Free Lila Blue by Annie Katz

person! Like a hermit crab without a shell.
    He turned away from me and busied
himself cleaning his workstation and sweeping the floor around both the cutting
chairs. When all was tidy, he disappeared into another room at the back of the
shop.
    "How was the taffy
adventure?" Lila asked me.
    "Fun," I said. "I
sent a giant box to Shelly. She'll be so surprised."
    "And what's this?" she
asked, as I handed her the white bag full of taffy.
    "Compliments of The Salty
Dog."
    Lila took the sack and scrabbled
around in it until she'd retrieved all the Maple Syrups. "These are my
favorite," she said. "Did you try one?" She offered one to me,
but I declined.
    "I tried enough," I said.
"So far, Vanilla Bean is my favorite. Lucky Lemon is a close second,
though."
    "Maybe I should branch
out," she said. "Never good to run too deep a groove for
yourself." She exchanged some of her Maple Syrups for some of the others
in the bag. "And licorice for Herbert," she said, making a pile of
the gray candies on a clean paper towel in the middle of his freshly scrubbed
counter.
    New customers came in, and after
watching haircut after haircut, I felt sleepy, so I said goodbye to Lila and
Herbert and walked back to the beach house through a chilly damp wind under
cloudy skies.
    There was no rain, though, and as I
stood on the porch ready to use my key, an enormous full triple rainbow
appeared over the ocean. It was so close, so sudden, and so beautiful that I
gasped.
    While I stood entranced, staring at
the dense bands of light that seemed heavy and solid, tears came to my eyes and
ran down my face. My heart ached with happiness, and something deep in my belly
expanded until I was as big as a dragon. For the very first time in my life, I
felt grateful to be alive.
    After that, everything was easy for
a while. Lila and I walked on the beach most mornings, even when it poured
rain. We ate breakfast together some days, and other times we took care of
ourselves, rule number three.
    Lila kept her retirement work
schedule, unless Herbert called to say it was slow on one of her half days.
Slow days were usually sunny days, because everyone flocked to the beach when
it stopped raining in Rainbow Village. Those extra afternoons Lila spent more
time on her newspaper columns or corresponded with friends.
    In the evenings, we did cooking
lessons, then we read or played backgammon or she played the piano and sang.
She encouraged me to sing along, and sometimes I did. She said I had a
beautiful voice, but I think she was being kind.
    On the days she worked, when I felt
like being around humans, I'd walk to her shop or visit the others in Rainbow
Village. I liked all the shops, and it was fun to describe them later to Shelly
in my letters.
    The Bakery Boys next door to Lila's
barbershop belonged to Paul, the dad, and his two sons, Ronny and Donny. Paul
and Ronny did most of the baking. Donny, the younger brother, was the runner.
He ran everywhere. They all looked alike, except Donny was about three-fourths
the size of his older brother and dad. Donny could not stand still. When he
wasn't actually covering ground, he ran in place.
    My first time there, we passed him
when we entered the bakery, and after a quick hello and smile to me, he raced
across the highway in between traffic and ran down the side of the road toward
the south end of town. He was carrying a blue zipper bag.
    "Is Donny off to the
bank?" Lila asked Paul, who came out from behind the counter to greet us.
    He laughed. "Any excuse to run
out of here."
    I found out later the bank was
three miles away.
    "Donny has running in his
blood," Paul said, and you could tell he was proud.
    Paul seemed to really like Lila. He
gazed at her the way you'd look at a movie star.
    Ronny, the older brother, loved
baking. He barely glanced at me while he shaped bread dough into long skinny
loaves and put them on huge baking sheets. You could tell he'd made thousands
of loaves by the way his hands and body moved so