A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING
By David Wainland
Monday, 6:00pm
Her nimble fingers worked the scissors with practiced precision. The snip…snip of the instrument barely audible above her contented humming. She guided the cutting edges around a cancer drug article thinking of that remote time when she would read all that she had saved.
Finished, she allowed the clipping to flutter into the basket at her feet, joining the hundreds of others. Magazines of every description surrounded the beige sofa. The majority of them altered, windows of slashed emptiness running through the pages.
Arlene paused and drank from a porcelain teacup, the brandy forcing her to catch her breath. This evening as usual she dressed casually in a flowered housecoat and worn pink slippers. After finishing her drink, she turned to removing a thick combination of make-ups from her pale and wrinkled face. She wound her thinning gray hair into a comfortable bundle on the crest of her head. Quite unlike the daytime-look, she affected in one of her wigs. Each morning she donned one of a hairpiece collection that ran from burgundy to frosted-blond.
As the liquid warmth spread through her, Arlene remembered her purse. Usually she did not forget that bottomless black bag in which she secreted her daily spoils. I’m really behind schedule and I’ll probably never get to sleep. She thought as her eyes searched through her chaotic dwelling.
Souvenirs of her past decorated the apartment, photographs and paintings of her youth. Collectables from around the world filled every shelf. With a sigh, she lifted herself off the couch and wandered through the clutter until she located her bag under a thick stack of newspapers and carried the heavy purse back to the couch.
Digging deeply within she brought out a mixed collection of pink and powder blue squares, alternately labeled Sweet & Low and Equal. These she stacked in separate piles. Then she removed several plastic bottles of shampoo and three small bars of soap labeled Compliments of the Marriott, smiling she thought of that nice young maid who allowed her to slip into a room for a tiny peek.
Toward the bottom, she found the plastic knives and forks from Doogies Coffee Shop where she had her breakfast, also a collection of salt and pepper packets from Mc Donald’s. She delighted over her favorite prizes of the day, three sets of bobby pins, black, brown and another for blonds, taken from a neighborhood beauty parlor
Then her finger touched something unfamiliar. It felt like a tiny wallet. Puzzled, she withdrew it and placed it on the table.
The mysterious black folder measured about three inches by two inches and appeared made of leather though it felt like plastic. She squeezed it between her fingers and the sides snapped opened. It held a collection of business cards, different businesses, but the same identify. It did not fit within any of her varied collections and Arlene could not remember acquiring the unusual piece. Perplexed, she put the wallet aside intending to re-examine it later.
She gathered her little pretties together, smiled and plodded merrily around the apartment placing them in their appropriate places.
“A place for everything and everything in its place,” she chanted.
The kitchen was a helter-skelter merging of items that looked like they belonged, but did not, ranging from plastic forks to the finest in monogrammed silver. Cups and glasses competed with stacks of restaurant dishes. Salt, peppershakers, and ketchup bottles labeled for ‘Restaurant use only’ arrayed like so many black, white, black and red soldiers, lined the windowsills.
