Showering this morning, two realities hit me: 1. I have no flight home —  my uncle was only able to get me a one-way ticket; 2. there is no real work waiting for me in NYC — I was able to get my shifts covered at the diner until the foreseeable future. Plus, I have been actively ignoring the freelance agencies’ calls.

“So-and-so from such-and-such agency, calling to see if you can hold July 9-12 for (insert European magazine) shoot with (insert European photographer), call me back at . . . .” I never listen long enough for the call back number.

This shower of clarity, so to speak,  led me to reason that, while in this categorical limbo I might have one of those life pivoting moments that ends one path and cements another.  I’m talking about pregnancy here, people! It is, after all, the leading condition of women my age in this town.

Now, I know (though I have my suspicions) that you can’t just get knocked-up by drinking the water.  But, I also know idleness leads to impulsive choices, that lead to babies.

Ok, let me back up.

The heavy lid on my three landing pads (home/dad’s house, my grandma’s, and my sister Taylor’s apartment) had me hungry for some fresh air. No surprise there, this happens nearly every time I come home for a visit, usually around day three of four.  I get all cagey and need to go for a long drive or get drunk with someone familiar, non-familial.

So I called up Jerry, my high school boyfriend.

“Soph!  A bunch of us are going up to the cabin on the 4th, you should join.”

We were each other’s everything before everything was inclusive of so much.  We were together for five years, with some of those years from a distance of two states lines, while I was at art school in California.

At one point, Jerry moved out there to live with me, but it seemed that each day, the job hunt would inevitably get hijacked by a case of cold beer and the beach.  He eventually relented to the appeal of his dad to take a job helping him run the family business and moved back home.

We were each other’s first test drive: sex, fighting, making up, drunk sex, drunk fighting . . . All the hallmarks of a relationship. Eventually, we tested out how it would feel to crush the other person’s heart. In the end, the score was even.  So, when we called it a day on our relationship, with some time, we were able to walk away as friends.

“I’ll pick you up after work.” He sounded genuinely glad, and so was I.

He rolled up to my sister’s in the company car — a black, extended cab pick-up with a vinyl of the company logo on the side doors. I nearly needed a running start to reach the threshold of the passenger seat.

We caught up, he was enjoying work, had gained a certain amount of trust from his dad and a lot of freedom.  And, evidently, a lot of money, I thought, as he explained that he had just bought this cabin with his sister.

“How is your sister?”  I ask.

When we were in high school, she was a business major at the local college and upon first meeting me, took the occasion to point out how many times I used the word like.

“ I guess that is where Jerry is picking that up from.”

“Candice is good, working at JP and dating this older professor of Philosophy.”

I rolled my eyes in the direction of my window, as to not be seen.

“And your mom?”

Joan, Jerry’s mom, on the contrary, was always so kind to me.  A lean and tiny woman, who is an avid runner and participates in 5k races as frequently as some people mow their lawn.

She and Jerry’s dad divorced when he was eight.  What followed was a long and challenging marriage to a former officer in the Airforce, who ran his household like West Point.  Jerry and his sister had to be in bed by 7 p.m. every night, even in the summer, when the sunset at 8.30 p.m. and the rest of the neighborhood kids were playing freeze tag within shouting distance from their bedroom window.

When Jerry was in third grade, they moved into a new house with a strawberry patch growing in the backyard.  This man, patently opposed to strawberries, or anything he couldn’t control, decided it would be best if he filled the patch with cement to keep it from overgrowing. So, in sum, a piece of work.

Luckily for everyone, the story has a happy ending. After seven years, Joan left the man with no soul and eventually married her high school sweetheart; she never looked back.

“She and Hank are good, they just celebrated their ten year anniversary in Hawaii.”

I let myself linger in admiration of this landscape of normality, but was careful to not stay long enough to land in a self-pity crater.

We were soon weaving the pick-up through the canyon, windows down, familiar scents tickling my nose: sage, juniper, pine.   As we inclined up into the mountain’s curvatures, the air cooled and dusk settled in.

