The Immaculate Wardrobe of Ebb Maggle

A dream that was the sand of an hourglass. The dream that slowly went somewhere. Do people believe that a day could ever end?

Ebb Maggle one morning became awake. His teeth needed brushing, he thought. The light in the small bathroom was soft and flattering and he admired his own soft features. Most of the time, Ebb was smitten by his own appearance, but that was mainly because he had made an effort to avoid any room in which the light did not enliven his own appearance.

Then he opened his wardrobe. Ebb Maggle was the most pear-shaped man that Ebb Maggle had ever seen and his wardrobe did reflect as much. In the mirror he tried on a suit that he had lifted from a man who had committed suicide by leaping off a bridge. The suit had fit him nicely and had suited him. The suit was pitch black and smooth with no tears, no misguided threads. He thought about his sister.

Ebb Maggle ate his breakfast in the dining room downstairs. He was alone as he often was. He had no wife nor children, nor life partner and few acquaintences. The suit had always a subtle burnt smell to it no matter how often he visited the dry cleaners to have it cleaned. The smell had greatly bothered him at first but time had quelled his distaste.

Ebb Maggle had some time ago had his own face’s portrait painted up in watercolor by a strange girl who lived down the street and who he never saw again after she gave him the portrait. The portait now had a round and ornate frame that he had commisioned from a professional framer and it hung above the fireplace in the living room.

On the radio the announcer seemed to be hysterical over something that Ebb Maggle had missed and Ebb Maggle became attentive to the radio. No way would Ebb Maggle be left out of the loop today, thought Ebb Maggle.

“Holy hell, it bites,” went the voice on the radio. A man’s pleasant and loud voice that Ebb Maggle could recognize. The voice was of the man they call Dr. Dawn, since his radio slot began so early. Ebb Maggle couldn’t make out what in addition that Dr. Dawn was screaming and so after a few minutes of silent concentration towards the radio he finally switched it off.

How long had it been since Ebb Maggle had a haircut? thought Ebb Maggle, while he washed the few dishes that he had dirtied for his breakfast. And Ebb Maggle, he looked at the strange faucet water that ran over the dishes he was rinsing. But could not be much comforted by the water.

Then he peed in the toilet.

“I am Ebb Maggle,” thought Ebb Maggle as he looked towards the portrait of his face that the girl had rendered in the colors made by water. “Or am I?”

The dead man’s suit had fit Ebb Maggle rather well even though the dead man had not been round- or spindle-shaped as he and he wore it to his car.

Ebb Maggle put the key in the ignition and turned. The car was humming as nicely as he could have ever hoped and he peeled away into the distance for his work.

At the house he left behind on the radio he had without thinking switched back on the voice of a man in hysterics had returned.

Ebb Maggle had attempted to drive to his workplace. He had been driving the old blue Bolvo for almost thirty minutes. And it seemed nothing could deter him. But he became distracted by a burning sensation in his throat and he found a place to park.

The motor had ceased its humming and all was quiet. Ebb Maggle removed himself from his vehicle and strode with his wobbly stride up to the edge of a large pond that he had never seen before. Upon the pond a young duck had ducked its head underwater and then the duck just beyond this duck did the same. Ebb Maggle leaned against a tree. His throat was still burning, even worse than before. Should he go to the hospital? he wondered. But he did not feel that he could make it to the hospital, and besides, didn’t even know where it was.

Just then the strange girl who had done up his portrait in watercolor came forth from behind a tree on the shore of the pond.

“Are you even real?” she said.

“Young lady…”

“My mother will be coming soon. Did you know that?

"My mother is a psychic, did you know that? She can read people’s minds sometimes. But never mine.”

“I had no idea.”

“Say, what are you doing over there? Are you hurt?”

“My throat. It burns.”

“I can smell something burning…” she said. She had come slowly up to him and was putting her nose quite close to him. And then she put her nose right upon his throat and smelled there for awhile, it seemed for quite awhile.

“No, not there,” she said.

“It’s the suit,” said Ebb Maggle. “The suit has a burny smell I can’t get out.”

“Maggie dear, what in sam hell are you doing?”

A woman barely middle-aged, or perhaps not even middle-aged, was coming near. The woman was wearing a kimono and what appeared to Ebb Maggle as an expensive pair of Japanese clogs. And yet the woman was pale of color and did not seem to him to be herself Japanese.

“He has a burning throat, mother,” said the girl. “Says he.”

“Oh does he now? C'mere, let me take a look. Hey, I know you. You are that man who lives down the street, the one they call Ebb Maggle.”

“It is I”, said Ebb Maggle.

Ebb Maggle was in the dining room of the house lived in by the watercolor artist Maggie and her mother and was eating caviar. The breeze through the window felt very nice on his sunburned skin and he heard a peal of thunder from the long-thundering thunderstorm, did not see the lightning directly, but could see the brief lightening of the atmosphere whenever it struck.

Ebb Maggle was ravenous, but tried to eat slowly for the sake of his stomach. He also had a small canter of red wine on the table before him, a bandanna, and a tiny wooden spoon. The suit had been taken to a specialty dry cleaners for its odor that drove the mother crazy and he wore a plain black t-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of Birkies.

