Ralph Greco, Jr.
The Floating Man
Emil awoke on the third month of his forty first year, much as he always had; kissed his puckish black-haired wife lying at his side, but when he rolled and sat to the side of this bed, his size 10 and ½ feet falling to the thick rug of his bedroom floor he did not come to stand on them as was per usual. Instead, Emil actually floated as he stood, hovered if you will allow, his toes just tickling the carpet, his heels gliding as if executing a perfect hover-craft maneuvering there in his peach-and-mauve bedroom. Not the usual heavy footfall he was accustomed to, nevertheless Emil glided to the bathroom to relieve himself of his usual morning urgency, standing there shaking over his toilet unaware his feet hadn't yet touched terra-firma. It was only when the grey-haired guy looked down to regard what he thought should have been the sensation of cold tile under his feet, that Emil realized he was indeed floating a millimeter above the expensive Italian tile he had had put in the week before Thanksgiving.
"That's kind of interesting," Emil said, looking up to his wide-eyed reflection, then back down again to his feet. He turned and floated silently back into the bedroom.
"Babe," he called to his wife, whose name was Andrea.
"Um, babe?" Emil repeated, hovering there at the foot of the bed.
With a slow right-to-left locomotion Emil found he could move rather well (he had unknowingly done so executing this same wiggle of his hips when he went into the
bathroom) and he came to stand at his wife's side of the bed, looking down at her slumbering peacefully.
"Babe?" Emil tried once more, and then Andrea opened one eye-lid tentatively, her reluctant baby-blue eye regarding her husband standing over her.
"Em..." she whispered her pet name for her husband. "...it's Saturday honey, let me sleep."
"Babe?" Emil prodded as Andrea attempted to close her eye-lid. "I think...I think..."
Andrea surrendered to a seated position. Allowing her husband a few seconds of her bleary-eyed attention, the pug-nosed lady coddled the dim hope she'd simply fall -- and fall is the operative word here -- back to the deep sleep she had been enjoying after Emil spoke his mind. But as Andrea cleared her vision, she followed her husband's brown-eyed gaze to his feet and there, at the bottom of the duvet, the young mistress of this household was amazed to full wakefulness:
Emil's feet were floating a half-inch off of the carpet!
"Shit!" Andrea spat, jumped out of bed and any remnant of her Saturday slumber.
Instinctively the handsome lady attempted to pull Emil back to earth, but his body resisted. He simply floated there, looking down at his excited wife.
"Now if this ain't some' ump, huh?" Emil quipped, as Andrea began to hyperventilate.
It's not like you could call a doctor!
First of all, Emil felt perfectly fine, in fact he found he could easily pour and sip coffee, take off his sweats, replace them with his jeans (executing this task, he simply sat on the edge of his bed while the soles of his feet floated over the carpet, his bent knees just a little bit higher in his lap), embrace Andrea to stop her shaking; attempt and complete any task he wished that morning. And after her initial shock and his assurance of no untoward physical effects -- except the floating of course -- Emil was convinced Andrea was becoming used to the fact that he was floating as much as he was.
As they sat across each other at the wood dining room table, the amazed couple posed questions over their respective coffees to no-one in particular.
"When did it happen exactly?" Andrea asked.
"I wonder how long this is gonna take?" Emil countered.
"Does it feel weird? I mean, do you feel like you're floating?" his wife continued.
"I can't be the only person this has ever happened to?" Emil inquired.
Three and half minutes of this rhetorical venting, and a few cursory sips, the lanky accountant stood from his chair and floated over to his wife (which to Emil's surprise was very much like walking, in that he didn't think much about getting to Andrea, he simply went to her) who promptly stood to her husband's surprising steady float.
"I mean, we have the whole weekend, no plans..." Emil said.
"...it could stop soon." Andrea finished.
"That's what I'm thinking," he said, smiled, kissed his wife's thin lips hard and then held her at arms length. "We still got tons to do with the tree."
"Yeah, lots," Andre agreed, leaving her husband's long arms and walking to their large sun-lit living room.
In the eastern corner of the large room stood the Christmas tree Emil and his wife had just purchased two days before, and had attempted to decorate last night. Strewn about Andrea, as she tried to avoid them, were seven cardboard boxes, each one still brimming with ornaments, lights, and tinsel. After wrestling a good three hours the night before, trying to find pieces, bulbs, and other accoutrements of their usual holiday decorations, Andrea and Emil had succumbed to the excellent wine Emil had opened. The couple was asleep on the living room couch, intertwined in snores and limbs by nine thirty; Emil had barely had the strength to help his wife to bed.
