Last Night On Monroe, Danielle

I was seeing and hearing things.

With some sarcasm an ice-cream blonde, her hair close-cropped and cell phone to her ear, challenged with certainty any one of three dark companions standing slightly off from her and away from the corner of the Sports Page.

"I know what you gotta do!"

There was 'yes, I do, too' in her voice.

In the bar doorway, a young man with the certainty of his not having acted improperly, answered, presumably, another young lady's accusation,

"Did I fuck you that night?"

The 'no, I did not,' that he found unnecessary to add he, apparently, thought conclusive.

I had to dodge wide to the curb to avoid the young man who was walking broadly and blindly toward me from Meigs and Mark's. His bicycle-walking companion beside him was telling him that he had, certainly, to go to,

"Alexander and East; near there..."

I was thinking how, somehow, all these encounters and the young woman eating at a fully occupied booth in Mark's front window were all so Monroe nearing two a.m. But with no idea how I might use any of them and, hurrying to be at the Convenience down at Averill before that two in the morning closing, I could only make note of them as I made the next crossing.

Then, too, in solemn silhouette, there was the memory of three companions I'd seen keeping them selves apart, away from the crowded Avenue. They were a trinity of sorts, variously sitting and standing half-back in the lot toward the old Rite Aid location. What might they be about?

Trinity, I jotted along with the rest.

But it was later, after I was turned around from returning to Oxford's by those two siren-sounding Blue-and-Whites that spun about up Meigs, that I had my most real encounter of the evening.

Crossing Goodman, I was over taken by a trim and hurrying young woman and her hungry male companion.

"I've seen you walking; I've seen you walking everywhere," she said making the corner and turning about to walk along facing her smile back to me, "You write. You carry notebooks in your bags."

Mark's was their destination.

Her companion, perhaps because he was hungrier or less literary, rather grumbled something about 'this guy.' But she sent him ahead to secure a place for them and he went on ahead of us.

We never really stopped walking, either. Because she was so trim and sure of foot, she more than kept up with me, walking along side and, then, at times, turning again to skip backward before me.

What sort of things did Iwrite about; did I write about things I heard and saw when I walked around? Was I writing anything at present? She was interested in writing herself.

I do write short things I encounter on Monroe. But I hadn't done much of that the last month or more. I told her of the novel, short novel, I had just completed. She was writing a piece, too, for an assignment, rather like a bit of memoir.

What was my novel about? How long was it? How many pages? Could I put her up on it? She would like to know what it was about.

My short novel is my memory of a party I was once at, it was a moment when a good many funny things happened all at once. They were things that all seemed in some way to do with the feelings I was then having about losing good friends who were beginning to go away. It was one of those moment that you know, even at the time, if you are interested in writing at all, you will want to write about someday and, now, I had.

Of course, it's my 'sixties' novel, I confessed; though it is only that in the sense of its environment and not at all in its purpose.

She rather challenged me on why I should have had such feelings, naturally. And I tried to explain that that is something that happens when you are nineteen or twenty. You find yourself in a process of transition that is frequently mistaken by those who have not been through any such thing before for something more dire and dreadful, something final and wholly unfortunate.

I should have mentioned to her that the party was a farewell for the first of those departing friends, someone who was a linchpin of the small group of people I was very in with and felt deeply about. It was the last of a week's worth of gatherings, both melancholy and riotous.

Did I have an e-mail address? We should exchange examples of our writing. We could discuss writing, perhaps.

Of course, she told me, she didn't have any paper or pen on her.

Those are things I am never without and I gave her my address and told her of my site http://theoxfordsquare.

"Of course, I can never recall all of that but it's 'theoxfordsquare,'" I told her writing, "and you can get there by googling Monroe, I'm told."

"Oh, sure..."

We were almost to Mark's and she was feeling so hungry, she told me. By the time I was at Mark's I was walking by myself, again, and went on by the officer out of his unit who was parked across the entrance to Woodlawn with his flashers on and a cherry flare burning in the street.

On Meigs, halfway to Park, the cops were leaving and the ambulacne that had come was preparing to leave. A patient, a young man, was on the gurney inside and a young woman was at the window on the side of the bus looking in while up on her toes.

No, it wasn't an accident; it wasn't an accident yet, one of the two young men in front of the Mayflower told me with cynism. It was only some more drama and I was to understand that he didn't approve of drama. More accurately he was bored with such Monroe drama.

"You walk the night?" he asked. "You walk around all night? Don't you ever get bored with all the drama?"

I've been on Monroe for something like five years now. And, no, I'm not bored with the drama yet, though, more accurately, the most of it is comedy and that I never find boring.

Back at Meigs and Monroe, with the cops gone off earlier elsewhere with lights and sirens in several different directions, there was only the one at Woodlawn who was still in sight. Something like the scenes of summer, scenes from a month or so back, seemed to be developing at 7/Eleven. It was still a long way to three a.m.

I decided to stick around on the corner.

September 19, 2009.