Near the end of a walkway were fourteen counted garbage bags. Black and bloated they held skeletal remains. Expired clothing, a Sunday brunch, and the drained indifference of an IPOD. Surrounding these museum pieces, like sinew, were the baked-on grease and food packaging. Sammy was finished with his duty for another week.
Friday morning’s rituals fast arriving. Sam brought with him two small coffees from Saver’s Donuts. One for him, and the other, his trusty cook, Dalilah. Lil was named everything from friend to card player in their fourteen –yr. relationship. Rarely, if ever, wife.
The sun burst on the alcoves of the antiquated rooming houses and apartments. Its rays hitting and missing curbs of nearby pedestrian traffic. The sight, an ingenious rhythm, complimenting and hurting branches and clotheslines.
Back at 405, Lil spelled a-g-o-r-a-p-ho-b-i-c for her guide crossword. She then read a comic featuring a great ape with the caption:” Are you living?”
“They’re out there again. They better have the money. Three weeks late. Happens every two months. It’s not great.”
Sammy had been ‘the super’ for a decade. He had been in 8 fist fights, 30 shouting matches, and 20 police calls. It was not a safe building. There were bars on the outside of the windows. While some passer-bys may refer to it as a jail more honest neighbors called it Murder Incorporated
Tenants had been badly injured through faulty wiring and breakers that elapsed. They had been harassed and assaulted by other’s guests, and even ladies of the night, and real beggars.
Sometimes they let their children beg for groceries, in-line, at the store. Andrea, apt.7, was planning to go to group. She had invited Lil to yoga, meditation and a sexual abuse survivor’s retreat. They had in the dingy stairwell, recessed hallway and makeshift lobby Talked. Sam was not a big fan of it. And more than that half a dozen well intentioned notes and text messages had never met Lil’s attention.
Andrea, though not a feminist, liked woman to feel empowered and felt Lil needed to open up. She did tell her, over modest white wine, an attack she had had in her early 20s. She had not told about the pregnancy, or further complication- a late stage abortion.
This was before the days of Sam, and when she was a part-time college student. Lil had thought of it, almost, as a foreign object (the penis). It seemed to have that little intent in her being. Boy, did he shove that thing into her four walls. Too frozen to yell for help or STOP even; he finally left and she cried for 6 days. She cleaned herself thoroughly, but he had been there awhile, and the sperm had penetrated her lithe body.
Out on the balcony she watched the outline of her middle-age stomach lose hygiene like a cloud passing. She had not really scrubbed her naval.
In Stormy Creek, her mom, was not someone to confide in. Herself, abused by mother’s boyfriends, Libby had lost herself in smut with her husband. Blue Movies they were called and she had played more bit parts of porn than a Hollywood extra. Now life with her second husband surrounded dinner and work. & little else. Certainly not the aging daughter and her alcoholic hubby.
Libby spent time painting her garden with acrylics from the $ store. She had painted a village: a school, church, on her rock garden. She painted two pretend koi ponds with two imitation iguanas hovering, like gargoyles above. This was her fertile ground. She would through all of the straining of a make-believe time, never know of her daughter’s attacker. Libby’s husband Rob called from work on his break and they talked about the hardwood flooring in the living room for 36 minutes. It was the longest they had spoken in 4 months.
At shipping & handling, Floyd’s, the calendar with the bikini digressed in mid-air with warnings of lay-offs. No one was safe. The older crowd in particular. The younger crowd were much easier to control.
“Alone time.” Robbie thought to himself. He would again take up SLR photography, library genealogy and cribbage night. “Not so bad.” he chuckled as he sent a M6T1O6 from Stoney Creek, Ontario to St. Jeans, Newfoundland.
Near the outskirts of the old Hasidic end of Kensington Market two gentiles walked off the warm vapours of draft beer. Steven had left a $5.00 tip on a $10.00 order and Sarah felt like a winner. He told her to take the stairs. A rusted key turned a brass lock and room 18 was now made available. They had known each other for 2 hours. He thought she was a prostitute, and without warning, she thought he was a Toronto tourist and that it was beginner sex with no ties.
The hotel stale with gold light. A comforter as unbecoming as his folded jacket, she thought. He kissed her. It was nice. He didn’t touch her clothing at all, instead settling i9n on his own hard-on and lack of leg wear. Sarah could hear the small fridge in the corner, as his mouth pressed harder against hers. She tried to back up-“Come here.” He did something strange kind of behind her; he nestled her throat with a forearm. The bed thumped- he took a shower. She had left…to a hospital.
