flamingo pink

It was a pale blue afternoon and the air felt like it could snap in two. Chloe put on her brown wool hat and stepped out onto the sidewalk, mixing in among the masses of tourists and chinese families of six or seven. She headed east down Hester Street, and as she cleared the herds crossing Chrystie Street, she broke into a stroll.

"Ahead of schedule," she thought, which was an unusual circumstance, and you bet she would take advantage of it. Passing the chinese men's club, which seemed perpetually gathered in a circle of smoke, she removed the small bag of dates from her pocket, which she held open in her hand from which to snack, and she ambled on.

Chloe was on her way to visit her friend Gabrielle who lived in a big flamingo pink building on the corner of Grand and Orchard. It sounds tacky, and she hated pink, but she liked flamingos, and it reminded her of them, so it was forgiven, as far as she was concerned. Also, the windows were huge and the whole facade was iron-wrought. It was a converted suspender factory that Gabrielle's parents, both artists, had lived in since the 60's. They bought the whole building and lived on two floors. Gabrielle grew up there, among the drug dealers and whores who populated the corner in those days. "I learned right away what real life is," she had told Chloe.

Not that Gabrielle had anything to worry about. She was well taken care of. When her parents decided to move upstate, they left the whole building to her. And so, eventually, she set up a yoga and dance studio on the second floor, below her living quarters on the third floor. The fourth floor served as everything from an art studio to a dance floor to a wine cellar of sorts. There was enough room for all of it and probably fifty of her friends.

Chloe crossed Allen Street and swung left up to the black door to Gabrielle's. It was hard to find, and as the years went on, since she had known Gabrielle, it seemed to blend more and more into the pasted-up poster and graffiti collage that had spread like wildfire all over the exterior wall where it met the sidewalk. She hadn't had a commercial tenant in the bottom floor for years, and she had basically just locked it up and let the outside go to pot. "I am doing my part to retain the character of the neighborhood," she said.

Up on the third floor, Gabrielle was drinking Bordeaux and listening to Devotchka. Chloe could tell from the speaker when she buzzed her in downstairs. The elevator didn't work, and the two flights always seemed like an eternity - the equivalent of four flights in a normal tenement building. Out of breath but very much enjoying the rush of blood through her veins, Chloe swung open the big metal door.

"Helllooooo, how is everything?" Gabrielle said, wrapping her silk kimono-swathed arms around Chloe. "Oh, fine," she replied, taking off her coat and hat and plunking herself down on one of the five couches laying about the loft. Gabrielle returned to her chaise by the giant window, where she glowed in the sunlight that streamed down.

"Promise me that they will play this song at my funeral," she said with a dramatic sigh, her head turned to gaze outside, and the glass of Bordeaux in her hand. How it Ends was playing on the speaker. It sounded so much better in her apartment. The voices bounced off the walls.

Taking the already-poured goblet siting on the table (how long has it been sitting there? she didn't care), Chloe took a sip and slumped down further on the couch, till her whole body was basking in the warmth of the sun.

two movies and a book

It was a rainy afternoon in December. That kind of chilling, damp air that penetrates to the bone. Chloe had just gotten off the phone with her friend Georgette, who had become slightly depressed as of late. She didn't know what she wanted, in general, and was sad about most things. Chloe had tried to console her.

Pretend you are a character in a movie and look at everything from the outside, and suddenly everything will come into perspective and everything will seem small.

Chloe's boots went clip-clop over the cobblestones on Crosby Street. She preferred to walk over these instead of the narrow sidewalk, because it felt like it must have felt to walk there in the 60s, when Crosby Street was a better version of itself. And in the emptiness, it felt like her own.

The cobblestones, though, were also a melancholy reminder of how little streets there were left paved with this vestige of old New York. Just last year the city had paved over all of Grand Street, leaving a smooth and slick surface, lined with stores selling thousand dollar t-shirts. Save for Wooster, Greene, Mercer, and that two block stretch of Clinton in no-man's land below Delancey, Crosby Street was one of the last holdouts.

