Hide the Scratches

He took off one of her shoes slowly. She didn't make a noise other than the steady flow of her breathing that had just a slight hint of a snore in it and to Charlie sounded more like a purr. He took off the other shoe and she curled her feet up into her jacket with her and rolled onto her side, facing the sofa back and clutching a throw pillow under her head. He spread the blanket over her and tucked it in gently. She let out a tiny sigh and he stood looking down at her for a time before going to his bed and fighting himself into a light sleep.

He awoke to find himself alone. Rosa had left either the night before or sometime early in the morning. Charlie stood in the center of the living room and appraised things. Everything was still there. He chided himself for actually holding out hope that she had stolen something. At least he could have been outraged, gone out to stalk the streets in search of her, had an excuse to go to Jonny's asking after her. But no, nothing of the sort.

Sitting in the recliner, he flipped on the tv. The morning talk shows were just giving way to the game shows. Turning the remote over and over in his hands, he vacillated between the twenty-four-hour news channel and a children's show. The news had a story running about how hundreds of area residents had been scammed by some guys posing as exterminators. Apparently they had sold people liquor bottles full of agricultural pesticides. The people, thinking that they were playing it smart by paying so little and spraying the stuff themselves, were now dropping like flies. The symptoms included nausea, dizziness and vomiting. He wondered if his landlord had sprayed his place before he moved in. He dismissed the thought, however, because his kitchen had a healthy supply of tiny cockroaches.

He flipped off of the news and settled down to an episode of Speed Racer, who, as the opening theme purported, was a demon on wheels. It went by predictably enough with Speed's little brother and the monkey hiding in the trunk and Speed having to race the evil-doers. Racer X swooped in to save everyone from some horrible fate or another and Pops chuckled.

Charlie poked at an ash filled pipe and got up to make coffee, turning the tv volume up enough to be heard from the kitchen. He leaned against the counter smoking and listening to the coffee maker sputter and gurgle as it went through its paces. He found a clean cup in the refrigerator and put two spoonfuls of sugar in it while he waited. Back in the living room, he locked the front door with its two chains and deadbolt and peered out through the peep hole. He could see up and down the street and nothing was going on, as usual. He sat and blew on his coffee as he stirred it noisily. The tv spewed nothing but commercials until he forgot what he had been watching and turned it off. Traffic blew by outside his door at an average rate of four cars per minute. He sipped at his coffee and looked at nothing. The four clocks in the room all agreed that the time was somewhere near eight-thirty in the morning. One of the neighbors, probably the man, stomped from the back of the house to the front door and paused. Charlie waited to hear the door open, but it never did. Finally, the dolt stomped off to some important matters in the back of the house. Charlie got up and turned the heater on to try to drown out the neighbor, and because the cold had begun to penetrate the joints of his toes. He stood fooling with the knobs of the heater for a while until he felt satisfied with the settings and returned to his chair.

He took a tentative breath to assess his health and found that he could take a more-or-less full breath, only hitching a few times. He looked up at his ceiling and worried about the danger of asbestos falling from it. After all, it was one of those styrofoam jobs with the squares hanging in a steel grid. Really a bad choice for such an old neighborhood, but then, the rest of the place wasn't exactly a candidate for Architectural Digest or Better Homes. . .

He suddenly couldn't let those squares sit up there any longer. He jumped up and stood balancing on the arm of the sofa. Stretching up, he pushed a square up and into the unknown void above. He simply had to see the beautiful wooden cathedral ceilings that the fool landlord had so stupidly hidden behind this modern atrocity of a ceiling. He peered into the dark gap and pushed a little further and got a shower of insulation material. The fuckers had put at least a foot of insulation on top of their pitiful ceiling!

He jumped down from the couch spitting and blinking away the horrible pink crap. Now he was convinced. This stuff had to be the problem. He immediately went to stand in the bathroom to see if his breathing improved. It seemed to be a little better, but he couldn't be quite sure, so he found his keys in his pants from the night before and opened the back door deadbolt. He then unlatched the other three locks and peeked out of the blinds before opening the door. He sat on the stairs and pulled the door closed behind him. Breathing still seemed a little better than in the living room. Gospel soul music was switched on in the house next to him, which was separated from his own by only a ten foot wide alley, if that much. The old woman next door began singing along with the music as she clanked pots and pans around in the sink.

Charlie retreated inside for a cigarette, carefully locking all the locks on the door. He saw that his answering machine had a message and he played it.

