the fruits of fate

Louise stood in the quiet pale green of the half-lit hall in her apartment, the afternoon sunlight filtering weakly through the plate glass of the casement window. Zelda had remarked on her last visit that her windows are "flithy," but Louise didn't see the point of cleaning them. She quite liked to see the grunge, imperfect frames of the outside world.

At this time of day, if she stood very still... and if Marly, her Russian blue kitten wasn't wrestling with some string somewhere... she could hear the faint hum of the Prospect Expressway which divided her neighborhood from Park Slope. To say you lived "on the other side of the expressway" was like saying you lived "on the other side of the tracks." Brooklyn was dangerous, but her small neighborhood, hugged on two sides by the cemetery, was insular somehow, made up mostly of Polish and Italian immigrants, who took quiet strolls arm in arm after dark and let their children run free in the streets.

She felt safe here, standing in the narrow hall, staring at the photograph of her great grandmother - her mother's mother - which hung next to a small gilded-edge mirror. The only decoration on a long wall, they appeared awkward and alone, but keeping each other company. She remembered when she hung them just after she moved in two and a half years ago, the fresh paint smelling of new beginnings. The pained frustration at hanging them so they were straight, and the subsequent giving up, so that they hung on the wall slightly askew.

The mirror was a poor excuse for a mirror. She had picked it up from a cardboard box left outside a stately mansion on Garfield Place... some rich family's refuse. Most of the things in her apartment were acquired this way, on the street or in flea markets, an amalgam of the fruits of fate. The cast-iron skillet, the kitchen table, the Danish desk chair, were all like the mirror: half-functioning, half-pretty, their glory days a distant past. The chair was worn in the seat, and the table was wobbly, but they were dear to her and she liked the idea of giving them a second, third, or fourth chance at life, treating them as if new.

The mirror on the wall had lost some of its reflectivity. The coating had pulled away from the back like paint, having documented each passing year with another centimeter, so that now only the center surface remained. It was enough, though, that she could see her brown eyes eyes, strong nose, and small lips, barely lit by the waning sun. Standing, still, she glanced back at her great-grandmother's portrait. Suddenly, Louise saw the same brown eyes, strong nose, and small lips, and she realized she was probably now the same age as her great grandmother when the photo was taken: twenty-nine.

She had known this photo since her life's memory began, when it sat on her mothers dresser, until she went to college and asked to take it with her. As a child, she had always been captivated by the beautiful dress, old-fashioned hairdo, and the knowledge that, three years after the photo was taken, in 1922, she would be stricken with a fast-moving and vicious leukemia. Most captivating was her gaze: haunting, yet peaceful, as if she somehow knew what would befall her. It was the same look she saw reflected in her grandmother's eyes when she stood staring out at the bluegrass of her Kentucky lawn, and it was the look she saw in her own mother's eyes when she was lost in thought on a long car trip.

Louise turned her head to look in the mirror once more, staring, into nothing, and for that minute, in the half-light, the portraits of two distant generations of women hung on the wall, side by side, slightly askew, mirror images of each other.

blazing saddles

Everett sank into the cool velvet chaise in Chloe's living room. From where he sat, he could see the evening sun of Summer setting beyond the western edge of Tribeca, bathing the top halves of its buildings in a sherbet glow, calming the city as if it were singing it a lullaby. Car horns diminished in the distance, and work-a-day Chinese women scurried on the street below, picking up last minute ingredients from the vegetable vendors closing down their stalls.

He was tired, Chloe could see, no doubt from having spent the entire day on his bike riding all over the damn place. She figured he did this, regularly, mostly because he was broke, but also because he needed adventure and this was the only way to get it. Seemingly endless, drawn-out work weeks left Everett more morose and downtrodden than the average daily-grind worker. He just wasn't cut out for it, this sitting in an office chair, day after day. It killed him. These things he had explained to Chloe over and over, while strolling around Columbus Park or while taking tea at the Mah Jong Parlour on Pell Street. And now he was taking action... sort of.

"Man, it was such a fantastic day. I mean, 85 and sunny."

Everett had an admirable tolerance for extreme heat. Actually, it was beyond tolerance. He thoroughly enjoyed humid, hot, sunny days. While Chloe hated even the feeling of potential perspiration, Everett luxuriated in it.

