gypsy encounter #1

the hospital is the most magical place in russia i promise.
i hate saying that because stephanie's in a wheel chair. i hate saying that because its a hospital.
it was beautiful yesterday; the sun made an appearance and there were yellow and red leaves blanketing the little village where stephanie has been living for about a week. the place with the weaving dirt paths, uneven stone and the magic blue door. stephanie got cigarettes and she wanted a stroll. i never knew how much id let myself go until i was huffing and puffing behind stephanies wheelchair. the red one. thats the good one. even if im suspicious that only one of the handbrakes is really actually functional.
stephanie ties her foot up in a sock and we abuse the elevator button. the elevators are like little rooms and they have little old persons in them and a coat rack and each one has its own slew of kitten posters or glittery religious calendars and a hard bench that may or may not be where the little persons lay to rest. i think may more than may not but this is all just speculation.
we weave around the backways of the hospital permitter and stephanie promises us a gypsy caravan. a wooden, mobile gypsy hut. and we peer in the windows and its full of wooden bunks built into the walls and dim and hardly functioning little lights. and we dont even hear the door open but all i hear is liz scream. and there, in the doorway: bonefied gypsy man. ratty raggy clothes, ratty raggy hair; bad teeth.
my first gypsy man. my first gypsy caravan.
of course we fled the scene immediately, just as another appeared in the doorway. they couldn't smell our innocents; we smelled like cigarettes.