PERCEPTION
The clerk beckoned to Morgan,
trying to be discreet with his exaggerated gestures of secrecy and urgency.
Glancing at the airstrip all the while, Morgan approached the counter
suspiciously. Morgan was pretty sure that he had covered all the necessary
bases paperwork-wise, yet he feared there might be a last-minute glitch. When
Morgan was close enough to the information desk to put his elbows on the
counter and lean forward enough to hear the clerk’s stage whispering, the
skinny little guy blinked rapidly up at Morgan through glasses so thick, his
eyes looked like twin blue fishes in side two tiny bowls.
“I have
some Imodium,” the clerk whispered for the benefit of Morgan and half the
people in a fifty-foot radius. Morgan brought his eyebrows together; two
mystified, hairy bars meeting to form a symbol of confusion.
“Pardon?”
Morgan asked, glancing through the large windows at the airstrip once again. The
clerk blinked some more, looking Morgan up and down as if Morgan was a yo-yo.
“Imodium. For
the-“ the clerk smiled nervously, the fishes darting left and right. “-diarrhea.”
Morgan stopped glancing at the airstrip, and turned his full attention to the
clerk.
“What?”
Morgan asked, shaking his head to show his lack of comprehension. The clerk’s
quivering smile vanished.
“Oh,
perhaps I made a mistake?” Forgive me,” the clerk stammered, letting a sudden
bray of embarrassed laughter. “I had thought, perhaps- well it’s just that you
were so fidgety and looking so uncomfortable-”
Morgan’s
smile of relief was so large and sudden it took him by surprise. No last-minute
glitches after all. “Oh, no, no,” Morgan
assured the clerk, “I’m fine, thank you. I’m just expecting a very important
cargo. Very important, and I’m anxious for it, that’s all.” Finishing his words
of reassurance, Morgan returned to his post by the doors, watching the
airstrip.
The
airstrip faded into the memory of another airstrip, another airport. In Nepal
from his trip over there the previous year. He’d gone there to fulfill a promise
he’d made to his grandmother upon her deathbed to try and see more of the world
beyond New England. There, he’d fallen in love. Another promise he’d made to
his beloved Gran, but not, perhaps, in the way she had envisioned.
Still. The
magical creature he’d seen in Nepal, while on an illegal safari had captured
Morgan’s heart. He remembered, with
undiluted vividness, the impossible whiteness of the creature’s hide. His guide had raised his rifle, noting the
desire in Morgan’s eyes. But Morgan grabbed the wiry dark arm of the guide.
“No,” Morgan
commanded. “I want the unicorn alive.”
* * * *
The
approaching whine of the cargo plane’s engines brought Morgan back to the
current moment. He leaned his eager forehead against the glass to determine if the
arriving aircraft was indeed the one he expected. He huffed his delight, yanked open the door
and walked out a few steps quickly, nearly skipping.
He waved
enthusiastically at the dour, stocky man who disembarked from the plane,
squinting at Morgan’s face-splitting grin with some consternation. “You
Cavanaugh?” the man inquired around the
cigar clenched between his yellowed teeth.
Morgan nodded, beaming.
“That’s
me,” he cried, “Everything okay? It’s in
good shape?” Morgan squinted at the dim
interior of the plane through the still-open passenger door, trying to discern
his new treasure. He’d just begun to
delineate, in the darkness, a large crate, when his line of vision was blocked
by the cigar-chewer.
“It’s just
Jim-dandy,” the man said. “You gotta sign here.”
* * * *
A couple
weeks later, after the mandated veterinary quarantine, and a paperwork Mt.
Everest, Morgan was ready to welcome his new possession into his home. Well,
not his home exactly, but in the habitat he’d sunk a considerable fortune into
as preparation for the unicorn. He managed to annoy the handlers and driver and
supervising veterinarian thoroughly with his micromanaging as they delivered,
unloaded, and opened the crate. As the creature emerged, blinking furiously at
the sudden light, the veterinarian, a near dead ringer for Judi Dench if she’d
weighed about 50 pounds less, turned to glare at Morgan once again.
“My
official opinion still stands, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she stated in a voice devoid of
every possible iota of human warmth, “this is wrongful possession and reckless
endangerment of a rare animal. It most certainly does not belong here. But if
you persist in refusing to returning the poor creature to its home, I can at
least make sure it can receive appropriate medical attention.” She handed a
card to Morgan, and for a moment Morgan thought she’d stab him with the card,
she had that much venom in her eyes.
“Believe me,
Ms. Denton, when I tell you that I will take care of him with the greatest
respect and attention,” Morgan promised, making a point of placing the card
carefully in his wallet.
