Chapter 6

Throbbing eardrums and throbbing fingers are great hindrances at staying perched or hanging off a ledge for too long. So it was that after a few breaths’ equivalent of clawing her way out of the bathroom window and rubbing against the brick façade of the wall that Nina let go and allowed her body to be pulled by gravity onto the emerald, grassy land below her.

The drop was short and the ground soft and bouncy so she found herself with relief to be in one piece and able to stand immediately after her desperate escape-stunt. She collected herself in the vertical position, kicking at the air a few times to get rid of the tingling in her legs and nearly-numb toes and gazed around her.

A row of hawthorn bushes was surrounding the spot where she had landed blocking immediate access to the rest of what appeared to be a well-tended garden or small park. The bushes were full of their petite, fragrant flowers and emanating a powdery smell that jingled and danced with the promise of something better. She stroked the white flowers lovingly. To the brush of her hand one of them got dislodged from its stem and fell to the floor. She carefully picked it up and put it in her pocket. “You are coming with me”, she whispered to it.

Crawling between the gaps allowed by the hawthorn-shafts she made her way past the sensuous wall of fragrance and into the yellow midday light that was generously bathing an open patch of freshly-cut grass. Nina sat on the ground and took in the beauty all around her. Scores of thickly-blossomed cherry trees were communing in the warmth and light of the sun humming secrets to each other in the slow breeze. It looked as if the ethers were covered with rose-colored snow. She laid down on the balmy, lush expanse and gazed up at the sky with her hands behind her head in the form of a rough pillow. There was no reference point, no tall building or structure with which to identify height so the heavens looked as if they were crawling on the ground. Additionally, what was a solitary cloud a few hours ago was now a whole family of vapors chasing each other in the sky perpetually towards the north.

Nina stared at the trees; their trunks, their leaves. She wondered whether they could sense the beauty around them and their participation in it. She asked herself what they would have thought of it. Would they be proud of themselves or would they simply be?

 The hazy, ice-grey of the clouds mingled with the cotton-candy-pink cherry blossoms, the colors mingling and blending together in such a manner that made Nina think of dessert. Her rumbling belly agreed noisily. She was hungry. Not to mention lost. ‘Hungry’ and ‘lost’ when combined together make up a potent mix of urgency and primordial instinct awakenings.

“Since this morning, I have both been thrown into a kitchen and been made to cook lunch – or something close to that – and still I haven’t eaten anything besides a tiny little macaroon”, she said throwing her hands in the air referring to no one in particular. She was beginning to acknowledge the fact that if she wanted to make intelligible conversation then she was going to have to make it with herself. “How ironic is that?” she asked both referring to her lack of sustenance as well as lack of someone she could actually talk to despite the continuous banter she had been exposed to all day thus far.

With her senses and stomach feeling hyper she made to find a way out of the maze of enchanting cherry trees and hawthorn bushes with a sense of unusual urgency that forced het to hurry along the minute she got to her feet. She chose to go north without much ado, trailing the rushing clouds right on top of her. Maybe they know something that I don’t, she thought to herself. She trotted through the grass and trees picking up her step as she started to make out a continuous row of blackthorn bushes behind which the semblances of roof tops were beginning to pop up. Her animation was so great that she almost failed to notice an oblong, hollowed hole in the ground that was laying open-mouthed right in front of her, offering a sudden, abrupt drop amidst the smooth stretch of grass. Her muscles stiffened and jolted in shock at the near accident as she rocked back and forth on the edge of the opening with her arms spread out away from her for greater balance. She retained that position for a few seconds and then relaxed her limbs, exhaling gratefully.

Ironically, it was at that precise moment that a forceful, quick push at her back sent her feet-first into the cavity. Nina yelped in astonishment as she got engulfed by the drop, landing awkwardly on the dirt-floor with her knees scraping the surface painfully and her hands barely resisting the impact between the wall of the opening and her head. She looked up in panic, almost crazy with shock that was being made worse by the stinging pain and little droplets of blood that were slowly emerging from scraped palms. Two smiling faces were gazing down at her in friendly appreciation. A pair of pocket-sized, young men was peering down at Nina’s miserable expression both of which were dressed in black and both of which appeared to be very amused, even grateful, for her misfortune.

“Are you alright down there?” one of the smiling faces asked her with theatrical interest and almost artificial worry.

“That was one nasty fall. You should be more careful…Running around the park, not watching were you were going the way you did” the other one said disapprovingly, shaking his head back and forth.

“Nasty, horrible drop. You must be flabbergasted”, the first took up where the second one had left off. “And those cuts of yours…They are bleeding”

Nina looked at her dirty palms, colored with light, scarlet dew. Nothing serious, she thought. Her panic had initially led her to believe that her wounds were much more severe than they were in reality, as she was gladly noticing. She brushed the droplets of blood gently against her jeans and tried to collect her thoughts and emotions. She had been violently and inexplicably shoved into a hole in the ground and her instincts and intuition were alerting her to the probable likelihood of the culprits being the very two men standing right above her feigning innocence and interest. The situation was puzzling and a bit intimidating but not enough so as to scare Nina out of her wits or will to get something to eat as soon as possible. Besides, if anything good had come out of the fruitcakes she had been acquainted with since that morning it was that she was becoming aware of her inner-resilience and the prospect of manipulation of light madness. She decided to approach the matter in a completely new way. She had just come up with an idea which she was itching to put to the test; she was going to fight fire with fire, unstable behavior with unstable behavior.

Nina smiled giving an impressive display of her well tended, twice-a-day brushed and flossed teeth as if the two raven-clad men were eager photographers pointing their cameras at an obliging glamour model. The gesture paid-out. The two men lifted their heads and looked at each other, mouthing questions to one another as to which course of action to follow. They seemed unable to reach a conclusion at first while communicating with each other menacingly employing small thrusts along with disapproving looks and whispers. Finally one of the two tottered a little closer to the edge and peering down carefully reciprocated Nina’s display of teeth with a nervous twitch.

“It’s a good thing we are here to help you up, don’t you think?” he yelled down at her.

“Fabulous”, Nina yelled back, smile in place. Her jaw was beginning to hurt.

“So, if you just extend your arms towards me I’ll be able to pull you up at the very reasonable price of half the cash you are carrying about your person.”                

 “Three quarters!” came the voice of the other one from behind.

“At the very reasonable price of three quarters of the cash on you”, he added.