When we arrived at our destination, Jerry slowed down to mitigate the impact of the bumps on the dirt road that leads to the cabin, I see some familiar and some unfamiliar cars parked haphazardly along the grassy shoulder.  I take inventory of the bumper stickers: Jerry Bears, NOFX, Alta, Snowbird, Black Flag, Moab, Utes.

The porch, like a beacon, was filled with perfectly stacked firewood and open, friendly faces.  It felt damn good to see these people.

We passed the night playing pool, drinking beer and sitting around the fire pit out back while my friends Nate and Tony played ‘the blues’ on their guitars and we took turns providing the lyrics. Many hours later, sufficiently drunk and smelling of smoke, I set out to find a place to sleep. Stepping over bodies strewn about the floor like a crime scene, I fumbled to a door, where I saw a bed, and like Goldilocks, I did not hesitate to crawl under the sheets.

I knew it was Jerry’s room, even if I awoke stiffened by surprise to find him in bed next to me.  I lay awake awhile, too much in my head, until a familiar comfort overcame me, a kind of safety I realized I hadn’t been afforded in months and in that instant I started to let it out.  As my body shook in sob convulsions, Jerry turned and moved his arms around me, stroking my hair as I buried my face in his chest. It was all too nice, like medicine. We fell asleep like that.

Now. As healing and needed as that all was, it cannot happen again.  I must not fall into old comforts in time of distress. I have to focus, forge ahead into my future. This is no time for sentimental sex romps.

John’s funeral was yesterday. My dad showed up in a fishing vest and slacks and gave a speech, equal parts heartbreaking and incoherent. My parents never uttered a word to each other. It is possible, at this point, they’ve exhausted all words for one another. Not that everything there is to say has been said, but all of what remains will be transmitted in silence and/or through the three conduits they call their children; a tactic that has already been set forth:

“You can tell your mother  . . . ”

“Call your sister and have her ask your father . . . ”

Fortitude and rigor will be needed to avoid becoming a double-agent.

After the proceedings of a not too religious (thank god) service, save for a few amens and the fact that it was in a church, everyone gathered in my grandma’s small kitchen.  For hours we sat looking at a spread of cut and carefully displayed vegetables and cheeses.  Every so often someone would pick up a carrot stick and hold it with all the best intentions, until, having lost the energy, they’d place it back down to lay limply on a paper plate. Meanwhile, a pile of crushed Natural Light and Budweiser cans amassed on the porch. My uncles, all men I’ve seen just as often with their shirts off as on, are managing their grief just as I would expect, in stoic silence. They offer each other solace in the form of short, meaningful eye contact and spontaneous, aggressive embraces. Their eyes are wet, but the tears never roll. Favorite stories about John emerged periodically, allowing everyone to revisit happier times, we all brightened momentarily, until we remembered our sorrow.

 

 

I spent yesterday sorting through pictures and other relics of the past, while my mom discerned which objects would be necessary in this new chapter and which could be left in the former.

In doing this, I came across a picture of me at three-years-old on my first visit to the zoo. A faded image of my grandpa holding me, him in his shirtsleeves, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. I’m chubby-cheeked and sporting two wispy pigtails, my grandma is posed next to us in the large frameless glasses she wore in those days. In the background, two nonchalant giraffes make their way across the frame.

Written on the back in light pencil, Sophi, age 3, first visit to the zoo.
There are other pictures of this outing, some with me and my parents, one with elephants in the background and one of a sleeping tiger.

It is precisely these images that form my memory of this first encounter with wild creatures in cages. It was late August, my birthday, a time when the Great Basin Desert exhales it’s dry, hot breathe. We picnicked under the refuge of a young oak. The giraffes were my favorite because they reminded me of my beloved Big Bird. I was afraid of the elephants and tossed them peanuts tentatively. I had to be told, no, I couldn’t pet that tiger, no matter how much he looked like a kitten. The image is static and yet, inspires these contours and details, that are perhaps – definitely – a reimagining of what was.

