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 6:25 AMI wake up feeling panicked by a wrong slant of sunlight. I know that I'm late, although for what I cannot imagine. It's not like me to oversleep, not even on a Saturday. I don't like the shaky feeling. I bury my face in my pillow and I close my eyes tight against a day that feels like a rude intrusion. I reach to catch the edge of a dream, but it slips away to join all the others I've lost. My cat, Bomboli, jumps from the carpet to the nightstand, and from there onto the tail end of my back. I snarl at her and then I get up. Poor cat. Bomboli came to my door many years ago. She slept in the alley behind the dreary building where I lived, a place I named The Cave for all its shadows. I think a man somewhat grumpier than I threw her out for jumping onto his back on one too many mornings. This jaded criminal had to be a man. Most women I know understand cats better than they understand men. I think women love cats for their constant willingness to snuggle and purr when you touch them. I can't imagine why Bomboli chose my door to scratch each night for a solid week, but her method of torture was a perfect fit for her desperate cause. The scratching drove me nuts. I had to open the door. Bomboli was then -- and still is -- a tiny ball of soft fur. She owned a wide, pink mouth, and she knew how to use it. I invited her in just the one time. Next morning she begged for breakfast. One meal leads to another. Bomboli taught me how to snuggle, and I taught her how to wake a man when he's late with a dream. I hope she knows that I love her. 6:50 AM I'm unsteady on my feet as I walk into the kitchen for my first cup of coffee. I'm not sure what I should do next, where I ought to go after the caffeine mixes with my blood. It feels too late to write about a morning that seems almost gone. Too late, as well, to run. I never run unless the air around me is black. I climb the staircase from force of habit and I tap a short note into my computer. I discover that I have nothing much to say. I'm tired of the keyboard. I decide that today I'll use a pen and paper and transcribe the lot to computer later this evening. For several years I've written nothing more than business notes with a pen. I tell myself that this day began off kilter for a reason. Perhaps the grounding of a pen and paper will help me to regain a sense of balance. 7:10 AM I drag down my email. I browse a few messages, and then I delete the entire mess. It's all chatter and it bores me. I shut down my computer. I clean myself and I dress. I slip the pen and a few sheets of notepaper into a side pocket of my jeans. I tuck a paperback book into one of the back pockets. 8:10 AM I leave my house. A grey fog has blown in off the water. The breeze is light, wet and cool. For the first time today I am able to think. I scribble my first note. I walk for maybe a mile, and then I stop to write another note. I feel as if I'm following myself. I'm not sure where the two of us are going. 9:30 AM The fog lifts and backs away across the lake. The sun emerges and turns the air yellow. I'm not yet ready for the bright light. I've always preferred nighttime to morning. 10:05 AM I enter one of my favorite cafes. A slight crowd scatters itself through the dark, main room. Mediocre paintings hang on two long walls. I remind myself not to be so damned critical. I met the painter once at a chic party for affected artists and their obsequious fans. Her husband drills teeth for a living, while she stays home to stroke her fancy onto wood and canvas. I'm jealous of her circumstance. I want my dentist, too. Then again, I can find no nervousness, no edge of insecurity, in this woman's work. Perhaps that's why I find it dull. I lay my paper, pen and book on a corner table -- to reserve it for my return -- and then I walk to the counter to place my order for food. I stand behind two people, a man and a woman, mid-thirties and still pretty enough to entertain vanity. They order slow and hesitant, the way tourists order food; no mind for people other than themselves. This time I back off and I watch, rather than surrender to irritation. I remind myself later to jot a few notes about this minor trial. 10:20 AM Finally the counter boy who would be man asks me what I want. For fifteen minutes he pranced and flirted with the chubby hubby member of this tourist tag team. She wanted olives with her omelette, while he wanted no onions and extra sour cream. Complicated omelettes, I admit, but negotiations need not have taken this much time, and hubby wasn't about to love this sweet kid anyway, not with the man's wife standing guard. I order two biscuits and a double espresso. I always order two biscuits and a double espresso when I'm at this café on a Saturday morning. I don't like omelettes for breakfast, and I never eat canned olives. How dare Americans call them olives? White boys can be so bland and awkward. No wonder they can't dance. 10:30 AM I jot my notes, bite my first biscuit and open my book, a tale by Georges Simenon. Simenon is most famous for his series of mystery novels starring Inspector Maigret. He wrote a few hundred of them, each one a slim volume of no more than 125 pages. Quick stories. The critics called Simenon a master of the 'psychological novel.' I don't think he was that good with psychology, but his Maigret was a sullen and intelligent hero, and I've always admired sullen and intelligent heroes. The novel I hold is called _In Case of Emergency_. It is not an Inspector Maigret book. It's a side story of love and treachery, passion and depression, sex and secrets. I picked it up at a used-book store for thirty cents. Forty years ago it cost sixty cents. The copyright date is 1958. There's a lurid painting of a lady in heat on the cover. She wears a sheer, yellow negligee. You can see her nipples through the light material. Sensational breasts to sell a book. It worked for me, although the author's name pulled me in, as well. I do love sensational breasts and sheer negligees. 