The familiar, minute cartoon-light-bulb flashed on inside Nina’s head. It was all starting to make sense now. Apparently this charade was some sort of attempt at scamming innocent passers-by out of their money by offering to help them out of the ditches that these two idiots had dug-out and probably pushed them into.  The absurdity of the whole theme was almost entertaining. “It sounds more than reasonable to me, giving out the bulk of my money to a total stranger willing to help me out of an inexplicably produced hole in the middle of a park. Just as long as the aforementioned opening is deep enough for me not to be able to climb out of by myself”, she said trying to keep a straight face as she easily clambered out of the pit, grasping at a few roots and rocks that were peering from the walls of the dug-up ground.

The tiny man closest to the opening gave out a noisy moan with the one behind him immediately bursting with disapproval and anger at his associate. “Now you see what happens!  I told you, didn’t I? I told you the hole wasn’t deep enough. But no” – ominous reverberating of the last vowel –“You said that we didn’t have to tire ourselves with digging deep holes”, he continued poking a finger at the other man’s chest while spitting out the word ‘you’ in a perceptibly bellicose mood. “You said they would be so scared at falling in, they would be susceptible to…how did you call it?”                                                                                                                        

“Psychosomatic manipulation” the other one whispered looking at the ground.

“Psychosomatic manipulation, that’s right. Ha!” he yelped, poking at the other man’s chest yet again. “Just because you have read the first three chapters of ‘Introduction to …’ whatever-you-call-it”                                                                                         

“Introduction to Psychoanalysis” the other corrected in a nearly imperceptible whisper.

“Whatever!”, the chest-poker yelped with arms flailing about. “Just because you have read it, correction, the first three chapters of it doesn’t make you an expert on psychology now, does it?”

Throughout this whole display of chest-prodding and intense discontent Nina had managed to somewhat make herself presentable, brushing away all the pieces of dirt and debris that had not melted into the fibers of her trousers and had folded her arms in front of her, quietly observing the comical spectacle before clearing her throat loudly in order to demand attention. Her action interrupted the two men right in the middle of the two of them being thus locked together; the chest-poking one having caught the other by the shirt-lapel was shaking him violently back and forth with the other one yelling out “Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis!” with eyes bulging out of their sockets. They both stopped to look around at her in surprise staying frozen in their interlocked position.  

“Which is the shortest way out of the park?” Nina demanded authoritatively.  They both pointed straight ahead, towards the direction she was heading to before her orchestrated plunge.

She turned her back speedily at the two con-artists and rushed towards the blackthorn bushes, closer and closer to the unmistakable hustle and bustle of traffic. From behind her came muffled screams fading further into oblivion. While rushing to her destination she made a brief effort at remembering what she could from ‘The interpretation of dreams’ which was the only book by Sigmund Freud that she had read, a long time ago. Even though she had actually finished the whole thing and not just the first three chapters she had never attempted to put its lessons to use. In fact she hadn’t found it entirely useful except as a natural relaxant since it possessed the uncanny ability of putting her to sleep. The reason though for it having such an effect on her was not that she had found it extremely boring. It was mostly the fact that it required vast amounts of concentration, after which her brain was ready for a much required nap.  In addition to that, Nina was suspecting that good old Sigmund was not actually very keen on other people reading his books and so had proceeded to make them over-complicated on purpose by formulating them to be near impossible to understand by any poor fool that ventured it. The peculiar thing was that she had met a lot of people who were claiming both to have read and understood the book which she hypothesized were either a great deal more informed than her or were pretending to have understood the overtly complex piece of work in order to make a good impression. One way or the other there was no actual fool-proof method for her to find out the truth which was a fact she was learning to accept in regards with many things, a lot of which were much more vital than this. She was beginning to comprehend that for many important questions there are just no definitive answers.

Fortunately there are many definitive ways out of an unwanted situation though and a very simple way out of the park, at the edge of which she was now standing. Nina determinedly used the exact same process of going past the growth of the thicket of blackthorn bushes as she had previously with the first shrubbery blocking her way, crawling carefully on her newly bruised knees. As she made her way out of the park, the change of scenery was immediate and unexpected.

A buzzing street suddenly erupted in front of her, at first glance looking more like it belonged to a lucid dream than it did to reality. The road in front of her, the cobbles on the pavement where she was standing, the street lamps and the benches, even the shops were all painted white. The traffic lights up ahead went from a pale to bright white. All around her feathery snowflakes were falling, swirling hazily towards the ground but the atmosphere was inexplicably, comfortably warm. The flakes disappeared into a puff of humidity as they hit the ground.

The traffic in the street was heavy and intertwined, but it was not just cars running around but also bicycles, unicycles and carts and she could also see some hot-air balloons and a ski lift roaming overhead. A homing pigeon quickly flew in front of her rushing to deliver a folded parchment that had been shoved into a miniscule plastic ring on its leg. The pigeon seemed quite exhausted in its attempt, flying haphazardly about without judging distance to its full capabilities and almost crashing onto Nina’s head, who jumped back hastily trying to avoid it. And that was the exact moment she saw him.

The over-weight, top-hat man strolled right by her and at a brisk pace up the hill at the foot of which they were both coincidentally situated. Nina looked at the man’s black hat bobbing up and down and directly above it a street sign that read ‘Albino Avenue’ in gold-lettered calligraphy. She instinctively and without a moment’s hesitation decided to trail his ascent along the pavement in close pursuit though with absolutely no idea on how to approach him. Her efforts with most current acquaintances had been fruitless to say the least, a regretful fact which had filled her with the need for extra caution and careful consideration of her contact towards strangers whom she required assistance from.

The two-member procession marched up the busy avenue passing by its white-washed, modest shops. First, Nina noticed the minimalist window display of a small store which had been crammed with rows of oversized test-tubes that were jam-packed to the rim with tiny, ashen orbs. The sign above the glass window read ‘Antibiotics’ in imposing, black letters. Right next to it stood the sign of another store, a green-grocer’s from the look and sound of it as its name was ‘All the Veggies’ with white crates resting on top of iron shelves coated with shiny, gloss-enamel paint the color of marshmallows. The variety of fruit and vegetables on offer was not expansive despite the name of the shop; in fact one would immediately categorize it as modest and rather odd. The crates only contained produce that started with the letter ‘A’: apples, apricots, avocadoes, asparagus, alfalfa sprouts and artichokes, to be precise.

