She pressed the receiver against her ear, waiting. No response. Nancy had no idea. Leona knew how this looked to her sister. She was familiar, in her own way, with both sides of the exchange: the reliable side, the unreliable side. She clung to the hopelessness of her appeal, as if it could buoy her up.
“Not in the dens,” Leona announced. “That goes against their instincts. They urinate in the tunnels. That’s how they build. They use the dampness.”
“Jumping Jesus!” Leona yelled. “What are they up to?”
She pictured the damp tunnels, the accumulation of urine, the spill-off area.
“What is happening to my world?”
The stain’s borders were poorly defined. Someone less familiar with the ceiling would have assumed that it was a smudge, but it was clear to Leona that it was no smudge.
Occasionally Leona had guests.
“You think I am imagining this,” she said to her guests. “Come into the bedroom. We’ll see who’s imagining.”
Comments