Chloe retorted, "Ugh. The weather was horrendous. I could smell the fishmonger all the way from Canal Street today. Also, I attempted to ride my bike, but the saddle was so hot from the sun I promptly dismissed the idea entirely." (It goes without saying that Chloe complained about the weather rather excessively during the summer months.)

Wisely ignoring her, Everett continued. "Well, for some reason, today, people just seemed dazed by the sunshine. Pedestrians just kind of walked around like zombies everywhere I went, stepping into traffic, barely moving along sidewalks." (Ever since Everett started riding his bike, really riding his bike, he referred to people who were not on bikes as "pedestrians.")

"So, tell me what happened that's gotten you so riled up."

Everett had texted her an expletive-laden message earlier in the day, the content of which Chloe found impossible to decipher. In response, she invited him to "just come over whenever the hell he got back from wherever the hell he was. " And so, her bell rang about 6:30pm, just as she was putting some rose in the fridge to chill. Thank god he had showered before coming over.

Everett recounted:

So, this lethargy I was sensing wasn't limited to pedestrians. Even car drivers seemed to be a little... unconscious. To the point where just getting out of Manhattan over the bridge proved to be near-catastrophic, with cars just coasting through the red light at Canal Street. It's a good thing I'm a careful rider. But the worst was yet to come. As I was coming down off the bridge in DUMBO, I hit the light perfectly so as to be able to cross into that raised, center-median bike lane. And you know how that's just one huge downhill slope down to Sands Street? well, I was just blazing-saddles down that thing, made it through that one light at Gold Street. I must have been going like 40 miles per hour. And for some reason, I just did not notice this car that had driven up onto the bike lane median and whose driver had their door wide open, almost touching the concrete divider wall between bike lanes. So there was nowhere for me to go but into the traffic lane, which, most unfortunately, was taken at that very second by a car. So, I attempted to slam on my brakes, which, of course, didn't stop me in time. My front tire hit the inside of the driver's side door, sending me (with a helmet, thank, god,) straight into the window pane, shattering the glass. It's a good thing I wasn't going faster or I'd be a lot worse off.

"But where are your injuries? Your scratches?," Chloe interjected.

Everett pulled up him pant legs to reveal two equally-sized wounds on each of his knees.

Just these. But look, this isn't the worst of it. I'm getting up, trying to pull myself together, and this huge, fat woman is screaming at me. And I'm thinking, what the fuck, I should be screaming at her. She's still in her fucking car, saying 'Look what you just did to MAH CAR!! YouSONOFABITCH!!' And all the while her lazy, fat ass is still parked in that drivers seat.

I was incredulous. I couldn't believe this was happening. My gut reaction was to start getting myself together to keep riding, and as I picked up my bike, still shaking form the impact, she's saying to me 'That's right, KEEP MOVIN, KEEP MOVIN.' So I shot back, 'You're in the fucking bike lane, what did you expect you BITCH?!' Well, that finally got her moving out of her seat. I defensively scrambled up onto the concrete barrier and in front of her car, so that she was blocked by her open door. At that point, I don't remember what she said. Nothing of consequence, really. Apparently she had just parked her lazy ass there right on a bike lane, for no reason at all but to hinder cyclists.

While she was ranting, I determined that I wasn't seriously injured, and I decided that I would be proactive. As she kept yelling at me, I calmly mounted my bike and, once the traffic lane was clear, circled around her car. I took out my camera and snapped one photo of the scene. The back of her car and car door, clearly blocking a bike lane, with the window shattered and the most important piece, a clear shot of her license plate.

Once she saw me take the photo, she flipped her shit and went after me. I started to ride away but I wasn't fast enough. I guess I was too shaken from the fall. She knocked me off my bike and I was so angry that I promptly got up and hit her, and at that point it was just a full-on fight. Me and this huge, foul-mouthed woman. All I remember is that I just kept punching her, until she finally gave way and flew across the concrete barrier, rolling into the opposite bike lane, where she lay, motionless. Of course, before I had time to process what had just happened, a cop car rolls up with its lights on. He questioned me, I told him the story, and he sent me on my way, saying he'd take care of the situation. He didn't seem to care about the woman laying face down on the opposite bike lane. Once I started riding away, he finally strolled over to her, and as I looked over my shoulder, I saw her get up, yelling and pointing at me as I rode away. I figured, that's justice.