Similarly, the florist’s next to it only stocked in flowers of the same initial. Colorful anemones of purple, crimson and white, luscious, blood-red azaleas, sapphire African lilies and languid acacias in great pots were being sprayed with water by the florist at the exact moment that Nina halted abruptly, mirroring the actions of the robust gentleman who after freezing inexplicably for a few seconds turned and made to enter the shop next to the florist’s, hiking gracefully up its steps. He pushed open the small door which barely contained him and then released it to close behind him with a rush of wind. Nina read the store sign above: Alpha Bookstore that was written in orangey-red letters the exact color of pomegranates and then followed decisively at the man’s heel.

 She thrust the door open with a forceful push of her shoulder. A little bell attached to the top of the doorway chimed happily at her entrance. The shop was completely white on the inside as well. Wooden painted shelves, a rosy marble desk where the shop-keeper was sitting behind reading a newspaper on top of a white and worn-out - though cleaned to perfection - carpet. The room was low-ceilinged and emanated a mystical smell of aniseed coming from the candles that were left burning on the bay-window ledge at the back of the store. She and the large man appeared to be the only two customers currently shopping for books. The top-hat man was inspecting a tome a few shelves away from her with apprehension while biting his nails childishly. She pretended to be looking for a book herself and started to slowly drift towards him. The book titles, expectedly by now, all started with the letter A. ‘Arsenic: Dangers and False truths’, ‘Apologies for all occasions’, ‘Absinthe: Do’s, Don’ts, Recipes and Remedies’, ‘Achtung!’, ‘Aluminum: 100 Uses’, ‘Alternate Universes. All You Need to Know about All That Is Out There’.

Nina froze on the spot and re-read the title. “Alternate universes. All you need to know about all that is out there”, she whispered tailing her finger over the embossed ridge of the volume. That’s exactly what I need. I don’t even have to rely on getting information from the odd, chubby man. I’ll get the information I need by myself. Ket’s just hope that the book is not too expensive, she thought.

She pulled the paper-back away from the shelf with excitement and headed straight for the shop-keeper who so far had displayed no inclination towards assisting her customers or even, in fact, acknowledging their presence. She had, for the entirety of Nina’s visit to the store, been reading her newspaper and appeared to be deeply lost in contemplation. Nina examined her while waiting for her to pay attention to her intentions of purchasing a book clearly demonstrated by Nina standing in front of the counter and holding said book in her hand.

The lady had a striking, well-tended appearance of avid professionalism and attention to detail, dressed in a crisp, white linen suit with a silk, pallid tie tucked perfectly straight into her waistcoat. Her blazer was ironed and utterly crinkle-free with the finishing touch of a handkerchief folded squarely and peering out of her left, front pocket and her skin was milk-chocolate-dark and covered with makeup; black, heavy eye liner and poppy-red lipstick demanding attention to her eyes and mouth. Her hair was blue-black, cropped short and spiked up with gel and she was seated commandingly on a handmade, ebony chair upholstered with ice-blue velvet embroidered with white flowers while smoking a long, ebony pipe and reading the paper which was folded in front of her so carefully so as to be virtually as crinkle-free as her suit.           

As Nina approached the marble counter even closer and bowed slightly against it, the spiky head of the shop-keeper arose from its absorption and perused the image in front of her. “Young lady, you are filthy”, she cried scornfully. Nina looked at her palms that were caked with dirt and dried blood and then at her shoes currently coloring the pristine carpet with dots of burnt-sienna-brown soil and specks of viridian-green grass. She couldn’t help the alterations to the carpet any more than she could clean herself up on the spot so she rested on the hope that the ‘customer knows best’ policy was being followed in the establishment and presented the lady with the book she was intending on buying by carefully placing it on the counter.

“How much is this book?” Nina said to the bookstore assistant.

“What exact quantity are you inquiring on?” she asked her firmly, releasing a puff of ice-blue smoke from her painted mouth.                                                                                                                                    

“Ah…money?” Nina replied indecisively. “I am inquiring on how much it costs.”

“Money, alongside politics in general, is a fictional system of values invented to make peoples’ lives easier. What it has become though is a system of oppression through the manipulation of those rules to create more fictional systems and qualities that do not exist. Sorry to disappoint you but we don’t accept money here.”                        

 Finally, here was a departure from sane normality that actually suited Nina.

 “Oh. Well that’s not a problem; I don’t really have that much of it anyway. What would you say you do accept then?” she asked sweetly.                                                                                      

“I can trade this book with you for something of equal sentimental value”, the shopkeeper explained while pursing her lips and making a small pause in attempt at recollection. “Let’s see… ‘Alternate Universes’. I found this one at a book fair on Kaleidoscope Street on the eastern shores of the volcanic lake. It was a cold winter’s day and it was pouring with rain. I remember that I had my old green umbrella with me, that my first cousin on my mother’s side had given to me on my birthday that year and it had gotten caught on the branch of an almond tree and ripped in three places the result of it being that I got drenched in the rain and caught a horrible cold, sneezing on the cover of that book a couple of times if I’m not mistaken.” Nina looked at the book in her hand wearily. “Don’t worry, I’ve cleaned it”, the leady sneered at her. “Now it is your turn”, she continued motioning towards her.

Nina had caught on to how this game was being played. “I’ll trade you this book for this hawthorn flower”, she said producing the crumpled blossom that was crushed flat from the force of her pocket pushing against her leg yet still maintaining a fraction of its sweet, mysterious scent. “I came to its possession after having escaped an obnoxious, pusillanimous actor for whom I prepared eggs Benedict and subsequently jumped out of his impressive-house window into a beautiful park with blossoming cherry trees the sight of which made me think of ice-cream”. Nina’s belly gave out a growl of confirmation and she continued. “Right after that I was pushed into a pit by two men intending on making a profit out of helping me out of the cavity at which point I imagine it got fairly crumpled and distorted though thankfully still maintaining its beautiful smell” she said elevating the blossom right underneath the shop-keeper’s nostrils.

The poppy-red, tinted lips curled into an agreeing grin as she accepted the white flower and rested it on the marble counter. “Thank you for visiting Alpha” she said presenting Nina with the book and lowering her head towards her newspaper again. “Come again.”

“Hopefully I won’t have to”, Nina mumbled to herself as she opened the door and vacated the bookstore. Suddenly, she was feeling drained and weak. She sat on the pavement right outside the store and looked at the cover of her newly acquired book. It displayed the image of a famous Roman fountain into which myriads of tourists threw the equivalent of a small fortune each year in the hopes of making a wish that would actually come true. Nina felt a little disappointed at the random cover which in her mind was completely unrelated to anything concerning the analysis of the universe, may it be alternate or plain, old regular.

