🌈 a small and wondrous attraction

Chapter 3: Petite Larceny | Mapledorum Trinket, Supposedly, Dreams in Rainbows.

Good Tuesday Tue You :) In the third chapter, Mapledorum is ready to try his hands with a new endeavor, one where he must don a pair of gloves with sticky fingers. His burglary dreams of dollars don’t go as planned, but at least he experiences his first kiss. It’s a plastic and fleeting moment. I’m sure we can all identify.

“Comfort is the enemy of progress.” — P.T. Barnum

Black Thursday 1929

Washington Square Park, Manhattan

The lollipop was in between two school children. They had been arguing over who was going to enjoy the sugared dream of sticky salivation. They had a quick game of tug of war and the lollipop landed on the battlefield. While they continued their spat over whose spit would be artificially pinkened, Mapledorum took cover in a drain that clung to a skyscraper like a great white beanstalk. He covered his own magic beans, keenly aware of his nakedness now, and because they were children. There’d been a sun shower not too long ago and some of the water had yet to find its way to the ground from the rooftop.

He saw the two sets of legs hop backward and forward, the result of their shoving each other. When there was an opportunity, Mapledorum, acting like the vermin he’d soon live amongst, sprinted out from the drain, grabbed the candy stick, and retreated to the damp safety of a trickling urban waterfall. The schoolchildren were shocked to see that they were now fighting over nothing. They walked away, deprived of their afternoon jolt of joy. Mapledorum was armed and ready for the fight before him.

Beginning a life of petit larceny—or in his case, petite larceny—was never his plan. But it seemed that life’s circumstances put him in this tight spot, which he hoped would eventually land him in the tight pockets and unzipped pocketbooks of the members of high society.

After the sun disappeared between the canyons of capitalism—on the same day the stock market supernova exploded, bringing the darkness of night to the break of pay—Mapledorum scaled the wall of an apartment building, looking for points of entry. Other unfortunate souls were taking the opposite route, falling in the same direction of the charts, and bursting bubbles they became.

Mapledorum struck gold when he happened upon a couple who were getting ready to spend a night out on the town. The only thing they ever invested in was each other. He heard them tell their daughter that she’d be staying with her neighboring friend across the hall. Once their living room lights dimmed, Mapledorum’s face lit up.

He found his way to their bathroom and scaled the side of their clawfoot bathtub. There was still a puddle of soapy water at the bottom. He bathed, splashed around, and pretended to be Babe Ruth sliding into home. He felt like a new man. Getting out of the tub wasn’t easy. The suds on his body and the sleek porcelain tub were a slippery duo. Eventually, Mapledorum dried himself off and got to work.

He found some loose change, but he told himself he would only resort to stealing coins if he were desperate. Climbing down the side of a building while holding the equivalent of a set of car tires would be less than ideal. Paper money was really the only way to go. Mapledorum looked in some obvious places, but came up empty. Then, under the couple’s bed, he found a small metal box. He reached into the keyhole and manipulated the gears with surgical acumen. He pried it open and kept it ajar with his lollipop stick. Mapledorum thought he found God, but really, he found eighty-two dollars. On Black Friday, even God knew better than to hide it in a safe. It was nearly a month’s salary. He rolled the bills up like a carpet and tucked them under his arm.

The door to the girl’s bedroom was closed, but Mapledorum, now moving with confidence, decided to squeeze himself under the door. It was uncomfortable, but he managed. The head of the lollipop was too big to take with him. He didn’t think there would be anything to find there, but he was as wrong as he had ever been. The city’s constellation of window lamps provided enough light for him to see that he’d stepped foot right into a dollhouse.

There were three dolls in the open-faced home. Like a mini version of the family, there was a man, a woman, and a little girl. When he looked at the woman, he blushed. Even though she was a mannequin, she was attractive, and just the right height. He took her by the hands and sang her a little tune he’d learned on the circus tour from a woman with three heads. Her stage name was Doe Re Mi. Of course, she sang it to him with the harmonies of an alto, a mezzo soprano, and a true soprano. Mapledorum spun the doll around and ended with a dip on the last note of the song. And he kissed her. It was the first one he ever gave anyone. Mapledorum wiped a few tears from his face, walked her over to the couch, and positioned her comfortably.

As for the man, things weren’t going to be so sweet. Mapledorum shoved him to the ground and took off his clothes. He pulled on a pair of gray trousers and slipped into a blue work shirt. The hat didn’t fit, but he felt they restricted free thinking, anyway. About to be on his way with a romantic lightness to his footsteps, he suddenly felt a blanket of danger around him. He looked around on high alert. Mapledorum thought he was being watched. He breathed a little sigh of relief when, in a dark corner of the girl’s room, meaning the large room, he saw a lineup of stuffed animals, their eyes with little sparkles of refracted light. As he bid them adieu, one of them blinked. Mapledorum stiffened into an awkward pose, trying to fit in with the rest of the members of the dollhouse.