"Hello, Chuck. This is Wendy from Norill Temps with a job for you," the voice said. "The pay's four-fifty an hour and you need to be there at ten o'clock. The address is forty-five-oh-eight Tchoupitoulas and it's the Gershwitz-Franz furniture warehouse. Please call if you can't make it."

Charlie knew the place and didn't relish the thought of going back, but he pressed out his cigarette and began gathering up his steel-toes and his weight-lifter's belt. He made it out the door by twenty after nine and walked quickly to cover the three blocks to the ferry landing. The boat was running late, filled to capacity with cars. He ran the last thirty feet of the landing, breathlessly thanking the ferry worker who begrudgingly held the gate for an extra couple of seconds.

The ferry ride afforded a nice view of the city's skyline, but he sat stony-faced thinking that he was being watched by some of the other passengers. There was the old couple who stood motionless in front of him and kept staring at the city through the window, but Charlie could see their reflections in the window. They were watching him, not the city. They kept turning to each other and whispering, pointing, not at the city, christ no, at him. . . and every now and again, one of them would turn around as if to look over his head at something. Charlie knew that one, he knew that there was nothing behind him. He could see their eyes glancing over him on purpose and never coming to rest on anything, but seeming to just move over him one too many times for it to be a coincidence.

The city loomed large in the windows and the ferry lurched slightly as it docked. The horns blew and everyone in the little chair-filled room stood at once. They all tried to smooth it over, searching pockets, stooping to tie shoes, snuffing out cigarette butts, folding newspapers. . . but Charlie could see it happening. They all seemed to be mooing softly to themselves and occasionally looking up to check on him before returning to chewing their cud. The bovine image was almost too strong to bear, but somehow he managed to stand nonchalantly and flow with them off of the ferry.

Walking over countless steps in the landing, he measured his stride carefully so as to not draw undue attention to himself. He could still feel the hot stares on his back. He picked people out from far away and steeled himself to walk by them. Their disgust with him barely hidden on their faces. All of them somehow held their tongues and kept from murderously launching themselves at him.

He continued down and out of the ferry landing building to the foot of Canal St. Mentally checking his map, he walked a couple of blocks up and took a left toward his destination. He stopped and pretended to wait for a pay phone. He peered at the arm of the woman on the phone and thought he saw that it was now five minutes until ten o'clock. He slapped his forehead and moaned loudly for the benefit of anyone who might wonder why he suddenly left his place in line for the phone and took off in a run, his heels quickly burning in his heavy boots.

A crowd was gathered in front of the giant steel doors of Gerschwitz-Franz. Charlie almost kept walking for fear that there was some sort of trouble going on, but reminded himself where he was and lit a cigarette and waited. Before he took two drags, a gray-black man of about fifty was mumbling for a cigarette. Charlie recognized him as Joe, with whom he had moved furniture around an office building for two weeks once. He gave him a cigarette and sat down against a dirty brick pillar to wait for the bosses to show up. Joe Henry sat down next to him and they both managed to look almost as good as leftover macaroni.

Charlie only remembered one thing about Joe Henry from their two weeks together, moving furniture from one office to another, up and down stairs and freight elevators, all at the whims of the executives, who treated the movers like the slaves they were.

"How're them hemorrhoids, Joe?"

Joe Henry turned and looked at him for a long time before getting up and walking to another area of the crowd.

Charlie thought Joe'd perk right up on that one. After all, all he had heard about while they humped credenzas up and down all fifty floors of that office building had been Joe's asshole. That and how many women Joe had taken up to the twelfth floor storage area.

Joe sure did seem to still be walking like his ass was killing him. . .

Charlie lit another cigarette from the butt in his mouth just as the fat, white bosses drove up and opened the doors. They all slowly trickled into the warehouse and had their time cards signed and collected. Then, suddenly, everyone seemed to know exactly what to do and where to go. One of the bosses saw Charlie standing around and pointed to a hulking man who looked like a mountain of lead sculpted into a set of filthy overalls and told him, "You're with him."

Charlie tightened the velcro straps of his weight-lifter's belt and put on his gloves. Everyone was grabbing a dolly or a cart and Charlie squeezed in to get a strong dolly. He ended up with a good solid one with straps and a chipped yellow paint job. He rolled it along behind the giant man he had been told to follow and waited.