Chloe got up to retrieve the rose from the fridge. She hoped it was chilled.

ethics in mail delivery

Chloe had a questionable habit of borrowing her neighbor's magazines from the mailbox. Both girls shared a box with the other tenant on the floor, Mrs. Wong, who mostly only received type-written envelopes from obscure organizations such as The International Center for Psychic Research and The Knitters' Defense Fund. Bonnie Maloney, for her part, received a continuous subscription to all manner of fashion magazines, also, Newsweek. These were magazines which mildly interested Chloe, but not nearly enough to commit to a $19/year subscription. Besides, it was more exciting to borrow them.

Chloe was always the first to get to the mailbox in the late afternoons, right after Mr. Cho, the mailman, made his delivery. If there was a magazine in the box, she grabbed it along with her own mail. She was always sure to read the magazine that very evening, reading (or flipping) through its entirety, devouring its contents in an hour or two or three. The next afternoon, she carefully placed the magazine back into the mailbox, as if Mr. Cho had delivered it that afternoon. Each time, Chloe prided herself on the near-virginal appearance of the now-day-old magazine, betraying only the slightest hint of use. No harm done, Chloe figured, except maybe Bonnie's assessment of Mr. Cho, who she probably thought an unpunctual and careless mailman.

fresh snow

"Why are you wearing that? Didn't Ian give that to you?"

"Yeah, so?"

Eleanor gave her a look of death. They were sitting in a bar in the East Village, drinking red wine and watching the white snow slowly build up outside against the black of the night.

It wasn't as bad as she was making it out to be. Eleanor loved to be dramatic, and Chloe usually let slide most of any perceived antagonism associated with her overreactions.

"I don't mind it, you know..." Chloe went on. "It didn't end so terribly."

Eleanor sat up in her stool, her back straightening. Chloe could almost see her spine bristle. "What are you talking about?! It was awful!" Slumping down back into her position on the stool, with her arms folded, she added "Well, it was awful for me, at least."

This much was probably true, and she deserved to be overly dramatic about it. Chloe told Eleanor everything. It's possible she was so used to telling her things that she might tell her too much sometimes. When they spoke, it was as if her brain took control of her mouth, and any kind of filter that Chloe would use with any other person was rendered useless. It was the result of years of friendship, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Really, I mean. Despite everything, I just really like this necklace," she explained to her friend.

The necklace in question was a golden, precious affair, with a fine chain and a small heart pendant with a hammered finish. Chloe didn't have any good reasons to back up why she liked it, like she could some other things she owned (i.e. "it was my grandmother's" or "it has a bird on it"). She didn't even like hearts, really. But there was something about it.

"Anyway" she went on, "I've purged it of all its negative meaning, in that way."

"Oh, and how have you managed to do that?," Eleanor shot back, dryly, skeptically.

God, Eleanor could really be a bitch sometimes.

"I created a kind of new life for it. Ever since Ian and I broke up, I've worn it every day. And every day I wear it, it acquires new meaning and becomes a part of new memories... such that its previous context, its old memory, gets farther and farther away."

"Have you been eating those street cart berries again?? I told you those things...."

Chloe had already zoned out, her attention stolen by some commotion between pedestrians. Eleanor was always getting on her for buying fruits from the street cart vendors in her neighborhood in Chinatown. There was nothing wrong with it, but Eleanor only bought her fruits from Whole Foods for twice as much, so what did she know?

She definitely didn't know that Chloe was rather fond of her new theory, which she called The Theory of Replaced Meaning. She could toss out the physical vestiges of past relationships which she didn't like, but the precious few ones she liked she found she could keep and make them her own. She applied this theory not only to objects but to places, too, reclaiming over the course of time the spaces they once shared. Over the past month since the breakup, Chloe had retraced all of the steps they took together. Up and down Elizabeth, Mott, and Mulberry Streets, and across Prince and Spring, Kenmare and Broome and Grand. She'd eaten at the same restaurants, drunk the same wine in the same bars, all in this new incarnation, with friends or without. It was a daunting undertaking, but once put in practice, it was downright enjoyable. She saw it all with fresh eyes, and it was even better than before. By now, she'd canvassed the whole of their relationship, from beginning to end, and this bar, unbeknownst to Eleanor, was the last stop. The place where it ended.

"Well, are you ready to go?" asked Eleanor, slurping down the last of her wine with clear impatience at Chloe's zone-out.

"Yes, let's go eat. Max's?," asked Chloe, putting on her coat and scarf.

"Isn't that where...?"

