But What's He WANT?

I must admit that I’ve become concerned.

It is 6:52.  I am moments, and blocks, from the beginning of a new work week, a fact that is not lost on my iPod, which responds by playing a requiem by Mozart.

The bus pauses in front of the Minneapolis Central Library, as a bus will do. 

A grand structure known for floors upon floors of books for the borrowing, long lines of children in matching tee-shirts giggling their way through an online dictionary in search of multi-syllabic words for “fart”, and sketchy dudes sprawled on the front steps, the Minneapolis library is near a bus stop.

I turn from my seat, toward the double doors leading into the library and see what I have seen every day for the last two weeks.

Stock still, his back to the street, a man stands perhaps two feet from the library’s entrance, leg akimbo, arms hanging heavy at this sides.  He is wearing more articles of clothing than is necessary for June in Minneapolis.

I stare at his back, willing him to move.

He does not.

He is waiting.

But what is he waiting for?

For its opening, in three hours?

For a “sign”?

For someone to hit “Play”?

Holy Hannah, is that man stuck on Pause?

He doesn’t move.  

He doesn’t scratch himself, check a watch, or shift his feet.

He is waiting.

But for what?

Call Me When You Get Her to the Car; or What's a Small Felony Between Friends?

I check the clock next to the bed: 12:40. I consider, reconsider, then answer the phone anyway.

“Hello?”

“You haffa come up here.”

“What?”

“Come up here. I need you to help me kick someone’s ass.”

Hmm. Marie just may be drunk. Slender and beautiful, in all the years I've known her, I don't think I've heard her like this more than a handful of times.

I sit up, switch ears. “What’s going on?”

“Todd, that –“ She goes on to describe her recent ex in glowering, apocalyptic terms. Words related to his physical shortcomings, his mental deficiencies, his fiscal future, and a particularly juicy bit of supposition regarding his lineage tumble out of her angrily.

I laugh softly. “Why do you even care? Seriously, he’s an idiot.”

“I – hic! – know!” she slurs. “And that’s why I’m gonna haffa kill this girl.”

“What girl?”

“His new girlfriend! The stupid bestid has a new girlfriend! It’s been two weeks and he brings her to my bar?  My bar! My pool table!”

She pauses, takes a drink. In the background, a toilet flushes, a hot-air hand dryer comes on.

“I want you to get dressed and come down here,” she continues. “Bring a pillow case an’ some rope.”

“Aw, shoot, Marie. What for?”

“’Cuz I kicked in the bathroom door earlier, made her jump up on the toilet.” Marie laughs. “Oh, Pearl, you shoulda seen ‘er.”

“I’ll bet it was awesome,” I say.

“It was. Seriously, she thinks she can hide from me in a bathroom stall? I tol’ her I was gonna throw a pillow case over her head and beat her with a tube sock full of oranges, stuff her into the trunk of my car, and drag her out to the nature center.”

Marie takes another drink. “Oh, yeah,” she says, hiccupping softly, “I need you to bring a tube sock. And some oranges.”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Tube sock. Oranges. That’s a great idea. Who do we know with access to bail money?”

There is silence followed by a heavy sigh.

“I can’t do this, can I?”

I switch ears. “Probably not,” I yawn, “but we can talk about it some more, if you want.”

A small puff of air escapes her: Pffffft. “Nah. I’m better now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Hey, Marie?”

“Hmm?”

“Call a cab, would ya?”

She laughs. “Good idea.”

Pump it Twice. Let it Up. Push it to the Floor.

Yesterday was my father-in-law's funeral, and I had no time to write; and while there is much to say about memorials and funeral services, I'm not sure that I will.

Please enjoy this re-post from the summer of 2011, I believe it was...


When the temperatures soar and the humidity is such that distant muscle memory of gills springs unbidden to one’s mind, what does the thinking woman do?

Go to the lake? To a pool perhaps? An air-conditioned theater, maybe?

Would you believe a backyard, sweat dripping from the end of my nose?

I blame my car.

My car! What an unbelievably precarious thing is my car!

