The door opens and she’s standing on the other side of it, looking like she just stepped off an album cover. “My kitchen light is burned out,” she tells me. “Can you fix it?”
I tell her I can fix it, but it’ll take a minute. I have to get the correct lights from storage. She says, “I’ll be in my apartment.”
“Which one is that?” I ask her.
“One thirteen,” she says.
A few minutes later, I have the step ladder and two boxes of lights. I’m knocking on her door and from inside, I hear her tell me that it’s open. I put the lights under my elbow and one of them slips out of the box, smashing against the pavement.
“Hold on,” I told her. “I’ll get my broom and dustpan.”
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. I’m done.
I get into the apartment, except this isn’t her apartment, it’s like a time machine to Stevie Nicks’ apartment circa 1979. She points at the dark kitchen. “The light is out,” she tells me.
She has rows and rows of herbs, most of them with hand-made labels. I set down the step ladder, grab my Phillips and unscrew the fixture. I’m almost done when it falls right out of my hands, crashing against the tiled floor.
Again, the broom and dustpan.
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep.
I go to remove the first light, but then I stop. “Is this turned off?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she says.
I look over at the lightswitch by the door. “Um,” I say.
“Oh!” she rushes over and switches it off. “Sorry.”
I remove the light and put it on the countertop. As I do, something odd happens. The light–circular and flourescent–leaps out of my fingers, twists three times and smashes on the countertop, sending fragments of glass to the floor.
“That’s so weird,” she tells me.
“Yeah,” I say.
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep.
Now, I get the new light and start fitting it into the fixture. It’s supposed to fit, but the fixture is old. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to replace the entire fix
SMASH!
the whole thing explodes in my hands. I’m looking up, right at it. I’m lucky I’m wearing glasses.
“Are you all right?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “I think I should do this tomorrow,” I tell her.
She nods. “I think so.”
I go to get my broom, but she stops me. “I’ll sweep it up,” she says. “And I’m sorry this went so wrong.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. “It’s just an odd day, that’s all.”
“The twenty-second,” she says.
“Twenty-two major arcana in the Tarot deck,” I say.
“The twenty-second being The Universe,” she tells me. She points at my alchemical cross. “I like that,” she says.
“Thanks,” I tell her. I grab my step ladder, dustbin and broom. “You have a broom to sweep this up?” I ask her.
She raises an eyebrow at me. Then, what she says next she says in exactly the way you’d think she say it.
“Yes,” she says. “I have a broom.”
