Alexandria Dobkowski's Open Salon Blog

A Call From the Darkness

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 23:09:12 -0400

It was winter in Maine and dark early. Clear still in my memory, all the landmarks of the house I grew up in: vast rows of tall windows, the sheen on cedar planks gleaming under track lighting, a plethora of houseplants hugging the corners, all the green and gold making for a warm and inviting atmosphere that belied the inhabitants of this address.

In the middle of it all was a pine kitchen table, more long wooden boards built and finished with care by my grandfather. His son, my father, was taking up one of the chairs against the wall, next to the front door, so that he appeared as a large black knot in a sea of gold. He was shaking. But that came after.

Dinnertime was often volatile. Yet I was beginning to dare a great deal more with my opinions, standing my ground; feeling perhaps that having so little to lose I may as well enjoy using my wits when I could. My mother frequently stayed out of political discussions, but on this particular evening the banter took a different turn. It began when my father, frustrated with some smugness of mine, responded with a physical threat. I flinched, half expecting him to immediately knock me out of my chair. My mother huffed impatiently.

“Oh, stop it.”

Stunned by her sharp tone, my father just stared at her. She was smirking now.

“Whaddya think you’re some kind of hero, smacking your kid because you can’t win an argument? What a fucking dope. As if it’s the kid’s fault: you couldn’t win a debate with a fucking paper bag. Why don’t you just do us all a favor and just die already?”

And with that, my mother just looked away from my dad, didn’t look at me, wasn’t looking at anything as far as I could tell but the pale green refrigerator in the kitchen. She was utterly motionless except for her left foot, which wagged back and forth with an intensity that was the only indication she was at all angered by my dad’s behavior. He was, as I said, a huge knot, shoved by my mother’s words against the wall, straight-backed and rigid, his mind working over her words like a cow chews its food. Suddenly, as if finally arriving at their meaning, my father launched himself out of the chair and stumbled into his bedroom. A man as large as my father can cross a room quickly but not without incident, and there were several crashes and curses as drawers were opened and emptied.

I was terrified. To me, John’s anger could mean anything, and I must have been especially wide-eyed as I crept next to my mom, because she responded to me with an uncharacteristic reassurance.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, just forget about it. He’s just being melodramatic. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

Just then, John came storming back to the kitchen table, screaming.

“Everything is NOT fine! You want me fucking dead? Fine! You got your wish! Here you go! Is that what you want? Huh? Is it?!”

John held out a plastic white plate, modern and flat, like the kind sold in Scandinavian housewares markets. It was piled with an assortment of red and white pharmaceuticals. He started grabbing small handfuls of pills and swallowing them, looking at my mother all the while. She neither moved nor changed her expression, just sat there, stone faced.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?”

He was now bawling. The emphasis was on the “is” as if he had only now come to this conclusion. I was standing behind my mother, watching in breathless horror, sure only that this particular gambit was original to my experience.

“I’m not going to answer such a stupid question.”

All of us sat there frozen, my mother with an imperial force behind her antipathy; I following her lead by saying nothing but with a million thoughts rushing through my mind: what if he died, what if he didn’t, was he really sad or was he just faking it, will things be even worse later…and so on. My father, although still vibrating with shame and rage, was almost triumphant when he finished his flat plate of pills, like a child who was getting the best of his elders. Nothing happened for awhile, and then he started to droop in his chair. When he was asleep, and clearly alive, as he was audibly snoring; my mom’s foot stopped shaking back and forth and she got up from her chair. As if she had seen the ordeal a thousand times before, she mechanically walked over to the phone and called an ambulance, providing all the relevant details in a flat voice. She went into the bedroom, put all the medicine bottles into plastic bags, and put them on my father’s chest.

My mother took me by the hand and said we were going on a little drive to the store. She left the front door slightly ajar, and she didn’t say anything on the way there. As usual she acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. It was hard not to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing. When we got back to the house, the doors were closed, my father was gone, and the only evidence that dinner had not progressed apace was the minor plasticine detritus left behind by the paramedics.

My dad did not return the next day or the following evening, a development that caused me so much relief that I was afraid to comment on it. My mother and I had a miniature vacation of sorts, one that would ultimately continue for some time.