The day Crosby is paved over is the day I leave New York.

The echoes of her boots filled the silence, and it started to pour rain just as she pulled open the big door at Housing Works Bookstore. She was craving a useful book. Perhaps a Historical Account of Crosby Street, or A Detailed Description of How to Navigate the Canal Street Subway Station. Finding neither of her desired books (what else could be expected?), she ambled over to the 50 cent cart.

While contemplating the usefulness of The Science of Relationships, she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was her friend Griselda, who had worked there for as long as Chloe had been getting her books there, which wasn't long. "I have a book for you!"

(Griselda had been keeping an eye out for certain books as they arrived, as a favor to Chloe, who had the idea that she wanted to collect all the books with the word "ocean" in the title. It was an ongoing project, but she had
collected quite a range, thanks in large part to Griselda's efforts.)

"It's called 'Near the Ocean' by Robert Lowell."

(The cover was aqua, with corners worn white with wear. The title, in a sans serif italic, sat in an off-white square, with aqua wave lines alternating each word, which were stacked one on top of another, flush left. It was very 60s.)

"Thank you, this is perfect."

Forgetting her mission to find a useful book, Chloe took off her coat and sat at a table with the volume... But first, a glass of wine, she thought. She stood up and went to the bar.

(Hello's. The order. Merlot please. Digging through her wallet. Thank you.)

Taking her seat again, she opened the cover. 1967. She couldn't help but wonder whether she would have preferred to have lived then. Maybe her happiness would have been greater. She started thinking about all that she wanted but couldn't have, and all that she had but didn't want. Drifting in thought, she sighted a man in the corner with a solitary stack of books like a skyscraper. Beyond him, she drifted up the stairs and up to the platform that stretched across the second level of the store. Gazing over the railing, she watched herself from above. And suddenly everything felt light and free, and all the bookstore and its patrons were just characters in some movie sitting on a dusty shelf.

Sam the Weatherman

Chloe knew a woman about 14 years her senior named Melba who lived down Mott Street across from the park. Her apartment was on the fourth floor directly above Ng Fook Funeral Services, LLC. Melba had told her that, in theory, living above a funeral home was rather morbid, but in practice it provided quite the contemplative atmosphere. "Being reminded of one's own impending death every day when one comes home keeps a person more alive," she had said.

Over hot tea one sunny afternoon in Melba's small living room overlooking the park, she confided to Chloe her disdain of the new blonde haired local news station anchor. You see, Melba had recently caught on to some potential flirting between her beloved "Sam the Weatherman" and said blonde woman as of late, and had become perturbed. She thought Sam was the ultimate man: handsome, funny, witty. She had told Chloe months ago that he wasn't cheesy and superficial "like those other weathermen." Melba had always felt Sam was all hers from 5am to 7am every morning, that they were meant to be together, she and Sam the Weatherman. When Chloe and Melba would meet for pork buns at Ho Won Bakery, she would always recount to Chloe some witty remark he had recently made about politics or the news.

But now, today, after a hot cup of tea, Melba felt less alive.

letter to no one

Dear Bicycle Seat Thief,

I hope that you feel every inch of your sorry human skin melt excruciatingly away in the flames of hell.

May your days of your sorry excuse for human existence be numbered.

