It’s because she sings. The woman inside the house sings and sucks
the gravity right out of the ground.
We find the house floating about three feet above the slab. I crawl
underneath the house. What I find are broken pipes and some
exposed rebar. The water must have been turned off—the slab is
completely dry.
All the while, she’s singing and the house continues to rise. Now
it’s ten feet off the ground. Inside, a dog is barking because dogs
are particularly excitable. There’s a family inside too, at the
windows, waving at us and smiling.
We shout at an open window: Lady, please, put the house down.
Her singing just gets louder. The family laughs.
Really, there’s nothing we can do. It’s their house. It’ll be up to the
Department of Building and Safety to take care of any code
violations.
Meanwhile, a large crowd gathers, first to gawk at the house itself
and then to listen to the woman’s voice. Then, slowly, the crowd
floats up toward the house, everyone stunned and delighted.
As of Monday morning, her song suspends the house, the crowd,
and some stray animals a hundred feet above our jurisdiction,
bobbing a bit on the breeze. Another voice has joined in, maybe
the woman’s daughter--
Le courant fuyant;
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l'onde frémissante
Dans l’onde frémissante
It’s Delibes, my partner says. Never heard of him, I say. That’s
alright, he reassures me. I don’t think anyone here has heard opera
in a hundred years. My grandfolks told me that when they were
children, the whole county would rise into the blue.
the gravity right out of the ground.
We find the house floating about three feet above the slab. I crawl
underneath the house. What I find are broken pipes and some
exposed rebar. The water must have been turned off—the slab is
completely dry.
All the while, she’s singing and the house continues to rise. Now
it’s ten feet off the ground. Inside, a dog is barking because dogs
are particularly excitable. There’s a family inside too, at the
windows, waving at us and smiling.
We shout at an open window: Lady, please, put the house down.
Her singing just gets louder. The family laughs.
Really, there’s nothing we can do. It’s their house. It’ll be up to the
Department of Building and Safety to take care of any code
violations.
Meanwhile, a large crowd gathers, first to gawk at the house itself
and then to listen to the woman’s voice. Then, slowly, the crowd
floats up toward the house, everyone stunned and delighted.
As of Monday morning, her song suspends the house, the crowd,
and some stray animals a hundred feet above our jurisdiction,
bobbing a bit on the breeze. Another voice has joined in, maybe
the woman’s daughter--
Le courant fuyant;
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l'onde frémissante
Dans l’onde frémissante
It’s Delibes, my partner says. Never heard of him, I say. That’s
alright, he reassures me. I don’t think anyone here has heard opera
in a hundred years. My grandfolks told me that when they were
children, the whole county would rise into the blue.
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Tom Laichas is author most recently of Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in High Window Review, Prairie Schooner, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Los Angeles Times, Plume, The Moth (Ireland), The Irish Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Venice, California.
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