Later that week, we visited him in the psychiatric unit of the hospital. My mom had been asked to bring him some toiletries and she had grudgingly acquiesced. I watched the other patients shuffle around and roll their eyes while my parents quarreled in the hallway. The uncertainty of those disarranged minds was nearly as scary to me as what had brought me there. My father was sedated and not speaking very coherently, and my mother didn’t seem to have much patience for it. She told him he’d be better off staying there since she wasn’t going to deal with his nonsense and walked off grimly as I trotted to catch up. When I asked what was going on, she said that it had just been a call for help. At the time, I assumed she meant her own phone call to the medics, not my father’s attempted suicide itself.

Not too many years later, after my mother had left for good, my dad would wield the threat of institutionalizing me to get me to do all kinds of things. It was that place, those shambling hospitalized wrecks that would come to mind as a motivating, but easily overblown, source of terror.

Dem On Dem Anger

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:09:35 -0400

This past Saturday, my friend Jesus and I had been wandering along Buffalo Bayou in Houston, having a chat, when we decided to stop in for a beer at La Carafe, ostensibly the oldest bar in the area.

Downtown Houston on a Saturday afternoon, even an unseasonably cool one like this past Saturday, resembles a post-apocalyptical fantasy. Giant skyscrapers loom and the infrastructure of bustling industry is everywhere, but the streets are deserted save for a few hardy souls. There were more people in the bar than on the streets, and even then it was not crowded by any means. As we walked in, a row of regulars squinted at us but said nothing as we ordered our beers (Shiner for Jesus, Lone Star for me).

La Carafe is the bane of electricians and fire inspectors. The space inside is dim and claustrophobic, and its exposed brick walls sport dust motes that finished floating a hundred years ago. Every time I’ve been to this quaint dive, I have been served by a different bartender, each as stoic as the next.

On this fine September day, a collection of the ugly Democrats I’ve been arguing for months don’t actually exist were at the bar. To the right of me sat a pair of gentlemen, one parodying Newt Gingrich with silver hair and a bad tie, and the other looking like his past professions included being a roadie for the Eagles. To their right were seated an interesting couple: a woman with blond hair pulled back in what is known in the UK as a Dagenham facelift, and a man who seemed beat down by her company.

They were discussing the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, or as they were calling her: Sarah Barracuda (okay, that’s kind of funny. But stop, seriously, I’m trying to make a point here).

The silver-haired personification of the word bloviate bellowed, “Well, the Republicans have just lost their damn minds. They’ve lost it!”

His weasel-faced friend agreed. “She’s just not qualified. She isn’t. I mean, how many people live in Alaska?”

“Less than a million.”

“That’s the same size as Austin!” He sounded indignant, as if Austin was a stain on the pride of Texas. Many people in Houston speak this way.

“Alaska’s pretty big in size, though.”

“True, true. It’s almost as big as Texas.”

“Bigger.”

This embarrassed them and they changed the subject. I’d wager even money that this was a significant source of their annoyance with Sarah Palin, that she had the audacity to live in a state more than twice the size of Texas.

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she has all those brats: it’s ridiculous.”

“Brats” and “ridiculous” were emphasized with contempt. This is the problem with dismissing Palin out of hand. It makes otherwise sane Democrats, or at least partially sane Democrats like myself, want to fight.

At the end of the bar, Dagenham facelift was dabbing her male companion’s neck with a moist towelette. He was cringing like a cat who despises what is happening but knows he cannot escape. She was shaking her head vigorously.

“Don’t get me started on Sarah Palin.” Her voice was like a fistful of keys being dragged across a tin roof.

“You mean Sarah Barracuda.”

“What?”

“We’ve been calling her Sarah Barracuda.”

“Ugh, she’s disgusting. You know what happens? When McCain finally has a heart attack? She’s going to be the one in charge. Can you believe it? Her?!”

Maureen, is that you? Honestly, if using a feminine pronoun is all you need to do to imply a candidate’s worthlessness, then you’re a sexist. Whether through fate or someone else’s passive aggression, the gravelly voice of Bob Dylan singing “Sara” emanated from the bar’s jukebox.

Dagenham Dowd’s agitation increased the volume of her broken-metal voice, “Oh, who put that song on? I hate that song. I hate the name Sarah. It’s a stupid name. I used to know a Sarah, but I hate that name now.”

Wait, what?

I had been wondering what this crowd would do if I smashed my beer bottle against the bar and snarled, “Just talk about the damn issues, you little fuckers,” but now I was just confused. She hates the Bob Dylan song and her friend’s name because of…Palin? Or did she dislike Dylan’s sad serenade of his estranged wife before this presidential race?

