Nobody Wants to Trip You

The window was completely open.

The woman closed the window and yet could still not hear a sound outside the window. Again she opened the window and put a hand through it, snapped her fingers. And the fingers did snap; she heard the snapping.

The woman was not going insane. She just couldn’t hear certain things in certain places, such as the robin that had settled on a branch. This had never happened before, the not hearing. Could always hear everything she should. But then suddenly this. The woman couldn’t ignore her own thinking, but when a visitor arrived, a middle-aged man with black slickbacked hair, she declined to speak of the matter with him. Instead they spoke of, to her, trivial matters such as his impeding divorce and a rug that needed cleaning. Sometimes while they spoke in various rooms of the house she’d look toward a window or a door as if hoping once again to hear anything outside the house.

Soon it became clear that the man wanted to swim with her in the pool outside the home, and she put on her bathing suit. She went outside and there was nothing, no sound beside the barking of her dog inside the house, and then, after the barking, pretty much nothing side from the ringing one gets in the ear when things are silent.

The man was speaking to her. He was giving what she took to be a lesson or instruction and she nodded as timefully she could, hoping only that the man would not become upset or confused. But he soon went for a solo swim in the water while she stayed bobbing up and down on the side of the pool.

A week passed by and still she could not hear anything at all outside her home aside from the sounds of her body. She could go outside and speak to her dog while walking her but couldn’t hear what she woofed back. Inside, she put a record on the turntable and let it spin her a tune. In some sense, she was glad that her hearing had become impaired, but was afraid that it would last forever and she’d never again hear the rustlings of a bird in a tree nor the wind.

The woman was, by profession, a personal chef. She would go into rich people’s homes and prepare their food, sometimes even while they stood there watching, as if there was some special sorcery in what she did. Not all of them and usually just one person. Sometimes just one creepy person who didn’t seem to care how creepy they looked or possibly were even trying to seem creepy, just maybe for the fun of it. Rich person’s boredom, suburbia. Not always that terribly rich. Sometimes just lazy or really busy.