Smart Alec

-Part IV-

Ms. B. says it allatime: that we're doomed. That we've no salvation. That life, as we perceive it, is aging, is rotting, is forgetting. Ms. B. is kinda right, but refuses to acknowledge that. Ms. B. is wide awake, running with rats she knows will never realize the fact that they're mice.

Ms. B. told me once that she was leaving. After some 30 years of incessant reading and learning and thinking, she was leaving. Ms. B. has left in that sunny (albeit cold) Sunday afternoon. She's gone fishing. Now she works 9 to 5, she works out, she pretends she's dumb. Oh, the dumber, the easier, she'd say.

Ms. B., her eyes, are sad. She didn't manage to kill herself totally. She's still there, buried, though, but still alive. Ms. B. just doesn't fit her dream of beigeness. Ms. B. lacks ordinarity.

Someday Ms. B. will grow tired of being this well-adjusted productive law-abiding beautiful human being. Tentacles will grow off her shoulders, her hair will turn green, her legs will stretch to impossible lenght an she'll tear off one of her breasts. Then she'll learn portuguese and walk with derviches. And she'll start a religion, stop worring about her weight and won't spare dumb people anymore.

And then, she'll be able to die. Again.