“My fingers smell like citrus. How strange,” he said while sliding the cranberry curtain a smidge to his right so he could get a good look at the family across the street tossing toys into the backseat of their four-door coupe.
“They must be going to her mom’s house,” he reckoned while taking an unhurried step along the sun soaked hallway of his second story apartment, then pausing to elaborate, “for dinner.”
“And I shall make asparagus with baked parmesan,” he announced while gazing downward at a dusty crate of records from the ‘70s.
“Perhaps I’ll listen to Alice Coltrane,” he declared while delicately bending a knee to browse the albums, patiently flipping from one to the other, but also, curious about the wall map above his head: the United States of America; ripe with purple and green pushpins that formed the shape of a mushroom.
He returned his gaze to the vinyl as a wailing fire truck rumbled down Druid Park Drive.
“Om to my kundalini rising, here she is,” he whispered excitedly, pushing himself up from the wooden floor into a legit gangsta lean, with the album “Journey in Satchidananda” tucked beneath his arm.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” he murmured while spying a folded piece of paper buried deep inside the left-hand pocket of his saffron robe. “What the?”
He repeated the mantra in his head: Breathing in, two, three, breathing out, five, six.
“It’s decided, I will invite the downstairs neighbor for brunch. Then I can ask,” he paused to exhale a hangdog sigh, “if my nag champa chaps their tranquility.”
Filled with unreliable confidence, he prudently walked to the end of the hallway, stopping at the mouth of the living room to unfold the diminutive note he found in the confines of his hooded cloak. It read: “Sprinkle the lemon on your asparagus.”
After a mindful exhale, he gingerly lowered himself into a lotus position on the crimson yoga mat in front of the turntable. He slid the record from the faded sleeve and reverently played the B-side first.
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