The wisp of a wannabe flapper with short mousy brown hair wiped away fog from the window. She looked out into her backyard to see the path down which any young woman like her would want to run. She watched the young doe run. She watched the doe disappear when the winds picked up.

She ran her fingers through over her furrowed brow and her scalp. She told herself,”No, no, it’s ok to be bit slow to sit back down.”

“It’s ok,” she told herself as she dropped back down into her worn oak chair. “It’s ok, it’s been an while and the deer’s clearly gone.”

When she was younger, she’d followed that path more times than she could ever count. More times than she would want to count even if she could. But the morning was perfect, and she wanted to forget all those other walks. The morning was perfect, and all she wanted to do was join her cloven-footed friend out in the great somewhere else.

She took a stack of dishes to the sink, and tried looked out that window as she gave each plate a brisk cleaning.

“Goodbye,” she thought. “Good bye deer friend.”

She thought it so loudly, as if she’d never see that doe again. As if the soft brown of her fur would be nothing but a memory and that was that, but the truth was far more mundane and she knew it. She knew that if she waited until tomorrow just after dawn, she’d look out at her apple trees and see the same deer munching away again, even if only for a moment.

She pulled a pack of Pall Malls from her purse, tapped one out and lit it. She pulled the first perfect fog of nicotine into her lungs and let herself go on with a bit of a sputtering shuttering fluttering like an antique lamp.  Cigarettes are cheaper than finding a way to hire a maid, she told herself as she pretended to do a bit of housework to fool herself.

For hours, she sad on the couch, fingering a little hole in the left arm with her pinky and trying not to sob as she worried about hunters killing the deer. A fierce resolve crashed over her. Today was the day.

She dressed in her outdoor clothes – blue jeans, a gray t-shirt, white socks and sneakers. She imagined some 10-point buck hard and ready to deliver his sperm into the most ordinary doe in all the woods.

She got to the door, took a long breath, opened the door and stood there on the breezeless edge of the late afternoon. She shook a little as she listened to a train pass. She took another longer deeper deep breath. She laid a powerless punch into the door frame. She watched a bird – a modest orange bird devoid of tweet or name or perhaps even feet as it flew off into that vast expanse of anywhere.

A tear fell down her cheek, and she closed the door again.