Photos deceive this way. They profess to tell a whole story, but represent merely a heartbeat. The closer a person is to that heartbeat, that moment in time, the better they are able to fill in the surrounding time and space. But, with distance from that moment, the edges of memory fray and the image becomes an impression from which an approximation is made. The picture sets off reverberations, the wavelengths of which transform with time.

It is no wonder people’s initial reaction to photography was that it was witchcraft. It sort of is.

I think this as I piece together the jumbled narrative of my life splayed out before me and wonder, of what I remember is truth.

“Up all night, sleep all day.”

I grasp for the location of this repeated melody as I fumble out of sleep and into a state of disorientation, the kind you experience when you wake up in your childhood bedroom years after you’ve escaped it. As I drift closer to consciousness, I realize the voice singing outside the door belongs to my dad.

He loved to sing this every Saturday morning to wake my sisters and me up if we dared to sleep past nine am.

And just like that, I’m sixteen again. I peel my eyes open to see the same walls I saw every morning of my teenage life — a black and white photograph of ballet dancers on point, a Smiths poster, a shelf with ceramic unicorns and a wooden incense burner.

My dad used to also call up his hungover friends on Saturday mornings with the same wake-up call. He’d been sober 15 years, high on nothing stronger than coffee or O’Douls.

“Boozers are losers,” he’d say in a sing-song voice to his beer-swilling buddies at parties.

“Rose, (our last name and what close friends call him), if I didn’t like you so much, I’d knock you out,” was a typical response to his heckling.

Yet, he was always offering us a beer. When we’d refuse with disgust, he’d justify himself with, “I like to use reverse psychology on you kids.”

He’d often report to anyone who’d listen, “Sophi started going to bars with me when she was a baby,” another tactic in the wheelhouse of this signature parenting method.
My mom has never fully corroborated his tales of these outings.

He stopped drinking at age 27, and I have to hand it to him, maintaining his sobriety while at parties amongst aforementioned boozer friends couldn’t have been easy. It helped that my mom joined him in solidarity for about seven of those years.

Anyway, time to face the literal music. I roll out of my peach-colored cotton eyelet lace comforter and throw on the same clothes I wore yesterday. Today is move day.

Walmart, Carl’s Jr., Costco, Target, an expanse of land dotted with carbon copy cream and gray homes between paved lanes. Repeat. This is the scene of coming home. All this repetition against those majestic rocks — how did I ever take them for granted? Luminous and surreal, like a two-dimensional screen lit from behind. But, thankfully, their jagged ridges and soft slopes are very real.

This cadence continues for miles until the car leaves the highway and heads west. Longer expanses of land, matching homes replaced by big wooden barns, long porches, fence posts and four-legged livestock. I know this song by heart.  

The colors warm, aided by the golden hay and unobstructed sunbeams. Then, the smell. I swear to god, there is nothing in this world that smells more like home to me, than the scent of birch bark mixed with the perfume of fresh manure.

It occurred to me today that growing up here I was too engrossed in my internal landscape to notice the quiet beauty everywhere. A reason enough for anyone to leave home, I guess.

Finally, we approach the stone and stucco house I grew up in and take the 45-degree turn necessary to avoid sliding into the treacherous ditches flanking the narrow drive. My dad and my mom’s dad laid the rock on this house. The granite came straight from those mountains and was split open by my Grandpa Jed. The plot of land, a wedding gift to my parents from my Great Grandma Addie, sits surrounded by many — don’t ask me how many, I barely mowed the lawn growing up — acres of once very active farmland, the family farm.  At one time this land teemed with activity and that signature manure scent. Before I was born, these fields were covered by tractors and men in denim, harvesting a plethora of crops. Now, it’s strictly corn and hay rotation, mostly for feed for the local dairy farm heifers.