“So what about you?”

Weasel-face was asking the bartender, presumably because the bartender was black. Fortunately, bartenders are, despite their appearance, all of a single race with origins in Switzerland.

“It’s been interesting.”

Stymied, the hooplehead Dems kept debating amongst themselves. Palin’s appearance, child-rearing habits, and whether her former occupations included prostitution. It was like being on Open Salon, but stupider. I began to think about Italy’s La Cicciolina about whom Umberto Eco, one of my favorite authors, said this: "Immorality for immorality; we've seen worse."

Of course, if we had our own Cicciolina, she would not resemble Sarah Palin the Puritan. She would support sex ed in schools, environmental protection (including safe green energy), human and animal rights, and ending hunger and poverty.

Those are the issues. Not Palin’s gender, family history, or clothing. My friend and I went outside to enjoy our beers in the sun, leaving our compatriots inside in the dark.

Women, Heart Attacks, and My Aunt Joan

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 22:09:08 -0400

“Thank goodness he’s gone and finally out of my hair.”

She pictures him, briefly, with his friends: out fishing in the sun, without a thought in the world for her. Far from sadness or resignation at this, she feels freedom and a measure of joy. For the first time in weeks she relaxes enough to become aware of the ache in her upper shoulders. She reaches up, rubs that tight triangle of flesh, decides the gesture is pointless, and opts instead to think about all the chores she wants to complete before he gets back. The possibility of a clean house and neatly stacked piles of clean laundry is something that usually energizes her as his persistent but well-meaning interference often leaves their apartment in something of a disarray. Today, however, she’s unexpectedly tired, as if she could sleep for days, tired from the immensity of a half-century of life, by the weight of the angry yoke across her shoulders.

My Aunt Joan, Joan of the Bronx, walks like an old woman to the kitchen, although she is not that old. In her own kitchen, a woman alone, she brews a pot of coffee, because she is god-awful tired. The smell of coffee fills the apartment, and she leans on the little countertop bar, looking into the living room. Finally she can take the fatigue no more and postpones the long list of all her chores.

“I’ll just have myself a catnap on the sofa, and if one or two things don’t get done, well, I’ll just have to leave it alone.”

A day later, her husband returns. The apartment smells like coffee, and Joan is lying on the sofa. When he bends to wake her, he finds that she is dead.

At the funeral, Joan’s husband says to one of her surviving sisters, “Whatsa matter witchu O’Keefes? Yehs sure die awfully early.”

Notwithstanding that he was a) distraught and b) an insensitive pig, he did have a point, which I can explain.

Joan died of a heart attack and probably didn’t have to, even though heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States. If she had called for help because she recognized the signs, early treatment could easily have saved her. A neighbor who performed CPR could have saved her.

Even so, to pass away on your own sofa amid the lingering scent of coffee isn’t the worst way to go. Slán Go Fóill, Joan.

My OS Life

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:09:36 -0400

The sun in Texas does not so much set as wander off for a few moments, maybe, leaving a full blazing heat radiating off every imaginable surface. In Texas, at dusk, the flowers are hot. It is another day, because for me, a day does not begin when I open my eyes to the sound of the incessant beeping of my phone. I never learn, really—I always leave my phone in some distant location so that it is impossible to find it without stumbling my sleep deprived self over a toy and cracking my head on a doorframe. I find my phone, turn off the alarm, and get the kiddo ready for school. When I return from walking her there, I guzzle the coffee I made the day before. Locally produced, sustainable Ruta Maya coffee, ruined for the most part by sitting out because I can’t drink a whole pot of coffee at once. It is okay if I add ice, and my Silk creamer.

Throughout the morning I edit financial transcripts (an occupation that is more boring than it sounds) and write. I steal moments to read Open Salon (does anyone else think it is weird that the tagline is you make the headlines when, actually, the OS editors do?) and leave as many comments as I can. Sometimes I cannot think of anything to say, and wish I could leave more than one thumbs up.

The day churns on, and I work as little as possible. Oh, look, the cat sees something outside. Is it a lizard? No, only a squirrel, cheeching indignantly at the movement of cat and human behind glass. The phone rings. I navigate the spiral of preferences that will lead me to answer it (less work) or wait for the machine to greet the caller with its robot voice (less contact with the outside world).