11:10 AM The tall man who sits behind me is suffering a sneezing fit. I want to sympathize, but I want more to read my book. I wait out the worst part of the storm, but then he pulls out a handkerchief and toots and snorts his loud coronet. Over and over again. I give up on the hot lady with hard nipples. I tuck her back into my hip pocket and I leave the café. 11:50 AM I arrive at a quiet park. I choose a bench that sits half in sunlight and half in shadow. In the distance I see a puffy man and his white French poodle. The poodle's fur is shaved close to its body, except for the broad fan of its tail and the exaggerated pompadour atop its head. The man throws a tennis ball and the poodle retrieves it. I've never before seen a poodle act this way. I take a moment to wonder why I associate French poodles with the idle rich of a bygone era. Poodles don't deserve the fruity reputation we've given to them, but were this poodle mine I'd shave its silly pompadour. Most cultural prejudices cannot be erased with a well reasoned argument against their validity. I read a while. I like the book. 12:45 PM The sun is high and hot. No more shadows on my bench. I slip Yvette (my lady with the yellow negligee) back into my pocket and I leave the park. 1:05 PM I slow my gait to stair at a woman's ass. She stands working at an ATM, in the cool shade of several broad-leafed trees. She wears cut-off jeans and a white, cotton blouse. Her thigh muscles flex as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. I name her Yvette and then I walk away before she turns around to catch Maigret melting and rising in the sun. 1:20 PM I stroll my way through a neighborhood of restored clapboard houses; many of them are nowadays offices to doctor's, lawyers and real estate agents. I imagine that for me such a pretty house would lose its charm fast if I had to meet clients or patients there every day. The trees in this town are midgets. I think the soil is bleached of nutrients by the bright sun, just as bleached as the vague attitudes and strong hatreds so many of its residents entertain. White boys can be so bland and awkward, yes, but they tie a good noose. 1:50 PM I arrive at the local literature warehouse. My excuse is that I need another espresso, although I suspect that I'll buy at least a couple of books to keep company with Yvette. I grab a British computer magazine from the shelf. I sit down with my coffee and I study an article on creating animated GIFs for the web. I don't want animated GIFs at my web site, but I like to teach myself new tricks. Periodically I think of Yvette, the one at the ATM, not the one inside my pocket. 2:15 PM I write another note and I see that I have just one more sheet of paper. I wonder if this warehouse stocks plain notepaper. I know they sell those over-priced blank books that are today so popular with spoiled, middle-class scribblers who call themselves purple crones and think they know what it means to work for a living, but all I want is paper. I walk past the greeting cards and I slip myself in with the perfumed crones. There's no plain paper on the shelves. I study one blank book covered in suede veneer. Rings at the binding, so it would be easy to write close toward the inner margins. No second-hand inspirational quotations to mar the possibilities. I search for the sticker. I find it inside the back cover. $14.95. Must be the suede veneer, that and the breathy expectations of shallow artists who own their dentists. I'd sooner buy Bomboli a month's worth of hamburger. I leave the warehouse resigned to end my voyage with one more page of notes. I buy no books. I decide that Yvette is all I need. 2:50 PM I stop at chic for one more cup of espresso. I sit at a table just inside the door. This is the only table low enough for writing and the best place to watch customers as they enter and depart. The afternoon crowd is thick and weighed down with packages. A tall, dark woman in a long summer dress walks in. Sharp features, tanned skin, angry glint inside her eyes. I watch her move from the shelf where the napkins and cream are kept to the table behind me where her husband sits. He looks just as irritable as she. He shifts his fat body continually and squeaks the wooden chair. He stares over his wife's shoulder and through the window behind her. Must be the rigors of shopping mixed with the boredom of familiarity. The background music here jolts, boings and jiggles. Sounds metallic and feels drunk. I dislike it. I've always disliked these rude, raspy sounds passed off as sexy rhythms. White boys jerk and twitch when they try to dance. A man walks in and glances at me as I write about him. He seems so predictable that I want to hiss and jeer my disapproval. Tall. White tee shirt drawn over a hairy torso. Scrappy beard to compensate for the lost hair that once grew from his bald head. Straw hat, leather strap hanging loose under his chin. Long, slow stride. Birkenstock sandals and polished toenails. Jesus in Jamaica. I'd like to buy him a blank book with suede veneer and tell him to write his life story. The book and the story would make a perfect match. 3:25 PM I head for home. Bomboli will be hungry. With the money I saved at the warehouse I'll buy her a few ounces of hamburger. *** Thanks for stopping by to visit us here at SpilledBeans.com. If you'd like to be notified whenever something new is posted to SpilledBeans.com, then please join the Spilled Beans notification list. -- Con affetto, Anthony V. Toscano, Editor SpilledBeans.com  |
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