xoxo,
Chloe

of lunch-eaters and table-benches

It was the only park nearby. Well, it wasn't really a park, as it lacked the requisite vegetation, covered as it was in asphalt and brightly colored children's climbing things. It was more like a playground, but at least it had plentiful benches, where Chloe could sit and eat her lunch, solitary among the shrill cries of spoiled 3 year olds, untended by chatting nannies.
On the whole, the playground suited its purpose for Chloe: a place to sit by herself under the sun. Every lunch hour was a new story; upon arrival, Chloe walked farther into the playground until she spied an open bench.
For many months, she coveted the four pairs of benches that faced one of four tables just outside the gates, under some trees. They were always taken, mostly by solitary lunch eaters, as if they felt themselves so lucky when they found their prize that they never left their seats, day after day. And no one would think to try to sit in the empty facing bench, because no one in their right mind would want to sit and eat their lunch facing a complete stranger, in some sort of forced, awkward closeness.
Then, one day, the playground gods shone down upon Chloe. The first pair of table-benches was open. She took a seat, smiling satisfyingly in her mind, spending five whole minutes retrieving the lunch items from her bag and setting it upon the table.
Just as she took her third bite of tuna salad, a 30-something businessman walked up to the facing bench and asked Chloe in the most polite of ways, "if anyone sitting here?"
The politeness only made her rage worse. Surely he was joking? She looked around at the other table-benches, all of which were attended by a solitary person. Why didn't he ask one of them? Why ask in the first place? She never asked anyone before, patiently waiting for her day, this, sunny, special day, when the playground gods would shine down upon her. Surely he thinks it could be at least slightly awkward, him, in his shirt and tie, eating a sub sandwich, facing her, two feet away? She would have to start some sort of labored conversation, the kind that strangers in uncomfortably close situations in places like New York have, consisting of awkward, basic generalizations about the weather and such. What a drag. What a jerk.
"No," said Chloe, as she re-packed her carefully placed lunch items, remnants of those short sweet moments of naivete that were taken from her just as quickly as they appeared, then retreating to a regular, non-table bench.

ring of fire

Chloe didn't know whether to scream and shout, laugh, or cry. Nevertheless, the feelings erupted from her like submarine volcano, the molten lava spewing up from the deepest of recesses, unbeknownst to all but herself, below a cool, calm blue surface. Building quietly upon itself whenever the moment arose, centuries later, she might finally break the surface.

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

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

here come the gents

Drew always forgot to bring beer for himself when he came over to her apartment after work. Chloe didn't drink beer, the consequence of her unrelenting thirst for wine. She never had any beer on hand.
So, as usual, he had to go out all over again, and, as usual, in her slippers and robe, she reminded him of the only place nearby that sells beer - the Vietnamese shop on Mott. He could find it in the drink case next to the soybean paste.
When Drew returned, he exclaimed his shock about the "sheer quantity of silk-clad blondes in towering stilettos, led by dudes in finance/banking costume." This confirmed Chloe's worst fears. They had finally broken the Canal street barrier, venturing forth into her once quiet-after-dark neighborhood. What did it all mean?
As she pondered her near future - her rent succumbing to the forces of gentrification, an Irish bar installed next door, tequila howls outside her bedroom window at 4 in the morning - she thought about the repercussions that extended beyond her own interests. Where would this trajectory be in 10 years?
Chloe imagined it coming full circle. All the Upper East Siders will have migrated to the "new cool neighborhoods," Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, deserting their abodes in Midtown and Uptown and leaving all but the old rich in their fanciful townhomes. With skyrocketing vacancies, rents in those neighborhoods go down, thus beginning a mas exodus of artists, designers, musicians, and writers from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Chinatown, and Lower East Side, all to congregate in the now-affordable Upper East Side. Faux-hip midtown bars give way to dive bars with $1 PBRs, and bands perform where power lunches once ruled, among wood paneling and dusty chandeliers.

reckoner

It wasn't every day, or every month, for that matter, that Chloe found some new music that she liked. And only very rarely did she happen upon a piece that felt transcendental, at which point she would listen to it over and over, eventually beating it till its poor melodious death, only to be resurrected once again upon a chance encounter many months later. Such was the case, once again, with a song she heard by an artist from whom she would not have expected such a reaction.
But this one was more complex, expanding and contracting in deliberate forward movement in melodic waves, like Arvo Part's Frartes. Like all the others before it, she would play it in permanent repeat mode in the darkness of her bedroom, and, flowing in and out of her, the sounds caressed her to sleep. And when she awoke in the morning its echoes would greet her with good morning wishes.
Chloe thought it fitting, then, as she listened to the song in the afternoon, that it reminded her of her favorite film, called Sunrise from 1927. She remembered that right after she saw the film for the first time, in the haze of the emotional catharsis in which she had indulged for the past 95 minutes, she called her best friend Jana to inform her that she wished to show the film at her own funeral, whenever that may be, that she felt so strongly that it was almost an expression of her own self. The film, complex and layered, yet visually beautiful, had affected her like none other, much the same way this new song had. Each work of art was the sonic and visual expression of the same feeling, the same experience.

cycles

Jules: What is it?
Catherine: Sulfuric acid, for the eyes of men who tell lies.