In the late afternoon I pick up the kid, feed the kid (a frustrating process that takes at least an hour and in which some tears are inevitably shed, not all of them hers), clean the kitchen while she has a half-hour of TV time, get her in the bath, help her brush her hair, have tickle fights, cajole her into bed, read stories (working on Little House in the Big Woods now), bring her water, turn on the nightlight, smother her with kisses, and say my last good-night of the evening. And then one more time after that.

Now it is dusk, and my day begins.

I walk up to the building. I’m wearing my long leather coat with a fur ruff that I bought at a consignment shop in Maine for 35 dollars; because to me, Chicago is cold, even in the summer. When I step inside, I take it off and hang it on the rack in the corner before making my way to the bar. The television in the corner is tuned to CNN, with the sound down and the captions on. A group is gathered at the bar beneath the TV, watching intently. There’s Liz and Rob, and Chris, and Mary and Elizabeth. Red, lalucas, mishima and tequila are sitting at the table closest to that end of the bar, and are also held in rapt attention by the news. Chris Matthew’s hair flaps as he gesticulates through a complicated sexist dismissal of Sarah Palin. The entire group cheers and takes a drink in concert. I don’t say anything as I sit, but I catch squirrel’s eye and he nods. A moment later, a stiff Jameson and ginger is sitting in front of me, the sheen of the slick ice reflecting amber fire.

I look across the restaurant, recognizing several faces. Heather and Michael are canoodling in a corner. A larger table is occupied by haggis, his kilt fanning across his legs as he leans back on his chair, Crabby, neil, Sandra, and Jim. They are listening to the richly inflected voice of monsieur, who is sitting at the head of the table reciting sixteenth-century poetry. Another 6-top is occupied by Donna, LT, Jon, leigh, and the Biblios. There is a stack of books in the middle of the table, and everyone laughs as Jon signs an amusing anecdote from one of his reads. Procopious and Skeptic are debating theological points with RL Preacher, who is beaming with happiness. Stellaa, Barry, Colombo and PF are being served their entrees and all eyes are glistening with anticipation. The smell of roasted meat, tenderly spiced vegetable and warm fresh bread spilling from baskets reaches me within a moment, and I inhale deeply. Against the wall sits pontificatrix, alone. She is taking notes. A few seats down from me at the bar, Joan is lifting a glass of red wine to her lips. I wave at her and ask where Kerry is.

“Oh.” She looks around disconcertedly. She puts her hand up to her mouth and whispers loudly, “He’s using squirrel’s bathroom.” Upon hearing his name, squirrel looks up and grimaces. Joan smiles sheepishly at squirrel, and raises her thumb. He rolls his eyes, but pours more wine into her glass.

A faceless man in a grey shirt is sitting next to me. Breaking a number of physical laws and a few moral ones, he whips out an iPhone and begins to opine, crudely and at length, about a chink bitch he did doggy-style while watching Bill O’Reilly interview Dick Cheney.

I make eye contact with squirrel. He nods, and approaches the gentleman. “Sir,” he says calmly, “this is a private party and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The man’s blank face reddens with rage, then begins to evaporate. “You Open Salon snooobs!” A last poof and some dust settles on the floor in front of the barstool, but he is gone.

“Well look who it is,” squirrel says drily, but not without some satisfaction.

I turn to the open door, and the wind swirling in through it, and immediately recognize Matt’s impish grin and impossibly warm eyes. I return his smile, and glance at the now-empty barstool next to me. He walks over and sits.

“Glad you made it out.”

“Glad to see you here,” he responds.

Another cheer is released from beneath CNN’s blinking transmission. Glasses are raised. The many conversations continue within this warm and lively shelter.

And no one, in the entire place, uses a coupon.

Memphis, 1994

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 11:09:35 -0400

While digging through a plastic storage box in my garage, I came across this fragment of a poorly-executed comic I drew many years ago, when I first arrived in Memphis:

Court Street, Memphis, Tennessee. Who knew there were twenty Court Streets, each one as derelict as the next? I wandered through each neighborhood, trying to look at numbers and not broken glass or other passing faces, all of whom seemed to be searching out my uncertainty. Finally, there it was: a U-shaped, two-story building, just one more lump of tan and gray concrete in a vast pool of tan and gray concrete at the edge of the Medical district of Memphis. The landlady occupied an apartment on the second floor. I knocked.

“Ya?”

She was short, as gray as her surroundings, with a thick German accent. She eyed me suspiciously.

