## She went downstairs. Looked like a good day for waffles. The color of the backyard was like waffles. Of course it was always like that, especially this time of year. She was out of coffee: just fragrant dirt-colored dust in the bottom of the tupperware. Damn. She said it again, just to have some sound in the house. Damn, damn, damn. The angular word bounced off the nicked-up hardwood floor, the squat porcelain appliances, the high dusty ceilings. Damn. Okay, so, cereal, some kind of fake frosted flakes, the last of the milk. Um, let’s see. There’s a turnip, some yellow squash, a tomato is technically a fruit, but yeah. No thanks. So cereal. She had a little daydream about bacon, then went back upstairs to put some clothes on. That’s enough padding around naked for one day. She sighed. Likely to get a splinter anyway. Sunlight had really started forcing its way in through her bedroom windowpane now, and it was really illuminating the dust. Old curtains that looked like something hanging in an out-of-business shop window on the old main street of a piddly little town just like this one glowed from ceiling to bare floor. Her dresser looked strangely like an old woman’s--a few little jars on the beige top, a silver-backed brush and comb set that had, in fact, been her grandmother’s. She drifted over to it, yes work was calling, but still, she brushed her hair slowly, feeling the weight of the Victorian brush pulling itself smoothly through her long hair. Her hair, she decided, was pretty much the color of waffles too. Somebody, she said aloud to the dark corners of the A-shaped ceiling, is trying to tell me something. Pause. About waffles! She pulled on a blue dress. She had to admit, it looked good amidst all the blond wood, wan sunshine, and fall fields outside, and her mood lifted for a second, like a car going fast over one of the hills on the county road to the west of town. But eventually cars get where they’re going and you have to get out and do whatever it is you have to do next. Why is there always a destination? She hopped back down the creaky stairs once more, brushed her teeth, said goodbye to no-one, and let the screen door slam behind her. Clomp, clomp, clomp went the three porch steps. It was really too cool for the dress, but probably later on today it would feel just right. She stepped over each of the cracks in the concrete of the walkway down to the sidewalk, paused by the \*\*\*\* tree with its massive ancient lightning scar, took a big, burning-leaf-flavored breath (must be old whatsisname playing with his burn pile again), and turned east toward the rich goth girl’s house. Back in the kitchen, a stainless-steel salad bowl still sat propped halfway into the left-hand sink. The tomatoes had been sitting there for days, and they were starting to wrinkle. There was an equilibrium in the silence, a sense of absence that filled up every cranny of the odd-shaped house, all its ::gables:: and ::A-frame sub-constructions::. Then suddenly, Damn! said someone, a different voice, the wrong voice, and the equilibrium was disturbed by footfalls. There was the scuffling of soles on wood floor, a pause. A loud clank as the salad bowl was dislodged from its slanted balance point, and fell the rest of the way into the sink. There was more cursing, muffled laughter, more shuffling around. Then this phantom, this interloper, left through the mud room, out the back door, with a handful of overripe tomatoes. Whistling, skipping, angling jauntily across other people’s backyards, kicking at dirt clods, watching puffs of breath steam up, swirl around, disappear.