Chloe gave her a perplexed look. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

They stepped out together into the streets full of fresh snow, their boots leaving a double trail behind them.

the story of matilda jennings

It wasn't always to be believed, but the story was true just the same. Born in the same month of the same year as she, Matilda Jennings was Louise's closest confidante when they were schoolgirls. She resided in a massive white townhouse where the P.S. 10 now stands. It was a corner lot, the envy of all the neighbors. Her parents has passed before she turned three, which is when the neighbors stopped envying and instead shook their heads and said things like, "Poor little Matilda" and "Isn't it a pity." The housekeeper, Ms. Dean, who lived there and cared for Mr. and Mrs. Jennings during their last days, stayed on to raise her, the single child, as there were apparently no close or distant family members available or willing to step in.

It turned out that the housekeeper was a poor excuse for one, letting the house go to ruin inside and out. By the time Matilda and Louise were in grade school, the awnings had begun to tumble, the vines growing between brick and mortar, pulling apart the foundation. But Ms. Dean loved Matilda and treated her handsomely, never depriving her of the good fortune her father had wrought in the pantyhose business. In the afternoons when Matilda and Louise were young, Ms. Dean would plant them in the backseat of her rust-colored dinosaur of a towncar, where they sat silently together, staring straight ahead, their brunette and hay-colored heads swinging this way and that as she turned corners, the wind whipping their fine long hair around in circles.

When Matilda and Louise turned sixteen, Ms. Dean passed, and Matilda was deemed fit by the courts to take care of herself. This meant that the house would continue to deteriorate. Having had a loving yet ultimately free-thinking upbringing, fixing up or maintaining the house was not on her list of priorities. During those years, Louise took it upon herself to mop the kitchen floor and dust the furniture in the drawing room, as Matilda slept until noon. She also made sure Matilda took her meals, and frequently invited her to her family's house around the corner for dinner, or she brought her a minced meat pie, her mother's specialty. Otherwise, she knew, Matilda would not eat. Instead of breakfast, she would go out into the dense and wild backyard of her house and catch sparrows and other wild birds and keep them in her collection of cages in the greenhouse. When they died, which never took very long, Matilda would bury them out in the back corner of the yard, next to the high brick wall, each with their own stone marker. It was a never-ending succession of birds that came there to die, however unwillingly, and by the time Louise left for college, there must have been twenty or thirty stones out there, all lined up in rows.

Matilda never made it to college. Not every girl attended college in those days, however. Most of the neighbors just said, "I hope she finds a good man." Louise felt bad leaving her there, but Matilda insisted she would be fine, and said she would call her by phone regularly, which she didn't.

The late autumn of their twentieth year of life was cold, the air permeated with the scent of burning wood. One Sunday morning, while Louise was still at college, Matilda dressed herself in her mother's silk wedding dress that still hung in the closet, and topped it with the moth-eaten mink. She carefully curled her hair and applied rouge to her cheeks. She looked the most beautiful she ever had. Her feet were too big for her mother's satin heels, so, barefoot, she strode out of the front door, leaving it wide open for the wind and leaves to rush through the hall and up the banister. She marched steadily past the neighbors who looked on in bewilderment from their windows. Down the hill she walked, steadily, assuredly, past the warehouses, down to the heavily polluted Gowanus canal, where, without pause, as if propelled by the inertia of her stride, she stepped off the concrete ledge into the freezing sludge, where, if she didn't drown, she was certainly poisoned by the refuse of industry.

When they found her, out behind the lumber yard, her frail and lifeless body lay face-first, the fabric covered buttons of her white dress peeking out from under a bright green frozen block of ice, scores of sparrows circling overhead.

peking duck

It was dusk, and someone somewhere was blasting Beyonce from their car speakers. The bass thundered down her little street, and Chloe could see Mrs Huang across the way, watering her plants in her kitchen window. She smiled and waved. Chloe smiled and waved back. She must be paying like 200 a month in rent.

Not that Chloe's rent wasn't cheaper than a New York apartment of similar size. It was rent-stabilized, which meant that her landlord would raise her rent every year to the maximum allowable percentage, in the effort to finally reach the magical two grand mark, at which point rent stabilized apartments are allowed to go to market rate. But the percentage per year wasn't too high, and she hoped that by the time it got anywhere near two grand she would be long gone to the Carolinas or some other mild-weathered state.