It was the family cat. It was real, fluffy, and predatory.

During his days on the tour, he’d been around lions, lionesses, tigers, and tigresses. But they were tamed by his fellow world travelers. They weren’t anything like the domestic beast in front of him. The house cat pounced, and the dollhouse became a bouncy house. Mapledorum jumped into the bathroom and picked up the mini clawfoot bathtub to protect himself from the foot claws of the cat. In a panic, he threw the bathtub at the feline demon. It bought him just enough time to climb upstairs to the little girl’s little bedroom. The cat hissed, and in his brand new pants, Mapledorum pissed. The cat swiped right into the little bedroom, tore through his shirt, and lacerated his skin. So much for the aspirations of being a fashion darling.

Mapledorum rolled like a log under the bed for protection, but he got caught up in the curtain that he inadvertently pulled off the wall. It bound his arms to his sides. The cat aimed its yellow eyes at him like the high beams on the front of a furry locomotive. His life flashed before him and the cat lashed after him. He closed his eyes and imagined the tear in the indigo sky at the beginning of his life—and the primal tears into the fabric of his skin. And then he thought of his mother. He internalized the struggles of “The Diminutive Damsel in Distress,” both on the tracks of the model train set, and the parallel lines of their parallel life stories. He was not going to let the Trinket lineage end this way.

Mapledorum’s veins caught fire and he broke free from the curtain. He picked up the bed and took a home run swing that caught the cat’s paw. The cat retracted. He continued his attack, raging through the house, upending tables, and finding weapons to launch at the beast. If only he had his lollipop, he thought. He threw the ice box and nicked one of the cat’s marbles. He tugged a handful of whiskers from its face. And then he hurled a grandfather clock that clocked the cat a few seconds back. Mapledorum was about to make his escape, but the cat made one last lunge. With its fangs out and a gust of cat food breath, he had no other choice but to sacrifice the little girl. Mapledorum shoved the little doll into the cat’s mouth and ran for freedom. As he squeezed himself under the door, the cat got in a few more vicious swipes.

In the hallway of safety, any feelings of guilt he imagined he’d have about being a thief, were replaced by elation, and the thrill of survival. But there was one problem. The money was still inside the room on the living room floor of the dollhouse. With the cat still pawing at the door, looking for another round, Mapledorum decided to cut his losses.

He knew right then and there, that this was not the way he was going to live his life. He welled up and shed more tears, partly on account of his allergy to the feline’s dander. With tattered, blood-stained, and urine-infused clothes, he dragged the head of his lollipop across the floor before slinging it over his shoulder. Mapledorum was utterly bummed. As for the lollipop, it was the most depressing experience a piece of candy has ever had.

Mapledorum chuckled in spurts over the sounds of his sobbing when he realized that a professional cat burglar he would not become. As he was leaving through the window, he heard the apartment door open and the little girl walk inside with her neighboring friend. They were there to feed the cat and retrieve her dolls for the sleepover. Mapledorum was sure she’d have some complaints about the new interior decorating in her dollhouse. It had been one of his jobs after all. And thankfully for him, the cat would still have its appetite.

This wasn’t a life lesson. This was a death lesson.

Mapledorum walked the midnight streets of New York City and looked for a place to stay. Along the way he was harassed by several creatures of the night. He’d reached a nadir, so he had little issue using his weapon to knock out a mouse with one swing, stun a spricket’s antennae, or joust a wayward gerbil.

Eventually, he happened upon an ignored basement near Pennsylvania Station. Mapledorum found a way in and slept in a cozy depression in the old cold floor, furthering his descent. After a month of Sundays and vantablack nights, Mapledorum was growing tired of his rodent bedfellows. He even befriended one of them who was missing an eye and a leg, still drawn to the curiosities of the planet. But after a night when he saw what the rat dragged in, which was the carcass of the cat he’d recently battled, no doubt kicked to the curb by the family after it destroyed the home within their home, he rose from the bed, and hit the road. He held the lollipop stick over his shoulder. Hanging from the end of the stick were his few belongings and two days of literal junk food tied up in the wrapper. It took him a long time to lick that lolly clean from the stick, even though he always did. He didn’t like to waste anything except time.

This was about to change, however. So tired he’d become of watching his life move in the opposite direction of his past ambitions. He’d always been a climber, a showman, a small and wondrous attraction.

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Well, that’s all for today. At this moment, Mapledorum isn’t doing very well, but his fortune is about to change… after his fortune is told. The telling comes from a woman, who’s quite compelling. Easy for me to say, as I’m the one doing the foretelling. (I wrote it, ya know?) Anyway, Mapledorum will encounter the paradoxical and mystic Ms. Missy Mississippi. She will have a lot not to say. The chapter is named Mystissippi.

Appreciations abound for those who will tap my heart, comment, subscribe, or share this post. Thank you!

💜 LLL IV

Previous Chapters:

1 | Indigo | tied to the tracks of a model train set

2 | Lollipop | dollhouse interior decorator