Gordon and Clara

“Embrace” by Melinda Giordano

I shouldn’t have left the angora goat on my doorstep because Clara from across the way let him into her place and now they have a bond.

But I manage a hey, nice pic in the bubble bath! I manage a how many followers is it now? I manage a did you knit that yourself?

The day before yesterday, when we met in the hallway after market, I nearly shouted Gordon the angora goat knocked on my door first! and if I had, I would have let the silence stretch and stretch and thwack back on itself.

Clara invites local dignitaries to hers all the time; I can hear the thrum of conversation when I edge my ear to the wall. The world needs this kind of thing! they say in articles, we all do! She is often accompanied by the local photographer; a cute, bearded hunkball who I tripped up in the street yesterday and he sprained his ankle and needed a bandage, camomile tea and cosseting.

I put ayurveda music on and my new shoes that make sex-devils of your calves, and dripped ylang-ylang on skin and on walls. I said, like me to apply extra pressure?

Foot massages are like tea, they’re always welcome, whatever the circumstances.

The local photographer’s name is Leopold which I spit-laughed at when he told me. Like the Holy Roman Emperor? I asked.

Leopold likes to capture the things we don’t see, the hidden, the fleeting.

Take a photo of my toes, I said, no-one ever sees my toes. I’ve got interesting toes.

Leopold half-smiled and pursued his thoughts on the mundane. He said that everybody misses magic because we’re in such a hurry, slaves to the wheel of capitalism which makes hamsters of us all, and I slipped off my sex shoes and popped my index in my mouth. He spoke about men called Eggle-something and Herzog and supermarket carparks, and I said uh-huh.

I am a hunter of the extraordinary in the ordinary, he said; the solitary scratch in the mirror, the old lady on the bench with her bag of tinned food, the stray cat. And he twisted his Nikon lens on his lap in and out of focus, in and out, in and out.

Although I was crotch-deep in the sensual, a thought came to me. I said, But hang on, there’s nothing mundane or ordinary about Gordon and Clara, and he looked at me and said, Ah yes, Gordon and Clara are something else! and I didn’t know what he meant by this, so I said, I could have been Clara!, and he didn’t know what I meant by this, so I slipped my left sock off and caressed my teeth with my tongue.

Ugh! You’ve got seven toes! he shouted, leaping off the sofa, letting his 85 mm lens fall and crack.

Uh-huh, I said.

About the Author

Kik Lodge writes short fiction in Lyon, France, where she lives with a menagerie of kids, cats and rats. She doesn't always like photographers.

About the Artist

Melinda Giordano is from Los Angeles, California. Her artwork has appeared in magazines such as Pearl, Amelia, new renaissance, Bone & Flesh, The Bellowing Ark, Club Plum, and The Sheepshead Review. She values the architectural properties of the small things - plants and shells: subjects as vast and complex as any cityscape or countryside. They are the loveliest of blueprints.