Everyone else was busily moving furniture from one place to the other. Now that the crew was in place, trucks started pulling up to the row of shipping doors. Men spit into their palms and hefted desks and dining room sets into dark semi tractor trailers under the watchful eyes of the bosses, who, sitting in their elevated office, with their tv blaring, smoking cigarettes, could see the entire floor of the warehouse through dirty windows.

Sweat darkened the men's' T-shirts and was dripping into their eyes within minutes. Fifty men, all negroes, humped the furniture around, grunting and wheezing. Charlie and his partner just sat at an empty gate.

"Shit, I'm glad we're not over there." Charlie said in a low tone to the big man who just grunted in reply.

No more than five minutes passed before a full sized eighteen-wheeler pulled up and began maneuvering into place at the loading dock behind them, beeping loudly. Charlie stood and gave the driver signals. He wasn't ready for what was in the truck. The big man opened it with a swoosh and there were huge boxes lined up to the very edge of the trailer. The driver walked briskly by them with some kind of chipper remark about how he had to get moving and how they'd better "git to it."

The big black man slammed his dolly underneath a twelve-foot tall box with a picture of a thick couch on it. He twirled it around expertly and rolled it out of the truck.

Charlie stepped up and worked his dolly underneath a box with a stencil of a recliner on the side. He had to jump up and over the top of the box to lean it back. The bag man just stood watching him, still holding up his sofa confidently. Once Charlie had the recliner tilted back the big man started walking rapidly off deep into the catacombs of the warehouse.

Rows upon rows of beds and couches and all manner of giant furniture were lined up to the distant walls. The big man strode easily with his couch as Charlie bumbled along trying to keep the recliner from toppling things as he passed by precariously stacked dining room tables and plates of glass. Finally, they arrived at the correct spot and the couch was off of the dolly in a second, quickly wedged into the ranks of other huge boxes. Charlie dumped his recliner, pushing it up against another box, and started back to the truck to await further instructions. He met the big man on the way back, who had two recliner boxes stacked on their sides strapped to his dolly.

"We unloading that whole truck?" he asked breathlessly.

"Yeah, an you bes git movin ifs you'll be wantin lunch."

"It all goes back there?"

"Yeah." he said, and pushed his load off into the warehouse.

Charlie hurried to get to the truck so as not to fall behind his partner. He managed to get two disassembled dining room tables onto his dolly and strapped securely before the big man was in sight. He rushed furiously to get to the storage area and on the way back, he met the big man a little bit closer to the truck than the last time. He continued to rush his trips until he and the big man had established a rhythm, always meeting in approximately the same place.

Slowly Charlie got more confident with his dolly and started loading larger and larger boxes. Soon he was carting two recliners at a time. He tried three, but a boss stopped him and made him only take two. The big man nodded approvingly at him on their next pass. He pushed hutches and tables and boxes of beanbags and mattresses and box-springs and secretary's desks and things he couldn't identify, even with the pictures right there on the box.

He and the big man took turns smoking Charlie's cigarettes outside, sitting next to the truck's big wheels. The furniture in the truck seemed like it would never end, but by the time his stomach started murmuring about food, it looked as if they'd have the thing unloaded before lunch. They slowed their pace and stretched it out perfectly so that they were squeezing the last box into the packed area at the back of the place just as one of the bosses yelled lunch.

Everyone got out quickly and walked in different directions to acquire lunch. Charlie spotted Joe and followed him to a small diner in the foot of one of the big office buildings. He stood in a long line and ordered a burger and fries to go. He got back with ten minutes to spare and wolfed down his meal while smoking a cigarette. When the bell rang, everyone disposed of his trash quickly and quietly moved back to work.

Charlie's sphincter tightened when he saw another full truck waiting at the dock and his giant partner wrestling with some difficulty with a heavy looking box. Charlie put his belt and gloves back on and retrieved his dolly from where he had hidden it before lunch. He sure as hell didn't want to have to deal with a wobbly-tired dolly for the rest of the day. The contents of this truck seemed to be mostly hutches and display cases. The hutches looked expensive and after examining the boxes, Charlie found that the average one cost in the neighborhood of four grand.