Ms. Denton
grunted, and turned her attention to the creature as it paced the perimeter of the
enclosure slowly, nostrils flaring at the abundance of grass and various edible
plants. Then she rolled her eyes and turned on her heels, striding out off the
rear deck overlooking the enclosure, to the side gate. Moments later, Morgan
heard the slamming of her car door just before it started. The car zoomed off,
leaving Morgan to wrap up everything with the delivery crew.
After he
paid them all off with thanks and the most minimal attention possible (since he
could barely take his eyes off the incredible creature), Morgan ran inside to
grab a lawn chair from the garage, which he brought outside to the porch to sit
on and stare at the unicorn. While he watched the unicorn move across the
grassy circle, he realized that something was off, something not quite missing,
but incorrect. Finally, it came to him.
“Your horn
needs to be golden,” he muttered. He made a mental note to go to the crafts
shop the next day and get some gold leaf. Some horse tranquilizer too. Morgan wasn’t
fully confident that the unicorn would stand still enough or calmly enough to
allow Morgan to fully gild the horn. Despite his being a virgin.
* * * *
Morgan was
already corking the wine in his mind when he saw the half- expectant,
half-skeptical smile fade from Felicity’s face.
She frowned at the creature, which looked up to regard her for a moment
before blowing air through its lips in a snort.
She looked at Morgan, puzzled.
“That’s a
rhinoceros,” she said, but good-naturedly, as if she suspected some kind of
prank. Admittedly, her reaction was
somewhat better than his previous dates who’d either been pissed off at what
they perceived as a joke at their expense, or worried, perhaps frightened,
regarding the question of Morgan’s sanity. Morgan hoped perhaps he would be
able to finish the bottle with Felicity after all. Morgan indicated the
creature with the hand not holding his wineglass.
“Many
people believe that the original tales of unicorns are based on rhinoceroses in
India, since they were seen in forests, and many people back then had never
seen one, but they’d seen horses, so they thought they were seeing horses with
horns.” He took a sip of his wine, surreptitiously admiring Felicity as she
turned her attention back to the animal. “But, you see, there are no rhinos
that color, and this one has a horn that’s not quite in the same place as a
regular rhino. I’m pretty sure that it’s an actual unicorn.”
Felicity
considered this for a few moments. “I don’t know,” she conceded. “It’s pretty
ugly in any case.”
Morgan put
the cork back in.
* * * *
Over the
next nine months, Morgan brought home approximately fifty or so women, but not
one of them saw the beautiful creature that Morgan had fallen in love with when
he first saw it. They all saw a snow-white rhinoceros with a single horn
located midway up its snout. Morgan felt strongly that a woman with the same
perception as he did would be able to connect with him on a deep, meaningful
level. Morgan desired a wife, but he found it difficult to maintain
relationships with people in general, let alone women. He’d gone the Gates
route- focusing on computers in college and making millions off software he’d
developed years of advance of his peers.
Often he
asked himself if he was being silly, putting his faith in something as esoteric
as a rhinocorn, especially when he got the veterinarian’s bill after Pliny (which
was the name he gave the creature) contracted pneumonia during its first Maine
winter. Yet when he sat on his deck and watched Pliny, he recalled with
pristine clarity the exact feelings he experienced when he’d first seen Pliny.
There had to be significance in what he felt.
There was a reason he had this creature in his care. Perhaps he needed to change the dynamics of
his interaction with Pliny.
Morgan
slowly built his courage up over the next few days, spending more and more time
inside the enclosure, but at a safe distance from the unicorn. Then the day
arrived that Morgan felt he could see if Pliny would allow his touch.
Interestingly
enough, this was also the same day that Morgan’s neighbor, Diana Hodges, had
also worked up enough confidence to introduce herself to Morgan, whom she had
only admired from behind her windows up until now. She found him to be while
not dashingly handsome, to be attractive enough. She knew he was single, and
noticing the number of dates he’d brought home recently, he had to have
something special going for him. So she baked a huckleberry pie, put on a
simple but flattering dress, and with a deep breath, began the short walk two
houses over to Morgan’s residence.
She rang
the doorbell twice without any results, and was debating a third attempt when
she heard the agonized screams coming from behind the house. After some
fumbling with the gate to the backyard, Diana hurried towards the enclosure,
where she beheld at once an awful and an awe-filling sight.
She
flinched upon seeing Morgan, now a twitching, groaning body prostrate on the
ground, bleeding profusely from a wound in his chest. But then her attention
turned to the creature, and she forgot about Morgan. The pie fell to the
ground, splattering warm berry juices upon Diana’s feet and ankles. But Diana
noticed none of this as she stared at the beautiful unicorn.
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