There was still lots to do with their Christmas tree.
"Hey maybe we can even fix The Lone Ranger," Andrea said, squatting to the largest of open decorations boxes. "I mean it's doesn't look all that ba..."
"That's the least of my problems," Emil chuckled, floating into the room after his wife.
"You had this all your life," Andrea said holding up the broken ornament.
They had unfortunately found a string of lights crushed, a basket bottomless, and three ornaments chipped when rummaging through the boxes the previous night. During the summer, Emil and Andrea's water-heater had busted, and in the haste of moving boxes and shifting old furniture in the basement a Christmas box had toppled, causing damage the couple feared they might spy when they got to the holiday and had to sort
through this box. Emil's childhood ornament had been broken those many months ago, a plastic Tonto attached to the right of Lone Ranger, since decapitated in the melee.
Actually, last night when they found the damaged ornament, Andrea had remarked that her husband seemed less upset then she was.
"Em, I'm actually floating an inch of the ground..." he said, coming to squat next to his wife (the oddest floating move he had yet executed, to be sure) pushing his nose into Andrea's soft warm cheek like he always did when he wanted to make a point, but not seem overly didactic doing so. "...we can give Tonto a rest this year."
"Yeah, I guess," she said, letting go of the ornament and kissing her husband.
As frosty Saturday afternoons are wont to do, Emil and Andrea's languished as they played with their decorations. Andrea laughed as her husband ran from one end of the room to the other (in mid air) and the couple generally went about their morning without giving all that much time to Emil's ignoring gravity. These two people generally enjoyed each other's company so much that whatever troubles they might be having or whatever else happened around them, good or bad, Emil and Andrea always found they could block all other people and priorities from their minds if they had a task to perform.
So it was with their continuing to decorate their tree and house.
"Got any more of that tuna with the craisins left?" Emil asked as eleven thirty rolled around and he felt his stomach growling. He was referring to a big bowl of tuna-salad Andrea had made the day before, and that they had had for a light dinner the night before. His creatively dutiful wife had smushed that very modern fruit hybrid of raisins and cranberries into her tuna, creating quite a flavorful treat.
"Yeah, probably enough for a sandwich each," Emil's wife agreed, leaving her husband to deal with another strand of lights. Although she enjoyed decorating, Andrea was tiring of sitting in that same cross-legged position she had been for the past hour with Emil floating over her.
"You know I was thinking..." Emil said, untangling the brittle lights so he could determine just what freaking one was out. "...maybe we could skip Eastin Village this year? I mean the drive is like two hours with the traffic and there's really not that many more weekends le..."
"...shit Em." Andrea called from the kitchen, but there was laughter in her exclamation, as well as across her soft pale face when Emil looked through the dining room window at her. "First the Tonto and now we're blowin' off shopping at Eastin?"
"What's come over you?" she finished teasing her husband, and walked back into the room with two heaping sandwiches.
To the shock of both Emil and Andrea, Emil was standing now, flat as he usually did on Earth, as Andrea reached him with the plate of heaping sandwiches! He had simply floated right down, his feet touching the carpet as they had all his life.
"Ah..." he began.
"You're not floating!" Andrea said, putting the sandwiches down on their low coffee table.
"We don't have to go to Eastin Village," the man said standing -- actually standing on the floor -- facing his wife, wide-eyed and smiling, despite the single thin tear now falling down his high right cheekbone. "We don't have to put that ornament on the tree..."
"Yes, Emil, yes honey," Andrea tried, stopping to let her husband continue.
"And I don't care."
"You don't care," Andrea repeated, still not taking a step to him.
"I don't care," he repeated, panting now. "I mean, I care about Christmas, you know I do. But we never really have the time for Eastin Village. We'll be so stressed trying to find a weekend to go...what's gonna happen if we don't go to this year?"
"Nothing?" Andrea attempted, confused, delighted, and a bit frightened by her husband's seeming catharsis right there in front of God, their Christmas tree, the Saturday sunlight, and the winking craisins.
"I always felt like we had to go," Andrea admitted, falling into Emil's shaking arms.
"I mean it's stupid, but...shit, we'll just go next year," Emil said into Andrea's neck.
"Next year," Emil repeated, and now Andrea was in his arms as he cried hard and nearly bit her shoulder.
"Screw Tonto," he blubbered, and felt his feet, and his wife's, firmly planted on the carpet, but his heart soaring high above them.
©2006 by Ralph Greco, Jr.
