Madame Pannoël will drive fifty miles to go to Hambridge today. As she plans to arrive at Dufuse’s around four o’clock in the afternoon, she will leave around midday. She will have time to have a nice breakfast and do some shopping on Molly’s food. It is a cloudy day with a little wind. The leaves on the willow trees have turned yellow in this season of the year. Some leaves falling on the lawn are partly buried under the soil. Some leaves are partly attached on the branches. If the wind blows a little stronger, they might fall. But now, they just hang there and swing with the wind. Madame Pannoël sits at her kitchen table facing her back yard while having her scramble eggs and fried tomatoes. The morning radio is broadcasting Hesitation Blues. Madame Pannoël is not a blues fan. However, she cannot help but notice the track is skipping and repeating “ Tell me how long do I have to wait?”. The disc jockey apologizes for about thirty seconds. Perhaps he wants to make up the time for the rest of the song.

Madame Pannoël wears a grey wig to cover her red sparse hair. She has a slim crooked nose. Every morning, she puts her perfect false upper teeth into her mouth and wears peach-color lipstick. She has an English shepherd dog. Mr. Dufuse gave her the dog twelve years ago for her fiftieth birthday. The dog’s name is Molly. Madame Pannoël and Molly live in a house on Huntington Street, one block away from Caesar Park. Joanna, the girl next door, comes to Madame Pannoël’s house at three o’clock every afternoon to take Molly for a walk. She can earn ten dollars every day. Madame Pannoël walks very little. Sometimes, when it does not rain, Madame Pannoël would go out with Joanna and Molly and walk to Caesar Park. Madame Pannoël talks very little. It is always Joanna talking about her hazel-eyes boyfriend and her talkative mother. Madame Pannoël listens to Joanna and pats Molloy once a while as if telling her to be patient.

Madame Pannoël accepted an invitation to come to Hambridge for a dinner with Mr. Dufuse and his grand daughter Virginia today. Mr. Dufuse is retired from the Tax Bureau nine years ago when he reached the age of sixty. He often jokes with Madame Pannoël that when he was twenty years younger, he was as charming as the black sphinx in the British Museum. He did not have to approach to girls whenever he was in a bar on Friday nights or in a café having his Sunday brunch. Girls came to him and flirted with him. His profession as a chief of all tax men in Hambridge did not hurt his popularity. Even now he is pushing seventy, his angular face is still one landscape of a kind, a wide-nostrilled nose connected with the broad nasal bridge sitting between two light-swamping eyes on his age-carved dark skin. Despised he does not stand that straight anymore, the ways he carries himself and the soft tone when he speaks are always breathtaking for Madame Pannoël. Madame Dufuse passed away in her hepatitis ten years ago. During those three years before she died, Madame Pannoël came to their house three times a week for her medical care. Madame Pannoël does not practice medicine any more. She still comes to the house sometimes whenever there is a significant occasion.

It was Virginia’s twenty-year-old birthday. Virginia’s parents died in a car accident when she was four years old. Mr. Dufuse has taken care of her since. She has brown eyes like Mr. Dufuse’s. Her dimple shows on the left cheek when she smiles. As proud as her grandfather, she earns her fellowship to study mathematics in St. Peter University. Madame Pannoël is fond of her. Virginia respects Madame Pannoël as a role model in terms of her performance in her career.

Madame Pannoël finishes her food, stands up, and takes the dish to the sink. While she puts down the dish, the knife she has used to cut the tomatoes and left next to the sink cuts her right index finger tip. The cut is deep. It lifts a piece of skin on the finger but the skin is not complete detached. It hangs there. Blood drops on her blue dress which she just puts on for the dinner this evening. It becomes purple. She holds the wound with a bandage she takes out from the counter drawer. She is not panic. Besides the reason that she used to be a doctor, she is not a little girl any more. She is able to handle the pain. This little incident and the fact she has to change her dress have taken too much time. She doesn’t have time for shopping any more. She has to leave.