The front bumper? Lost in an unfortunate car versus iced-over alley confrontation.

The driver’s side window? Can’t be lowered more than three inches without running off the track.

And if you’ll just turn the music down a touch, you’ll notice that the front end makes an interesting R2D2-meets-wet-Gremlin sound that make women heading into grocery stores turn around and frown in confusion.

What is that sound?

And now? The brakes. The soft, holy-hannah-that-was-close brakes.

For cryin’ out loud, will it never end?

So that’s where I am. I am in Mary’s backyard. With Mary. Watching Jon replace several feet of brake line.

“The neighbors are afraid of us,” Mary says.

“Well look at ya…”

“They’re afraid of us, aren’t they, Jon?”

“Who?” Jon’s voice is muffled by the Honda’s undercarriage.

“The neighbors.” Mary points across the alley. “Over there.”

“That house?” I say, pointing to where the new people have moved in.

Jon wiggles out from under the car, stares upwards thoughtfully, carefully wipes his extra-long screwdriver with a stained blue rag. “Is that it?” he says, dryly. “We’re pointing now?”

“That’s ‘cause we’re crass, aren’t we, honey?” There’s no response from Jon. “Honey? Aren’t we crass?”

Jon is already on his back. “We don’t talk like that,” he says.

He’s back under the car. “Now you’re gonna want to take a look at this,” he says. “Here’s your problem.” From under the car, he holds out a leprous, scabby length of 3/16th piping.

“It’s a weeper,” he says.

I look at Mary. She shrugs. I look at Jon.

“It’s a weeper,” he explains. “There’s no actual hole – this is the length just behind that rusted-out wheel you used to have. You wouldn’t have seen a puddle under the car. It was just weeping out, slowly.”

Mary starts chuckling, low and musical. It’s a sound she makes when she’s got something going upstairs. “You know what this means, don’t you, Pearl?”

I’m grinning already.

“It means don’t fear the weeper,” she grins, blue eyes shining. She turns and shouts toward Jon. “Doesn’t it, honey?”

“I’ve always enjoyed a little Blue Oyster Cult,” I offer.

From under the car, Jon sighs in resignation.

The sky hangs low in grey and blue clouds, the deluge of the night before clings to the ground. It’s hot, it’s humid, and there are Japanese beetles everywhere, looking for all the world like tiny and expensive brooches.

The air compressor has kicked on with a mighty thump. WHIRRRRRRRR.

Jon removes the left front wheel. Mary climbs into the driver’s side, her head hangs back, her face red in the heat.

Jon wipes his face with his tee-shirt.

“Pump it twice. Now let it up. Now push it to the floor.”

Again and again, he repeats this litany, and again and again, Mary does as he says. “Pump it twice. Now let it up. Now push it to the floor”. Eventually the brake fluid runs clear, no air spurts.

That's one fewer thing wrong with the Honda.

She lives to brake another day.

And as Jon likes to say, he killed it.

The Traitorous Nature of Trousers

“My life is a travesty,” I moan. 

 “What’s that now?”

“My life.  It’s a hollow, meaningless farce marked by intermittent, brief glimmers of hope.”

“Yikes,” Mary says.  “That sounds serious.”

I shift the phone from one ear to the other.  “Guess what I did for lunch?”

Mary takes a breath.  In my experience, she does this every time she’s getting ready to mess with me.

“Let me think,” she says, with what is surely a smile on her face.  “You ate?  Pearl, did you eat for lunch?  No, wait.  I can do better than that.”  She laughs softly to herself.  “Gimme a minute.  Lemme think.”

“Mary –“ I warn.

She cackles over the line.  “Okay, okay,” she says.  “What did you do for lunch?”

I take a deep breath.  “I tried on pants.”

A hush goes over the line. 

“You didn’t.”

I nod. Surely she is nodding, too.

“Oh, Pearl,” she sighs.  “I am so sorry.”

“Fourteen pairs of pants, Mary.  Fourteen pairs of pants.”

“And you didn’t buy a one, did you?”

“Nope.”

There’s a brief pause as we consider the heartbreak that pants-shopping can cause.

