Blind Allie 5:2

“I’m trying to get to the market, but I’ve lost my way. Can you point me in the right direction?”

“It’s near State street at the end of Dolores street, downtown.”

“Can I get there via State?”

“No. Only via Dolores.”

Delirious from hunger, Allie floundered (No. 3). Although half Atlantic salmon, she had lost almost all sense of direction and could barely navigate the streets of her own town. Worse, visions of her mother kept dancing through her head like that mesmerizing gypsy girl from the book whose fate now seemed intertwined–but hardly completely–with her own (No. 4). If it weren’t for the shopkeeper who had propelled her and some litter along the street gutter with the jet from his hose, she wouldn’t have made it to the market (No. 5).

Lying face up in the gutter on Dolores at the entrance to the market, Allie felt the invigorating splash of cold water across her frontal bone courtesy of a passing Veronica’s Unicorn (both foreign and domestic) Rental delivery van (No. 6; cf. Missy Impossible, Chapter 10). Her mind drifted back to those sweet moments in the pool with her teammates, which now seemed out of reach like hazy distant memories.

Physically exhausted, Allie floundered a second time (No. 7). Never before had she experienced such lethargy in her tail and throughout her bones. She could barely advance, let alone jump the curb to enter the market.

Suddenly, as if by some magical force, she rose above the level of the curb and floated northward into the market space where, upon reaching some fateful point, she was laid to rest onto a bed of wet decaying leaves. “That’s good enough, Coco,” she heard a vaguely familiar voice say. “That fish’s going nowhere” (No. 8).

Immobilized both emotionally and physically on that cold and damp bed of leaves, Allie, having floundered for the third time, started to cry (No. 9). Those impermeable translucent skins that had been her secret weapon in the pool for so long but that, she came to realize, had also clouded her vision, detached from her big garbanzos and fell forever from her eyes (No. 10).