbling, the rent was unpaid and the hooch was my last.

Things are tough all over.

To cap it all the only client I'd had all week never showed up on the street corner where I'd waited for him. He said it was going to be a big job, but now I'd never know: he kept a prior appointment in the morgue.

So when the dame walked into my office I was sure my luck had changed for the better.

"What are you selling, lady?"

She gave me a look that would have induced heavy breathing in a pumpkin, and which shot my heartbeat up to three figures. She had long blonde hair and a figure that would have made Thomas Aquinas forget his vows. I forgot all mine about never taking cases from dames.

"What would you say to some of the green stuff?" she asked, in a husky voice, getting straight to the point.

"Continue, sister." I didn't want her to know how bad I needed the dough, so I held my hand in front of my mouth; it doesn't help if a client sees you salivate.

She opened her purse and flipped out a photograph. Glossy eight by ten. "Do you recognise that man?"

In my business you know who people are. "Yeah."

"He's dead."

"I know that too, sweetheart. It's old news. It was an accident."

Her gaze went so icy you could have chipped it into cubes and cooled a cocktail with it. "My brother's death was no accident."

I raised an eyebrow - you need a lot of arcane skills in my business - and said "Your brother, eh?" Funny, she hadn't struck me as the type that had brothers.

"I'm Jill Dumpty."

"So your brother was Humpty Dumpty?"

"And he didn't fall off that wall, Mr Horner. He was pushed."

Interesting, if true. Dumpty had his finger in most of the crooked pies in town; I could think of five guys who would have preferred to see him dead than alive without trying.

Without trying too hard, anyway.

"You seen the cops about this?"

"Nah. The King's Men aren't interested in anything to do with his death. They say they did all they could do in trying to put him together again after the fall."

I leaned back in my chair.

"So what's it to you. Why do you need me?"

"I want you to find the killer, Mr. Horner. I want him brought to justice. I want him to fry like an egg. Oh - and one other little thing," she added, lightly. "Before he died Humpty had a small manila envelope full of photographs he was meant to be sending me. Medical photos. I'm a trainee nurse, and I need them to pass my finals."

I inspected my nails, then looked up at her face, taking in a handful of waist and Easter-egg bazonkas on the way up. She was a looker, although her cute nose was a little on the shiny side. "I'll take the case. Seventy-five a day and two hundred bonus for results."

She smiled; my stomach twisted around once and went into orbit. "You get another two hundred if you get me those photographs. I want to be a nurse real bad." Then she dropped three fifties on my desk-top.

I let a devil-may-care grin play across my rugged face. "Say, sister, how about letting me take you out for dinner? I just came into some money."

She gave an involuntary shiver of anticipation and muttered something about having a thing about midgets, so I knew I was onto a good thing. Then she gave me a lopsided smile that would have made Albert Einstein drop a decimal point. "First find my brother's killer, Mr. Horner. And my photographs. Then we can play."

She closed the door behind her. Maybe it was still raining but I didn't notice. I didn't care.

* * *

There are parts of town the tourist board don't mention. Parts of town where the police travel in threes if they travel at all. In my line of work you get to visit them more than is healthy. Healthy is never.

He was waiting for me outside Luigi's. I slid up behind him, my rubber-soled shoes soundless on the shiny wet sidewalk.

"Hiya, Cock"

He jumped and spun around; I found myself gazing up into the muzzle of a .45. "Oh, Horner." He put the gun away. "Don't call me Cock. I'm Bernie Robin to you, Short-stuff, and don't you forget it."

`Cock Robin is good enough for me, Cock. Who killed Humpty Dumpty?"

He was a strange looking bird, but you can't be choosy in my profession. He was the best underworld lead I had.

"Let's see the colour of your money."

I showed him a fifty.

"Hell," he muttered. "It's green. Why can't they make puce or mauve money for a change?" He took it though. "All I know is that the Fat Man had his finger in a lot of pies."

"So?"

"One of those pies had four and twenty blackbirds in it."

"Huh?"

"Do I hafta spell it out for you? I... Ughh..." He crumpled to the sidewalk, an arrow protruding from his back. Cock Robin wasn't going to be doing any more chirping.

* * *

Sergeant O'Grady looked down at the body, then he looked down at me. "Faith and begorrah, to be sure" he said. "If it isn't Little Jack Horner himself."

"I didn't kill Cock Robin, Sarge."