The driver of the truck was in more of a hurry than the first one and helped out some. He stayed in the trailer, pushing the huge boxes into position for Charlie and his friend. They were half-way into the truck and things seemed to be slipping along, almost in a groove, when Charlie tilted a large hutch, apparently with leaded glass doors and a safe built into the bottom, on his dolly. It tilted, and tilted, and fell back and over. Charlie caught it with his belly and spread his arms above him to try to catch the corners as the thing continued to crush down on him. In a flash, he could see the lawyers from Gershwitz-Franz slapping him with a bill for five thousand big ones and him having to pay it off for years with a twenty percent interest rate. He had stopped it from smashing down and breaking itself, but now it was threatening to crush him. The trucker just stood by and watched, afraid to incur any part of the debt about to be created in the back of his rig. The hutch finally settled down over Charlie, pinning him between the handles of his dolly. He just lay there waiting for the pain to come, but it didn't. That really got him worried. He couldn't budge the hutch and he couldn't move from under the dolly. His partner had, by this time, returned from rolling three or four of the very same hutches, no doubt. He and the trucker carefully lifted the hutch off of Charlie and seemed almost disappointed when Charlie wiggled out, apparently unscathed. A boss had seen the commotion and was already cutting open the box to inspect the damage to the hutch. Nothing seemed broken on the precious piece of furniture. He looked from Charlie to the behemoth and said "Come with me."

For the rest of the day Charlie worked with an old man whose hair had gone almost entirely white. The old man gave Charlie a box of markers ranging from black to a reddish-brown. Dining room chairs with ornately engraved legs and backs were placed in their area and the old man instructed Charlie in the fine art of scratch hiding. Every chair that came through did so because someone had found a scratch on it. He had to search carefully over each chair and color in any gouges or scrapes that he could find. They were then whisked off to be delivered with the rest of the set.

Charlie guiltily stole a glance at the unloading dock where he saw his big friend starting on another full eighteen wheeler, this time alone.

Viewpoint

Sitting in Charlie's darkened living room, the light from the street filtering in through the blinds, they passed it between them quietly, each inhaling deeply and professionally until the bomber of a joint was nothing more than a sticky tab of brown paper that would not light no matter how hard Charlie tried.
"Stop flicking that thing, man. You're giving me a headache." Rosa said, leaning back on the couch and nearly disappearing into her coat.
The window unit pumped heat into the room.
"Sorry." he said, putting the lighter down and scraping the resinated roach off of his thumb and onto the edge of the ash tray. The heater shifted gears and settled into a different tone. "Rosa," he continued, "I may be crazy, but I think all of this has happened before."
"Huh?" she said, almost asleep, her feet slowly making their way up onto the couch with the rest of her.
"I mean everything, everything that happens. Like elections and wars and death and, well, shit. . . just everything. . . Ya know?"
". . .hmmm, yeh. . . right. . ." she said through a sleepy haze.
"I mean the way we think of previous generations as backwards and uneducated, innocent, the whole nine yards. . . why should they be so innocent? Did our parents simply appear and POOF! there we were? No of course not. . ." He lit a cigarette as he spoke, pursing his lips, continuing to speak around the cigarette. "What. . .we. . .per. . What we perceive as just beginning to happen is really not just beginning to happen, it's just that we are only now beginning to perceive it. For instance, how long have people been sucking toes? Hmm? How long? You might think it'd be a relatively recent perversion, but I'd be willing to bet that hunch-backed, club carrying mongoloids were sucking toes ten thousand years ago. My point? Well my point is that people aren't as original as they like to think. . . People make a huge stink when there is a murder or a gang-rape or whatever, but what they don't seem to understand is that those things have been going on for so long that their outrage is misplaced. Benobo monkeys. Ever hear of them? They basically do nothing but hang from the trees and fuck all day. You should see the positions these things can achieve what with their prehensile tails and all. . . They have group sex, incest, anal sex. . . all of it right out in the open, right in plain view of the rest of the population, who if they aren't too busy fucking, often sit and watch while masturbating. Meanwhile, we, WE have laws against nudity, laws about who you can and cannot marry, what sex they have to be, exactly how far removed they must be from your family, etc. . . Who came up with these things? Us? Our parents? Their parents? Nope, this stuff has been going on for tens of thousands of years, since before we stood upright when our little rodent ancestors scurried around collecting nuts. . . But today we have law enforcement telling us that in response to recently growing problems, laws are needed such as laws against oral sex and exposure. . . I say that it's just a pretense to allow them to pull the noose tighter around our necks. These things are supposed to take care of themselves naturally. If an exposer keeps it up, he is eventually trounced. If the oral sex goes on, well, I still can't figure out what would be wrong with that, but what I mean is, these things should be left to nature. If someone exposes themselves to someone else and the person who is exposed upon, so to speak, does nothing about it, or doesn't have someone else do something about it, well then I guess someone got away with something naughty. Children are raised to hate and raised to follow their parent's example. Boys born to hunters would die for the right to have their guns. Why? Because they need them? Not likely in this day and age. They would die for them because their fathers felt that way. Why then, did their fathers feel that way? because their fathers felt that way, ad infinatum. Guns have never been an absolute necessity of life. The American Indians made it for many generations without them and did quite well, thank you, that is, until the Europeans showed up with cannons and rifles and bombs. . . Most every healthy young Indian who died for the next five hundred years was killed by a bullet. Why? Control. It's not necessarily bad to pass things down until it becomes almost a matter of course that the youngsters learn it. Lions all learn to hunt or they die. It's not a bad thing for them to pass down to their children, but humans have filled their children's heads with such garbage that it makes me sick. Is it just me," he asked the now soundly sleeping Rosa, "or do the same families seem to be the ones in control, generation, after generation. . . Kings and monarchies, presidencies, tribal chieftains, the whole gamut, there always seems to be that alpha-male thing going on like in those Jack London wolf novels. . . I grant that it's an entirely natural process, but it seems to me that we have pretty much rid ourselves of every other semblance of hierarchical bestiality, why not that one? We don't mate with our relatives because we know it'd foster regenerative traits, we research ways to make babies born without vital organs live long, empty and confused, unseeing, bitter lives, but we still have the same alpha-males making our decisions, governmental and economic. . . Why? Because by the time we are old enough to give a damn, the alpha male is firmly in place, his seed gestating and waiting to be placed onto the throne of power just as his father grows nearly weary enough for us to topple him. I hate to sound bitter, Rosie, but it seems like breaking that cycle, in any of its modes, not just political, is impossible. That barrier is thrown up everywhere. I go to the grocery and find the old man behind the counter, his son working in the stock room waiting for him to die so he can do some remodeling and really get the place going, when all that's really gonna happen is he'll pass it on to his kid. Where's a guy supposed to break in? What's to be done? All I've been left are two strong legs and this accursed mind. . ." He lit another cigarette, lost in thought. He had been sitting on the floor in front of the couch. His head leaning on Rosa's back. At least he thought it was her back, he couldn't be sure it wasn't a handbag in the giant pockets of her coat. Whatever it was, it was good and he could feel her breathing and smell her smell. He finished the cigarette and got up to get a blanket for her.