At the corner of Mount Sanai she read a 4-yr.old New Yorker short story. The beeps of monitors kept her retinas engaged. Her back was numb with panic. The marks on her neck looked worse, and it was difficult swallowing. Ahead of her by 3 hours was an elderly man (hallway medicine) with his son who fed him soup from a nearby canteen. A mother with a crying infant was 6 ft. behind and 10 inches above, running, was the stock index of the nightly news.
Someone’s making money, she thought. Two flights down at The Toasted Loonie, a woman fought with an intruder. Not a man in a balaclava or someone who had pried a closed window but a sort of stranger, she had known for over a year. He was watching the Cartoon Channel and they had just finished a chunk of hash. Carol sang along to the Marineland commercial jingle. Angelo smiled. “What would you do if I said Christmas was early?” She shook her head and saw her scabbed ankle and nicotine-stained jean jacket fall. He had a gun.
“nup.nup.nump.nump.” Said Ol’ Charles the street cat. Back from some fresh giveaways at Yin’s Emporium. Coconut Bun- a favorite. He had bin on the street for half-a-dozen years, and was no. 5 in regard to cred. All boys with balls. And a caged incense for the girls. He had 29 kittens, 3 adopted. Life in his semi-domesticated throngs was for the most part a full stretch in the noon sun. Once in awhile he was petted by a hustler or a prostitute, someone he could trust with a mortgage.
Today he had bigger things on his mind. A franchise was moving in. Plop center on the street. Between an Italian take-out and a Middle Eastern café. Toppob coffee was American, a chain and unwanted in the hood. He had never seen so much silver. (Stainless steel) A lot of alphabet (signs) and grave markers (stools). Their spot-on pop music filled the alleyways. Eclectic bass mirrored trays of bite-size millennial morsels.
On the other side of the highway Pierre and Brittany discussed the paternity suit. Twenty years passed tense and Brittany decided to forgive. They showed pics of children & grandchildren until the available seating at the Gym Juice Bar got too busy. Each left through a separate door and parking lot.
In the rear-view, Brit glances a profile:“It was a job and I made myself available to it.”, she sobs.
At the edge of her eye light a spider’s web spins through her drive time. “I survived, is the other side of the argument.”
She hugs the wheel.“I have a marriage and children and I’m sorting out the details”, she stutters. A sharp right.
“We just got a new deck, and paid off a loan…the abuse is still there, this time with the in-laws.”
Her eyes and hands move toward the glove box. “But there are silent protests, boundaries and time-outs.”
Exhausted she stops for gas and opens the trunk. INCOME TAX 2019
Brit says shuffling papers “Wow, how different this return will be.” BIG COUNTY ISLAND 15
She had never really given-maybe a few bucks at charity bingo or a small donation of a lost cause. The horn!
But she had not put herself out there, the way she had, sexually, as a trade worker.
Stoneybrook 10-3 “Chicken salad.” It’s not like you get famous or paid or anything. It’s for suckers.” P.T.A. meetings or running on behalf of breast cancer was, well, she felt far beneath her.
As she shut her light blue grey interior door, she followed dirt roads with the odd family car or pick-up. Like every other year for ten years, they are renting a cottage-junior partners & accountants-paid upfront. She had treated herself to a new designer robe. Parks.
Inside they had all unpacked. She snapped a few selfies. This time not only were the geese present but also rabbits. For hours they ate, caroused and talked dirty until the wee hours. In the dawn’s shade Brittany Noble passed wind in the outhouse and made a fist to the sky. She remembered a date from a rock concert. “Look around.” He had said. “It’s not like Hollywood.”
With cream on her brow and new tan lines, Brit stroked her way through long grass back to the cabin and the fish they had killed four hours earlier. Her roommate, Paris, had taken the top bunk. She had thought, climbing in, of her son and his shift work. He had moved in with strangers in the city. An ad at the laundromat. FIRST MONTH’S RENT. She shook her flashlight once at a fog approaching. Through evergreen she spotted the tame dog of a camper. Her eyes, now, anxious for her husband’s bedside manners. He had taped a quote of Gandhi’s: When there is love there is life onto her agenda. She lay between it and Sudoku, aging and thi9nking of her thinning hair and that her father had wanted to see the Grand Canyon before he died.
“One more screw and she’s done.” said Ralph, the landlord. “Fuck I can almost smell the baby formula. “Sam interjected “Don’t blame yourself. We warned them. They had four chances to respond and pay. If she’s pregnant, that’s her lie. They’re out tomorrow.”
“The Sherriff should be by in an hour, to tape their pretty diploma to the door.” said the Wilson’s. “We won’t be seeing his suit or her hair anymore on the street.” added the Frank’s. They all had a beer. Some of them laughed.