"And I suppose that the call we got down at the station telling us you were going to be rubbing the late Mr. Robin out. Here. Tonight. Was just a hoax?"

"If I'm the killer, where are my arrows?' I thumbed open a pack of gum and started to chew. "It's a frame."

He puffed on his meerschaum and then put it away, and idly played a couple of phrases of the William Tell overture on his oboe. "Maybe. Maybe not. But you're still a suspect. Don't leave town. And Horner..."

"Yeah?"

"Dumpty's death was an accident. That's what the coroner said. That's what I say. Drop the case."

I thought about it. Then I thought of the money, and the girl. "No dice, Sarge."

He shrugged. "It's your funeral." He said it like it probably would be.

I had a funny feeling like he could be right.

"You're out of your depth, Horner. You're playing with the big boys. And it ain't healthy."

From what I could remember of my schooldays he was correct. Whenever I played with the big boys I always wound up having the stuffing beaten out of me. But how did O'Grady - how could O'Grady have known that? Then I remembered something else.

O'Grady was the one that used to beat me up the most.

* * *

It was time for what we in the profession call 'legwork'.I made a few discreet enquiries around town, but found out nothing about Dumpty that I didn't know already.

Humpty Dumpty was a bad egg. I remembered him when he was new in town, a smart young animal trainer with a nice line in training mice to run up clocks. He went to the bad pretty fast though; gambling, drink, women, it's the same story all over. A bright young kid thinks that the streets of Nurseryland are paved with gold, and by the time he finds out otherwise it's much too late.

Dumpty started off with extortions and robbery on a small scale - he trained up a team of spiders to scare little girls away from their curds and whey, which he'd pick up and sell on the black market. Then he moved onto blackmail -- the nastiest game. We crossed paths once, when I was hired by this young society kid - let's call him Georgie Porgie - to recover some compromising snaps of him kissing the girls and making them cry. I got the snaps, but I learned it wasn't healthy to mess with the Fat Man. And I don't make the same mistakes twice. Hell, in my line of work I can't afford to make the same mistakes once.

It's a tough world out there. I remember when Little Bo Peep first came to town... but you don't want to hear my troubles. If you're not dead yet, you've got troubles of your own.

I checked out the newspaper files on Dumpty's death. One minute he was sitting on a wall, the next he was in pieces at the bottom. All the King's Horses and all the King's Men were on the scene in minutes, but he needed more than first aid. A medic named Foster was called - a friend of Dumpty's from his Gloucester days - although I don't know of anything a doc can do when you're dead.

Hang on a second - Dr. Foster!

I got that old feeling you get in my line of work. Two little brain cells rub together the right way and in seconds you've got a 24 carat cerebral fire on your hands.

You remember the client who didn't show - the one I'd waited for all day on the street corner? An accidental death. I hadn't bothered to check it out - I can't afford to waste time on clients who aren't going to pay for it.

Three deaths, it seemed. Not one.

I reached for the telephone and rang the police station. "This is Horner," I told the desk man. "Lemme speak to Sergeant O'Grady."

There was a crackling and he came on the line. "O'Grady speaking."

"It's Horner."

"Hi, Little Jack." That was just like O'Grady. He'd been kidding me about my size since we were kids together. "You finally figured out that Dumpty's death was accidental?"

"Nope. I'm now investigating three deaths. The Fat Man's, Bernie Robin's and Dr. Foster's."

"Foster the plastic surgeon? His death was an accident."

"Sure. And your mother was married to your father."

There was a pause. "Horner, if you phoned me up just to talk dirty, I'm not amused."

"Okay, wise guy. If Humpty Dumpty's death was an accident and so was Dr. Foster's, tell me just one thing.

"Who killed Cock Robin?" I don't ever get accused of having too much imagination, but there's one thing I'd swear to. I could hear him grinning over the phone as he said : "You did, Horner. And I'm staking my badge on it."

The line went dead.

* * *

My office was cold and lonely, so I wandered down to Joe's Bar for some companionship and a drink or three.

Four and twenty blackbirds. A dead Doctor. The Fat Man. Cock Robin... Heck, this case had more holes in it than a Swiss cheese and more loose ends than a torn string vest. And where did the juicy Miss Dumpty come into it? Jack and Jill - we'd make a great team. When this was all over perhaps we could go off together to Louie's little place on the hill, where no-one's interested in whether you got a marriage license or not. 'The Pail of Water', that was the name of the joint.

