Why do I find you, the two of you — young, beautiful, healthy, vibrant — sitting in the dark room next to the bathroom on your lunch break? It’s Sunday. It’s sunny. There is a world going on right outside — Clement Street, right across from you, is alive! Dim Sum! Pork Buns! Steaming coffee! Slobbery dogs! The unfettered screams of children! Drowsy Elm tree’s languid arms eclipsing the sun! The last tendrils of January, slipping away, never to be seen again this year…
I just go in to use the bathroom. I have to pass by you, the two of you — rich black hair and nimble shoulders — to open up the door to the buzzing neon, the stale ammonia, the crisp brown paper towels. I feel my lungs shrivel just passing through, holding my breath, suspended, until I can again collapse into the arms of the sun.
But you, the two of you — porcelin, sculptural, colors now softening — remain docile and content, TV-watching in subdued bliss. There is no desperation. No sense of regret or disappointment, as I might project upon you. Just simple acceptance of the moment.
I’m on my way out, pick up my waxy plastic bag with Wal-borne™ inside, purchased desperately in a codeine haze in an attempt to drown out this month-long cold, and turn–
pause for a moment. I want to ask you How. I want to inquire, “um, ladies? You — the two of you, Walgreens employees on Arguello — how did you choose here? How do you decide a moment? To conclude with such confidence yes. Here, now is where I choose to be. How do you quell dissatisfaction?
but I turn back, begin to head out, and catch one of you smiling in my periphery.
1 response so far ↓
1 Jeff // Feb 1, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Of all the things I miss about working on Clement, the near-constant availability of pork buns is what I miss the most. And, to a somewhat lesser extent, the slobbery dogs.
Now it’s a few blocks up to Beale so I can score some decidedly unslobbery hot dogs at the appropriately-named “What’s Up Dog,” which I think is probably across the street from the ATMs owned by “What’s Happening Money.”
Speaking of pizza (wait, what?), apparently the widely-accepted abbreviated form, “Za,” is now an acceptable word in Scrabble. Is anyone keeping track of how many signs of the apocalypse have surfaced so far this year?
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