Oranges

"I've got a devil's haircut
In my mind."

-- Beck!, "Devil's Haircut," Odelay

--

I'm eating a small orange, leaf by leaf. It's tangy and sweet, and it comes from Florida. Thirteen of its brothers and sisters are in the red-net bag at the foot of my desk, waiting to be unpeeled by my recently-trimmed fingernails, lodging pulp in my cuticles, a fruit's final rebellion to the feast.

--

We begin Christmas Carol rehearsals today, and it is snowing in this part of the city; fitting, isn't it, that the change comes today, when we acknowledge with our work the coming holiday?

(I say "this part of the city" because it is not snowing in all parts of Cincinnati. It is sleeting a block south of here, and on the bridge, it is raining, and in Kentucky, it is only cloudy. Selective weather. The snow doesn't stick, wherever it falls. It dissolves and gathers in piddly puddles, leaking and flowing in narrow streams at street edges, pushing trash and leaves like ships downhill: microcosmic urban rivers.)

--

Because my car's locks are shitty, it's easy to break into. So I don't keep valuable things in there.

I got to my car this morning, opened the passenger door to slough my bag into the seat, and I noticed that the seat was reclined fully. And then I looked at the stash of parking-lot receipts in the slot under the radio, and saw that it had been disturbed, rifled through, sifted (probably for change), and scattered onto the floor mats. Strangely, the CD player was still there, as was the stack of quarters jutting out from the coin-shaped slot.

I imagine it was a homeless man, not a crack addict or government agent; and he was cold last night, as the snow began to fall, landing on the small patches of uncovered skin (neck above the collar, wrist below the cuffs), and in sad panic, he started trying car doors, shivering up and down the street. He got to my car, and the door, miraculously, opened to him, and he leaped in without a moment's hesitation. He curled into sleep like a child, squirming and shaking without a blanket on the seat of my car, grateful for Fate's latest gift. When he awoke, the thought crossed his mind that he should pilfer the car for any other gifts available--

But he stops, a warm pang clutching his heart in the cold, and he thinks, I just stayed here without paying. The least I can do is leave it be. And he opens the door, forgetting to pop the seat back up; rested, he looks up and down the street, at any moment expecting someone to cry, "Vagrant! Miscreant! Rat!" but he hears no such thing. He smiles, feels small snowflakes kissing his cheeks in the hushed morning chill, and he hunches his shoulders, pats the top of the car, and walks his way once more.