It was 6 pm and Mildred was late, due to a shoe shopping trip gone awry. She really didn't want Mildred to come over, but invited her over out of habit, or boredom, she wasn't sure which. Mildred had become sort of scrappy lately, succumbing to the societal pressures to get married and have babies before she hit forty and taking it upon herself to make sure she didn't "fall behind the pack." She had started wearing high heels and going on dates with guys like "Aaron from the art gallery" and "Tim from the coffee shop." She used to be more unexpected. Now she did the boring things everyone else in New York did, like go to Sheep's Meadow on Saturday afternoons and the Meatpacking district at night. It made Chloe sick to her stomach, and she had almost had enough.

At 6:25, the small bell rang outside her bedroom window. She had rigged it up when, after moving in, she realized there was no buzzer in the 100-year-old tenement building. So she hung a brass ringer from the 99 cent store on the rail outside on her fire escape, and attached a long, inconspicuous string that blended in with the parasols sold by the vendor in the downstairs storefront.

She ambled down the two flights of stairs, tipsy having now drunk half of the bottle of wine that she and Mildred were supposed to share.

"Hiiiiiiiii Chloe! How are you?," shrieked Mildred, giving her a hug.
Poor Mildred. She was well-intentioned, but offensively girly. Chloe faked a smile.
"Come up. Would you like some wine?"
"Sure!," she said. Hiking back up the stairs, Chloe wondered how to tell her, how to break it off.

Inside the door, Mildred plopped down on the couch with a large sigh, while Chloe resumed her place on the chaise. "So, how did the date go?"

"Oh! It was so lovely! The whole time I was thinking, This might be the one!"

Chloe set down her wine glass and felt she might gag. But she attempted a feigned excitement. "Ohhh, that's wonderful, what happened?," she forced out of herself.

Couldn't she tell she was faking it? That she didn't give a shit about this guy who seemed hideously boring. That she thought Mildred herself was hideously boring.

"Well! So he took me to Central Park and he had a picnic basket! He even thought of the blanket. So we sat there, in sheep's meadow, having a lunch of lemon curd and toast. I do love lemon curd. Just as soon as he brought out that jar, I knew he was the one."

There was a pause, with which Chloe didn't know what to do. It was awkward. She could tell her feigning was fading. Certainly Mildred couldn't actually be this superficial.

Well, enough was enough. Plus, the wine bottle was empty. Chloe stood up and announced that she was so sorry, that she must leave to pick up her Peking Duck for tomorrow night's feast at the mah jong parlor.

They gave each other kisses on the cheek, and after closing the door, Chloe heaved a sigh of relief, purging Mildred's putrid words out of her system. She changed out of her clothes and slipped on her silk Chinese robe. There was no feast tomorrow, and there certainly was no Peking Duck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_Duck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah_jong

pungent sights

On a perfectly brisk yet sunny October Saturday, Chloe was inside selling overpriced but good croissants and coffee at Ceci-Cela on Spring. She thought it might be a fun thing, like a hobby, working in what would be the closest thing to a real Parisian cafe. Plus, it was just a few blocks north of her apartment. She imagined herself blithely tying on a cute apron and joyfully serving smiling, happy customers delicious pastries, chatting with the locals in between. Instead, it was all drudgery and belittlement. The customers, both tourists and natives alike, were downright rude, and the smell of croissants was now sickening. She was about to tell the manager she would like to quit when in walked a familiar face.

One look at his trendy new boots and she knew he wasn't the same. It had been five years, of course, and one was certainly allowed to change. But not for the worse. Not while still in your twenties. He reeked of expensive cologne, and he produced an iPhone4 from his back pocket.
"Really? An iPhone?"
"Yeah, aren't they great?"
"I wouldn't know. I though you hated iPhones." Chloe cast a jaded glance out the window over her right shoulder, then turned to face him again.
"I did, in theory. But now I don't live in the theoretical world. I live in the practical one."
"I can see that."

She motioned to the rear of the cafe, if you could call it a cafe. It was more like a claustrophobic hallway. Not more than one person could stand between the wall and the glass case. She walked out from behind the counter and followed him to a pair of rickety chairs set around a table still strewn with the remnants of someone's breakfast.

There they chatted about the usual things one chats about with someone from the past. Jobs ["Are you still at...?"], haircuts ["Your hair seems longer..."], apartments ["You've moved five times?!"], and relationship status ["So, how's Tara? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."]. By that time, he had finished his coffee and croissant, and Chloe saw him on his way, ["It was great to see you. I'll see you around."], never to be seen again, in all his pungent, high-tech glory.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pungent