I called over the bartender. "Hey. Joe."

"Yeah, Mr. Horner?" He was polishing a glass with a rag that had seen better days as a shirt.

"Did you ever meet the Fat Man's sister?"

He scratched at his cheek. "Can't say as I did. His sister...huh? Hey -- the Fat Man didn't have a sister."

"You sure of that?"

"Sure I'm sure. It was the day my sister had her first kid - I told the Fat Man I was an uncle. He gave me this look and says, 'Ain't no way I'll ever be an uncle, Joe. Got no sisters or brother, nor no other kinfolk neither."

If the mysterious Miss Dumpty wasn't his sister, who was she?

"Tell me, Joe. Didja ever see him in here with a dame - about so high, shaped like this?" My hands described a couple of parabolas. "Looks like a blonde love goddess."

He shook his head. "Never saw him with any dames. Recently he was hanging around with some medical guy, but the only thing he ever cared about was those crazy birds and animals of his."

I took a swig of my drink. It nearly took the roof of my mouth off. "Animals? I thought he'd given all that up."

"Naw - couple weeks back he was in here with a whole bunch of blackbirds he was training to sing 'Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before Mmm Mmm.'"

"Mmm Mmm?"

"Yeah. I got no idea who."

I put my drink down. A little of it spilt on the counter, and watched it strip the paint. "Thanks, Joe. You've been a big help." I handed him a ten dollar bill. "For information received,' I said, adding, "Don't spend it all at once"

In my profession it's making little jokes like that that keeps you sane.

* * *

I had one contact left. Ma Hubbard. I found a pay phone and called her number.

"Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard - Cake Shop and licensed Soup Kitchen."

"It's Horner, Ma."

"Jack? It ain't safe for me to talk to you."

"For old time's sake, sweetheart. You owe me a favour." Some two-bit crooks had once knocked off the Cupboard, leaving it bare. I'd tacked them down and returned the cakes and soup.

"...Okay. But I don't like it."

"You know everything that goes on around here on the food front, Ma. What's the significance of a pie with four and twenty trained blackbirds in it?" She whistled, long and low. "You really don't know?"

"I wouldn't be asking you if I did."

"You should read the Court pages of the papers next time, sugar. Jeez. You are out of your depth."

"C'mon, Ma. Spill it."

"It so happens that that particular dish was set before the King a few weeks back .... Jack? Are you still there?"

"I'm still here ma'am." I said, quietly. " All of a sudden a lot of things are starting to make sense." I put down the phone.

It was beginning to look like Little Jack Horner had pulled out a plum from this pie.

It was raining, steady and cold. I phoned a cab.

Quarter of an hour later one lurched out of the darkness.

"You're late."

"So complain to the tourist board."

I climbed in the back, wound down the window, and lit a cigarette.

And I went to see the Queen.

* * *

The door to the private part of the palace was locked. It's the part that the public don't get to see. But I've never been public, and the little lock hardly slowed me up. The door to the private apartments with the big red heart on it was unlocked, so I knocked and walked straight in.

The Queen of Hearts was alone, standing in front of the mirror, holding a plate of jam tarts with one hand, powdering her nose with the other. She turned, saw me, and gasped, dropping the tarts.

"Hey, Queenie," I said. "Or would you feel more comfortable if I called you Jill?"

She was still a good looking slice of dame, even without the blonde wig.

"Get out of here!" she hissed.

"I don't think so, toots." I sat down on the bed. "Let me spell a few things out for you."

"Go ahead." She reached behind her for a concealed alarm button. I let her press it. I'd cut the wires on my way in - in my profession there's no such thing as being too careful.

"Let me spell a few things out for you."

"You just said that."

"I'll tell this my way, lady."

I lit a cigarette and a thin plume of blue smoke drifted heavenwards, which was where I was going if my hunch was wrong. Still, I've learned to trust hunches.

"Try this on for size, Dumpty - the Fat Man - wasn't your brother. He wasn't even your friend. In fact he was blackmailing you. He knew about your nose."

She turned whiter than a number of corpses I've met in my time in the business. Her hand reached up and cradled her freshly powdered nose.

"You see, I've known the Fat Man for many years, and many years ago he had a lucrative concern in training animals and birds to do certain unsavoury things. And that got me to thinking... I had a client recently who didn't show, due to his having been stiffed first. Doctor Foster, of Gloucester, the plastic surgeon. The official version of his death was that he'd just sat too close to a fire and melted.