I made it home thanks to my Uncle Tim, my mom’s brother, who works for the airline. The funeral is on Friday. I will help move my mom move out of this house on Wednesday.

Preparing myself for some emotional excavations.

Woke up this morning to three missed calls: Dad, Mom, Taylor and two voicemails.

I hit play on the first listed.

“Sophi. It’s your dad.” Pre-caller-ID habits die hard.
“Call me.”

I could hear enough gravity in his voice to intuit real urgency in the request . . . even if urgent calls have become routine in recent weeks; my dad’s anxiety palatable across the line, on our now, daily calls.

On these calls, we talk about all sorts of things — my jobs, weather here, weather there, my sisters, politics . . . anything but what is on his mind, on my mind.

This divorce has put him in a state of disbelief. I feel for him, I do, and I want to make it better, but, also, I want to scream.
Was I the only one paying attention these last two decades?

The best I’ve managed to do is answer his calls and breathe on the other end.

After one ring, he picked up.

“John is dead.” He uttered before even saying hello.

As I type those words, I am again under the crashing wave of shock that came over me in that instant.

John is one of my mom’s five brothers, just nine months older than her — “Irish Twins”. John has the natural good looks and charm of a rugged movie star — think Brad Pitt circa A River Runs Through It. To boot, he loves the outdoors and will take every opportunity to be one with them. It wasn’t uncommon for him to ride his horse alone up the trails to the high wilderness behind my grandma’s house, equipped with little more than a hunting rifle, a pup tent, and some beef jerky; not to return for several days.

So, fifteen years ago, when he and my aunt Gigi packed up their life and three young sons to move to her hometown of Vancouver, Canada, it seemed like an ideal fit. With a place so blessed by Mother Earth, the opportunities to experience the great outdoors were plentiful and so were the job prospects. An additional and perhaps more dire motive was that Vancouver was far away from a poison that lurked in that Utah valley country, one that had cast a spell on my uncle.

Once settled in Vancouver, John found a bountiful land, flourishing in shades of green and flowing with abundant rivers: salmon, steelhead, cutthroat trout. He didn’t hesitate to take up fly fishing, and in a short time he became very skilled at casting his line and colorful fly in the sport’s ritualistic dance of seduction; tempting the hungry mouths below the skin of the river, to emerge above the ceiling of their wet womb. Which, thanks to John’s willingness to take risk and wade deep into the swifter and more populated currents, they often did.

All the family back home have become the lucky beneficiaries of this newfound passion. Each summer, John, my aunt, and my cousins would drive the three days down from Vancouver in their truck and trailer with a big Coleman cooler full of the season’s catch. We’d gather at my grandma’s house, a small rock home nestled in a pocket at the foot of the Uintas, to feast on the booty. Everyone was so glad to see them, couldn’t wait to hear John’s fishing tales, to taste wild salmon grilled on an open flame, in a way only he could, and to all shriek with disgust and giddy when he ate the eyeballs.

A carpenter by trade, he took a job building movie sets, another natural habitat for him. His likeability translated well amongst the production crew, and he quickly found his circle. This made the inevitable late nights less dark, but it also made it easier for the snakes to locate him. They hunted at night, slowly slithering up his limbs, staking their claim on his veins.

Addiction is a family trait that has manifested in a multitude of ways amongst my mother’s siblings. She, somehow, managed to wriggle her way out of its clutches before it could claim her. I often recall a story of her at 15 years old — she’d been fighting with my grandpa and temporarily went to live with her older half-sister, Paula and Paula’s boyfriend. Paula had given my mom some speed tablets. An apparent gesture to help my mom combat the fatigue she battled while attending high school and working a part-time job at an ice cream counter at the local supermarket. She described to me how, as soon as Paula left the house, she tossed the little pills in the toilet and flushed.
The story felt, less of a parental parable around saying no to drugs, but more as an offering on how she had side-stepped a destiny that dogged her.