“That’s a catchy cover”, a friendly, high-pitched voice came from behind her. The top-hat man grinned widely and sat next to her on the pavement with aplomb. Nina gave him a surprised gasp and half-hearted, tight-lipped smile. “I am Frank. A pleasure”, he attested briskly lifting his hat off his head and giving out his shoe-sized hand in greeting.

“Nina”, she said pointing at herself with the book and then at her dirty palm in explanation to not returning the friendly gesture.

“So that’s why Eleanor called you filthy!” he concluded loudly, observably amused.

“I fell. Or rather, I was pushed into a pit. Long story...” she replied gravely staring at the asphalt.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing it. Have you eaten lunch? You look hungry. Not to mention a bit tired. Though your eyes have an interesting sparkle that they were noticeably lacking this morning” he said winking at her.

Nina’s muscles tensed at the observation. Her head shot up and she stared at him menacingly. “You remember me, don’t you?”

He gave her a knowing look. His eyes danced playfully, filled with childish excitement.

“You…you sabotaged the elevator on purpose! What the hell is wrong with you?” she screamed at him not able to contain herself. Blood was pumping through her ears ferociously. They felt warm and pulsating. If she had a mirror in front of her at that moment she would be able to attest to the fact that they were also bright red. The snow-flakes that had the misfortune of swiveling-close to them disappeared in a wisp of evaporation immediately.

“You looked lost. I thought to give you a way out”, the man replied wearily with a regretful expression on his sympathetic face.

“Lost? Are you joking? I was on my way out of my dentist’s building”                                                                                                                                       

“I regret the inconvenience. You just seemed to be so timid...”

Nina folded her arms around her and stared into the man’s face. Anger was boiling inside of her and she could feel acid swelling on the walls of her esophagus.

The man continued with his rationalization. “After I entered the elevator I smiled at you and you looked at your shoes. You were so interested in my appearance when you first noticed me that I distinctly remember you trying to sneak a peek into my pockets. As soon as I acknowledged you though, you shrunk into a corner.”

Nina continued to glare at him, though her anger was starting to waver.

“Oh please, don’t be angry with me. I was only trying to help. What can I do to make it up to you?”                                                                                                                 

 “You can buy me lunch”, Nina said in mock-anger.

“Certainly, my dear! I was about to do that very thing anyway”, he said in a gentle, apologetic tone, looking worried and a bit embarrassed.  

Nina’s fury melted away and sank into the pavement. This awkward, kind-hearted man was entirely sincere in his gestures and intentions. It was impossible to stay mad at him.

“I maintain a residence in my factory on Portmanteau Street which is a few blocks away from here”, he said starting to walk across the street and motioning for Nina to follow him. “I expect the lentil soup will be ready by now. Very irresponsible to leave the stove on, albeit in a low heat, while I am away from home, but I desperately needed to get this recipe book. I just couldn’t remember if I was supposed to add rosemary or bay leaves”, he continued merrily as they headed on, punctuating his statements with animated gestures.

The cook-book he had purchased was gripped securely in his large palm and was eccentrically called ‘Alleviate Boredom: Cook!’                                      

«Bay leaves», she told him following behind jadedly. Her grandmother used to cook lentil soup for her on really cold, winter days.

“Ah, if only we had met a few hours ago...” he concluded shaking the book about and pointing at a small side-street where Nina followed him into.

The street sign at its entrance read ‘Portmanteau Street’ which made her realize where she had seen the word ‘portmanteau’ before. The word meant the blend of two or more words and their meanings into one and had been the subject of a question in a literature pop quiz she had failed at school, the sting of which acquainted her with the meaning of the word closely.

Portmanteau Street was a quiet, residential road with rows of identical two-story houses of the same color and well-tended gardens while presenting no indications of any two or more things joining together to form something new or for that matter anything innovative or irregular to speak of. In fact, the only aesthetic disharmony in sight was a large concrete building with smoking chimneys and a tall, metal, fuchsia double-door that looked like a miniature factory towards which they moved rapidly with Frank unlocking the shiny door and holding it open for Nina who ventured inside groggily.

“Welcome to the Portmanteau Razor factory”, he announced proudly. Astonished by the facility of the room she had been invited into she looked around the expanding industrial space curiously. The factory, or rather the large workshop by the size of it, was indicative of spaces where heavy-duty, raw-material kind of work is conducted. The place was very plain on the decorative front destined solely for straightforward steel-blade manufacturing with hefty, metallic machinery, furnaces and water-filled crates taking up most of the space that was covered with patches of either dust, humidity or scattered about planks of wood.

Frank stood in the middle of his modest factory flooded with light from its numerous windows, beaming with satisfaction.

“Is this what you do then? You make razor blades?” Nina asked him. “Portmanteau Razors”, he said sweetly while producing one such razor out of his coat-pocket wrapped in thin, black cardboard with the name of the aforementioned street along with a picture of the factory façade printed on the cover. Nina accepted the gift thanking him spontaneously and studied its front picture, concluding to the reason as to why the man’s pockets made such a peculiar, scraping noise. It was at that point that she noticed, with even bigger surprise, Frank’s fingers for the first time. Almost all of his digits were covered in white bandages.  

“What happened to your fingers?” she cried out taken aback.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I get cuts from the razors from time to time. It’s the reason why I wear this hat you see. It distracts people from my bandaged fingers and counteracts the frightening sensation they get from my multiple scrapes and gushes. Being overweight also helps, actually.”                                                                                               

“You are right! I was so distracted by the hat, and forgive me, the fat that I never saw your bandaged digits.”                                                                                                        

“Mission accomplished. Now, I’ll give you the grand tour of the factory while the soup gets ready and then we’ll proceed to lunch. Let’s begin, shall we?” he asked merrily.

Nina seated herself on a nearby, empty workbench and rested her elbows on her knees nodding in agreement.

“A blade strip arrives from the manufacturer”, he said flamboyantly pointing at a compact steel ring made from miles of steel strip wound endlessly around a creamy, plastic wheel and secured at its sides with adhesive tape. “The blades are made from a very special corrosion-resistant alloy called carbide steel which is made from mixing carbon, silicon, manganese, chromium, molybdenum and iron. This is very important because the grade of steel used for the razors must be hard enough to allow the blade to maintain its shape, yet malleable enough to allow it to undergo changes when it is processed. Much like people, I reckon. Firstly the steel mixture undergoes a process known as annealing which makes the blade stronger. Now pay attention because this is vital”, he said playfully to an already alert Nina, “perfect temperatures make the perfect blade.”