Jules et Jim (1962)


She always fell hard for them. Like a schoolgirl with a crush, she always thought. But then they would always fall harder in return. And, sometimes after weeks, sometimes after years, Chloe would suddenly get rid of whatever unfortunate male specimen happened to be around...so that she could finally spend a Friday night alone in her apartment drinking wine and her weekends riding her bike aimlessly around Brooklyn.
Forever attaching, unattaching, and reattaching herself, she was doomed to a vicious cycle. And Chloe knew that eventually, when the wrinkles appeared and when her hair began decorating itself with bright silver strands, she was further doomed to a life of nine cats and twenty-three houseplants. And these, eventually, she would not be able to get rid of so easily.

separate lives

They met by accident, or rather, by default; as such, they met under circumstances that allowed for the possibility that each had already gone separate ways (which was, in fact, the case). And so, after sunset, these separate lives entered that vague realm of time and space that exists between the relentless consecutive numbered units of human consciousness. There, they met one another, and amid rolling waves of grain stretching before them like an ocean of time, they danced freely together under the white glow of the crescent moon.

[for emily]

Scooter Lady

The first time Chloe saw Scooter Lady, she was heading West towards her on Broome Street, speeding down the sidewalk in spandex pants and cheap flipflops. Behind round sunglasses, the Scooter Lady, appearing to be in her early 50's, seemed to be in a hurry with a mission to accomplish, judging from her intent stare and refusal to move out of the way; even if it meant running Chloe down under her two little orange wheels.
The second time she saw Scooter Lady was the very next day. She sped past her once again on Houston Street with the same clothing, the same urgency, and the same sense of purpose. For a moment, Chloe envied Scooter Lady for perhaps having a life characterized by exciting, back-to-back secret meetings and parties to which she was always late and at which other Scooter people gathered to talk about their Scooter lives. It would be nice if she could find a group of people like that, except not people who liked Scooters, thought Chloe, like that bumble bee girl in that Blind Melon video.

wood and stream

She decided to go on the hike alone because, well, there wasn't anyone there to go with her. Aunt Aubrey and Uncle Harry had gone to fetch her sister and husband and nephew from the airport, which was a long drive away from Mount Desert Island where the house was. Seal Harbor, specifically, on Pierce's Point. They would not be back until dinnertime, Aunt Aubrey said. No matter, thought Chloe. It would do her well to go alone.
When she proposed this plan to her dear Aunt Aubrey, she was flabbergasted. She said it wasn't a good idea "because, well, it's just not done! A young girl hiking alone in those woods!" Perhaps it wasn't a good idea; staying at the house was much safer. But the thought of an entire second day being spent indoors did not sit well with Chloe, and she decided to go anyway.
After she heard the car speed down the long gravel driveway, she put on her backpack and, map in hand, stepped out onto the front porch. She had never been to these woods, and it would all be entirely new. And so, beneath the veil of morning fog, she took off on a journey to an uncertain destination.

Hal

It all started when he would appear on lonely and rainy Saturday afternoons, emerging from the shadows of Chloe's living room/kitchen (she refused to turn on lights in the daytime). His name was Hal. He would come and sit next to her on her couch and listen to what she had to say about things. And they were nice, these visits. Because she could tell him anything and he would listen.
Then, Hal began accompanying her on random errands. He would appear on a subway platform and talk to her about music, about Nick Drake and forgotten songs. Then, conveniently, he would disappear when she couldn't pay attention to him, like when she was shopping for fruit at the market, for instance (it took some concentration to find untouched cherries on Grand Street at the end of the day).
Later, at home again, he would reappear, assuring and dependable, even when they had nothing to say to each other; keeping each other company in that full and satisfying silence that only kindred spirits can share.

marionette

Most days, now more than ever, she felt herself hovering over her marionette likeness. In her own sky of illustrious cloud and cerebral sun, she pulled this or that string with her eyes closed, her doppelganger interacting in perfect symbiosis, because she knew the choreography and the story so well. And it was a perfect decoy; she fooled everyone, not excluding herself.