John had been sliding deeper recently; his vitality flailing. Over the course of the past few years, he’d lost his job, suffered a brain aneurysm and eventually and most significant of all, he’d lost his major pillar, his wife, my aunt, Gigi. A grounded and caring woman who has tried, for years, to keep him away from the free shoot-up centers across Vancouver. But, the poison was too enchanting, too twisted around his soul.

My cousins keep coming to my mind. All kind and capable, almost men. One with a daughter on the way.

It’s all too strange. I desperately want to be closer, to feel the humanity of my family, to share in their terrible pain.

But, I am down to 150 in my bank account.

I could just imagine her, sitting, top of the stairs,
Brown Berber carpet, head in hands.

“Your sisters are mean.
Your dad doesn’t understand.
For years I put up with this.
Enough.”
*Sob*

I can’t say that there was a single turning point. It has been more like a series of storms rolling through town, in seasons, over 25 years. All any of us could do was try to hold on to something, anything, that was anchored down. For me, those anchors were my grandparents, books and my fantasies — I’d watch airplanes as they ascended over the mountain ridge and imagine they were all bound for California, where I was sure, rock-n-roll and endless sunshine awaited. I dreamed of the day it would be my turn.

My parents are splitting up. Broadly, this means the tethered family relations: parent and child, siblings, and partners will have to be undone and reconfigured in some new cat’s cradle. Specifically, it means the couch is no longer going to be the scene of my dad snoring from under a blanket, while Wolf Blitzer and CNN blare all night long.

None of this is going to be simple.

Their story is a familiar one: young love expedited out of its simplicity too soon, by way of an unexpected pregnancy. My mom was still a teenager when she donned her wedding dress, two months pregnant. As a kid, I loved to flip through their wedding album and marvel at how they were once so young. The image so blazed in my mind’s eye, I can recall it without effort: the two of them posed under a white, wicker arch, my dad in a maroon tux with his wild Gene Hackman hair and my mom, peeking from under an enormous, white, lace bonnet like a baby lamb. I would sarcastically point out how I’d been there too, how I’d eaten wedding cake from the womb.

In all honesty, I’ve always felt responsible, in some way, for their happiness. They married each other, but my role was implicated from the start, a reason and guarantee of the commitment; a sort of patron of their marriage. So, I watched and worried: through the countless fights, the yelling and quiet talking behind closed doors, the separations and reconciliations, the struggle to pay the bills, and the joys and frustrations of raising three daughters. And in all honesty, I’ve very often, resented this role.  I’ve expressed that frustration through rebellion, tears, and outbursts.

“You are my favorite mistake,” my Dad encapsulated once when I was at my peak of teenage angst.  It is the kind of candid, real talk I can expect from these parents of mine and something I have grown to respect and appreciate.

Through the years, it eventually became clear to me — they needed to save themselves in order to save each other. Maybe . . . HOPEFULLY, that is what they will do now. I tend to keep my hope at bay on this topic, but I feel this time, perhaps something is shifting.

All I know for now is they are both turning to me from thousands of miles away for comfort and counsel, and I know, I must see them through this too.

 

It’s noon, and I’m just emerging from a very restless sleep. The sun has started rising at 6 a.m. and pounding through my windows. I made it to bed at, I dunno, 4, 5 a.m. (?), so all considered I probably haven’t had more than two full hours of REM.

But, who cares – it’s finally SUMMER! The holiday weekend jettisoned the cloud of spring and in came, all at once, bare legs and rooftop barbecues.

I started last night at a party on the roof of a warehouse building, somewhere on South 5th. Wade, Mariah and I, spent the early part of the evening mingling with some graphic design friends of theirs; all of whom had the same San Francisco hipster look down: ripped cut-offs, black t-shirt, a cycling cap, and bike chain belted at the waist. Personally, not a fan.

