Serendipity Green by Rob Levandoski

unsold petunias and marigolds and impatiens, are pulling out their hair. Kmart and Wal-mart have more bags of topsoil and peat moss and cedar wood chips than they know what to do with. Denny’s hasn’t sold a single glass of iced tea. Frank and Carla Cooke, owners of the Dairy Doodle, are up to their elbows in frozen custard. Farmers can’t plow. Men sit in their garages on their idle riding mowers watching the wet grass get higher and higher, while their wives rearrange cupboard after cupboard. The girl’s softball team at West Wyssock High hasn’t played half its games because of the rain, and in a one case, because of the snow.
    Some blame the terrible spring on global warming. Some blame it on the coming of a new Ice Age. The Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee on Sunday, rain stomping up and down on the roof of his half-empty church, blames it on the filth available at the library. “God is warning us,” he says.
    Still, the people of Tuttwyler, Ohio, have to get on with their lives, Howie Dornick among them.
    One Friday evening he takes a long shower with a new bar of Ivory Soap. He puts on his suit pants and a light blue shirt, and then, after watching the clock tick away to 8:30, gathers up the bag of fancy muffins he bought that afternoon at the Daydream Beanery and walks up South Mill, across the square, then down East Wooseman to North Grant. After stopping at the In & Out for a box of Tic-tacs, he forces his legs up Oak Street to Katherine Hardihood’s two-bedroom ranch. He stands on the front step for a long minute and watches Delores Poltruski pull into Dick Mueller’s driveway. Finally he rings the bell. And he knocks, just in case the bell isn’t working.
    Katherine Hardihood isn’t at all surprised by his appearance at her door. She’s invited him to stop by. The dress pants and blue shirt and bag of muffins do surprise her, though. Pleasantly surprise her. Also makes her more nervous than she wants to be.
    â€œSmells like Pine Sol,” Howie Dornick says, sniffing the living room air.
    â€œMy cat has a hard time controlling himself.”
    â€œPisses things, does he?”
    Katherine Hardihood takes the muffins to the kitchen and puts them on a pink depression glass platter. She pours two cups of freshly dripped coffee—freshly ground from the hazelnut-flavored beans she bought that morning from the Daydream Beanery—and putting everything on a reproduction tin Coca-Cola tray, returns to the living room.
    Howie has positioned himself on the end of her sofa. “It’s going to be just like last year, isn’t it?” he says, putting down the Newsweek he wasn’t reading. “It’s going straight from winter to summer. No spring at all.”
    â€œLooks that way, doesn’t it?”
    Howie Dornick and Katherine Hardihood have been seeing each other quite a bit lately. D. William Aitchbone has seen to that.
    â€œThese muffins are wonderful,” Katherine says, peeling back the sticky paper cup and taking a guppy bite out of her muffin’s crunchy golden skin.
    They talk about the Daydream Beanery for a while, he shaking his head at what a prissy place it is, she telling him that it’s where she bought the coffee they’re drinking, which, he agrees is pretty tasty. They talk about the trouble EDIT is causing for the library, including D. William Aitchbone’s ongoing threat to nominate Ray Biscobee for the board. They talk about his ongoing proposal to privatize village services—it looks like he has the votes to push it through at the June meeting—and they talk about the cause of all this trouble in their lives, Howie’s unpainted clapboards.
    â€œDo you really think I should paint?” he asks.
    â€œIt’s up to you,” she answers.
    â€œI don’t know,” he says.
    They finish all the muffins and half the coffee, and then, as if D. William Aitchbone secretly has implanted