His face was animated with excitement as he marched up to light-blue, heavy-duty steel cubicle with a security, multi-latched door at the front and two air-ducts coming out of its body, one on the top and one on its side. Frank switched the machine on by pushing a plastic, red button at the bottom of it at which point the whole thing came to life purring frantically and shivering harmoniously towards every direction. “Don’t worry about the noise, it’s just the blower motor inside the furnace”, he shouted looking unfazed while pushing the red button again and forcing the contraption to fall back to its prior state of stillness.

“If the time is too short or the temperature too low then the strip will be too soft while if the time is too lengthy or the temperature too high then the strip will be unusable because it will not withstand grinding the way that it is supposed to. Ideally the heating temperature will be from 1075° to 1120° Celsius. Immediately afterwards the strip is deep frozen to harden it and then it is heated again at 250° to 400° Celsius, a process known as tempering which gives the, by now, brittle strip of steel back some of its flexibility and then the blades are ground to a sharp, cutting edge. Since the blade edge is composed of three separate facets we will need to feed it through a series of progressively finer grinding wheels to form the appropriate cutting edge shape. You have the coarse grinding wheels”, he said while lovingly patting a green, heavy contraption at the back of the factory made up of a bulky, hydraulic tube attached to the ceiling and resting against a charcoal-grey, hard-surfaced, rotating wheel situated at a parallel position above the ground with a smaller wheel protruding from the tube at one third of its diameter, resting on top of it. Exact replicas of the green grinder stood proudly adjacent to it painted cherry-red and described as “finer-grit wheels” and strawberry-milkshake pink introduced as “extremely-fine-grit wheels.” He set one of the machines in motion by theatrically flicking a switch on its back, at which point the wheel started spinning and producing and nerve-racking din that sounded somewhat like a kitty on amphetamines being thrown in a dumpster and closing the lid.                                                                 

“These high speed strops give the shape and smoothness to the tip of our blade”, he attested proudly, smiling apologetically at Nina’s expression of intense pain and then hastily switching it off.

“Finally, we cut the strips into individual blades and stack them on long pins”, he said pointing enthusiastically at them “called bayonettes. And that concludes our presentation”, he wrapped up giving a slight bow and smiling proudly.

Nina, having recovered her sense of hearing, clapped with delight, honestly surprised at how much she had enjoyed the presentation. She had never truly given a second thought to the razors she habitually used to shave her legs before and the same went for the majority of the everyday, household items that she used. In her mind it suddenly loomed as doing all these things a great injustice by not dedicating any of her time to learning about how they were made or how they actually work.

“Wow, Frank! You are really good at this. You’ve actually made me want to buy a razor. I mean, you have made steel sound interesting.”                                                                                                                                             

“That’s because it is interesting. If you think about it, steel strips are made into fine-cutting, effective instruments in pretty much the same way that people are”, he said while moving towards the back of the razor factory and opening a door that stood hidden behind the pink grinder while motioning for Nina to follow him. “And now, I believe I owe you lunch”, he continued disappearing into the opening. Nina raced behind him without need for further explanation. She was famished and the earthy, smooth scent of the boiling lentils was drifting towards her heavily.

The new room she had speedily followed Frank into offered a sudden and abrupt departure from the industrial, sparsely furnished space of the factory they had just come from. In complete antithesis to the heavy machinery, steel and naked-wood furnishings of the workshop, this was a proper living area with a kitchen, sitting-room and library all accommodated together in one expansive room that was populated heavily with furniture and decorations that were obviously selected with care and a unique sense of aesthetics. Here was the space where Frank’s velvet top hat fitted into as much as his bandaged fingers matched that of the razor factory.

Firstly the kitchen, Nina’s initial area of interest focusing mainly on the pan containing the boiling lentil soup into which Frank was now dispersing a few dried bay leaves and stirring the mixture with care, was located at the far end of the room and taking up the whole of the back wall which was made up of wooden shelves and cabinets in the midst of which resided the stove.  Opposite the cabinets was a granite countertop above which pans and utensils were hanging haphazardly along with braids of dried garlic, rows of sausages and twists of packed, dried figs. The light fixture amongst all these culinary items on the kitchen ceiling was throwing its yellow light with some difficulty on what resided below, having to force its way in-between the papery, pallid leaves of the garlic and  the cold, reflective surfaces of the frying pans, tongs, knives and ladles. The diffused illumination would have been barely sufficient for anyone to read all the opened and dispersed cooking books, magazines and newspapers that were lying on top of the speckled-violet granite counter. Nina came to the assumption that Frank must have been a proper bookworm, judging from the volume and diversity of the reading material one could find in the entirety of the room, starting from the kitchen and moving on to the sitting room which was adjacent to the library, that was taking up the left wall vertical to the kitchen and was stacked with colorful cardboard, paper and leather making up all the volumes and periodicals filling and overflowing from its shelves.

A large, multi-paneled window over which more shelves had been arranged shed natural light into the room. In front of the window, an old-looking treasure chest had been covered with soft, black and white pillows constituting a cozy reading corner.  Resting on top of one of the pillows a regal, taxidermy swan had been placed to gaze at the street that the window was overlooking. Nina raised her head to look at the petite, crystal chandelier that was hanging right above from her and then at the lush, stripy black and white sofas and suede armchairs that were surrounding a square coffee-table, the surface of which Nina could not make out due to it being covered with yet more papers, teacups and burned candles, the dripping wax of which had been carelessly left to spill onto the papers and book covers the candles were resting upon.

The tapestry on the walls reminded her of Japanese kimonos and was worn-out and peeling in some places, revealing the turquoise-painted wall underneath. Each corner in the room had been equipped with a large vase resting on the floor that had been filled with vanilla orchids. The vases were artfully decorated with hand-made drawings depicting dragons flying on top of bucolic villages and waterfalls as well as samurais dressed in their scaly armors and throwing themselves into a fight with long moustaches curling around their angry faces and long fingers curled around their sword-handles.

Nina advanced towards the treasure chest and sat herself squarely amongst the black and white pillows, right next to the taxidermy swan which she absentmindedly patted on the head  a couple of times before being presented with a steaming bowl of lentil soup by Frank, who then sat himself on an armchair opposite Nina and looked at her with keenness. He was obviously poised in anticipation of some feedback on his cooking skills.

Nina raised the wooden bowl to her face to take in the straightforward, unsophisticated smell of the boiled lentils and potatoes and then filled her mouth with a large dollop of as much soup she could possibly fit into the spoon. She savored the process of vigilantly pulverizing the dispersed lentils and potato chunks with her teeth and then swallowing the homogenous broth which warmly and softly slid down her throat, softening her vocal chords and tired nerves. She had no words to express her gratitude so she simply vocalized her approval with a rhythmic “Mm…”, and a soft shift of her head up and down as she continued to gulp down the source of her thankfulness and consolation.

