| By day the Café Purple Parakeet does brisk business serving squat square foods: coffee cakes, carrot cakes, brownies and banana breads. Across the street, a very short man and a tall-ish girl live in the top two floors of a slim slice of layer cake. Their rooms point at the street and widen in the rear. Their walls are iced with the pale violet light of the Café's purple parakeet sign. Let's call the short man Petit-Robert. And the tall-ish girl Oxford-English. Last week Petit-Robert renamed his Hard Drive Hard Dick and crawled inside his rotten Apple computer. He sleeps on his desktop, fiddles with his files, fondles his folders, and Photoshops his dreams. Down the hall Oxford-English locks her door, sleep tosses atop flannel sheets festooned with florid orange flowers. In pith helmet and khakis she machete hacks whacking her way through thick humid jungle dreams, loud with monkeys screech-reaching and bright song birds caw-calling. Fecund fruit falls. It's Petit-Robert's Apple computer crashing. Waking Oxford-English. Her limbs pale velvet, ultra violet washes the walls of her rooms. Across the street from the layer cake apartment, the Café's purple parakeet perches. All night the neon sign bird grooms. |
