Last night on Monroe in the rain a surprizing lot was happening.
Most of the time it was only a small rain that was falling and the things that were happening were all small things that mattered little except to the people who were doing them.
Coming out of the Gulf that would be closing in minutes, two young men with fresh faces needing shaves were returning home to Boardman Street under the canopy at the convenience pumps and making for the alley in back of the Wilmer. Perhaps they had been to one of the bars north of Goodman, O'Cal's, The Sports Page, one of those bars. Otherwise why carry home a carton of beer bought along the way and not make their last call at the Gulf nearer home. The carrying the carton before him clutched both hand holes and grinned big like at a joke anticipated or just told.
Last Call, too, was on the minds of the Runners.
These three guys came up from Goodman on a stumbling, flailing, laughing run. They were on the east side of Monroe until just before Enrights. Then they were on the west side and held up a green pick-up truck chasing one another across Amherst.
The one in the middle threw hands up on the front hood and, laughing out loud, apologized,
"Sorry! Godda make Last Call, bro!, while running off.
He stumblingly turned almost around doing it and laughed about that, too.
Crossing the same crosswalk, moments later and in the other direction, I looked around and, now, the Runners were crossing for Oxfords, the east side of Monroe, again, hollering and laughing and running, head-long black figures with arms up and silhouetted against the lights of that block.
I took just that one quick look and, then, only heard them arrive at the bar grinning explanations to the bouncer at the door and gaining thankful entry in time. I didn't much notice either the guy on his cell walking along parallel with me on the outside of the parked cars at Gitsis' across the avenue.
All my attention had turned to the girl down at Rite Aid, almost at the Goodman corner of the store. She had on a dark jacket and ws slim, five-eight, five-eight and a half. At first, and from that distance, just passed Amherst, I thought it some wide-collared or too large sweater she had on, for she seemed to be showing most of a white shoulder and the fabric dipped enough below to expose a shallow arc of back as well. Perhaps wearing a boyfriend's borrowed sweater or sweat shirt, I thought. Altogether, not something you expect to see on a night in November with rain however light, nearly not there at times.
There was something, too, in the way she was standing, tall and slender. When I thought I saw the most of her left shoulder and that arc beneath it, she had turned to look after a number of boys who had passed her and were about to cross at the light. Perhaps they had said something.
But the rest of the time, both at first and after that, she only stood close to and facing the store window nearly to the end, almost at the corner far from the doors where people go in and come out. She wanted to be alone, felt alone and wanted to be by herself.
People were going in and coming out of Rite Aid and I might have been one.
As I was nearing the sliding doors and in-store brightness knowing I wouldn't be going inside yet, there was a clatter.
The clatter got her attention - for a moment she glanced back across Monroe not over or down her shoulder but around it and down.
A young man in a bright, open jacket and white shirt had dropped his cell taking it out of his pocket while pacing in front of the Chase parking, the ATM drive-through. Now, he was reaching for it with head pointed toward the pavement, bent at the waist and a little wasted.
The girl in the jacket - I'd already determined it was a jacket with white lined hood thrown back over one shoulder - had gone back to standing close to the window pane and looking down in her pensive, at least her waiting mood. As I passed her to the corner, she had dark hair that went down straight into her collar and hood and a narrow pretty face. She was looking at the packaged traiin sets in the window. Only something to be looked at while waiting for a boyfriend, I supposed.
Still, she might have waited nearer the doors or looked into one of the windows nearer the doors with dolls and other toys and seasonal things on sale in them. And that continued to be interesting.
I thought in passing of the train sets at - Dan's. Dan's Crafts and Things has sets with perfect in every detail miniatures of the locomotives and cars of trains from the past like the Super Chief and the New York Central's Twentieth-Century limited, sleek long passengers cars they built and repaired int he East Rochester Car Shops.
I might have mentioned them, mentioned Dan's, and had even turned and lifted a small greeting in her direction.
Only a dark young man in a brown open jacket was carrying a carton of beer with him coming down from the entrance of the store. The girl in the jacket shifted her hips and turned to join him walking, hands in her pockets and head still a bit cast down in her same unsmiling mood.
They went on around the corner, west on Goodman, in a resumed, a settled into slight bitterness conversation of short sharp words and grudging silences.
Bright jacket had found and dialed a number and was,
"Where the fuck you at...?"
...and,
"Thought you were comin' right back...."
...and,
"No, I'm not there; I lef' there. I thought you were comin' right back...!"
A wide-guy had come out of Enright's door, a few yards up the block, and ws on his cell, too.
