A dim red bulb is how her friends would describe her. If she actually had any friends that is. Jaynie did not like people, that’s what she told herself, yet upon close scrutiny (forget close scrutiny, her disposition was as clear as the nose on your face, and that is a LARGE nose we’re talking about), one could easily discern the enormous pleasure she derived from the horrified expressions she caused when committing her famous Public Acts of Atrocity as she was fond of doing. Nothing too out of the unusual mind you. A stickler for flourish and a purist to the core she favored the classics: touching herself inappropriately, picking her nose with chopsticks, fondling her colossal toes; in restaurants, bus stops, airports, newsstands, church services, any place that looked to her in need of disruption, which was just about anyplace. And just as the actors from Le Grand Guignol, she judged her success by the number of faintings in her audience.

But what was a poor girl to do? When she wasn’t trammeling through town on her skateboard; shocking pedestrians, frightening to near heart attack, flying into intersections at brake screeching speeds, things could get…well…BORING!
And boredom could cause her do embark upon crazy schemes, truly maniacal enterprises incalculable in their scope and uncontrollable in their range. Like the time she littered the beach restrooms with cherry bombs, sending a spray of inconceivable spewage skyward, dulling and darkening the otherwise cerulean blue sky on that ocean bound throng-of-a- day ten years ago.

Vendors pulled out their hair, women screamed and, yes, fainted, men ballyhooed and bellowed threatening all manner of retribution, while children, in their off the cuff childlike way, giggled and squealed in immeasurable delight.

Public nuisance number one since age five, she was well acquainted with the art of social disintegration. The way she looked at it, she was merely another pebble in the ongoing avalanche.

***
Sitting on the edge of her tall Queen Victoria bed, counting playing cards between her toes, was the perfect place for philosophical inquiry, deep thought, a place where only the true seekers of wisdom dared tread. Jaynie’s toes had always been her willing companions, good listeners, close friends she could share her deepest feelings with, a cup or two of horseshoe floating strength espresso (though her toes preferred café au lait), perhaps a game of checkers, listening to the steamy instrumental sounds of smooth jazz, or one of those hideous record collections sold on the TV for $19.95 if she were desperate. Just a pair of pensive friends, united in the quest for sublime experiential discovery.

Love is a many splendored thing, a conventional folk tale. And love could in its supreme incarnation could become just that. Although she couldn’t say she had ever seen a case where that was so. Of course, the capacity for speech had not abandoned her. Certainly, she could say she’d seen such a case of blessed, divine love. Could articulate the words, form her lips lovingly around every dripping honey syllable that hung like sap, staining her clothes, gooing up her tongue and palate and making her choke on the sugar blast. The mechanical elements she could perform. Definitely. But she’d be lying.

In all of her discoveries so far, one she had not witnessed was a couple of people, man and woman to be specific, who after having taking the final plunge into relationship, serious relationship, totally serious relationship, and finally marriage, after having taking that final plunge found themselves in anything but a putrescent pool of pernicious poison. The fatal plunge. Enduring and persevering until the day the universal plunger would suck them out from the bowels of the matrimonial toilet and into the welcoming arms of Mother Earth.

Perhaps the strains of that bitter melody could have been discerned as disastrous right at the beginning, that point where one gonad winked at the other and said, “Hey babe, you’re for me!” Maybe then the poor saps might have had a chance, could have turned and run screaming from the room, from the planet if necessary, anything but taking that fatal plunge into a hell worse than life.

Ahh yes, hindsight is Good ‘n Plenty.
But there was no longer any point in lamenting the woes of this all too common tragedy, her mind was made up. Single she was and single she would stay. Better to suck the wild, sweet juices from the bubbling papaya of life.

***
It was one day when the sun had just breezed over the horizon one more time much as it had done since the beginning. Jaynie, busily at work studying the drag and swing of her big toes in the expanse of her feet, was deep in thought when the sparkling idea of the moment struck her.

“I really could use a new pair of shoes,” she determined. “Just look at the shoes I have on.”
The shoes upon her feet were flagged indeed; holes on each side, tears at the bottoms, laces shredded and ragged. It was a wonder to her how she could continue to wear shoddy shoes such as these. Yet, she had worn these shoes well past their useful life. Now she knew it as sure as the ailing sun knew it would rise again.
“I must go and get myself some new shoes,” she said. “A top priority business to be sure.”

She started out for the store, a feeling of solid fortitude attending her. As she passed by the monkey house, a mélange of monkeys appeared at the window. They looked at her as if trying to discern where she was going. Stacked in triangular fashion they were. The one at the top of the triangle wiggled his fingers in his nostrils. The one on the left side bottom picked his ears. The one at the right side bottom covered his eyes. Jaynie thought it funny. Wasn’t this the exact pose of the “speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil” rhyme? She laughed but soon realized something was not quite right in this arrangement.
“Wait a minute. When did ‘smell no evil’ become part of this rhyme?”
She reflected not more than a micro-moment before she realized that “smell no evil” had not become part of the rhyme.
“Oh. Just those stupid monkeys again.”
And true it was they were stupid monkeys. None of them had the privilege of an education as she did. There was a time not long past when their owner, Miguel Leonardo Cabezamelon, had pondered sending them to school. But Miguel Leonardo Cabezamelon, being one to ponder long and hard without ever going from pondering into action, was still after three years at the point of pondering. One day his daughter, Guadalupe Rosanna Cabezamelon, inquired to him about the monkey’s scholastic career. He answered, “I have thought of this Lupita.”
“Really,” she said. “And what have you decided?”
Miguel Leonardo Cabezamelon scratched his chin and puffed on his pipe.
“Well,” he said, “I have thought that I perhaps need more thought on this topic. A monkey’s scholastic career is of course important, but so is the business of my children. After I tend to my children’s business, I will give more thought to the business of the monkeys.”
Guadalupe Rosanna Cabezamelon was confused. “What business of your children is it that stops you father?”
“Oh, my dear. You are a mere child of ten. Do not worry. There is always business of children to tend. If not today, tomorrow, or the next day. But be patient. The business will arrive soon.”