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

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

sea and shore

Flushed cheeks and unbridled joy. She remembered those few hours in soft, undulating waves, washing warm over her at the edge of an isolated shore. Memories of the still shadows of a Sunday night, of pulsing conversation and blood, flooded the empty conch shell of her soul and washed her back out to her sea.

the tortoise shell

Among the strewn and broken crates and watery fish waste, Chloe ambled on through the darkness that had descended upon Grand Street. She remembered the story about the tortoise who happened to lose its shell and who then, after many moons, happily found it again. Through the red door and into the cement-paved courtyard behind her building, up the steep stairwell, she finally returned to her own shell. Within its walls, alone, stuffing the socks she never wore in the bottom drawer, just like before, and her toothbrush on the second level in the bathroom cabinet, she let her mind wander on through the mists of her memory of childhood. How the mangoes dropped like snowballs onto the roof of their house on Pinta Court. The great banyan trees and the way they swayed before a storm, rustling. She had come home.

the apartment

It went without saying. It was like saying she wanted to find happiness or enlightenment. Or like saying she wanted to live in that top floor Apartment with the roof of skylights at the triangular corner where Division Street meets Canal Street. Of course, who wouldn't? She had admired It from afar, from as close as she could get, on the sidewalk below, always peering into those plentiful windows facing Ludlow Street.
Perhaps not everyone would want that Apartment, thought Chloe. Though it took up the entire top floor, it was small, inside an edifice with a crumbling facade and a forever-shuttered storefront on the bottom. But that was what made it special. So unusual, so mysterious, so quiet, so thoughtful, so perfect. Whenever she walked within sight of the red triangular building, even from Essex Street, The Apartment sang to her, to the world. She imagined herself living there, knowing precisely where she would put her piano (by the East-facing window). She imagined sleeping there, with the peaceful sunlight wrapping its arms around her in late afternoon slumber. She thought of all the happiness that apartment could have shown her, or perhaps could still show her.
But then all of sudden, she hated The Apartment's guts. How dare it stand there, appearing at least two days a week, tall and aloof and handsome. Singing songs and living its own exciting life. Offering glimpses through its windows, tales of happiness and of the young love for which she longed, tales being lived by another who was not her and who would never be her.

misspellings

Clicking with her mouse on "Inbox (1)," Chloe discovered she had received an Email from her friend Tori. Nestled in among several paragraphs detailing the current state of affairs in Tori's life, in the paragraph recapping her conversation with her delinquent boyfriend, a particular phrase stood out: "your lacking common cents." Spelled just like that.
Now, Chloe loved her friend Tori dearly, but this slight misstep (not one, but two misspellings in the same phrase!) on Tori's part, unbeknownst to her, had large ramifications for Chloe.
You see, Chloe possesses a severe aversion to people who cannot spell, or rather, who don't spell. Was it laziness? Ignorance? Spite? A cruel joke? At any rate, Chloe is capable of becoming repulsed by even the slightest of absent apostrophes. First she cringes, then shudders, then re-reads the offense over again to be sure her dear friend didn't surely mean something else. But always, upon further examination, her fears are confirmed.
At this point, Chloe couldn't bear to read one more word of Tori's Email. It was tainted. Chloe signed out of her her Email account and didn't see her friend Tori for 4 1/2 weeks after that.

