mystic_savage

Melody is superstitious -- she's always admitted it.  Whenever she hears a snatch of music on the street she knows it is going to be a good day.  She has decided that all omens are good.  When she sees a penny, she might pick it up or not, having changed the last few lines of the old verse to "see a penny, let it lay, you'll have good luck anyway."  Also good luck for her:  sitting in an odd-numbered row from the front at a movie theater, having a leaf fall on her head, a pigeon cross her path, or a panhandler ask her for money.  She often says no, but she always sees the request as a blessing.  She doesn't go out of her way to walk under ladders, but she doesn't avoid them either.  She knows that they could be bad luck, but  if you hold your breath while you're under a ladder and make a religious sign or symbol with your hands you turn the luck to good.  She has lots of religious symbols.  She crosses her fingers behind her back or makes a cross over her chest, or taps her third eye three times with her ring finger.

She's not odd.  Well, not visibly odd.  She looks like everybody else, has an office job, two children.  Her thighs are fat.  She's often in a hurry, carrying her purse and her lunch in a plastic Target bag because she keeps forgetting to buy cloth.  She's not a hippie.  She's not a pagan.  She doesn't dance naked under a full moon (although the thought makes her grin).  She likes football, and notices that the Seahawks win whenever she goes to a game.  She doesn't go to many games, but never feels like she jinxes it by being there.  If anything, she can almost make a touchdown happen if she drinks half a beer and leaves the other half under her seat.

Lots of her superstitions involve leaving things:  she leaves a dollar in the violin case of the guy who plays outside of Pacific Place.  She leaves sticky notes all over her desk at work:  on the arms of her chair, on the monitor frame, on the telephone.  And she's never had problem leaving people.  In fact, she's good at it.  She used to be able to end a relationship within half an hour of deciding it was over.  There.  All of her belongings would fit in two milk crates and a suitcase, and she'd be back at her Aunt Bethie's house, in the room she stayed in when she was between things.  Having children changed that, though, and she finds herself now, surprised, having lived in the same neighborhood with the same man for the last six years.

Just as she's thinking this, she feels the sticky tack of gum under her shoe.  She grimaces as her foot comes up from the sidewalk.  Maybe it's time to leave something else, she decides, and before she has time to second guess herself, she's slipped off both shoes and is walking in her socks down the sidewalk toward her bus stop.  The pavement is cold and rough under her feet, and she thinks maybe that is a good omen too.  It's important to stay in touch with the rough edges.