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.