Frank appeared to be more than happy with her joyful humming and nodding so he proceeded with consuming his own portion of the soup though much less rapidly than the ravenous Nina who had almost finished her broth before he had even had his first spoonfuls.

Nina was feeling much better by the second and confident enough to pose the question that had been pestering her ever since she had been introduced to the portly, top-hat-wearing man outside the bookstore on Albino Avenue. “So, why did you think I looked like I needed help? And why did you get me lost like you did? ” she asked sweetly while stirring what little was left from her lentil soup with her spoon. She stared at the bottom of her bowl as if the answer to her question had already been lying there.

Frank looked up from his lunch and rested his bowl carelessly on the coffee table next to him. A few drops of the brown broth spilled out of the porcelain container and onto one of the book covers that had already been decorated with some of the burned candle-wax. The book cover had now turned a murky, light brown. He continued looking at her until she had lifted her eyes to meet his thoughtful gaze.

His demeanor reminded her of a documentary she had watched once in which a team of marine biologists had assembled on a Pacific Ocean beach where dozens of whales had lost their way and got stranded onto. The scientists’ were anxiously attempting to return the whales back into the water, in the hopes of them finding their way back to their feeding and mating grounds. The look on the marine biologists’ faces was exactly the same as Frank’s at that moment.

“I didn’t get you lost my dear. It would be more accurate to say that I attempted to show you another way out”, he said in a consoling, slow manner.

“Why?” she asked him dejectedly, feeling more out of place than ever. Having a total stranger taking the time to evaluate her emotional state and proceed to actually try and help her unselfishly and, as it appeared to be, not for personal gain but for the sheer enjoyment of improving her situation, well…that was a first.

“Is it such a novel concept for you, finding someone who can see that you are not happy and decides to help you out?” he asked as if he had read her mind.

“Very”, Nina said with an emphatic grin. “You have hit the nail right on the head. All this is knocking me off balance. This type of altruism is unprecedented as far as I am concerned. So, what is it that you want?

Frank breathed out a sad sigh. His huge belly bounced up and down dolefully and then rested around him once more. “I just wanted to help, that’s all. You see, I have always had someone coming in at the right moment to lend me a helping hand and from sources where I least expected it as well. So, I feel that I owe it to them to do the same for anyone who might need me to. Not to mention that it makes me feel good to help. There you go then…in truth I am mostly doing this for myself. Would you be alright with that concept?”

“What you are saying is that I am helping you out as well? Mm… that sounds just right”, she said smiling widely after pretending to ponder his proposition for a second.

Frank got up and went over to the kitchen where upon shortly visiting the fridge he returned holding a plate of chocolate concoctions that had been shaped to look like mice with almonds as ears, raisins as eyes and a slim slice of wiggly, chocolate-covered orange peel as a tail. Frank presented her with the plate. “Chocolate mouse?” he asked.

Nina happily took two and resting one on her lap, took a large bite out of the other mouse’s soft belly. It was filled with creamy nougat. She rested her back on the window and made herself as comfortable as possible while enjoying the rest of her desert. Frank watched her with delight. “You still haven’t told me anything about yourself”, he said as he prized the orange peel tail from his chocolate mouse and shoved it in his mouth. “What is your profession?”

“I paint” she said in low voice tinged with embarrassment.” Though I wouldn’t say I profess to it”, she mused. “Still, I very much enjoy it.”

He looked down at her sternly, apparently not impressed. “That doesn’t sound like a very serious profession to me. Not very serious at all”, he said raising his eyebrows all the more while reaching the crescendo of his disappointment.

Nina’s back arched up from where it had been resting in surprise. She shot Frank a desperate look and begun to get up from her seat, before he slapped his knee and broke out into laughter. “I am joking. Being a painter is a wonderful profession. I wish I could paint as well though I am honestly useless at it. I was just pulling your leg, sweetie. You should have seen your face though”, he said in childish amusement. “It seems like I’ve hit a sore spot there, huh?”

Nina sat dumbly on her pillow letting her upper body arch miserably forward with eyes that were beginning to fog with rushing tears. The silent tears felt unstoppable this time. She didn’t even make any attempt at holding them back so they swarmed and crowded her eye sockets uncontrollably. “Contrary to you, I am somewhat good at painting and still it makes no difference. I haven’t been making a living out of it, I have to work at stupid jobs instead, doing dumb things that I don’t enjoy or see the meaning behind, all day”, she whimpered. She had reached that point where she couldn’t be objective about anything until she had gotten the negativity and accumulated frustration out of her system. “Growing up, all the advice I ever received regarding my future vocation was ‘be a lawyer, a doctor or an architect and make lots of money’. That’s it! Does that even qualify as advice?” she yelled out. “No one ever explained to me how relevant a term ‘getting a job’ or ‘making money’ is, or how absolutely miserable doing the wrong job for you, day in – day out, can make you. Now, I have found something that I love doing and I think am good at as well, but I haven’t received a proper education on it and don’t know anyone who can help me with a heads-up on how to go about earning a living from it.”

Nina put her hands in front of her face and took a deep breath to calm down. She was beginning to sound like a yelping puppy and it wasn’t a pretty sound. “It’s just that things are so different to how I was told they would be, so different to whatever education I have received and what I have been prepared for, if prepared is even the word for it. All I have ever heard from grownups as a kid has been ‘do what you’re told, make us proud, get a job, get married as fast as you can and don’t ask any questions’. It’s insane!”

Frank laughed in agreement, nodding his head. “So now that you have come to that realization, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure Frank. I’m stuck in a rut at the moment. I keep thinking that I’ve missed my chance and that everything is only a matter of dumb luck. I keep thinking that there is nothing I can do to change anything and it haunts me”, she sniffled wiping her eyes. Her frustration was starting to die down, to be replaced by quiet depression. “On top of that, I constantly blame myself for not knowing any better and for doing what I was told.”

“You are getting me confused. Does happiness have to do with dumb luck or not? If it does, then you are surely not to blame for what went wrong, and neither is anyone else for that matter. So you wouldn’t need to feel guilty or bitter because there is nothing you can do to change things. If it doesn’t have to with luck, then you should be happy. It means that it is up to you to change your situation.”

“I don’t know, Frank. It’s impossible for me to see things as straightforward as that. Plus, which of the two is it?” she asked raising her shoulders.

