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Chapter 8
The world was off-balance for the young scientist and the strange sway of everything could be seen in her wobbly steps. In her half-awake movements, she slumped about her home in the middle of the night. Staggering around her small kitchen, Cemone lethargically contemplated her evening. She had just returned home from having celebratory drinks with Nolan, Dr. Cart, and some of the great minds of the western hemisphere, and was feeling more than tipsy. She had just earned her second doctorate at the age of twenty-three: a feat so astounding that she assumed it would land her in a paper somewhere.
But, exciting as it was, she was more obsessed with the memory of the last part of her night. The part when a clearly drunk Nolan, the Geisha of Columbia, accepted her request to see her again before he should leave Oxford. Cemone rummaged through her kitchen cabinets as she happily recalled his calm response: “That sounds lovely.” Cemone appreciated the answer. She relished it so much she considered getting a doctorate in charm. Upon that thought’s passing, Cemone laughed, realizing now just how drunk she was.
In her eyes, Cemone’s little kitchen represented her current standing in the world. She thought it was nice, but knew it could be much nicer. Like her, the kitchen had potential with its multi-tiled floor, antique brass lighting fixtures, and matching brass sink. However, with its ‘80s cream-colored refrigerator and rusted gas stove, the kitchen also matched her lack of caring in appearance. She noticed the cabinets above the stove looked in desperate need for a new coat of paint. She stared at their faded white, and meanwhile thoughts bounded to the fore of her inebriated considerations. A thought to which her sloshed mind replied, “Peanut butter!”
Cemone found her peanut butter in the kitchen cabinet. In her stupor, the peanut butter seemed like the ultimate reward for over three years of hard work and dedication, and one night of boy-charming. She then grabbed a spoon from the sink, and enjoyed what she then realized was a spoonful of chunky peanut butter. Sliding to the ground as she chewed her confection, Cemone imagined herself and Nolan working together as spies: how they’d rendezvous in secret, and how they’d deal with whichever daft foes dared to cross them.
“Bang! Pew pew!” She pretended to hold off a hallway of vindictive Danes. Danes made the perfect enemy spies, with their wonderful teeth and other features people didn’t care to learn. “Forget about me, Nolan. Save yourself,” she told the imaginary Nolan. She gestured erratically for him to escape with whatever secret documents they’d obtained. “But, my love,’” she cried in her deepest voice. “’What of you?’” Her voice wasn’t the same as his, and she didn’t want to diminish it with her imitation any longer. “We’ll always have Sunday mornings, my sweet. Bang! Bang! Now run! I can’t hold them off much longer!”
She had killed three Danish spies before she was interrupted by the ring of her telephone. Disgruntled by the interruption, Cemone sulked to her living room where her peach-colored telephone rang. The phone had made its fifth ring when she finally reached it.
“Hello! Who the… who is this? It’s very late, you know?” Cemone blared into the receiver.
“Oh lord, you’re drunk.”
Cemone’s drunken anger was quickly replaced with a concentrated discomfiture as she realized who had called.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Cart. I didn’t think it was you calling. How can I help you?” Cemone wanted to apologize more but stopped at the sound of Dr. Cart. He was having another conversation with someone else, outside of the phone call.
“She is a tad out of it, is that alright? Oh? How long then?” Dr. Cart said. Cemone could hear bits and pieces of Dr. Cart’s side conversation but couldn’t understand most of it: just Dr. Cart, and parts of a woman’s voice in the background. “Cemone, are you still there?”
“Yes,” she responded whilst re-killing another Dane.
“Darling, eat a bagel and wait for a cab to come pick you up. It should be there shortly.” Cemone wanted to say more, but was cut short by the click of the phone. She knew Dr. Cart had hung up, but out of dedication to him stayed on the line a minute longer. Once that minute had passed, she dropped the phone and returned to the kitchen. Stepping over the bodies of her imaginary enemies, she searched her cabinets for a bagel. She looked everywhere, only to realize that she hadn’t bought bagels that week. Cemone decided to eat two muffins instead and assumed this would fit the doctor’s order. After ingesting her two muffins—one bran, the other blueberry—she proceeded to her door.
