EQMM 1971-03 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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The flustered blush rocked fitfully in her temporary harbor in Ferry Landing, Florida. I felt the bracing Florida breeze on my face and watched the warming Florida sun rise above the glittering glassy faces of the overpriced Florida hotels and brushed away an overeager Florida bug about to take a high dive into my corn flakes. I took a long drag on my Donald Duck orange juice and stared northward toward Battle Creek, Michigan. Your com flakes aren’t what they once were, Battle Creek, and try as you will you cannot disguise the fact by designing a new way to get into the box every year.

But then you aren’t what you were, Battle Creek, because you’re an American city and American cities are like archaic broads who try to ward off time, that agent of decay, with ever-increasing layers of junk that only heightens what it’s trying to conceal. Even Miami has that look these days.

It was one of those mornings when all the sun and all the Donald Duck orange juice in the world can’t give balance to the teeter-tauter of my outlook, when my lonely melancholia is so heavy it outweighs soaring birds and flying fish and all the vibrant life around me, and I arise from my bed in my seagoing home full of penetrating social commentary that longs for expression.

I guess I should have been happy that particular morning. I knew she was ready, my little wounded bird, to fly out again on her own, or as ready as she would ever be. She wasn’t scared any more like she was the day I fished her out of the Miami Beach yacht harbor where Chili Warlock had left her to sink.

A broken spirit takes more time to mend than a broken wing, and in the past seven months she hadn’t once stepped off the deck of the Flustered Blush and into the world outside. But now we knew, as if by mutual consent, that she was ready.

She came out now, still looking like a fragile blonde wisp longing for protection. She sat down beside me shyly and said, “Good morning, Trig.”

“Morning, kid.”

She reached for a box of raisin bran from the variety pack. She didn’t hesitate. She reached for it decisively. I liked that. She looked at it for a second, bewildered. “Trig.”

“Yeah, honey?”

“They changed the box again, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, I guess they did.” I didn’t help her. I couldn’t. She had to face it herself this time. And I knew she could. I was right. Two minutes later she had it open.

“I didn’t lose a single raisin, did I, Trig?”

“You did fine, baby, just fine.”

I guess it was a good breakfast, but I didn’t taste much. I never do at times like this. Sometimes I could kick myself for being such a sentimentalist. But other times I think that sentimentality is the stuff of which life is made, however much you can lose by it. What you have to know is when to be sentimental and when to be unsentimental.

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