“Not to mention,” I say, having started a separate but parallel conversation in my head, “the pants I’m wearing today look like I pulled them out of the hamper.”

“Did you?”

“Pfft,” I say.  “You know I don’t do that anymore.” 

We laugh the laugh of people who have worn swimsuit bottoms as underwear.

“So, what then?” she says.  “Tell Mary about your current pants.”

I shake my head in disgust, something I’m sure transfers over the phone.  “You know those pants that look good when you put them on, nice and smooth, and they get baggier and baggier, get weirder throughout the day?”

“Yep,” she says.

“These are them.”  I glance down, pull at the fabric around my belly.  “These looked pretty sweet at 6:30 in the morning.”

“And now?” she asks.  “We talkin’ grapefruit smugglers here?”

“Yep,” I say.  “I look like an unmade bed.”

“Probably find a homeless guy sleeping in your lap later.”

I smile, snort into the receiver.  “There’s room for him now, I tell you whut.”

“Seriously, though,” she says.  “Pants be traitors.”

“You got that right.”

We smile a telephone-smile at each other.  “You feel better now?”

“You know,” I say, “I believe I do.”

“Well all right,” Mary says.  “Then my work here is done.”

More Bus Action; or, I May Never Buy Another Car

I can hear her, over my iPod.

“Does this go all the way to Northtown?”

I’ve written this in lower case, but the reader should not take that to mean the question was asked with an “indoor voice” but rather that to begin this post in CAPS would be to paint one’s self into a font-ish corner.

The bus driver answers her in a tone that is not – and should not – be audible from where I am sitting.

“OK!” the woman says, holding a phone to her ear.  “I just gotta go all the way to Northtown!”

I take out my little book and write this down:  Bus commuter’s gotta go all the way to Northtown.

And I wait.  No point putting the book away at this point.

We long-time bloggers know a story when it’s hollered at us.

“Hello!  HELLO!”

Ah, there we are.  Didn’t have to wait long.

“That apartment still open?  What?  WHAT?  Yeah, I’m on the bus now.”

From my seat eight full rows behind her, all of this is very clear.

Across the aisle from me, a young woman with a blue streak in her hair looks up from her iPhone.

“I should prolly tell you somethin’, though.  I mean, when you run the background check, well, I’m charged with a felony.”

Blue Streak and I look at each other.

“But it’s just a CHARGE, not a conviction.  I mean, it’s not anything you can hold against me.  You have to show me the apartment.”

Several more heads pop up to inspect the back of the head of The Person Without Boundaries.

“It wasn’t even mine!  It was my boyfriend’s.  IT WAS LESS THAN A GRAM!”

It is at this point that I laugh out loud.  I mean, come on!  Whatever it was, Potential Landlord, it was less than a gram!

Blue Streak grins at me. 

“Yes. YES YOU DO!”  There is a slight pause as the woman on the phone listens.  “Two dogs.  TWO DOGS.  Look.  I’m gonna be there in 30 minutes.  I’ll see when when I see you.”

She turns her phone off, and for the next five minutes stares out the window, silently.

And I de-bus.

But even now, two days later, I wonder:  Did she get the apartment?

Did I Ever Tell You Kids About My First Job?

My father, as perhaps has already been mentioned, was a salesman, and a good one at that. He had a talent for conversation, for appealing to the common denominator in any group.

He was not shy about using this talent.

“How’d you kids like to make 50 cents?”

And no matter how many times I heard that phrase, I always fell for it.

“Let’s see how fast you kids can wash the car. Get it done in under 15 minutes and there’s a small DQ cone in it for you.”

Neighborhood kids would follow him to the shed for a rag and a bucket, squeal-y with the anticipation of working their collective asses off for a 30-cent cone.

My father worked as soon as he was old enough to consider working, and he sought to instill in us the same burning desire to toil as soon as we were old enough to hear about it. Like my mother’s belief in the medicinal properties of the Hot Wet Washrag, my father believed in the healing power of work, in the self-affirmation of a steady paycheck.