Big Night

Charlie knew fun and had tried to remain familiar with it over the years, but somehow it always seemed to elude him now, seeming to just slip around the corners of his awareness, growing more intangible as the days and months passed him by. Often, he went to places where others seemed to enjoy themselves in one way or another, but he usually came away with little more than an empty feeling and a smile that sat like a prosthesis, disgustingly plastic, on his face.
Winter was coming.
He let the thought hover in his mind as he lay listening to the muffled news broadcast that was seeping through the wall and had awakened him. Eyes still closed, he tried to understand the flow of the reporter's words, but he could only catch a few here and there. He got out of bed and, sniffling and snorting, he fished a set of clothes from the hamper and set out for the neighborhood bar.
The neighborhood was an old one and as such, had seen both good times and bad. Lately it seemed that the pendulum was on an upswing. People were opening coffee houses and news stands, corner groceries were chasing the bad elements from their storefronts, the old cathedral was playing Amazing Grace on its bells. Still, people crossed the streets from each other and only the very old gave greetings if they happened to pass close enough to do so. But still in all, it was a pretty nice neighborhood. It was almost three hundred years old and had been built when New Orleans was nothing more than a little place where European sailors could get whores, whiskey and slaves.
Jonny's bar was a dark little place. The door, like many in the area, had steel grating over the window and required a buzz from the bartender to open. Charlie pressed the buzzer and waited. A camera scrutinized him from above and he looked up at it blandly. The door clicked and buzzed and he pushed it.
"Hey, what's up, Chuck?"
"Chuuuuuuck. . ."
A nod from someone playing pool alone that implied an invitation.
A tilt of the head, a slight spreading of the hands and a crooked tsk-tsk smile, two slow shakes of the head and Charlie graciously refused the invitation.
Pool balls resumed their clicking, the pool table resumed it's clunking and Charlie sat on a stool at the long, antique cypress bar.
"Michelob.."
He paid quietly and looked up at the tv mounted in the corner, sipping the foam that slowly rose from the neck of the bottle. Music videos filled with unnaturally perfect, bikini-clad women and shirtless, muscular men with chiseled features paraded across the screen between important messages from the sponsors--mostly beer, trendy garment manufacturers and automobiles. Charlie looked around with a sigh and noticed that everyone else seemed to constantly be in the process of either turning toward or away from the television or trying in some way to consciously to ignore it.
Charlie pulled out a dollar and studiously folded it back and forth on the bar in front of him, stealing glances at the bartender. Soon enough, he had four quarters and was standing before the jukebox. He played two blues songs by a long-dead black man. The tv volume was turned down and the music loped along, smoothing everyone's mood. He ambled back to his stool.
The pool player caught Charlie's eye and nodded approvingly as he shot and missed a maroon seven ball in the corner pocket.
Charlie raised an eyebrow, squinted, nodded, took a sip of his beer and returned to his spot near the taps.
At the bar again, making a concerted effort to avoid the television, his gaze moved from liquor bottle to liquor bottle, examining, appraising, remembering. . . listening to the man on the jukebox holler his woes over driving rhythms and a railroad train harmonica player that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
The reverie was broken by the buzz at the door.
The bartender looked at a screen under the bar that Charlie could see in the mirror through all the bottles. He could also see what looked like a sawed-off shotgun lying on the shelf, next to the little screen. When it came to security, they didn't play around at Jonny's. Not since the murder of a nineteen yr. old kid right outside the front door the year before.
The door buzzed and opened.
Charlie and the others at the bar all looked mutely at the mirror behind the bar and watched her come in.
She wore a long coat with jeans and tennis shoes showing out of the bottom. Her black hair framed a face with a slight south-of-the-border cast to it. Bustling her coat off, she sat down on the last stool at the bar, next to Charlie.