"But just suppose he was killed to stop him telling something that he knew? I put two and two together and hit the jackpot. Let me reconstruct a scene for you: You were out in the garden - probably hanging out some clothes - when along came one of Dumpty's trained pie-blackbirds and pecked off your nose.

"So there you were, standing in the garden, your hand in front of your face, when along comes the Fat Man with an offer you couldn't refuse. He could introduce you to a plastic surgeon who could fix you up with a nose as good as new, for a price. And no-one need ever know. Am I right so far?"

She nodded dumbly, then finding her voice, muttered : "Pretty much. But I ran back into the parlour after the attack, to eat some bread and honey. That was where he found me."

"Fair enough." The colour was starting to come back into her cheeks now. "So you had the operation from Foster, and no-one was going to be any the wiser. Until Dumpty told you that he had photos of the op. You had to get rid of him. A couple of days later you were out walking in the palace grounds. There was Humpty, sitting on a wall, his back to you, gazing out into the distance. In a fit of madness, you pushed. And Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

"But now you were in big trouble. Nobody suspected you of his murder, but where were the photographs? Foster didn't have them, although he smelled a rat and had to be disposed of -- before he could see me. But you didn't know how much he'd told me, and you still didn't have the snapshots, so you took me on to find out. And that was your mistake, sister."

Her lower lip trembled, and my heart quivered. "You won't turn me in, will you?"

"Sister, you tried to frame me this afternoon. I don't take kindly to that."

With a shaking hand she started to unbutton her blouse. "Perhaps we could come to some sort of arrangement?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, your majesty. Mrs. Horner's little boy Jack was always taught to keep his hands off royalty. It's a pity, but that's how it is." To be on the safe side I looked away, which was a mistake. A cute little ladies' pistol was in her hands and pointing at me before you could sing a song of sixpence. The shooter may have been small, but I knew it packed enough of a wallop to take me out of the game permanently.

This dame was lethal.

"Put that gun down, your majesty." Sergeant O'Grady strolled through the bedroom door, his police special clutched in his ham-like fist.

"I'm sorry I suspected you, Horner," he said drily. "You're lucky I did, though, sure and begorrah. I had you trailed here and I overheard the whole thing."

"Hi, Sarge, thanks for stopping by. But I hadn't finished my explanation. If you'll take a seat I'll wrap it up."

He nodded brusquely, and sat down near the door. His gun hardly moved.

I got up from the bed and walked over to the Queen. "You see, Toots, what I didn't tell you was who did have the snaps of your nose job. Humpty did, when you killed him."

A charming frown crinkled her perfect brow. "I don't understand... I had the body searched."

"Sure, afterwards. But the first people to get to the Fat Man were the King's Men. The cops. And one of them pocketed the envelope. When any fuss had died down the blackmail would have started again. Only this time you wouldn't have known who to kill. And I owe you an apology." I bent down to tie my shoelaces.

"Why?"

"I accused you of trying to frame me this afternoon. You didn't. That arrow was the property of a boy who was the best archer in my school - I should have recognised that distinctive fletching anywhere. Isn't that right," I said, turning back to the door, "...'Sparrow' O'Grady?"

Under the guise of tying up my shoelaces I had already palmed a couple of the Queen's jam tarts, and, flinging one of them upwards, I neatly smashed the room's only light bulb.

It only delayed the shooting a few seconds, but a few seconds was all I needed, and as the Queen of Hearts and Sergeant 'Sparrow' O'Grady cheerfully shot each other to bits, I split.

In my business, you have to look after number one.

Munching on a jam tart I walked out of the palace grounds and into the street. I paused by a trash-can, to try to burn the manilla envelope of photographs I had pulled from O'Grady's pocket as I walked past him, but it was raining so hard they wouldn't catch.

When I got back to my office I phoned the tourist board to complain. They said the rain was good for the farmers, and I told them what they could do with it.

They said that things are tough all over.

And I said. Yeah.

