oscar’s fifteenth chapter: the impending zoom.

There they were, Oscar and one of his favorite women, sitting on a downtown patio one warm sunny spring Sunday afternoon drinking iced teas – unsweet with extra lemons – smiling sweetly across the small wooden table at each other. Oscar was not aware of anyone else, the world was flat and the sun, the moon and the stars, all visible, revolved around their table where the conversation was comfortably spare but warm and ripe and dripping heavily with hope, fear, anticipation and the unknown magic from the tangy dust of citrusy fairy wings.

Oscar finally focused dreamily on the world going by.

“There goes a man carrying his arm.” And indeed, there was a man carrying his arm – the arm he was missing.

She giggled.

“That forebodes an exceptional afternoon,” said Oscar. What Oscar did not realize was that they would later see a young homeless man, looking at his reflection in a downtown store window, shaving, enthusiastically singing a Carpenter’s tune – “We’ve only just begun!”

The colorful afternoon would easily and nicely blend into a colorful evening and then, joyously, an even more colorful night. As if the nightly television schedule – starting with the evening news – were being sung by Frank Sinatra.