Charlie, careful not to look at her, lit a cigarette and pushed the ashtray to his right, her being on his left. Before he had taken the first drag, she was lighting one too, so he moved the ashtray back to his left into the neutral space on the bar between the invisible lines of their staked out spots on the bar.
"Thank you" she said, looking not at his face, but at his shoulder, or hand, or somewhere. Charlie couldn't tell, watching her in the bar mirror, her appraising him unabashedly. She followed his gaze and turned to stare right at his reflection and their eyes met for a second, Charlie turning away first, then furtively looking back, her looking away, then back, both of them looking down, blushing.
"Charlie. . ." he said, sticking his cigarette into the slotted ashtray and extending a warm hand.
"Rosa," she said, "but my full name is Rosalita" she continued, letting a slight, probably second or third generation, accent peek through.
"It's a beautiful name" he said, feeling her soft, tan hand in his. She had given it to him palm down, like a princess, as if she were expecting him to genuflect and kiss her knuckles. He just squeezed it ever-so-lightly and nodded sheepishly at her.
He could feel the stares coming from the other men in the bar and he couldn't blame them. He had become the only entertainment in the bar, other than the music videos, which remained soundless even though the juke-box had long since quieted.
"Like a beer?" he asked.
"Okay."
"Michelob?"
"Lite please."
"Fine, fine. . ." he trailed off as he tried to imagine her midriff through the multiple shirts that girded her against the cold. The bartender was standing in front of him before he had his wallet out. "Michelob and a McLite" Charlie said, dropping a five on the bar.
The beers came and they sat and sipped them in silence. The tv volume returned and they smoked slowly as the beers disappeared.
He was down to one last frothy sip when she produced a pocket book from within the folds of her voluminous coat and ordered up two shots of whiskey and more beer.
They sat drinking like that for the space of an hour or more. Neither of them saying more than two or three words at a time, occasionally nodding at each other in response to something on the tv. The pool player turned in the balls and chalk, the tv switched to baseball, no one in the bar spoke, blue cigarette smoke hung in the air and rose lethargically to be gently sliced by the two slow moving ceiling fans that were suspended from the high ceilings.
"You smoke?" Charlie mumbled the question in the quiet bar.
Rosa looked at him, time seemed to slow and Charlie fidgeted in his chair, puffing at his cigarette. "Yes, but first let me go to the bathroom." She got up a little wobbly and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. He put out a hand to steady her and he let it rest on the small of her back. He could feel the taut, parallel muscles and the pert curve that led downward. She regained her balance and turned, her hair flying past his face. The smell of strawberries and something else and his hand was left holding only empty air.
Charlie looked around at the other patrons. They looked like wax statues and he found himself imagining them with dust and spider webs like he imagined an old abandoned wax museum might look. He slouched back to staring straight ahead at his beer, sitting on the bar. He tracked the statues in his peripheral vision for a while and could feel his eyes glazing after a minute. The bathroom door squealed and slammed loudly and Rosa was soon behind him.
"Hey Chuck, you all right?" she ran a cool hand over his back.
"Yeah," he said blinking away the trance. "Let's go burn."
"Let's go" she said shrugging on her coat and buttoning it up.
The door buzzed as they approached and Charlie pushed it open for Rosa with one hand and waved to the bartender behind him with the other.
Outside it was cold. As they walked, they both stuck their hands into their pockets, foregoing cigarettes until they reached warmth.
"So you got it with you?" she asked, looking up at Charlie.
"No, it's at my house." he said, noticing for the first time that she couldn't be over 5'1.
"Where's that?"
"Three-and-a-half more blocks."
"Oh."
They walked along in silence, her heels sometimes giving her problems on the irregular brick sidewalks. After the third stumble, Charlie offered a piggy-back ride. She politely declined, watching the changing sidewalk pass more and more quickly beneath her feet like a treadmill gone wild.

