A tall thin man of indiscernable age stood in the doorway. His pelvis jutted forward; a bony hand rested on his angled hip. A dilapidated sun bleached bucket hat sat cockeyed on his head. The skin of his face pulled leathery thin around his pursed, chapped lips. A blade of wheat grass twirled slowly at the discretion on his tongue.

“Well…” he drawled. “May I come in?”

His presence unnerved her tiny frame. She stared blankly at his faint blonde moustache’. Her hands tussled nervously through her thick, wavy black hair.

She had been lonely. Glancing at his gangly arms spread across the doorway, she remembered the scarecrow from the garden of her childhood years. One of his long slight legs crossed the other at a drastic, broken angle. His foot tapped out a steady rhythm.

A kettle whistle from the kitchen broke her trance as she looked up into his eyes. They stared back cold blue without reserve. Her ears rose and her brows arched.

“I was making tea,” she said matter of factly. The tapping continued.

Hollow hammering echoed in her temples. And then the whistle…the piercing whistle.

“Of course,” she stammered.

Turning abruptly, she walked toward the kitchen — leaving him in the open breezy
doorway. A far-away smile consumed him; his eyes narrowed. His motions became aqueous — limp and suggestive. Sauntering toward the sofa, he licked his dry lips and plopped down.

Steam engulfed the kitchen. She waved her arms in half-hearted protest. In time, she moved the kettle off the burner and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard. She stared at her trembling hands.

Through the rolling steam, she witnessed the second hand on her heirloom wall clock. It twitched in mindless spasms. She set down the mugs and sudden urgency struck her as she topped them off.

Hicko stared widely through her as she ambled into the room. His knowing smile lent an unmistakable familiarity: a sharp contrast to his odd crumpled features. His posture decayed before her.

She placed a mug on the coffee table in front of him. Resigned sorrow overtook her eyes. Her hands fumbled with apron strings.

“Change,” she said softly. The question in her voice tapered toward the end of the word.

Hicko grew drunk with self-contentedness. He removed his hat slowly and picked up his tea.

“Why…you don’t even know, Sweetheart.”