Dr. Ottone halts in the corridor and begins to balance on the balls of his feet, very slowly at first, with his eyes fixed on one of the hospital’s black and white floor tiles, and so Dr. Ottone is thinking. Then he makes up his mind, returns to his office, switches on the lights, leaves his things on the couch and rummages through the papers on his desk until he finds Mrs. Fritchs’ file, and so Dr. Ottone is preoccupied with a certain case and has determined to resolve it, to find an answer or, at the very least, to refer the patient to another doctor, for instance, Dr. Messina. He opens the file, looks for a specific page, finds it and reads: “… Black holes. Do you understand what I’m saying? Like, you’re here, and then suddenly you’re at home, in bed, with your pajamas on, and you know for certain that you haven’t locked up the office or turned off the lights or traveled the distance you had to travel to get home; what’s more, you haven’t even seen me off. So, how could you possibly find yourself in bed with your pj’s on? Well, that’s an empty space, a black hole is what I say, zero hour, whatever you want to call it. What else could it be? …”

Samanta Schweblin Black Holes Agujeros Negros

“Empty Hallway of Hospital,” photograph from 10Wallpaper.com.

Dr. Ottone returns the page to the file, picks up his things, switches off the lights, locks up his office and sets off to see Dr. Messina, whom he is certain to find at this hour. Ottone does indeed find Messina, but asleep on his desk and with a statuette in his hand. He awakens him and hands Messina Mrs. Fritchs’ file. Messina, still half asleep, asks himself, or asks Dr. Ottone, why he has awoken with a statuette in his hand. With a shrug, Ottone conveys that he does not know. Messina opens his desk drawer and offers Ottone a cookie, a cookie that Ottone accepts. Messina opens the file.

“Turn to page 15,” says Ottone.

Messina flips through the file, finds page 15 and reads it carefully. Ottone waits expectantly. When Messina has finished reading, Ottone asks his opinion.

“You believe this, Ottone?”

“The business about black holes?”

“What is it we are talking about?”

And so Ottone recalls Messina’s habit of replying only with questions, and this makes him nervous.

“We’re talking about black holes, Messina …”

“And you believe this business, Ottone?”

“No. You?”

Messina opens his desk drawer again.

“Another cookie, Ottone?”

Ottone takes the cookie Messina offers him.

“Do you believe it or don’t you?” insists Ottone.

“Do I know this Mrs. … ?”

“… Fritchs, Mrs. Fritchs. No, I don’t believe you do. She’s only been to see me twice and this is her first treatment.”

Someone knocks on the office door and peers inside. Ottone recognizes the janitor and asks:

“What is it, Sanchez?”

The janitor explains that Mrs. Fritchs is waiting for Dr. Ottone in the floor’s main hall. Messina reminds the janitor that it’s ten at night and the janitor explains that Mrs. Fritchs refuses to leave.

“She’s sitting in the hall in her pajamas and says she isn’t going anywhere without seeing Dr. Ottone. What do you want me to do?”

“Why didn’t you bring her, then?” asks Messina as he studies the statuette.

“Bring her here? Or to Dr. Ottone’s office?”

“What did I just ask you?”

“Why I didn’t bring her.”

“Bring her where, Sanchez?”

“Here.”

“And where is here?”

“Your office, doctor.”

“Where should you bring her, then, Sanchez?”

“Your office, doctor.”

Sanchez bows slightly, excuses himself and retires. Ottone looks at Messina, Messina whose jaw is pressing his lower row of teeth into his upper row of teeth, and so Ottone is nervous and still waits for Messina’s answer, Messina, the doctor who begins gathering up his things and arranging the papers on his desk.

“Are you leaving?”

“Do you need me for something?”

“At least give me your opinion, tell me what you think should be done. Why not see her yourself?”

Messina, already at the door of his office, halts and looks back at Ottone with a slight, barely noticeable, grin.

“What difference is there between Mrs. Fritchs and your other patients?”

Ottone intends to respond, and so he begins to raise his index finger from its resting place to bring it level with his head, but he thinks better of it. And so Ottone’s index finger remains at waist level, neither signifying nor indicating anything in particular.

“What are you afraid of, Ottone?” asks Messina, and he exits, closing the door behind him and leaving Ottone alone with his index finger slowly descending until it hangs from his arm. At that precise moment, Mrs. Fritchs enters. Mrs. Fritchs is wearing light blue pajamas with white trimmings and embellishments on the collar, sleeves, belt and other extremities. Ottone deduces that the woman is in a state of considerable nervousness, and he deduces this from her hands, which are constantly moving, the look in her eyes, and other observable signs that, although they are typical indicators, Ottone considers it unnecessary to list.