“Ah, there you are,” said Maggie. Ebb Maggle looked around but didn’t see her. Then he twisted around to look the other way but she wasn’t there either. The clever girl was playing a trick on him, he figured. “Where are you?” he said.

“I’m right here.”

But for the life of him Ebb could not tell from where the voice had sprung. The cheshire cat’s voice from Alice In Wonderland was like this voice. Spectral, but not scary. Only spectral. She was sitting right across from him.

The girl’s hands were clasped together on the table in the way of a nun who was preparing a stern admonition.

“Are you feeling any better?” she said.

“A little.”

Maggie was looking intently at Ebb Maggle’s face.

“The wine is very good and so is the caviar,” Ebb Maggle said, but Maggie didn’t reply.

“I’m getting pretty tired,” he said. “Is there somewhere I can sleep?”

“Yes.”

Ebb Maggle was so sleepy he wasn’t sure that he could make it to a bed, but he allowed Maggie to take his hand, and together they tottered to a bedroom.

“There’s blankets in the closet. I’ll get them for you.”

However by the time she returned with the blankets Ebb Maggle was already sprawled across the bed and sleeping.

The sun shone through the window. The sun had seemd to splatter on the floor and had splattered into the shape of a trapezoid. Ebb Maggle had ceased to squint but his eyes were still rather watery due to his time beneath the sun’s heavy sadness.

The drycleaned suit hung odorless or at least not burnt-smelling in the now open closet.

Everthing around him was very still and quiet.

A hummingbird flew into the room and hovered in the air above the fake flower the dresser had supported. The hummingbird flapped quickly enough to stay perfectly still above the flower as if showing off or imparting a secret meaning.

Just then the notion occured to Ebb Maggle that the dry cleaner could possibly have kertwanged them. The dry cleaner had promised to use his special dry cleaning magic to deodorize the chronically smelly suit, but may not actually have any such magic. And so after repeated unsuccessful attempts to clean the suit, rather than admitting defeat, the swindler had simply found a suit that looked the same and gave them that one.

The notion was so strong that Ebb Maggle went over to examine the suit in detail. The color was the same and there were no errant threads. Ebb put the suit on and the suit fit the same. Then he looked in the tall standing mirror of the closet’s rolling door and it still was the same. Just no burnt smell. Yet strangely he became firmer in his resolve that the red-faced dry cleaner had played a trick on them.

Ebb Maggle took off the suit, took a shower, redressed in the jeans and t-shirt, and went down for his breakfast.

Once again he was ravenous. And so blood sugar shorted was he that he was dizzy and was having bad thoughts. And so he was ecstatic to find that Maggie’s mother, Aggie, was cooking a pan of sausage and a pan of eggs, almost done. From the fridge he found a quart of orange juice from which he poured himself a cup and slowly sipped while he read the front page of a newspaper that had been left on the dining room table.

This table was round and had four chairs spaced around it, all wooden.

Aggie put the cooked food on two plates and put the plates on the table, put herself in a chair and began to eat. Ebb also ate.

“What do you think of the wallpaper?” said Aggie the mother of Maggie, clad in her kimono. “Of the bedroom that you slept in.”

“Think it is good.”

“What have you been dreaming?”

“I thought you were psychic.”

“A professional psychic. Meaning I only do that stuff at work.”

“Meaning that you’re an entertainer.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Don’t you think it’s kind of personal?”

“So you don’t want to answer?”

But Ebb by this time had forgotten the dream and he told her as much.

“Anyway it’s a lovely day,” said Aggie.

“Thank you for the breakfast,” said Ebb.

“I am glad that you enjoyed the food.”

–

Outside the house Ebb Maggle looked at the birdbath. Who am I? he wondered.

Beyond the birdbath a sort of thick stand of bamboo had seperated, to some extant, the neighbor’s property from Aggie’s, but Ebb could see that someone was facing him from the other side. The figure was of a spindly-figured woman of middle-age, roughly his height as well, and from his vantage she seemed to be the female version of his self.

Ebb was about to greet her when she walked away.

“Who are you?” said Ebb at a normal volume, as if he was speaking to someone right next to him, and he awaited an answer, but the answer did not come. The sun was getting hot and he seated himself beneath the parasol of the patio by the garden and looked upon the bamboo.

“I am here,” Ebb thought.

Ebb’s thoughts had become so complex that he was forced to use simple phrases to get by. At least that was his thinking. Ebb Maggle was no scientist in the professional sense, but his mind was consumed with matters related to science. Everything was science and biology, it often seemed. Plus math.

And a day could never end. Or was it a dream? His own latest dream had seemed to escape him entirely, that was until one moment, this occurence that brought it back.

This moment: Ebb for some reason looked upward and behind him to see Maggie at the window. But she wasn’t looking his way. She was looking in the distance and she seemed almost frozen in thought, much like the hummingbird was frozen in its winging.

Could a thought be like a wing? he wondered.