Nothing goes well, and then you get a break. Driving home from work, I was happy simply that I had escaped without irreparable damage. The gloomy day was slowly dying as I turned into the parking lot of the gym. Certain I didn't want to be there, creature of habit that I am, I felt duty bound. Changing in the locker room, however, I found that I had forgotten to pack my shorts that morning. A reprieve, of sorts, I slipped back into my trousers.
"You need to sell shorts," I told her.
"You sure you need them? Hey, wait, you want to go through the lost and found?"
I shook my head.
"Are you coming back?"
"Not until tomorrow," I told her, thinking now I was making an escape. I had things to do anyway. I needed unbleached coffee filters and some underarm deodorant, a bottle of scotch, yogurt, milk, and maybe some ice cream. How many stores is that, I wondered before deciding what to do. I got into my car and backed out of the parking space feeling free. I'd be home early. I could read AND watch a movie. I might like this.
I stopped at the pharmacy first, the kind that sells everything from Cheetos to lawn chairs and as a bonus has a liquor store next door. The first victory was finding that my deodorant was two-for-one. Old Spice. I use it because my father did, and I like to think that few others do. It is old fashioned. Old school, I mean. There were few other shoppers and I felt something familiar and far away. It was Monday just before dark, the brightness of the fluorescent lights just beginning to stand out in a strange way against the dusk. When I was younger, in high school and college, I loved these times, between times separating this and that when people were either here or there and everyone else was in limbo. I wandered through the store looking at random items and noticed the song playing over the speakers. "Turn Down Day." I couldn't remember the name of the band, but I remembered the song. I was humming along.
The second victory came next door. The liquor store had a discount on Glen Fiddich. It was a sterling night. One of the Walgreen employees was buying wine from the specials bin.
"How much is this Cold Duck?" she asked.
"Three-ninety-nine," the clerk told her.
"You know what it means if you are buying cold duck?" I asked her.
"Oh, I'm not buying this for me," she said quickly. The clerk looked at me and laughed. It was grand being out, sad and alive. Why am I so busy, I wondered to myself? Why am I missing all of this.
Whole Foods was as crowded as usual. It seemed no in-between time there. I got the yogurt and some whole milk and decided on Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream. I wouldn't eat much, I told myself, just a bite or two. Some Manchego cheese and the unbleached coffee filters. I noticed that the he music wasn't as good as it was at the pharmacy.
At the checkout register I watched a young girl I can never stop staring at working as a bagger on another aisle. I am fascinated by her nose that looks different from opposite sides and by her a mouth that turns down in a frown naturally, and by her great curly hair that looks Brooklyn Jewish if there is such a thing. I can't tell how old she is, but she is young, and I try to imagine her in thirty years. Forty. Now she breaks my heart. She is not sad, I imagine, but looking at her you can not believe that is true. She is so serious looking that you know she must be pondering the great philosophical questions of the past, something her eleventh grade humanities teacher might have offered up in class. Maybe she is a freshman in college. I can't tell. I try not to stare, but I am unconvincing.
"Hrrtgerfeltungfelt," the cash register woman says. I smile having no idea what she's muttered. She is from Russia and has put on thirty pounds in the year she's worked at Whole Foods. She says more. I assume she is furthering her point, but I still haven't a clue what she is talking about. I think she is saying something about the coffee filters, but she could be telling me that in Russia I could marry the bag girl and have many babies. I give her a tense shake of the head hoping that I am right in agreeing.
Outside, there is little light. The rain has begun to fall. I feel the rain and the light and the dark and all the people in their cars in my muscles and my nerves. I remember this. When I was young, I felt everything.
At home, I put away the groceries and listen to my crying cat. She sounds as if she has been beaten all day while I was gone. Oh, the agony, she says in long, lonesome wails. Quickly I put some food into her dish, but she it is not that she wants. I leave the door open and she runs in and out, in and out. "Daddy, daddy," she yells. I think of Elliot Gould's Marlowe in Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye." I feel a bit like that, too.
I take my gym bag to the bedroom and change out of my working clothes. Sitting on the bed, I think it is early and I will play my guitar. I pick it up, tune it, and strike a chord, a normal E, and I begin to sing. I try to make a rhythm with my voice, a meter more than a melody, forcing air and holding it back, accent and cesura. It sounds alright and I strum partial chords, a few strings at a time, not too many the way I have in the past but only a few, simple and clean. One song, then another. If I could hear myself as I sound, I'd be embarrassed, but I don't. I only hear what I think I sound like. It is wonderful. I imagine people turning in surprise. It is dark now. I will start a band, I think. I will be better than before.
In the kitchen, I cut open the Manchego cheese and find some water crackers in the fridge. I pull the cork out of last night's wine. I do feel good, I think pouring one glass and then another. I have time for this tonight. I will make a salad and drink more wine before I heat up last night's beef. While I cut the garlic the cat bumps against my ankles. I put a piece of cheese down for her. She sniffs it but doesn't eat it. If it were cheap and soft, I think, she'd snatch it right up. Prole.
I take my salad and my wine to the computer to check my email. It is good. My friend who likes to live much and well and who loves art and literature and food and drink and all the sensuous things has sent me a PDF file of something, maybe an introduction to a book. In part it reads, "I, too, am bound by a chain formed of gloomy fancies," this hand-written on a line drawing of a woman looking back over her bare shoulder.
"I am rich," I think. The night lies ahead of me like a promise. I shall read awhile and then I will watch "The French Connection" which I haven't seen since it was released so long ago. I can do these things this night and do not wish to take them for granted.
The air turns cooler, the rain falls harder. The cat is nestled upon my feet. There are other things in life and I miss them often, but tonight this all feels good and right.
Tomorrow. . . is another story.
* * * * *
2. The Cyrkle also recorded Paul Simon's "Red Rubber Ball."
3. That's right, Simon and Garfunkle's "Red Rubber Ball."
i love when you write like this.
ReplyDeletei love pictures of this girl masked.
ReplyDeleteThank you both. Makes me happy.
ReplyDelete