“Mrs. Fritchs, you are overly nervous. It would be best if you calmed down.”

“If you don’t resolve this problem, I’ll file a complaint, doctor. This is an abuse.”

“Mrs. Fritchs, you have to understand that you are undergoing treatment; your problems aren’t going to disappear from one day to the next.”

Mrs. Fritchs glares at Dr. Ottone with indignation, scratches her right arm with her left hand and says:

“Do you think I’m stupid? Are you telling me I need to put up with popping up all over the city in my pajamas until you determine the treatment is over? What am I paying health insurance for?”

Ottone imagines Dr. Messina walking down the hospital’s main stairs and that provokes diverse sensations in him, sensations he is not going to go into at the moment.

“Look,” says Ottone patiently, beginning to balance, slowly at first, on the balls of his feet. “Calm down. Understand that your problems are psychological in nature. You invent things to hide other, more important things. We all know that you don’t really go around the hospital in pajamas.”

Mrs. Fritchs untwists the folds at the hem of her nightshirt, and so Ottone understands that this will be a long visit.

“Please sit down. Relax and let’s talk a while,” says Ottone.

“No, no I can’t. My husband will be home any minute and I won’t be there. I have to get back. Please, doctor, help me.”

Ottone is quickly overcome with the first of the postponed sensations of Dr. Messina walking down the stairs. Air coming in through the seams of his coat, and so he feels cold, a bit cold.

“Do you have money to get home?”

“No, I don’t carry money on me when I’m at home in my pj’s …”

“Well, I’ll lend you some so you can get home and the day after tomorrow, at your regularly scheduled appointment, we’ll talk about these matters that are on your mind …”

“Doctor, I have no problem taking your money and going home if that’s what you want. But I told you already, you know, that in a short while, I’ll be back here again, and every time it gets worse. Before it was every once in a while, but now, every two or three hours … Bam! Black hole.”

“Mrs. …”

“No, listen, listen to me. I recover, or rather, I return to where I was. How can I explain it? Let’s see … I disappear from my house and appear in my brother’s house, so I despair, imagine, three in the morning and I appear in my pj’s—in my pj’s in the best of cases—there in my brother’s bedroom. So I attempt to get back home. Do you know how I suffer, doctor? I have to get out of the room, get out of the house, without anyone noticing, and hail a taxi, in my pajamas, doctor, and without any money on me, imagine, having to convince a cabbie that I’ll pay him when we get there. And when we are almost there … Bam! End of black hole, I’m back home again.”

Ottone takes advantage of this moment to analyze the second sensation of Dr. Messina walking down the stairs. Getting in a car, temperature more agreeable, relief upon depositing the weight of the briefcase on the passenger seat.

“Besides, imagine, me at home always with money on me and a coat tied around the waist of my nightshirt, just in case. But not anymore. I said enough. When I fall in a black hole, I no longer even try to return. I never make it back anyway, I figure; I take taxis that almost never drop me off in time. No. Enough. Now I stay put wherever I might be until the black hole ends and that’s it.”

“And how long do these black holes last?”

“Well, see, I can’t say exactly. Once I went and returned in a split second, no problem. And another time I was at my mother’s house for quite a few hours. At least there I knew where things were kept. I made myself some mate and waited patiently for three hours, doctor. What a disgrace.”

Ottone wonders how many minutes have elapsed since Mrs. Fritchs appeared at the hospital, but is unable to arrive at a definitive answer; maybe five, maybe ten … he does not know.

Sanchez knocks on the door and sticks his head in. Ottone asks:

“What is it, Sanchez?”

“Dr. Messina is looking for you.”

“How’s that? Didn’t he leave?”

“Yes, he did, but then he was back here again a short while later. He looks a bit anxious to me. He’s half dressed … or undressed. I don’t know which, doctor, but he’s asking for you.”

“What did he say exactly, Sanchez?”

“He wanted to know if you were here and if you could do him the favor of going to see him. He looks angry …”

Dr. Ottone looks at Mrs. Fritchs, who scratches her left arm with her right hand and responds to his look with a recriminating gesture.

“You’ll have to excuse me.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

“No, please, Mrs. Fritchs, do me the favor of staying here. An angry Dr. Messina is enough of a problem as it is.”

Sanchez seconds Ottone’s statement with a nod and exits, walking down the corridor, the corridor down which Ottone follows a few meters behind him.