Eventually, the sun slipped down over the bridge and the night began to buzz. Right about then, Donnie, who is the drummer in a band with Krissie, showed up and was bouncing around like a gummy bear. Not unusual, Donnie is a like hyper 9-year-old boy, stuck in a 30-year-old’s body. He let me know he was excited because he’d brought some fireworks and began eagerly setting them off in the center of the roof. Cackling the whole time.

Everyone began jumping around the popping and colorful flames like crazed banshees. By everyone, I mean mostly the men. They all appeared possessed by something, and in no time, their whooping was at a fever pitch. I half wondered if someone was going to end up aflame. In the absence of daylight, with a boon from the moon, sometimes, people just get primal . . . and there is nothing like some fire to really get them going.

I stood, staring, for who knows how long, before a voice nearby snapped me out of it.
“Hey, do you know where the bathroom is?”
I dread the bathrooms in these warehouses. There is always, like one bathroom for every two floors, the locks are generally broken or non-existent, you dare not breathe out of your nose, and there is never toilet paper. Oh, and lord save you if you are wearing a jumpsuit.
I turned to answer.
“Wait, I know you . . . aren’t you Krissie and Mercedes’s roommate?”
Through the smoke haze, I focused my eyes to see that it was Charli’s roommate, Blake. We’d met a few weeks back at Daddy’s.
“Sophi, right? Blake.”
I was instantly relieved by her presence in the midst of this inferno.
“I swung by here after a failed barbeque at Shea’s . . . long story.”
“Oh right.”
I knew Krissie was likely also at Shea’s – their current status being ‘on’ in their off and on relationship.

Before we could figure out where the bathroom was, we both looked up to find a half dozen cops hollering that the party was over. It’s so cliche, but this is literally what they said.

“Party’s over folks.”

Pretty pretentious to declare a party you haven’t even partaken in, over. Anyway, was probably for the best – I sensed the fire was inciting something wicked.

Blake turned to me.
“Charli just texted. I guess now everyone is at your place.”
I checked my phone and saw a text from Krissie.
“Babes, DUDES, Beer, and BBQ! Come home!!”
It wasn’t yet midnight.
“Let’s go!”

We mounted our bikes and got the hell out of there, our furious pedaling generating a hot breeze. The most surprising thing about summer on the east coast is that unlike in the west, where summer nights are synonymous with crisp air and light jackets, the heat here is unrelenting. Endless Summer.

The vibes back at our candy shop were high and freewheeling. Krissie and Charli had summoned a few scraggly, long-haired fellas and they’d even managed to pick up some hot dogs and veggie burgers along the way. And lo and behold, even Shea had abandoned his own barbecue for ours.

Mercedes arrived home soon after from her shift at the fine-dining restaurant where she works, with some gourmet offerings to add to the feast.
I looked at my roomies, this group of rag-tags, this city and admired all the kismet happening in that precise moment.

We all then passed several hours (!?) drinking PBR in the backyard, listening to Entrance and Dead Meadow and such and basking in the warmth summer was sparking.

TGIS: Thank God It’s Summer.

 




Do you ever just want to live inside a song? I do.

The first time I remember entertaining the possibility was to Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do Is Dance,” on heavy rotation in ‘87, courtesy of my parent’s record collection. That song took me to a place where I was old enough to drive and wear eyeshadow. In the span of three minutes, I traveled to another dimension, floating through the night; loving and dancing madly. Momentarily, I was free. Free from the confines of my minor age and the limits of an 8 pm bedtime.

My best friend in eighth grade, Tamara, explained that you could live in a song IF you dropped just the right amount of acid and closed yourself in your bedroom or car with only the song and a favorite blanket. She sailed away on some such song long ago and has yet to return.

“Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone,” was a place my dad often lived in the 80s. Mom, she was living in a Springsteen or Seger refrain. Together, on Sundays, we’d all listen to Hendrix or Jethro Tull, while my mom cooked dinner. I’d lay on the kitchen floor and feel the wave of sound through the linoleum, through me.