A Shitty Day Continues

I opened the door in a pair of old swim trunks and a stained, white T-shirt. In retrospect, sopping wet and stinking, I mustn't have made a very good impression.
The young couple at the door were very nice. They explained that they were looking for a friend of theirs who hadn't been seen in a while. Apparently, he had lived in my apartment and they thought he still lived there. I could imagine their surprise when the door opened on the scene in the living room, not to mention my condition.
They politely apologized for intruding and disappeared around the corner.
Two hours later, waiting for Earl and charging my telephone battery, I found a cop at my front door.
He handcuffed me, made me kneel, and pushed my face down to the floor.
His safety assured, he proceeded to question me.
"What do you know about Carmen LaTrobe?", he demanded.
"Nothing", I replied.
"So, how long have you lived here?", he asked almost conversationally.
"Two months."
"Who did you rent this apartment from?"
"The apartment people downstairs."
"W H O!!!!?" He yelled so loudly that he spit and his face turned red. From my vantage point I could see that he might even have had an erection.
"I don't know the old lady's name. She should be down there right now", I said as calmly as I could.
"We'll see", he said ominously and stalked out of the apartment.
So there I lay. Hog-tied on my sopping living room floor.
I tried at the cuffs. It hurt to change the rotation of my wrists in the least. I resigned myself to lay there in the toilet water.
The day had started out so pleasantly and now here I was. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. Just to be safe, I made a mental note to never wear glasses while shitting.
I managed to crawl like a caterpillar myself over to the couch. I was just about up onto it's heavenly, dry surface when the cop came splashing back in with the old lady.
"Get back on the fucking floor!!", he screamed in his way.
I assumed the butt-fuck position and waited.
He pranced around me like a drill sergeant inspecting the stance of a new recruit at attention.
I remained perfectly still.
The old lady just gaped at the apartment.
"She says she doesn't know who the hell you are and has stated to me that you are not currently a tenant here", he said, pointing at the stooped figure of my landlady in the doorway.
"What do you have to say to that?"
They exchanged a knowing glance and then both stared down at me.
"So, um, am I under arrest?", I stammered.
At this point, the officer kicked me in the side, hard, then he went on a delirious rant about justice and the weak willed being amongst us, or something along those lines. Sweaty and winded after his speech, he picked me up by the cuffs and yanked me along all the way to his squad car.


In the cell I sat talking to a self-professed career mugger. He told me how he made an easy living mugging people. He'd travel all around the country; city to city, state to state. He'd go all around the city mugging people at night. Taking buses and sometimes cabs after particularly good takes. By day he lived the good life playing the tourist wherever he went. He never had to injure anyone, he said, and he always tried to drop the stuff other than money (like lipstick, wallets, etc) near by and therefore, possibly locatable.
He was full of reasons why he wasn't a bad guy. I just sat and smoked and listened to him.

Lafayette's Own David Egan

There really isn't anything else to say through the melancholy tears:

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Tips On Tubing:

"When the water's shallow, be prepared for penetration by submerged roots. Clench tightly. The first time I encountered this, I almost started lisping."

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