Reading in the Rain

It was a dark and stormy morning when there came a knock at the door.

"Knock, knock," said the door.

"Who's there?" said Pico, Biff's gay cat.

"It's the police," said a voice with much police-like authority.

The door opened. Two police officers held a sodden and unkempt Biff between them. The Biff looked half dead and smiled at a skewed angle, like something that might congeal at the bottom of an abandoned bowl of alphabet soup.

"Is this yours?" said one of the officers.

Pico regarded that dripping mess of Biff and thought about the time it refused to feed him a ladybug. "No ... I've never seen it before," said Pico, and slammed the door.

Yes, a true story. But I survived and returned home. Pico is in a burlap bag in the trunk of my car while I decide what to do with him. I made it to the Boyce Market and gave away book marks, posters and brochures. I even had a brief audience and read a story, but most people weren't really into listening to a dowsed writer reading in the rain.

It doesn't look all that wet in this picture of me reading to the only two people of the day interested in hearing a story. (Actually, I had to hit them over the head with heavy objects and tie them up.) The rain picked up momentum shortly after and continued to grow increasingly wet and rain-like until, by 1:30 I pulled up by the fountain at The Green and it was a dark and stormy afternoon. I parked by the fountain for a few minutes and then wandered mindlessly through the jungle of downtown Fredericton until the police picked me up and tried to pawn me off on my cat.

But I just checked the long range weather. It looks like next Sunday will be cloudy, but dry. I think I'll go for just the reading of Ladies of the Fountain, and I'll do it on The Green, by the fountain, under the cloudy dry sky. At 2:00 PM.

There will be free book marks, posters and pennies. And BTW, please remember that this story is for adults only. It contains strong language, sexually explicit content, and naked pictures of my gay cat Pico. Or something like that. You can read the first few paragraphs for yourself (if you have a PDF reader) here. If you haven't taken the photo tour, just scroll down to the previous post.

See you there.