Nata Kay - The Choice Era. Part 1

After breakfast Harry felt wreck. He was walking up and down around the apartment to find something to do, but in vain. The morning was so long. Harry had a day off and no plans for it. Mona didn’t offer anything either.

The Nelsons used to improvise during non-working hours, but now it didn’t work out. Worse still, it was annoying. Annoying for Harry.

But Mona seemed to feel comfortable. She was doing some chores, mumbling songs. When she felt Harry’s eyes on her, the songs began to sound louder, more expressive and emotional.

However, Harry couldn’t even sing along as he loved. The Nelsons had made a pretty good and funny duo in the past, but this morning Mona was singing solo.

Harry tried to watch TV, but the programs he came across were uninformative, and the films seemed boring from the start. Disappointed with the TV, Harry tried to spend time looking something up in his laptop, but he quickly realized he didn’t want to text with anyone, didn’t want to play and didn’t want to search for anything on the Internet. Harry was staring blankly at the shortcuts on the desktop for a few moments, then sighed and hopelessly closed the laptop.

Another way to get away from his own inner world could be the outer world, namely a real, most ordinary window. Harry got up, walked over to it, opened the drapes and stood next to the frame.

Nothing was happening on the street that could seriously attract his attention, but Harry was staying motionless by the window for several minutes. He looked at occasional pedestrians until he caught himself thinking that he was looking at them, but he wasn’t noticing anything about them, as if pedestrians were just some clear plastic like windows.

«Would you like to take a walk?» Harry broke his own silence. He heard Mona coming into the living room.

«I thought it was raining outside,» said Mona with a note of surprise. She started to put her nail polishes on the table. Small jars were lining up in color order with other fingernail accessories next to them. Most of them Harry could describe as «obscure stuff».

«Not yet, but it may start soon,» water drops could soon rain down from the clouds. Harry peered up in the sky. He wasn’t very good at cloud types, so he relied on intuition which suggested the dry weather should not be expected from these gray giants.

«Then why would we go outside?» Mona took out three polishes and painted her three nails, then blew on her fingertips, leaned back to see the results and choose one of the colors.

Usually the process of turning nails into a work of art took a long time, so Harry didn’t think Mona would agree to go out, even in clear sunny weather.

«I don’t know,» said Harry. Many people didn’t understand why they should go for walks, but Nelson wasn’t at all one of them. He loved going out with Mona, with Ivy, with friends or even alone. «I’m in no mood to stay at home. If you want to stay, I may go alone. If you don’t mind, of course, do you?»

Mona distracted from her nails, smiled and looked playfully at Harry.

He loved her smile. It made him smile too. And now this trick worked perfectly. Harry immediately smiled back, although he had been gloomy for the last few hours. The world could shift not only because of great changes, but also because of one simple smile.

It was so amazing how Mona’s smile magically fascinated Harry and many other people. Mona was able to easily blend into any society, whether it was elderly relatives, neighbor’s kids, her husband’s colleagues or a typical company of women that used to have «ladies nights». Mona could become the life of any company at once if she wanted to.

«Men need to be alone sometimes,» Mona answered in a philosophical tone. Despite they were talking, she managed to choose a color that matched her outfit, mood, position of stars and other vital conditions. Now Mona was washing away inappropriate options. «If men are forbidden to be alone, they would get upset.»

Harry approached her, hugged and kissed her temple. Over the years of marriage he didn’t lose warm tender feelings and didn’t understand why others were about to lose it. Perhaps the other spouses simply didn’t help each other to keep love, so they were losing it more and more every year, not even noticing such a monstrous loss.

And few wives, perhaps, were able to show as much patience and understanding as Mona showed. She knew how to support, cheer up, fill the void with her sweet chatter and sometimes step aside in time to allow her husband to cool down and recover.

Harry left the apartment in a state that could be considered at least normal, though he still would like Mona go for a walk with him. Now, outside the house and without his wife, Harry was again coming back to his thoughts, which were still tangling and spreading in different directions, like cats frightened by a loud car signal.

Earlier Harry perfectly fit his views on life into a single solid concept, and this concept had not yet ruined. Only Harry’s new life experience, oddly enough obtained from books, couldn’t find a place for itself in this concept.

The rain wasn’t about to start. The clouds were waiting for a good moment. They were looming over the city to rid the streets of fearful people.

Rain was a phenomenon not for those who couldn’t sacrifice dry feet for a hike. Of course, shoes were protected by all kind of modern covers, but there still was a problem with tricky water drops inside the shoes and boots. A mere thought of them left hundreds of people at their homes.

Harry carried an umbrella with him only if he went somewhere with Mona. He didn’t take it just for his own sake, because he didn’t want to carry it in his hands and accidentally leave it somewhere in public places. If Harry got wet, he wasn’t upset. At work he had an extra suit, and as for all other places people would understand and forgive his inappropriate appearance… Or at least pretend there was nothing wrong.

This time Harry followed his traditions and left home with no umbrella. He walked left from the house almost without thinking.

Harry had no final destination. He was just looking ahead and kept walking. About twenty years ago Harry acquired a habit of walking very fast when he was lost in thought and focused on himself. Sometimes he received blows in his shoulder and went a red light, but then he got used to control the situation and return to reality when it was necessary.

Even now, when the number of thoughts in one morning was breaking all records, Harry managed to maneuver between people walking with their usual measured pace, colored with a faint touch of city bustle. Some people were looking at Harry suspiciously. Why was he in such a hurry? What for? What’s wrong with him?

Harry noticed their distrustful looks, but ignored them. The opinion of strangers worried him, but in such a state he wasn’t ready to figure it out.

A few blocks away Harry would have walked out to the quay, the favorite place to stroll for a lot of people, including the Nelsons. But now he wanted to change his usual route and turned around the corner of the house closest to the quay. Harry didn’t remember ever walking that road.

Harry always considered the quay house’s facade as if not an architectural masterpiece, then at least a successful construction and a real pride of the street. However, to Harry’s surprise, the other side of the house was… shabby. It seemed it hadn’t been repaired for a long time. The paint faded, the drainpipes were deformed and some balconies started crumbling.

Harry grinned. He wasn’t really happy about his discovery. He could be in the dark about how some familiar things turned out to be different at both sides for much more time. It seemed like many people managed to ignore this difference. Nevertheless, residents and frequent visitors of the street probably knew about its features and «dark» side.