Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito Page B

floor.”
    â€œSo did you.”
    â€œSo what kind of a rescue is that?”
    â€œIt was a blaze of glory!” He gestured to the floor. “Look at it. What an explosion! All that potential energy contained in the
plate, held in the molecular structure of the ceramic, escaping in one smashing instant. The plate was only the shell for a spirit, a spirit who stepped apart from the rest and reveled in its individual beauty. it’s escaped, see? ultimate release only comes to those who achieve their potential. It was ready.” He stepped on a shard and ground it into further smithereens. “It was a good death.”
    â€œBut you just killed it.”
    â€œFlake,” he smirked, drying a goblet. “What are you talking about? It was just a plate.”
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    18 “Which do you like better?” Sophia once asked me as she sat in her rocking chair knitting with the joy of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. “The tingling, needles-and-pins sensation when your foot falls asleep, or the dizzy, seeing-stars feeling when you get up too fast?”
    â€œI don’t much care for either, actually,” I responded. “Besides, they’re really both the same thing. Your foot tingles because it’s not getting enough oxygen, and you get dizzy because your head’s not getting enough oxygen.”
    â€œGood.” She gave her chair an emphatic rock. “Now I don’t have to choose between them.”
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    19 The union of Blip and Sophia is far greater than the sum of its parts. Singly, they are mere sounds, notes with no purpose. Together, they harmonize like a chord never before struck, dancing to a tune only they can hear, living in a world only they can see. They are a providential pair, a dyad reunited, and the
happiest couple I’ve ever met. Strangers are forever commenting that they look like twins, a dually flattering pronouncement, for each is tremendously delighted at being likened to the other.
    Sophia and Blip had already been dancing together for five years when I first met them ten years ago, but they got married (or
merried
, as they insisted) only eight years ago. They made certain, however, that their wedding guests understood that they were not about to start counting their anniversaries all over again.
    It wasn’t a legal ceremony anyway. In fact, they promoted it as an outlaw wedding. And indeed, it was a blatant disregard for normalcy. No one presided over the ritual but themselves, and it was held deep inside a gorge at a state park where such activities were not permitted. They took great delight in this fact and played with it from the start, sending out parchment invitations sealed inside bottles, daring their guests to attend this bandito matrimonial, to applaud them as they sought treasure in one another. Flamboyant costumes were required.
    When the day of the wedding arrived, and they had dressed those who hadn’t taken them seriously about costumes (myself included), they divided their guests into five groups of six. They gave each group a separate treasure map, five different paths leading to the same secret rendezvous. Then they disappeared, by which I mean they somehow ducked out of the picnic area while everyone else stood around looking ridiculous and trying to meet up with the others in their group. There was some grumbling but much amiability, for Blip and Sophia had succeeded in turning us into an unlikely gaggle of gypsies and jesters and monks and pirates. Since even the grumblers weren’t about to skip out on a wedding, there was nothing to do but follow our directions.
    I was an elf. Blip gave me some green tights and a tunic, then popped elfin tips on my ears and painted my face, “emphasizing your laugh lines,” he said. “You don’t laugh enough. I’ll bet you get cramps in your cheeks when you laugh too hard. That means that you’re not laughing enough. Your face should cramp up when