God is a Woman in a Rice Field - Chapter 5

© dianegreen 2023

Summertime (section) - Acrylic on Canvas - by © diane green 2005

Back to 1998 in Chicago:

Abby read the old ‘Balanchine’s Cat Mourka’ story to Rain Beaux & Cash as they fell asleep. It worked like a charm. They fell off into dreamland.

Next she devoted herself to showering, finding her sexiest casual black on black Victorian grunge outfit and drying her long fiery hair to fall as precious red wax candle drippings down her back. It was a sliver of new Moon crescent Sunday night in late March. The ghostly mourner’s bench of past butterflies were flying from Abby’s belly through her brain. Heart beating faster than a railroad train falling off the track. Looking out the window, then the clock, then the window…over and over until she finally tip toed out the back porch door to roam around the side of the house toward the front walkway. Floating from behind the tall shrubs she appeared in the front yard.

Gabriel was walking up the pathway to the front door from the sidewalk carrying an old guitar case. Feeling as if he was seeing a ghost he stopped in his tracks. For a moment of silence there was not even a breath from either of them.

Abby walked toward him as if she had flown into the air like a firefly after dark. He felt an anxious tremble to his bones but stepped forward.

“Oh, hi, Gabe?” said Abby walking out of the darkness from behind the bushes of the side yard. She walked toward Gabriel on the front door pathway. “I wasn’t sure you knew which door to enter. Come in. Come in.”

Nope. He was not a back door man at all.

Gabriel showed his wordless poker face smile then said “Yes, hello. I think you’ll like this guitar.”

They walked into the front room of Abby’s northwest Chicago bungalow home. She offered coffee or tea. He declined.

Gabriel was a friendly soul. Skin and bones, rail thin hips, wearing a newsboy hat over his corkscrew black hair, he was as sexy as Abby’s fantasy Supreme Being. “…he showed me the leather belt round his hips….” David Bowie’s words rattled Abby’s brain.

They walked into the dining room and sat down at the dinner table. He opened the guitar case. It was a 1964 red Harmony electric guitar.

Gabe and Abby talked about guitars and amps, the bands they had been in, old prewar blues musicians, and such. Growing up in Memphis and hanging out on the shadier side of town Abby had so many stories she could make a King Snake Boogie Man eat its own tale.

Then something went south. Below the belt south. Abby’s mind spun. The old “Go west, young man!” voice echoed as she heard Gabriel ask a question, “So Abby about what had happened between you and Jazz?”

Abby was astonished. The butterflies in her belly had laid eggs in the milkweed behind her bosom and the larvae were hatching all around her heart. Her life had been in such pandemonium of turmoil over the past year in which she had been rowing forward with such blind faith in survival that she was taken aback that someone, anyone, even gave a damn. Especially THIS guy! Gabriel appeared to care about her just the way she was.

“No, wait. Go north…” Abby thought.

“What happened? Did you have a head injury?” Gabe asked.

Halt!