|
The Seventh Doctor |
I wanted him to know the answer, precisely because he was the seventh doctor and that was my lucky number.
He would give me turtle eyes. In the way a turtle needs a pond - a woman with a dying foot really likes the idea that a man gets her.
"Oh hell," he said, "Let's see you walk tiptoe."
He put his hands on his slim hips, this one was a runner I was sure of it. He ran in packs of doctor-dogs.
“I am not a circus woman," I said, meaning I could not do that. I looked him through. He gazed back at me and I could tell he knew I was wearing out.
The air was so still I may have heard a duck dying in Canada, three hours away.
"No joke?" he said.
“No joke.”
His nose was pointy, French, and he had a ring, this was a plaid shirt kind of man, who would soon be smelling fall in the air, a barrette in some happy kid's hair coming loose at a family get-together, not caring about the way things seemed. His wife would be pregnant and prancing on tiptoes and laughing.
"Why is it your foot... so goddamn cold to the touch?" he said, as if I had the answer. He didn’t.
Then he smiled at me, a booming, sugar-pie smile. So wide and sparkly, that I think, and even years later, I should have asked if there were a test to see if he were still human.
copyright 2013
Meg
Pokrass |
