Of course, that title presumes that senses exist. Common senses exist, but sadly my hearing has just taken a battering more intense than most rock concerts in Grant Park.
At precisely 11:54 pm, as in 6 to Midnight, a cacophony of car horns, truck horns and the obligatory loud voices were heard in the alleyway that borders the back of my apartment building.
Then, a few loud cracks in the air, a couple of whistle sounds, and a deep explosive sound caused the building to literally rock on its foundation. It was not an earthquake. It wasn't a real bomb. In fact, it sounded like someone was doing the pre-New Year's Eve fireworks 6 days early.
I opened my eyes and glanced again toward the window and the laser flashes of police lights spilled into my bedroom. By the time I was fully awake, the doorbell rang. Then it rang again. A third time.
By the time the bell was set off in the obligatory "shave and a haircut, beat, beat, six bits", I was at the front door and there was the new delivery guy from Lakeside Livery.
He had two large boxes with him and a clipboard thick with delivery receipts. Without a single word, he shoved it under my nose, slapped a greasy pen in my left hand and said the only word I ever heard him speak. "Sign."
Now, this was a first. Lakeside Livery was not in the business of delivering parcels to residences. They were a business to business outfit, and picked up delivery orders from businesses that had more business than trucks. In doing so, they kept costs down, which meant they weren't much on the pleasantries, and were very much into fast, furious and cheap service. As such, some companies never did add that extra truck to their fleet. They just used Lakeside as an extra employee that never took a day off, with trucks that never needed an oil change on company time.
I signed the appropriate line, and noticed the receipt had the address of the sender covered over by a large sticker that proclaimed "Lakeside Livery wishes you and yours a very Happy Holiday Season." They even had a picture of Secretariat pulling an old fashioned milk wagon festooned with evergreen garlands and poinsettia blooms.
I was offended by the desecration in that picture. First off, the whole use of the "holiday" thing, when they were clearly celebrating end of the year crunch time, and not thinking for a second about peace on earth, or about which holiday was being celebrated with all the red and green. Second, I was really offended by the use of Secretariat, complete with a blanket of roses over him, just like the photos that are plastered all over every article, Wiki-something entry, and school kids essay about that legendary horse. A horse, mind you, that would never, ever, never have pulled a wagon of any sort. Especially not a dairy wagon from pre-fire Chicago.
Anyway, the delivery guy grunted as he stuffed the pen under the stocking cap he wore. His cap was so dirty that I cringed a bit having held a pen that had likely been removed from that location before I used it to scrawl some evidence of delivery.
"Hey, you're new on this job, aren't you?" I asked as he turned and headed down the hall to the elevator.
"Yeah" And, nothing.
"What's your name?"
Nothing. Not a whimper, grunt or other sound. Just the sound of the elevator doors opening and then closing softly behind him.
Well, it was time to see what was inside the boxes. I opened both in the hallway, because one was too unwieldly to move and the other was too big to fit through my doorway.
Inside the first was a huge cage housing two doves. It was one of those old fashioned looking parrot cages, which was about three feet high and about three feet wide. When the light hit the birds, I could see they were beautiful white doves, with just a bit of gray shading around the wings and some bluish feathers on their heads. The tag affixed to the ornate ball at the top of the cage that formed a cap had a hand painted turtle on it. I flipped it over and the message read, "Two Turtle Doves From Your Very Own True Love..."
Oh.
Oh cr...
Oh Crikey.
The other box had to be cut away. I needed my knife, and by the time I found it, the cat had already gotten a decent hole ripped into the side and a few feathers had floated out onto the carpeting.
I shooed the cat back into my flat and used the hole in the side of the box to body wrestle the box into my own entryway. When I cut the cardboard away, my worst fears were realized.
I had another pear tree. This time with real pears on it. And, in a tiny cage, which probably was for protection of the partridge inside it during transport, there was one extremely agitated bird. I could swear smoke was coming off its pin feathers.
After some effort, I removed the tiny partridge cage from the pear tree, took it and the larger cage with the turtle doves inside, and moved both into the spare bedroom/office.
The lightning fast flash of gray fur told me there was a cat in the room, ready to spring forth and get at least four extra large meals at the birds' expense. I wasn't up for livestock slaughter inside my flat, especially since those sorts of activities brought all sorts of city inspectors, fines, fees, payoffs and other legal, and not so legal stuff that could be very uncomfortable indeed. Especially for my empty pocketbook.
I got the cat out of the room using the oldest kitty con in the book. The ball with a bell inside is a never miss attention grabber for the feline set. He fell for it.
I closed the door behind me, pulled the key from the hook next to the door, and locked the room behind me. After all, I have a cat that could have graduated from as a bad lockpick, but successful door opener, and was so silent at it, that he'd win prizes at any seven bells school since Dickens wrote about Fagin's establishment more than a century earlier.
It was time for sleep. The police lights were still flashing in the alleyway. I heard someone yell, "Get that horse out of here! Now!."
Nah. Couldn't be. Lakeview Livery would never use a delivery system from a prior century, hauled by a horse that's been dead almost as long to deliver boxes to little old Moi.
I drifted off to sounds that could have been hoofbeats. Horses hoofbeats.
Not a chance. It had to be someone's stereo. After all, this was the big city. When you hear hoofbeats generally, think horses not zebras. When you hear hoofbeats in Chicago, think boombox, not horse drawn wagon-box. Right?
Rrrrrriiiight.
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