Messina appears from behind a dividing screen in his office minutes after Messina is not sure what, and finds Mrs. Fritchs sitting in a sofa. Messina looks at his hand and asks himself why he’s holding the same statuette again. Bewildered, he looks at his desk, at the empty space where he had left it not long before. Then he looks at Mrs. Fritchs, and Mrs. Fritchs, her hands grasping the sofa’s armrests as if she is about to fall toward or from some place, looks back at Dr. Messina.

“And who are you? What are you doing in my office?”

“Dr. Ottone said …”

“Why are you in your pajamas?”

“The janitor and Dr. Ottone went to look for you down …”

“Are you Mrs. Fritchs?”

“You are in your pajamas, also,” observes Mrs. Fritchs, looking apprehensively at the statuette in the doctor’s hand.

Messina verifies that he is indeed in his pajamas and mentally comes up with possible hypotheses to explain his present predicament, puts the statuette back on his desk and straightens the collar of his undershirt so that it is aligned with respect to the axis of his own neck, a position for his undershirt that makes of Messina a more confident man.

“Are you Mrs. Fritchs?”

“Dr. Ottone told me to wait here.”

“Did I ask you about Dr. Ottone?”

“Yes, I am Mrs. Fritchs. I’m waiting for Dr. Ottone.”

“Does this look to you as if it could be the office of a doctor like Ottone?”

Messina mentally compares the figure of the woman before him with that of his wife and derives no benefit.

“Are you the woman having trouble with black holes?”

“Aren’t you, too?”

At that moment, a few things dawn on Messina, things of which he regards only two as pertinent and worthy of further consideration: first, an explanation of what might be happening to him; second, the notion that Mrs. Fritchs may be a very intelligent person. He thinks of a question to test the latter:

“Why are you waiting for Dr. Ottone?”

“Ottone and the janitor went down the corridor to look for you. You are doctor …”

“Messina?”

“That’s it. Messina. I need someone to help me.”

Messina searches for and finds Mrs. Fritchs’ file on his desk and, with his back to her, reviews its contents while his mind begins to connect ideas about black holes, people in pajamas and statuettes. He asks:

“What do you believe is happening to us?”

“I’m not sure about you, doctor, but in my case nothing,” says Sanchez entering the office through the door and holding out a set of keys. Messina quickly looks over at the now empty sofa where a second before Mrs. Fritchs sat.

“What are you doing here, Sanchez? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Sanchez, his arm extended towards Messina with the keys dangling from his index finger, says:

“Here are the keys, doctor. I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going? Where is Mrs. Fritchs?”

“My shift ended at ten, it’s now ten thirty, and I’m leaving.”

“Where is Mrs. Fritchs?”

“I don’t know, doctor. Please take the keys.”

“And Ottone? Where’s Ottone?”

“He’s looking for you, doctor. I’m going now.”

Messina exits his office without taking the keys and walks down the black-and-white tiled corridor to the main hall, where he finds Ottone.

Ottone folds the fingers of his right hand into a tight, closed fist, with no air in its center, and presses down on these fingers with his left hand, causing his knuckles to let out a series of cracks, and so Ottone has seen Messina, is extremely anxious and is disturbed by the sight of the doctor, Dr. Messina, half dressed, or undressed, Sanchez was unable to say which, and Ottone is now unable to determine himself which would be correct.

Messina is about to go over and ask Ottone something when he notices he is holding the statuette in his hand, and so he asks himself, or he asks Ottone, why that statuette is in his hand. Ottone conveys with a shrug that he does not know. Messina opens his desk drawer and offers Ottone a cookie. Ottone takes the cookie without asking himself how it is that both of them, Ottone and Messina, are no longer in the main hall, but rather in Messina’s office.

And although Messina thinks of saying something about it to Ottone, he decides against it and simply places the statuette on the hall counter, because, in effect, they are once more in the hall and not in Dr. Messina’s office.

“Are you alright?” asks Ottone.

“Do you think I can be alright in the state I’m in?”

Ottone observes Messina’s rumpled undershirt.

“What’s your opinion now, Messina?”

“About what?”

“About black holes.”

“Where is Mrs. Fritchs?

“She’s in your office.”

“Are you kidding me, Ottone? Don’t you realize that I’ve just come from there?”

