Like a Closet in Spring

“How campy,” she hummed almost silently and deep to  herself, never considering the growing distance between her, oats and the Cleveland man her mother thought would never marry.  Outside the third floor window, the one which faced south and had the best view of Martine’s school almost half a mile away across the now fallow field…

…clouds of spent carbon ranged high above the horizon.  Bricks were closer, heavier and more radiant now.  The sun had taught them how.

Fish filled that stretch of stream between Founder’s Point and the West 7th Street Bridge.  Dexter and Little Tuesday knew that.  Armed with real fishing rods–not the bamboo sticks and string that the O’Donald kids were using, both expected that dinner would soon be in their buckets.  They had listened to and understood the ways of nature.   Close attention to the movement of the wind, a wind which knew no recourse other than it’s own.  Martine and the O’Donalds suspected treachery around the bend, but without proof the Comanches would not offer support.

Omelets for all.

And muffins, the kind made famous by New York luncheonettes before the Greeks had taken them over to create family businesses enduring for generations; before  Koreans, now with Mexican employees, had taken over the corner groceries throughout the city, leaving the newest generation of Italians, mostly  third and fourth generation Americans, adrift in a sea of corporate corruption; while the Dominicans had ousted second and third generation Puerto Rican bodega owners and cornered the market on loose cigarettes and illicit drugs sold at street level.  The newsstands?  Indian and Pakistani, but so what?

Sure there were still selfless housewives scuttling along the outer shores of the Back Bay and it’s all-to-fancy brushwork, but no one felt there was any real threat in mainstreaming the Raster-infested bulwarks of that time after mantras and marijuana had surfaced.  Maybe Timmy saw things differently, but no one listens to your mother, they’d told him.  No one at all.

Charlie Redfinger smiled.  Severe Algonquin luggage tags hovered above the camera, each in it’s original condition but for the circular blue stick-on tags each bearing a hand drawn “44.”  Buddha in bronze, allegedly from Nepal and first seen in a glass display case along with souvenir ash trays and cigarette lighters made in China, looked down from the base of the antique desk lamp at the twice-folded green towel laid impractically atop his desk.  Slippers off, that was the credo of those saving discs and reluctantly applying hand sanitizers to the orphans crawling about the cubicle.  Nothing could save them now, risky thinking aside.

“Examine  your fingers.  Do it now!  There might be opportunities later,” Ragged Ned continued, “but there might not be later later.  There might not be any later at all.”  They looked up at his towering presence.  No one in memory had commanded the deck as did Ragged Ned.  No one had held the reigns of power as had the descendants of this crazed curmudgeon and, to be sure, no one would.  His was the saga of musical virtue gone wrong, of a duplex on a side street, a raised toilet seat in a school for only women.  Who would dare to offer explanations when there was no one present to listen?

Among the new-found party of scholastic raiders and internet henchmen there arose–or did it descend?–a partial landing of mock goodness in green.  Several planters had come forward during that late evening to sing in close harmony with the farmers and stagehands all dressed as if in a dream, as if attending a high school graduation in the American south…

…black shoes, creased navy trousers and softly colored shirts blossoming over the black belted tops of those over-sized drawers.  Compliments to all on  having carried it off with such aplomb.

Jeffrey and Carni looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak.  Carni rose and cleared her throat the way a man might do it.  “How long will it be,” she asked.  Jeffrey could only stare down at the small red rocks which lay in no particular pattern between his yellowed boots.  Soon it would again be dawn, and no sign of trouble would be too small to notice.  Again Carni cleared her throat.  “I’m still asking,” she intoned petulantly, eager for any answer at all.

No reply.  A reply could only mean a fight.  Jeffrey had other fish to fry.

*   *   *