“You have to acknowledge the fact that most apparently complicated philosophical problems are actually meaningless in the sense that just because a philosophical question sounds sensible does not mean that it is actually so. You see, my dear Nina, just because your question sounds complicated does not mean that it is actually very smart. And you have to keep in mind that questions that remain enduringly unanswered should be considered as questions asked in the wrong way”   

“What should my question be then?”                                                                                     

“I will answer your question in the form of another question which, may I add, sounds very pretentious but tends to yield results. Here we go then; why do you think your life is some kind of test, where you have to do everything right at first try and get top marks each time? Are you scared of living so much that you have to trivialize it in order to go through with it?”                                                                      

“No, that’s not it at all… I don’t think my life is an assessment of admittance to a better place should I pass it if that is what you mean. I haven’t for some years now. It certainly felt that way when I was growing up since everything affecting my life seemed to be shaped around that concept. Now I know that we live life to live it. The whole thing is glorious in its simplicity. I’m just having trouble adjusting to it after years of being taught differently.”                                                                                         

“Don’t you have any ideas of what might help having reached such a conclusion then?”                                                                                                                                           

“I’m not sure. I want to experience something real and beautiful, something unforced.  Maybe I should be in nature. There are more variations in the shapes and colors on the leaves of a tree blowing in the wind than I’ll ever see on a thousand dollar dress. I mean, I long to be in nature only I don’t know where to find it. You see, I was born in a city, was raised in a city, all my friends and family live in one and all I’ve ever known how to do to survive is related to cities and modern civilization. I feel like a coward for not following my instinct and a coward for wanting to forsake everything I’ve ever known instead of trying to make it better even though I don’t know where to start or if that is even possible. I wish I was normal, I wish I could fit in and be happy with what I was born into. Isn’t that what normal people do? And I’ve tried, tried to go along with it, dress the part, pretend I was enjoying it and when that didn’t work I tried to find a way of actually enjoying myself and see the positive side. And I beat myself up for being too conceited or cowardly or stupid or whatever the hell I am for not managing to work myself up into this fury of modern survival and over-achieving everyone else seems to be so much into”, she said, gasping for air as she finished her monologue.                                   

“Well, what truly matters in introspective analysis is the motive with which it s conducted. If it is done only in order to confirm what we subconsciously seem to have predisposed ourselves to think of as negative then the results are doomed to be negative and counterproductive,” Frank told her with a kind smile.

Nina gave an out-loud, puffy-eyed laugh of relief at that remark and wiped her wet cheeks on her sweater. Frank produced a clean hanky from his pocket and gestured it towards her tenderly. She accepted it with an awkward grin and started twisting it around her fingers. Its soft texture calmed her considerably.

“Yes, I’m starting to realize that. Things get complicated the more you analyze them as well. Like my grandmother…” she said softly.                                        

“Does she get increasingly complicated the more you analyze her?”                               

“No, let me finish…” Nina said laughing at his remark.  Her wide smile caused the remainder of the dew in her eyes to squeeze out of her sockets and spill out, following the small, wet rivers that had been formed on her cheeks.                                                                            

“You see, my grandmother is dying of an autoimmune disease and for all intensive purposes she is killing herself from the inside. It is a long and painful process and there is no cure for it. The thing is, her body made her sick on its own and I am not one of those people that think nature is cruel. It just abhors a vacuum. That is to say it abhors discontinuity or anything that is unnecessary. Therefore it has created mechanisms to keep things in balance, keep them speeding along and pain serves an important role in this process. We would not know if there was anything wrong or have the desire to fix it without it. Pain makes us better. Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? So keeping all that in mind why has my grandmother’s body turned against her? And why in such a painful, drawn-out way? She has always been a relatively kind person, a good family-woman, working hard and minding her own business. I mean, I know death is supposed to be painful but her condition is lasting torture. I don’t think you would ever see, let’s say, a squirrel in such dire circumstances lasting for more than a few days in the forest. It is us who prolong the torture. We sit in bed, we stuff ourselves full of pills, we have doctors taking our temperature and cutting us open. And we fixate upon our end, we save all our money for our potential hospitalization and start saving for our pension ever since early adolescence. And in the meantime we eat and drink poisons we create, we sit on sofas and chairs all day, our spines warped forward in front of screens spewing garbage and we fear and stress and sweat and cry over missing a bus or ripping a stocking or not being liked by absolutely EVERYONE we know…”, Nina said throwing her hands in the air almost yelling out the last words. Resting her hands on her lap and composing herself again with a loud exhale, she continued. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandma and I don’t want her to suffer. That’s why I wish she had a more decent death with more dignity…But that’s not even the point…”                             

“And what is the point?”                                                                                                        

“The point is to get over the death part and focus on the life part. Death is only a part of life and a small one at that. We should fear it, forsake it, understand it, embrace it and get over it. We are all stuck on being absolutely petrified of it. And what you fear defines you sometimes more than anything else. That’s what I wanted to say about my grandmother; she is not living, she is dying. She could be living instead. In pain, yes, but living nevertheless and with a different perspective on life because she knows how she is going to die…and after having a full life as well”                                            

“And how would you want to die?”                                                                                              

“I don’t care. It’s not my death I’m worried about!”                                                            

“Ah, life, yes. But what is it you want out of life? So far, you have mostly been mentioning what you don’t want.”                                                                                            

“I have been thinking about that a lot. What I want…and I realized that, that’s just it. I don’t want to want. I want to have no expectations. They spoil everything. I would like to wake up every morning not knowing what is going to happen and be perfectly content with it. To have no need for achievements or acknowledgements to make mom and dad proud or everyone else jealous. And most importantly to have the rare and exhilarating privilege of feeling at ease with myself even, horror of horrors, love me for what I am and not want to change me for anyone but me”, she said in satirical mock-horror with her fingers in front of her mouth.                                  

“I see. And how about love and understanding and that whole shebang?” Frank asked her smiling at her gesture.                       

“That too. Though I’m starting to realize that these things come naturally when we love ourselves for who we really are.”                                                                                 

“You don’t believe that we have to strive to make ourselves better? Or that morality is a result of religion or civilization, something that we have to be taught or coaxed towards?                                                                                                                                    

“No, that is exactly it you see; the very fact that it is desirable to be moral as we aspire or drive towards it means that we are somehow predisposed to good or morality. I think that the root of the problem for humans is precisely in the way that they conceive themselves as human beings. They feel that they are separate minds in an alien or even hostile universe in which there is no way of making sense of it all and no actual common sense which is agreed upon therefore the most aggressive and selfish - openly hostile if you will - makes the decisions. So humans need therefore invent some higher being to lay down some ground rules and give them a view of the world so they can all agree upon a certain type of behavior as acceptable and give their own individual lives some kind of meaning. Of course, that doesn’t mean the higher being doesn’t exist though, only it probably isn’t what we have imagined it to be to serve our own purposes.”                                                                                                                                               

“So, you are angry with other people for being selfish and aggressive then?”           