Leaving her home, Cemone walked down her stoop and waited for her cab. She lived at the corner of her block and was fortunate to have a lamppost just next to her home. The light from the post helped her examine the brisk English night: eerily quiet, yet at the same time relaxing. There were no hums or drips of existence in the vacuum moment, not even the tarry of previous souls. The entire block waited in sleep for the moment she would say something; the houses and trees, eager to hear her voice or anything emotive. The hush enceinte with excitement, created a pregnant pause, one that would give birth to a single disyllabic word.
“Humping.” Cemone laughed at the absurdity of her word choice as she tested the acoustics of the neighborhood in the night. She continued to do this with the names of sexual procedures, laughing each time as her drunken buzz was replaced with a heavy lethargy. During Cemone’s fifteenth enunciation, she began to question how much longer she would have to wait. She checked her pocket watch and saw that it was one a.m.—a time that she would usually have been enjoying her fourth hour of sleep. Cemone finally succumbed to her exhaustion, and closed her eyes on her front stoop. In her dreary half-sleep, she dreamed a very happy half-dream. The dream was once she was used too. It had been had experienced many times ever since she was a little girl. In it, Cemone twirled with the young woman wearing gold from Michael Dahl’s Lady Carew. A familiar reprint hung in her father’s home. Cemone was about to ask the woman about her future husband when she was rudely awakened. Upon opened her eyes she found herself in front of a short, swarthy-looking man. One that did not seem happy.
“Well get up, girl, I’ve been waiting a good time now,” he said. The man, clearly in his late forties—and carrying them well enough, with his coming crows-feet and arrived nose hair—stood tapping his feet on the pavement. Despite the stranger’s deep baritone, his persona was almost laughable due to his stature.
“Can I help you?” she muttered sleepily, confused and slightly blinded from the light of the adjacent lamppost.
“I’m your ride, Cemone,” the swarthy stranger flourished to his yellow cab as he spoke, and she immediately understood who he was.
“What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for hours.”
The cab driver looked confused at this information as he and Cemone walked towards the car.
“I was told to come at exactly three a.m., miss. I’m right on time.”
Cemone pulled out her pocket watch and saw that it was exactly 3:02. She wanted to correct the cab driver on his time, but he cut her off with the slam of his driver’s door. This cabbie is either a tad rude or oddly strong, either way he’s compensating from something, thought Cemone. The sarcastic thought behind her, she climbed into the yellow car, and turned back to watch her small home disappear in the distance.
“We’ve got a good amount of driving. You should take the time to rest, Cemone,” said the swarthy man. Cemone liked the idea, but felt unsure of the cabbie.
“How do you know my name?”
“I’m Dr. Cart’s personal chauffeur. He talks about you constantly.” The little truth perked Cemone up as well as reassured.
Happy to hear that Dr. Cart talked about her in a casual fashion she snuggled deeper into her seat.
“I wasn’t aware the doctor had a chauffeur.”
“Nobody knows. That’s why he makes me drive a cab,” he replied. Cemone wasn’t surprised. The doctor had a reputation: very odd and even mysterious. There were memories of several occasions in which Dr. Cart had impersonated an anthropology professor, or served as his own lawyer, or successfully predicted random events. He did odd things like this often enough that she knew the cabbie was being honest, and that he, too, was a part of the growing mystery of her professor. With this in mind, Cemone happily went back to sleep and reintroduced herself to the woman in yellow.
They continued to frolic and play in the dream for over two hours until she reached her destination. She was again awakened by her mysterious cab driver. This time, however, he seemed a bit more empathetic.
“It’s time to get up. We’re here.”
Cemone rubbed her eyes as she rose off the polyester seat of the cab. Details of the dream were quickly diluted into obscurity as exact elements of the world came into focus.
“Where are we?” Cemone asked the cabbie.
“Some farm, I guess,” the driver replied. Outside of her window Cemone could only see two things: a depressingly gray barn, and inestimable miles of wheat. The barn looked abandoned and decrepit, while the wheat seemed relatively young. From the status of the two she could tell that whoever owned the land no longer operated out of the farmhouse. Cemone continued to look at the barn for a few minutes before she saw Dr. Cart walk out of it. The old man seemed pleased with himself and was motioning for her to come meet him. On his command, Cemone left the cab and entered the barn right behind Dr. Cart.