Dear Diary,
Friday and Saturday
belonged to two different worlds. I spent Friday mucking through stacks
of obscure archives and records. All the while, the arithmetic of my
expenses buzzed in the back of my mind.
Early Saturday morning, I
had coffee with green-faced Louisa. She munched on cookies as I spoke.
She asked about my past. She told me about hers. Louisa works as a
waitress at a blue-collar diner. Louisa wasn't hired for her looks, so
much as her mouth and strong legs. The job involves a lot of standing,
and her "yakking" makes the customers feel at home. Or that's what I
managed to extract.
She laid out her rules for working women:
1) Never date a boss
2) Never date a co-worker
3) Never date a customer
That is why
4) You have girlfriends that will keep an eye out for you
,which leads to
5) Never date a friend's boss.
If I were searching for a role model, I'ld keep looking. Otherwise, Louisa seems harmless enough. At some point, her barrage of mangled words began making sense. After thirty minutes, it sounded perfectly normal. I could automatically conjugate her oi's and d's back to their original sounds.
cauffee - coffee
oilier - earlier
Oim - I'm
de - the
toid - third
[indecipherable scribble] Norman would probably have an interesting reaction if I picked up her East Side accent.
"Dorothy,"
Louisa said. "You look like you've got a lot on your mind. Why don't we
go shopping tomorrow, it'll take your mind off things. There's always
something new on Canal Street."
Since my concerns were fiscal, I didn't see how more spending could help.
"I do need new curtains," I replied, confronted with this strange idea.
"Trust me," she said. "Why don't you get some rest. We'll make a date
of it. I'll meet you at nine sharp, in the morning. It's better to get
there early. Usually I'ld go earlier to beat the Church crowds, but it
can't be helped."
At nine o'clock in the morning, my upstairs neighbor showed up. She wore a bright green dress without the bright green mudpack. I dressed in black. We took a bus to Manhattten.
"It's
not about the buying or even the looking," Louisa explained. "It's an
excuse for being out and about, minding your business, for just being
there. Some people call it taking a walk. I call it shopping, because
I've got to call it something. Otherwise I say to myself: 'Louisa, what
are you doing out here? Get your ass inside and do something useful.'
But when you do call it shopping, your real purpose is being there just
to enjoy being there.
"Of course, if you see something you want to buy, go for it."
It didn't make much sense at the time.
Most
of the borough is inside a Dome. Chinatown and other slivered
neighborhoods ring the Dome. At one of the Chinatown borders is Canal
Street. We arrived a block away and could hear noise the moment that we
stepped off of the diesel bus.
From Roger's mansion, Paradigm massy
and forbidding like a labyrinth. At night, the block around my
apartment seems tense. By day, Canal Street was a festival. The asphalt
was chained off to stop traffic. Shoppers milled around on the street.
Tables, luggage on legs, blankets, and booths lined both sidewalks.
Over the din, Louisa screeched something about breakfast and towed me
onto line for belgian waffles and coffee.
We ate breakfast at the
side of the crowd, near a fire hydrant. I noticed that the people
looked past each other. At best, a bump elicited an absentminded
mumble. When I ran errands for Norman, I stole glances of people and
never experienced that size of a crowd. As the day wore on, I
discovered why people looked past each other, there were too many faces
and eye, too many people to take in.
By the end of the day, I found a set of dark blue curtains for a reasonable price. I also found a sturdy purse and a medium landscape of the Hudson in winter.
Today is Sunday and reality sets in again. I tried to read, but was distracted. I felt uncertain and bought a newspaper to peruse the want ads. I can't do much about it today, but for better or worse, tomorrow is another day.
R. Dorothy Wayneright