“Not exactly. You start off astonished with how rude, inconsiderate even openly hostile some people seem to be then you progress to being upset and offended by it followed shortly by being rude and hostile as well which will probably lead you to feeling pretty scared and lonely just like everyone else. It’s a vicious, perpetuating cycle. And at the bottom of it lies fear. Cold, nameless fear. It’s amazing how scared everyone is.  At first I considered the possibility of fear being at the bottom of all this hostility and meanness to be just naïve. At first glance it wasn’t making much sense either. Living in a civilized society where everything is pre-planned and put neatly into shiny little boxes for you surely there is no need to feel threatened especially not by most of all those natural forces that meant to hurt human kind in the past. Nature has been dealt with by now. People are so used to the predictability of it all that they even feel offended when a member of the human race doesn’t get to live the full amount of years specifically assigned to them. What is there to be so afraid of? Maybe that is just it though. There is no actual need for us to be creative or fend for ourselves anymore, not for survival purposes anyway. We lack the right or opportunity to make any important decisions for ourselves. We are told how to behave, what is acceptable to eat, wear and look like while we are schooled on how to think, talk and feel and then we are graded on our performance. People are not actually hostile out of hatred, they are not even angry with each other. They just cannot help but vent all the bottled up anger and resentment they’ve accumulated from being useless to themselves. The fact that some-one or some-thing outside of themselves is controlling who they are is utterly frightening.”                                         

“You are a smart girl.”                                                                                                      

“What good is it anyway, being smart? It dilutes your chances of ever meeting anyone you can have a decent conversation with” Nina said looking down dolefully.

“Intelligent but frightened like I thought” Frank exclaimed making her look up. “You are so preoccupied with other people that you forget about yourself and what is best for you. You take the time to figure out what it is that makes others mistreat you, so you won’t misunderstand them, so you won’t hate them. There is a limit though to how much time and effort you should dedicate to such endeavors however noble they may be. Take care of yourself first or you will end up as miserable as those people whose actions you so decidedly try to analyze into logical little pieces”                         

 “I’m not that noble. Mostly I need the security of knowing others hold no unpleasant surprises for me. So they won’t sneak up when I least expect it and knock me out of balance, sweep away my world from under my feet”, she admitted closing her eyes and resting her head on her hands resignedly.

“I know, my dear. And that is a very dangerous game you are playing. Soon enough, you’ll mentally thrash yourself into a corner of predictability of your own making. With your blinkers on you will stumble through life thinking you are safe, setting yourself up for an even bigger disappointment. Not to mention the worse case scenario; all of your theories coming true. Nothing new ever happening to you again, nothing to learn, nothing to discover. But such an outcome would be highly unlikely unless your brain becomes marginally unhinged and you only see what you choose to see”.

Nina gave him a smile of acknowledgement. She had witnessed that kind of condition first-hand.

“Face it”, he continued. “You cannot control your environment. You cannot control the people around you. The only thing you have control over is yourself and how you react to these uncontrollable situations.”                                                                                        

“That’s not the first time I am hearing of this notion today”, she murmured with a smile on her face. She was fondly remembering the ‘Amor Fati’ club, thinking that Frank would fit right in as a member only she wasn’t sure he had any prosthetic parts or missing integrity to bet with so she refrained from proposing it to him. As well as wishing Frank would have joined her in her recently joined association, she also secretly wished that he had been her school teacher in place of all the blathering, disinterested zombies she had had educating her throughout her school years.

The wish brought her to a bitter realization. “I’m beginning to apprehend that I’ve received too much education without the equivalent knowledge. Too much information, not enough experience. I feel like I’ve become my life’s lawyer arguing both sides of everything unable to make up my own mind. The funny thing is that despite all the litigation, I am not actually being objective. I analyze everything into a corner to prevent any unpleasant surprises from popping up. This way I’ve been fooling myself into believing that I would be rid of disappointment and an unknown future. How very stupid I’ve been.”                                                                                                              

“For a smart girl you certainly have been very obtuse.”                                                     

“Absolutely stupid, yes. You see, I grew a hard-outer shell to protect myself from getting hurt. But along with the bad stuff, you prevent the good stuff from getting in as well. And if I had to be objective, I would say that the good stuff outnumber the bad, by far. It is human nature though to be more strongly affected and pay closer attention to the negative. That’s what I need to work on, my objectivity. Things are not as bad as we make them out to be. As I make them out to be”, she said pointing at herself.                                                                                                                                       

“No, they most certainly are not. And neither is the situation you find yourself in, my dear. Unbeknownst to you have been studying life… making mistakes, getting to know yourself. And let me tell you there is no easy way about such an exploration. All this time you were under the impression that you were cultivating a disappointment safety-net, when instead you have been giving yourself the strength to be unfazed by disappointment. You just have to acknowledge the outcome and embrace who you are wholeheartedly. So you are right in choosing to work on your objectivity.”      

“Thank you”, Nina said with a relieved smile.                                                                                                                              

“My dear Nina, sometimes I don’t understand the world neither do I understand other people all that often”, he chirped almost singing out the words. Philosophical conversation seemed to put him in a very good mood. “What I do know is a conclusion when I hear one.”                                                                                           

 “I have reached a conclusion, haven’t I? I feel relieved, like I’ve made up my mind” she said punctuating her new-found freedom with a little, impromptu hand-dance in the air. “I also have lost the urge to go back home. I am completely indifferent as to where I end up next. Is that normal do you think?”                                                                                                          

 “It depends on your definition of ‘normal’. Nevertheless, I think it suits you perfectly.”

To that, Nina jumped swiftly off the counter in a happy, abrupt movement of her entire body landing her a considerable distance further than calculated and with much greater momentum leading her to a sharp wobble and flat fall onto her face. Frank found the whole choreography hilarious attesting to it with loud laughter accompanied immediately by Nina’s loud giggles. “Frank, you are my holy totem of joy. I bow down to worship at your feet”, she said resting on her knees and flapping her arms up and down.

“Oh, stop it” Frank gestured to her comically in his best blushing-bride impression.  

“Seriously though” she continued sincerely, getting to her feet. “Thank you.”