Ottone thinks about something he can’t explain, but when he sees Mrs. Fritchs running in the distance from one corridor to another, he suggests to Messina that they ought to go get her. Messina’s eyes open wide and he leans towards Ottone as if he is going to tell him a secret. Ottone listens attentively:

“Don’t you realize that she knows?”

“Knows what?”

“Why do you think she is running around like that?”

Ottone makes to crack his knuckles again, but Messina reacts quickly and, taking him forcefully by the wrist, says:

“Didn’t you notice?”

“What?”

“Didn’t you notice what happened the last time you cracked your knuckles?”

“Were we there?”

“In a black hole?”

“Yes?”

“Do you really need me to answer that?”

Their conversation is interrupted by the jingling of a set of keys dangling at the height of both doctors’ foreheads from the end of Sanchez’s finger. Sanchez announces:

“The keys. I’m leaving.”

Messina suggests to Sanchez:

“Why don’t you bring Mrs. Fritchs to us before you go?”

Ottone seconds the idea eagerly and adds:

“Yes, bring Mrs. Fritchs here and then we’ll take the keys.”

Messina indicates to Sanchez the corridors down which Mrs. Fritchs can occasionally be seen crossing the main hall, sometimes walking worriedly, and other times hastily. Messina pats Sanchez on the back a few times as Ottone smiles at him and urges eagerly:

“Go ahead, Sanchez, go and bring back Mrs. Fritchs.”

Sanchez looks down the hall towards the corridors and then at the doctors. He leaves the keys on the counter and says:

“I see you have a problem on your hands. But I’m the janitor and my shift ended at ten,” and he leaves.

Messina stares at the keys that have been left next to the statuette and then, desperately, focuses his attention on Ottone, Ottone who is looking back at Messina, but whose senses are now perceiving other things, things like Sanchez going down the stairs, Sanchez feeling the cold air of the street on his face, Sanchez thinking that he is never dressed as warmly as he should be, and that it’s all his mother’s fault, who, unlike other mothers, never admonished him about these sort of things. Messina then thinks of Sanchez boarding the 134 bus, branch line two or three, either one, and when he is about to think of Sanchez opening the front door of a house, a house where, logically, this same Sanchez lives, what he sees is Mrs. Fritchs, or rather, he doesn’t see her, or better put, he sees her disappear before his eyes. And so Messina asks Dr. Ottone:

“Did you see that, Ottone?”

“See what?”

“Didn’t you see it?”

Ottone is on the verge of responding, and his imminent intent can be deduced by his index finger, which, slowly, begins to ascend toward his head, and when it arrives, when the finger is level with his head and Ottone articulates his first words, then this doctor, Dr. Ottone, finds himself standing not before Dr. Messina, but before Clara, in other words, his wife, in his home, both of them in pajamas.

In a hospital corridor, now even farther from his office, Messina asks himself, once more, what he is doing there at this hour of the night, half dressed, or undressed, with a statuette in his hand, and when he is about to ask himself the question aloud, the hospital corridor is suddenly left completely empty.

Couchsurfing is a great way to improve your English. I've been doing it since 2009, have met so many amazing people and got to perfect my communication skills beyond believe.

Studying English is necessary but living it, it's a must to boost your confidence.

Couchsurfing allows you the share quality time with people you haven't met before and that usually don't speak Spanish. 

Things you get when you couchsurf that you don't get in a hotel:

The rattling sound of pots and silverware in the morning. Bathrooms with ratty, beloved mismatched towels. Leftover birthday cake. Dark hallways humid with the smells of baking. Looking at the weird stuff people keep in their medicine cabinets. Cats to pat, who are at first standoffish then decide they love you at 4 a.m., when you're finally asleep. Walls of Elvis plates. The recaptured feeling of havind a sleepover party. Dodgy electric blankets. A chance to try on hats. Morning coffee in a wineglass for lack of enough cups.
Children of all ages and temperaments who draw pictures for you. The ability to make your own toast. Record players. Out-of-tune pianos and other strange instruments to fondle. Candles stuck to mantelpieces. The beautiful vision of strangers in their pijamas. Weird teas from around the world. Pinball machines. Pet spiders.Latches that don't quite work. Glow-in.the-dark things on the ceiling.
Late-night and early-morning stories about love, death, hardship and heartbreak.
The collision of life. Art for the blender.
The dots connecting.
Amanda Palmer. The art of asking.

You can check it out:
www.couchsurfing.com