Of recent, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors and Led Zeppelin IV are calling me to come inside and stay awhile. These albums have become a bit of a zeitgeist of my apartment and circle of friends. The magnetism, I suppose, is an alchemy of winsome nostalgia, the right frequency of vibrations and lyrics that exalt; it’s as if Nicks, McVie, and Plant can speak my heart. Sigh.

The Rumors album has even become a bit of a Litmus test, for if you’re a down dude.

For example, just this week, after a night out at that ol’ glory hole, Enid’s, me and the girls ended up back at our place with a group of guys – a ginger-haired law student, Krissie had been on a couple of dates with, along with his crew. Someone threw that album on, and before we made it to “Go Your Own Way” they were out the door. No pass. Buh-bye.

I want a lover who can live in the same song.

It took about six weeks for me to understand Midtown bartending was not for me.

I landed the job through a friend in SF, whose father was part owner.  One week after touching down in NY, I met him there for an interview over a cold beer.  He took three deep gulps to empty his bottle and told me, on the good faith of his daughter,  I could start that weekend.

The place was ostensibly civilized – loyal, well-heeled clients, martini cocktails, Central Park adjacent, et al. An Irish pub with a touch of authenticity – all the waitresses were named Geraldine or Patty, and they all ate Weetabix every morning, before their lunch shift – but, not too much – you could order anything from a shepherds pie to a quesadilla, a Guinness to an Appletini.

I felt fortunate as hell to find a job so quickly and to be bringing home a bunch of cash every week.

But, eventually, the charm went bankrupt, and the money gave off a certain stench.

The breaking point came on a Thursday, during a busy, happy hour shift. A woman in her early 50s, dressed in pearls and silk, sat down alone at the bar. She immediately ordered a Champagne, in what I thought I detected as a remotely European accent. When I returned with her Chandon (sorry, not a Champagne kind of place) and leaned over to deliver it to her coaster, a generous waft of amber and musk hit me, and I had to suppress a cough while she retrieved cash from her bright, crocodile clutch. She then began to slowly empty the split with the pace of a woman awaiting a guest.

Beyond this, I paid her little mind.

Until a few minutes later, when midway through a pour, I heard gasps from the other side of the circular bar. By the time I made my way around, the bar manager, Kevin, a five-foot-five jovial Irishman, was trying his best to make his way through the gathering crowd. The Chandon woman, before so composed and calm, was now flailing her arms in the air as a man of about 40, clad in banker shirt and tie, was choking her. The buttons of his shirt defied physics, as they held the cloth together across the meridian of his very round belly.  His tanned and shiny mug twisted up in rage, while his giant hot dog fingers forced themselves around her neck. A scene that had me in stupefied awe. Suddenly, the two dropped their struggle to the floor and out of my sight line.

A very long moment later, Kevin and some patrons, managed to pry the man off his victim and collectively force him out the door. When the woman finally rose above the bar’s horizon, blood was falling from her forehead. The result of a wound, suffered on the ground, from broken bottle shards, her attempted retaliation to something – nobody surveyed, knew exactly what – her assaulter said. An act which launched him into such fury.

Outside the large windows that overlooked the avenue, I witnessed the swollen and sweaty perp huffing and hollering something into the glass until, finally, he pivoted and marched up the avenue.

The following night as the shift was winding down, I spied Bill Murray through those same windows.  He stood on the sidewalk, watching the bar television. His image, augmented through the thick glass as it reflected the news broadcast, gave off a spectral aura. The serenity in his face and the stillness of his posture cast a profound ripple of calm over me. He lingered until the commercial break, then turned, and glided down the avenue. I resisted an urge to leap over the bar and follow him.

I quit that week.

I now work weekends at a popular diner, an eggs and toast kind of place, in the LES. I’ve made two great friends there, Beatrice and Dustin.  We pass the time between tables by checking out the clientele and hypothesizing which of our coworkers are certifiably crazy.

Less cash flowing in, but I’m happy. I’m more of a downtown-egg-slinging-kind-of-girl, anyway.