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

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html

a wind of change

Like a wind that blows suddenly from a new direction, gently yet with great confidence, she felt a change sweep over her, through her. Chloe had overslept that morning, waking from a deep slumber just a few hours ago, with the sun already high in the sky and the people already having begun their days, in an event highly uncharacteristic of her usual early morning routine. And perhaps that was just it, she thought; the reason for the change, that is. Though she generally found much comfort in routine, it being a sure, dependable friend in life, she had begun to realize that her good friend might well be a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Today, having broken free from ritual, she felt suddenly clear-headed. Her energy was endless and her appetite for food minimal. In the bright, cool sun of her lunch hour, life itself felt suddenly different. Perhaps it was just for today. Or perhaps the new wind will continue to blow.

bicycle stories

On her bicycle, she felt free. Even if it wasn't a cool bicycle. Metallic blue, most likely from the 1980s, it said "Ross Professional" on it. It wasn't even a girls' bike. At any rate, it was her size and she got it at the Chelsea flea market for a fair price. So it didn't matter.
Since acquiring her new bike, she had gotten used to specific bumps in familiar roads, on her way to school, on her way to work. The pot hole at Bowery and Broome, the bump on the East River just to the south of the pedestrian crossing to Grand Street. She knew these well, for very good reasons, but did not always remember them well, which caused for spontaneous surprise, at times.
Today, in the grey of the April early evening, she rode on, having no place to go. She came across that same hungry squirrel down by the housing projects on Cherry Street. He almost had a death wish, the way he ran in front of her wheels. And then, as she turned onto Jackson Street, a dead one in the middle of the street, a dead squirrel, that is. And then, as she passed slowly, her legs tiring, she realized it was not a dead squirrel but instead a fake fur snap-off portion of someone's (now fur-less) jacket.

processed thoughts

It suddenly occurred to Chloe that now was the time. Sitting across from him, elbows propped up on the greasy aluminum table, she bit into her giant cheeseburger. Gazing into his eyes, chewing a giant wad of highly processed white un-bread, highly processed cheese, and juicy beef (hopefully not also highly processed), she processed her own momentary thoughts, though not highly. Instead she acted on impulse. Here goes nothing. And then, she broke up with him, while eating a giant cheeseburger.

of senses lost

On her way home, Chloe's head was still swimming with all the thoughts and ideas that had crossed her mind that day in class. Not that color, needs a cleaner typeface, nice photograph, can you make the secondary element just a hair bigger? All the arguing and going back and forth between students and teachers had sent her mind racing like a high speed Cuisinart, and all these thoughts in her head were starting to really become quite a mush. She was starting to wonder whether she was quite crazy afterall.
Turning the corner with her usual downward gaze onto West 23rd Street, then noticing a stick moving slowly back and forth along sidewalk in front of her, coming towards her, she moved out of the way to let a blind woman pass. It was curious that what ailed her today was too much viewing, too many images. Curious that what ailed her today was, in fact, what she had taken for granted.

tales of lateness

tale no. one
It wasn't the fact that her lovely canary yellow high heels with orange trim were biting into her feet (specifically, the right pinkie toe and the left big one) that annoyed Chloe. It was the fact that they were slowing her down as she hurriedly walked (or attempted to jog, at times), to meet Ryan. She was late, as usual, but herein lay the irony. It was Ryan's fault she was wearing these treacherous shoes. He always complained when she wore her Asics or her eBay-acquired vintage Hush Puppies. He told her he liked her better when she wore high heels. And also when she looked skinnier than she usually does. Back to the shoes. He complained so much she finally gave in and wore high heels. But only to meet him.
And so here she was, now finally past 2nd Street, now past 3rd, walking, then proceeding to a slow jog, then walking and jogging again, the kind of jog where you feel and look ridiculous because you are wearing yellow high heels and trying to run. It doesn't ever feel or look like it does in the movies or in the tv commericals, and Chloe always dreads having to do so. Now walking, now doing the absurd jog, in her canary yellow heels with orange trim.
"They look like what an Italian woman in the 1960s would wear," said Ryan excitedly when they bought them together at Edith Machinist vintage store on Rivington. Not that she didn't like them, too, just not on her feet while trying to walk 15 blocks and also being late and also being even later because of them. She would be late to meet him. And it would be his fault.