Kicked out of the house, I walk around as if in a dream. I feel like a sleepwalker. Nothing seems real. Then, like a far away radio transmission, I can hear two voices talking.
“One raindrop is worth 50,000 chairs. Red chairs, to be exact.”
“Really? I didn’t know a raindrop was that valuable, red chairs or not. How do you know this?”
“Oh — it’s been tested. We don’t need to go on about that.”
The transmission fades out a bit, as I walk slowly past a upstanding looking two story house with wide tan shingles on it. The house has a faded American flag on a faded American flag pole, by the front door.
“How much would a drop of rain go for in Geese?”
“About 24 Geese to a raindrop.”
“Wow. I had no idea that Geese were so expensive!”
“Well, you know, the Geese to raindrop ratio has skyrocketed on the exchange. It can’t be helped.”
I pass a park, and under the trees some kids are throwing a ball, but I can’t figure out what the game is. It doesn’t look like any kind of game — just repetitive throwing of the ball back and forth, with a considerable amount of laughter for no apparent reason. It reminds me the time I was living in the Mission District, and I watched this kid play with an old shoe by throwing the shoe straight up in the air, and watching it fall.
“How many battleships to a raindrop?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know.”
“Why not?”
“You really don’t trade battleships for raindrops. It simply isn’t done!”
I wait for a long time to try and cross the street. I wait and I wait, I get sweaty just standing there in the sun, listening to the cars, seeing when it might be safe to cross. For awhile, it seems this time will never arrive — I’ll always be on the wrong side of the street, never ever be able to make it back to my apartment, a block and a half away, on the left.
— CM Evans