“I had a paper route when I was a boy. Did you kids know that? Did I ever tell you about the route I had when I was a boy?”

“Yes, Dad.”

I applied for my first job in fourth grade by filling out a form in the back of a comic book. There, next to advertisements for x-ray specs and garlic chewing gum, was the opportunity to earn extra money. I was, of course, hired immediately and went door-to-door selling candles, greeting cards, little porcelain salt and pepper figurines of angels, windmills, and mushrooms.

My father was sitting at the kitchen table when my first catalogs came in the mail. He patted the chair next to him, then held his hand out. I handed him the catalogs. He flipped through one.

“See? You’re thinkin’. You’re thinkin’,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. “You’re in a trailer park, you got all these doors right next to each other. Boom, boom, boom, you’re up and down the streets in five, six hours.”

He paused, lit a cigarette.

“Let me hear your patter,” he said.

“My what?”

“Your patter. Your spiel. Your opening line when they open the door.”

I hadn’t considered my patter.

He slapped his left hand on the kitchen table.

“See?” he said. “You lost me. You lost me and I’m closin’ the door.” He leaned forward in his chair, ready to slam an imaginary door.

I put my arm out. “Wait!” I paused. “OK.” I said. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” my father said.

“Hi. My name is Pearl and I’m 10 years old and I’m selling candles and cards and cute little salt and pepper shakers because I want to buy a bike. Would you like to see a catalog?”

My father sat back, tapped his cigarette into an ashtray shaped like an outhouse.

“OK. Not bad. Not bad. But hand them the catalog, don’t ask them if they want to see it. You asking gives them the chance to say no. And when you hand it to them, have it open to the candles. Women love candles.”

He paused.

“And how old are you again?”

“Ten.”

“Really?”

He looked at me, frowned. He seemed perplexed. “Tell ‘em you’re nine.”

“Why?”

“Nine sounds better.”

“Why?”

“It just does. Trust me.”

He paused again.

“Oh, and don’t tell them it’s for a bike. Bikes are iffy. Tell ‘em you’re going to band camp or something. People always want to send kids away for a couple weeks.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome, Pearl. Knock 'em dead.”

The Action on the Bus on a Friday Afternoon

It’s been a quiet day.

That changes with her arrival on the bus.

Sit here, next to me, won’t you?  Because she looks like the kind of woman who will be entertaining, and I tire of witnessing these things by myself.  Bright purple pants, silver sandals, a Pepe Le Pew tee-shirt knotted at the waist and proclaiming “I’m a Li’l Stinker”, I can’t help but hope that she is, indeed, a li’l stinker.

But back to the pants, for one turns down one’s iPod when these kinds of pants get on the bus.

These are not just any pants.  These are, if you’ll excuse the expression, “in your face” pants.  Perhaps there was money involved, wagers placed as to whether or not she could get them on and keep them on for a length of time.  Made of a surprisingly sturdy material nonetheless going a bit shiny and distressingly thin in the rear, I get a good look at the seam running up her backside as she stops at the seat across from me, bends over to place her bag down in the seat next to the window.  She throws herself into the aisle seat with a satisfied “umph”.

Then…

“Mmm-hmmm,” she intones.  “You got that right.” 

For just a moment I am startled.  I then realize she’s talking on the phone.  I stare out my window, ears attuned.  Who got what right now?

“Mmm,” she says.  “That’s what I think, but dang!  Michelle gon’ take him out, honey.  First time in history a sittin’ president be killed by his own wife.”

What?!

“That’s what I say,” she nods, laughing.  “Girl, you know the only reason he make Condoleeza Rice Security Advisor is so he can get in her pants!  Heh, heh, heh!  Nah, nah, she good-lookin’, but if Hillary threw a lamp and missed, Michelle gon’ throw the lamp and it gon’ find its target.”

Ah.  The mystery revealed, but it’s not Condoleeza Rice that has been named National Security Advisor.

It’s Susan Rice.

Shall I tell her?

In the end, I decide against it.

There’s nothing to do but turn my iPod back on – and watch her as she departs, just three stops later, still laughing about what’s about to go down on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dang.