Sensations under a Staircase

A few days ago, I walked into a spacious new library with Margaret, the tantalizing prospect of a bit of quiet reading dominating my mind.

After seeing Margaret off with her Latin tutor, I settled in a warm, shadowed nook wedged between a large staircase (the principal one of that building) and a convenient wall. Dropping into a plush chair, I pulled out Virgil's Aeneid, and fell gently through the pages into Carthage, where Dido cried, implored, and raged in vain, and Aeneas slowly followed an unusually insistent Mercury down to the shore. As Dido opened her mouth to defy Aeneas' immortal parentage, what should reach my ears but the sound of a heavy fall, apparently from several millenniums ahead.

Rather curious, I surfaced from my fantastical daydream, and as Dido's shrieks grew faint, I became aware of a fluent stream of profanity. As the library came back into focus, I glanced upwards, and beheld a passerby prone upon the staircase that rose above me, now angrily uprighting herself and fabricating the colorful phrases that had interrupted me.

Not thinking this of any particular importance, I drifted back to Dido. I shadowed her through her insanity, her countless sacrifices, and her suicide, only to have my attention seized at the crucial moment by labored breathing and a panted, "Good - exercise; keep - it up." Upon examination, there proved to be a ponderous lady ascending the evidently popular and relatively long staircase.

Mildly amused by a double encounter with expressions not meant for my ears, and marveling slightly at the coincidence, I rejoined Dido, only to find that she had died in my absence, and I was now to attend the funeral games of Anchises.

The boat race, my favorite event, came first, and I joined the Nereids in propelling the foremost vessel, Scylla, to victory. As I watched Aeneas dole out the prizes, a strange voice muttered, not far away, "Knees, knees, knees!" My attention was instantaneously reverted to the staircase, from whence I supposed this extraordinary exclamation to issue, and sure enough, there was the speaker, an elderly gentleman nearing the top step. I very much wanted to laugh, but waited until Margaret and I were packed in the car on the way home, as I attempted to relate the tale.