I can predict the future

The characters in the novel

Coincidence level: 9/10 Category: I can predict the future

Once upon a time, I wrote a novel.

I was completing one of the last main characters in my novel (I thought I had only 7) in South America. More or less, I’d had all of them filled out – complete with their own profiles, personalities, quirks, physical surpluses and downfalls.

Except for a young Spanish character that I’d had in mind, the sister of the narrator’s lover. I didn’t really have a name for her, so I put in a substitute name, and I didn’t really have an idea of what she was like, except that she took care of her older brother, was born and raised a gypsy in Triana, and would be caught in a plot that she didn’t ask for or deserve, but that would prove integral to the fate of the narrator and almost everyone in the story. The world at large.

Thus was the shadow of this character.

Well, I was halfway into the text of the book when I met Louise in Buenos Aires.

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The fox in Bermondsey

Coincidence level: 4/10 Category: I can predict the future

The last story was life imitating art; this one is art imitating life. Kind of.

In 2018 I went to London a lot–work and personal reasons. One week I was staying in Bermondsey, just a wee bit south of the Thames; in fact, it was a joy to run along the river in the mornings. It was also a joy to wake up in a room that had a clear glass door into a backyard “garden.” I say “garden” because the thing was loaded with shrubbery, untamed, weeds sprung about everywhere, but still gorgeous in its natural lushness, a few stray vines creeping up the adjacent brick wall into the neighbor’s “garden” (probably a real garden, I didn’t look).

There was no air conditioning in the room, so I felt the full blast of summer heat, mosquitos, spiders and all, and that smell of life in South London.

Saturday morning I awoke at 6:00AM, too nervous to sleep, and the river breeze brought a beautiful, red-furred creature down the steel stairs. I wasn’t even wearing my glasses, but my blurry vision still caught the thing because it was treading very slowly, like a cat, one hind leg after the other. I should mention the building was a couple of stories, I was on the ground floor, hence the garden, and the upstairs terrace led down to my backyard via said staircase. The staircase was also directly in front of the glass door.

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