Seeing Things

I spent the morning talking to a large fly, trying to lure him to the open sliding doors, and out onto my terrace. That’s the way he came in yesterday, and now it was time for him to go. He was competing with a large floater that was roaming my still rabbit red eyes. I had gotten my bi-monthly shots a week ago.

I had let him do the tour last night. I turned lights on and off gently leading him to my apartment door And hopefully into the building hallway. He wasn’t biting. I didn’t think a fly in winter could be infectious. In fact I thought he could possibly eat up any stray alien airborne atoms that might have wandered inside my personal bubble. I was being careful. I went to bed.

The fly was still flitting around this morning.

There were some beautiful long stemmed white carnations in a tall vase, but no, he was not buying those either. He was more attracted to the packages of anti-bacterial hand wipes scattered around on various surfaces. He landed on one and I tried to swat him. He buzzed off but not before giving me a gotcha look.

I really did talk to him, why not, no one else was around. I called him Bubbalah. Then I tried the soft approach. I did not want him going rogue, darting hither and yon.

Soon, I got into a computer bridge game , I realized there were now four of us: the floater, the fly, me, and the computer cursor. It made for deeper concentration and my game got stronger. My partner was very happy.

Later in the afternoon, as the sun was setting over the red brick side wall of Whole Foods, I was freezing. It was 37 degrees out. The air stream was playing right on me at the desk. No wonder Bubbalah wasn’t leaving so fast.

Before I closed the sliding door, I thought of one more tactic.

I opened the hall door and created a current for him to ride out on, out to the terrace or out to the warmer inside passage, his choice, but I was done. I am not a naturalist by profession. But I thought this was the perfect solution. Nature or Nurture. He could hang out outside all winter or fly the toasty hallways in comfort. He could settle on the shoulders of one grey haired woman after another. It would give them something to focus on.

I put on a heavier jacket and made some phone calls.

Soon enough the sun had set, my dinner had been delivered, Bubbalah was nowhere in sight, Maybe it had worked, The air current was blowing. Papers were flying from my desk. I was ending the experiment. I gave up. I closed the hall door and was about to close the sliders, when I spied some activity on one of my small flowery porcelain sculptures on a shelf. Now there were two flies. One was much prettier than Bubb. I came closer and tried to stare him down. He looked back at me, and I am sure he said, in that fly voice,

“What’s a guy to do, fly by night?”

“Yes,” I answered meekly. “I guess I have squatters.”

546 WORDS