Riding the Carousel Thunderstorm of the Infinite String of Pearls on Tuesday

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Tuesday was an unfortunate day for eternity to come looking for a woman.

She was sitting on a carousel suspended somewhere between heaven and a secondhand furniture store, counting pearls that had once belonged to the rain.

There were approximately seventeen million of them, although nobody had ever counted beyond Thursday.

The carousel was turning very slowly because the horses had forgotten where they were going. They had been going around in circles for six hundred years, and it was beginning to affect their philosophy.

One horse believed in reincarnation.

Another believed in carrots.

The third had stopped believing in anything after discovering that the universe was operated by a little girl who had misplaced the instructions.

The woman was dressed in a magnificent arrangement of lace, silver, and the accumulated misunderstandings of several extinct civilizations. Her dress contained enough fabric to make curtains for a small European monarchy.

She held the string of pearls in her hands.

Each pearl contained a thunderstorm.

This was inconvenient because whenever she touched one, somebody somewhere remembered something they had forgotten.

A man in Nebraska remembered his first kiss.

A widow in Paris remembered the smell of her husband’s tobacco.

A goldfish remembered the ocean, although it had never been there.

The woman continued counting.

Outside, the clouds were being assembled by unemployed angels who had previously worked in the umbrella industry.

They were doing a terrible job.

Rain fell upward.

Lightning struck yesterday.

Thunder arrived three days early and apologized to nobody.

The carousel moved through this weather with the dignity of an elderly duchess riding a bicycle through a supermarket.

There was no beginning to the pearls.

There was no end.

They had been strung together by a blind woman who lived inside a clock and believed that time was simply a very long necklace worn by nobody in particular.

Every Tuesday she added another pearl.

Every Wednesday she forgot why.

The woman on the carousel had been given the necklace as a wedding present by a man who promised to love her until the universe ran out of Tuesdays.

Unfortunately, he had mistaken eternity for a railway timetable.

He departed on a train made entirely of mirrors and was last seen travelling backward through the childhood of a thundercloud.

She had not heard from him since.

Occasionally she received postcards from the future.

They were always blank except for the weather.

Today the postcard said:

Scattered showers of infinite duration.

She smiled.

One pearl slipped from her fingers and fell through the clouds.

It passed seven abandoned heavens, a cathedral filled with sleeping birds, and a planet where everybody had the same birthday.

Eventually it landed in a puddle beside a bus stop in a small town in Oregon.

A little boy picked it up.

He held it to his ear.

Inside he heard a woman laughing, carousel music, and thunder rolling across the furniture of eternity.

He put the pearl in his pocket beside a dead beetle and a peppermint.

Then the bus arrived.

It was Tuesday.

And the universe, having briefly misplaced one of its most important possessions, continued turning as though nothing had happened.