“Here about the apartment?”

“Two-fifty, first of each month. Hundred dollar deposit. Separate check. You vant furnish?”

I was fumbling with my checkbook.

“Huh?”

“Furnish, furnish. It extra.”

She thrust her hands out behind her to indicate her own dingy furniture. My mental calculations took in the additional fee, a relatively high nausea factor, and the probability of finding something decent from a local Goodwill.

“Oh, oh—no, thanks.”

I wrote my two checks and handed them to her. She stared at them as if she wanted to bite them like an old coin. Then she folded the checks neatly, one at a time, and put them in her front shirt pocket. She stared at me, unflinchingly, with pale blue eyes held by fingers of wrinkles.

“I get you key.”

She disappeared, rummaging around in a back room, while I stood and waited, looking at the dark living area with its mustard colored sofa and plaid chair, a collection of newspapers and small glass bowls. Everything was at once orderly and drenched with grime. She began to shout while she moved boxes to reach some previously inaccessible location. She came out holding a small ring of keys, walking with a slight stoop and yet looking up at me with a cocked head, which gave her the appearance of a cautious bird.

“You on first floor. Your check no good, you no move in. You not pay, you move out. Got that?”

“I understand.”

“Good. It not fancy place, but people look out for each other here, Miss Dobkowski.”

She pronounced it “Doob-kowf-ski”. She looked at me again with her penetrating avian glare. I smiled at her, and nodded, but I wanted to salute.

The next day there was a knock on my door: tonk, tonk, tonk. Out the big bay window with a view of the desolate courtyard I saw a swath of brightly colored fabric, but not much more. I opened the door to greet a friendly black lady.

“Well now. Look atchu. Nana just knew there were new people, and here you is. Jus moved in. Shoulduv brung a fruit basket! Are you settlin in alright?”

I swung my door open wider and smiled.

“As you see.”

“Oooh, child! Are you sleeping on the floor?”

“Beats trying to sleep on the ceiling.”

“Oh, hush. Sleeping on the floor, nothing in the kitchen, skinny little thing—you on the run or something? Naw, naw, don tell me. You all right, I can see that. I’m Nana, everyone here knows me. I live over on the second floor in two-one-eight, right across the way. This weekend I’m fittina make some spaghetti an steaks. Everyone is welcome. You like spaghetti an steak?”

I nodded. Spaghetti and steak?

“Jus come on by, and you’ll get yourself a plate.”

I looked over my shoulder at my kitchen. It was as bare as the rest of the apartment. Nana shook her head, as if wondering how the rest of the world went on without her at its door.

“Hey, thanks. It was nice to meet you.”

“Two-one-eight. Saturday afternoon.”

“Sounds great.”

By Saturday I had made a few improvements. On my way back from the corner stop, I noticed an abandoned wheelchair in a deserted hospital parking lot. I checked it out. A little rusty, but otherwise sturdy and un-befouled by errant bodily fluids. I put my sack in the seat and started wheeling it back to my apartment, giving my diagnosis to the convenience store purchase.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brown Bag, but you have only twenty minutes left to live. You see, you have a strange infection of something my colleagues and I have never seen before: Rose’s Pork Brains with Milk Gravy. We’ve decided to take you in for some expert analysis, but you likely won’t survive the operation.”

I started trotting with the chair, then stepping up on the back crossbars and coasting. An old fellow sitting on a stoop with a forty eyeballed me briefly before returning his interest to his liquor. When I got to my apartment, I moved my blankets out of the way and I parked the wheelchair with its brake so that it was facing out the courtyard. I sat. It was an odd view for such a big window: a parking lot and the other run-down apartments, with their red metal rails and barren doors.

Tunka tunka tunka tunka tunka. It was a sharp, almost fervent rhythm coming from upstairs that interrupted my thoughts. It was as if someone was pounding on the floor (my ceiling), but the vibration was more elongated than that which would come from a hammer. Almost like a rocking chair, but a great deal faster.

Tunka tunka tunka tunka tunka. I gave the noise a good glare, as if extinguishable via eyesight. Tunka tunka tunka tunka tunka. Tunka tunka tunka tunka tunka. My wheelchair creaked and gave a jitter itself when I heaved myself out of it, as if unused to the ambulatory. Time to visit apartment 218.