"Guy dohn' mean nothin' by that...!"
...and,
"If y're gonna git pissed ev'r little thing guy says...!"
And a second, narrower guy comes out and paces back and forth, too, out of the doorway with cell,
"...y're on Alexander y' just kee on to Monroe..."
...and,
"Y' got a light on Monroe at Averill, a light at Meigs and just passed Goodman...."
...and,
"Enright's, y' see it on your left just passed the light...."
Short guy with bushy hair traveling fast coming out of Cornell with his head down and his cell to his ear is positive,
"I wanna shop, too!"
It's Closing and every one is on their cells. There is still half a night left to fill, Saturday morning.
At the entrance to Rite Aid's parking lot, a hot blonde with long straight hair driving a white compact has slowed to make the turn into the drive to the lot. The car cuts in across the sidewalk but, then, just sits there. The girl is well made up and wears a gray coat that looks dressy and she is smoking a cigarette that is freshly lit and long. She sat across the sidewalk more to take a logn drag or two than looking to see if the traffic behind her will let her back on the avenue to go south.
And it will and does because her pal, a second hot thin blonde who might be her sister, followed her in another white car, a match for hers and she is sitting in traffic waiting and talking on her cell. The first sister completes her turn, backing out and starting off down the avenue all the while with her cigarette compassing theway between her lips. The second white car takes longer to turn and follow, swinging off to the far curb and three-pointing once two or three darker colored cars ahve cut ahead of her.
It is closing time and she is never off her cell.
The sliding doors at the drug store sprung open and I went inside the brightness.
I figured it would be easier to scribble notes in my pocket pad in the unshadowed white light out of the rain and night. My hands would work better out of the cold.
It was the first of two trips I made into the Rite Aid with my note pad, the second to make notes from a walk north of Goodman.
There was a car lit up that pulled into the Edmonds followed closely by the blue-and-white. The car pulled into the alley behind the burrito shopand the cruiser followed him there, too.
The cruiser's overheads spun flashing a blinking rose light down the back alley that showed itself on the fence back of the Sports Page. Some guy was up close and facing the blank wall of what used to Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs sharing the building with the burrito joint. He kept looking over his shoulder but looked back toward the avenue and people passing there. I doubt he ever noticed the light of authority around in dark back of the building.
There was an altercation that begin in the Page or the Acme that flagged other RPD down. A well dressed girl with dark red hair was angry and was being walked away from the scene toward Goodman by people she was with but wanted all along to go back. It was others who flagged down the passing cruiser and reported what had happened to the officer. A man with a shaved head had begun a fight in the bar and pushed a girl around running off back down toward Meigs.
From the description the kids were giving the officer, I thought it sounded like one of a group of three or four skinheads who have been around the block between Rowley and Meigs since last summer. I have seen several incidents between them and kids on the block. The skinheads in their uniform white tee-shirts get into iwth the neighborhood kids and the altercations all end with the Whtie People's Party of Monroe retreating in a pack to their festung.
"It always seems to be racial with these guys. Whenever they get into it, it always has something to do with race, " I said to the witnesses after the cop was gone to put it out with dispatch.
The one guy, who had doen the most reporting, the guy with the back pack over his shoulder, stared thoughtfully back and nodded a bit.
"Fits," he said, seeing and agreeing to something that hadn't occurred to him before, perhaps.
Later and down at Big Deal Pizza's corner, the girl with the dark red hair was back and on her own, still looking pissed.
It took no more than a few words of recognition to put her back in the middle of the scene from before. She shouted her words out and addressed them angrily to the avenue as though broadcasting them rather than having a conversation.
"Some GUY," she gestured, "thinks he can SIT IN A BAR and ABUSE some poor girl, PUSH her around and....Y' try and tell him Y' CAN'T DO THAT. Y' can't THROW some girl around like that and.... He gets in your face, TELLS you he's going to SHOOT YOU IN YOUR FACE....
"You can't DO that. YOU CAN'T do that in a CIVILIZATION!...."
She said her name was Kelly and shook hands while all around us the RPD were prowling about. Blue-and-whites were pulling out of this side street and that and lighting up to U-turn in the other direction on the avenue; or they were turning off to patrol in to the back parking lots and alley way passages.
Before I went up for the night, I noticed the rain falling in the pools of water along the car-less curb above my building. The lakes were black crone fingers with clawed talons and arthritic joints and knuckles. But they shown just enough in the streetlight for the rain to be rippling them with incessant small rings that appeared and winked out replaced by more and more just their likeness.
Saturday night, 12:48.
