Continental

I sip my free coffee and munch my free bagel and ponder the benefit of having a friend who works at a hotel. A benefit that is never more useful than when a certain clip on the inside of my door lock wiggles out of place. The end result of this wiggling is that a key inserted into the lock will spin candidly into infinity, oblivious to its initial purpose of engaging the bolt. Upon a midnight return home, this spinning at first baffles, and then frustrates, once the cat starts to mewl and I realize my highly anticipated pasta salad would have to wait.

The morning after this realization I am standing at the edge of the river, waiting to rendezvous with the maintenance man. The willow bushes have smooth, skinny branches, yellow like pencils, splashed against the steel water. Crows glide in to meet two Canadian geese on the bank. The morning is crisp - snow has just kissed the tops of the hills.

It seems to me that there is a sweetness, when the wiggle-able clips in life set free the cogs that keep us turning dependably. There is a pleasure in rolling out a blanket bed on a friend's floor, in waking to the song of a dove (instead of claws in the cat litter), of savoring coffee in an empty lobby. There is peace in idling time on the bike path because I have nothing on me but what I strolled out with last night, nothing to do because the nucleus of my world is shut, and I've realized I am separate from it, from everything but my brain and my hands in my pockets.

As the breeze wakes up the day, I turn and walk quickly homeward. I don't want to be late to have my broken lock repaired, if it was really wrong at all.