I didn’t have anything in particular to bring, but I wanted to ask Nana about the brains, so I left the can in the bag after taking one last glance at the bright Rose’s label. Were the eggy lumps the brains? Or were they meant to be mixed with eggs? And milk gravy? What wondrous porcine thoughts stewed in this?

Walking out my front door, I noticed a youngish male face peeping out of the heavily curtained window of the apartment next to mine, what would be closer to the bottom of the U. He scowled and shut the curtain hurriedly.

I looked towards the stairs and ascended. At the top of the stair, a plaque on the closest door read 218.The door opened before I could knock.

“Oh, there you are! You’ve come for Nana’s spaghetti an steak. And what’s this you brung me?”

“Well, uh…only if you want it.”

“Ooooh, brains! I love some pork brains wit mah eggs. Nahw, how did you know?”

“Lucky guess?”

“Well, everythin’s all ready, but I sure could fix us a helping of pork brains if you had especial feelings for some?”

“Ah, no. That’s for you. I definitely want the spaghetti.”

“An steak.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wonderful.”

Nana was beaming as she slid a plate out from her cupboard and dug into an impossibly large kettle of sauce-drenched spaghetti. An equally large kettle lay stacked with thin but large steaks, fried, greasy, but smelling of barbeque and good, practiced seasoning. Nana dished more food than it seemed the plate could handle, much less my stomach, but I vowed not to disappoint her, as long as my gut did not disappoint me. Holding the plate, standing with a fork , waiting for some idea of what to do next or where to begin on an absurdity of food—suddenly the door opened.

“Hi, Nana.”

“Oh, you again.”

Besides myself and the German landlady, this was the only white person I had seen in this neighborhood in some days. He looked like a younger version of my crazy uncle Eddie in New Jersey.

“Got my plate.”

He held it up for proof.

“Mmm-hmm. Licked it clean, ah spose.”

“Like a great big puppy dog!”

He started an impression, lapping the plate like a hound, his eyes up at the ceiling. She swatted him.

“Oh git. Get s’more fixins or get on out.”

“Arright, Nana. Who’s this? She gonna eat that or what?”

I had been transfixed by the interaction and was politely waiting for its conclusion.

“This the new girl.”

“Hi. I’m Alix.”

“Hi Alix. I’m Chuck. Why don’t you take that on down and eat with me an my girlfriend?”

“Oh. Uh, okay. Nana?”

“Oh, you go on down. I’ve already eaten. And you…”

She was talking to Chuck.

“You b’have, y’hear?”

“I always behave!”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Steph, we got company!”

“You get more food?”

“You bet.”

Chuck’ girlfriend was heavy lidded, quite pretty; if a little overweight, and dressed in acid-washed denim. From neck to ankle. She looked up at me and smiled knowingly.

“He’s such a shit, huh? Got any smokes?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

I tossed her one, while I considered whether her first comment was meant to be positive or negative. I looked around their version of the apartment. Their sofa was big and puffy and beige. They had a glass-top coffee table. There were bunches of half-smashed Budweiser cans in little stacks—next to the sofa, on the table—that resembled sprouting plants that didn’t quite make it. Each of the apartments I had seen so far resembled each other far less than I would have imagined possible for nearly identical floor plans.

Chuck split up his one heaping plate like mine into two smaller ones: more steak and less spaghetti on one, vice versa on the other. He clattered Steph’s plate in front of her (spaghetti) and began to slice into his steak, chewing noisily. Chuck was a little hyper.

“So, whachya’ll doin here?”

I started to explain about my intent to travel and write.

“Oh yeah? I never was much of a reader myself, but sometimes I write a little poetry, don’t I Steph?”

“He sure does. He’s a natural.”

“Wow. That’s really cool.”

I was suddenly distracted with vaguely frightening thoughts about what his poetry might sound like.

“Hey, maybe you could look at some sometime and tell me if it’s any good.”

“Sure.”

I tried to sound enthusiastic.

Chuck and Steph sat next to one another; pawing and bickering, sniping and molesting—like a youthful, more cheerful version of George and Martha. When I started to feel more voyeur than guest, I excused myself.

“Come back sometime!”

“Hee hee hee!”

I waved to the pair on my way out. As I crossed the parking lot to my apartment, I noticed the curtain in the window next to mine draw back again. Again a scowling face and the swift return of the drape, obscuring it.

Laying down on the floor on a pallet of blankets I listened to the long swinging whine of sirens as I drifted off to sleep.

I had finally made it to Memphis.