In With the New

Our Karen was all excited.

You should have seen her.

She knew where the whole lot of us were who had come out together and she was around insisting we be together at midnight. As soon as they began with the ball drop on the bar flat screen, the cow was galloping around finding every one of us, the whole lot.

Long as it took for the big moment, nothing would do but that we all gather with her near the corner of the bar and the front door of the Pub.

That was the Big Thing!

The ball hadn't begun to move and you could hardly hear anything being said any longer, the screen being way the hell down at the back of the place, but excitement was mounting and there Krazy Ass Karen was frantically waving those tight little fists of hers and grinning like the gargoyle she is, gathering us even nearer to her.

"C'MON, C'MON, C'MON!" she was urging us.

Leaning down and laughing, she wanted all our heads together with hers.

There was something she just had to tell us and, of course, you could only hear about half of what the ugly elderly elf had to say with all the horns blaring and everybody beginning to shout.

We should all get...

"...CLOS'T...DOOR!"

We had to all...

"RUSH OUT..." on to the street as the..."...BALL DROPS!"

Her fists shaking adamantly, excitedly, she was insisting,

"'AT'SWAY Y' DO IT!"

We all had to go out on the street...

"SHOUT HAPPY NEW YEAR!"...as 2010 was erupting behind us.

The lot of us would lead the orgy of celebration out into the night.

Boss Lady said,

"'AT'S HOW'S DONE!"

Because, being older than sin itself, Mother Monster had seen more decades in than any of us kiddies had fingers and toes, y' know?

"ALL'A US, EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY!"

So, as usual, we all had our work assignments.

Alright, enough, Kathy Griffin, you wanted to say to her fool face.

Some how having the Old Lady out with us, smashed and making an ass of herself, wasn't nearly hoot it was supposed to be even if she was as stupid drunk and uninhibited as we'd hoped she'd be.

She was still givng the orders, wasn't she?

Blah, blah, blah!

The elderly evil bitch was still in charge, wasted or not.

"She's enjoying herself!"

"WHAT?" Melinda took her eyes off the big screen, made annoyed looking brows beneath that cock-eyed silver tiara planted in her hair.

"SHE'S ENJOYING HERSELF!"

That brightened her fat face.

"YEAH, ISNIT A HOOT!"

"Oh, it's a riot, alright!"

"WHAT?"

"IT'S A RIOT!"

"YUH, AHOOT!"

I swear...!

So, then, anyway, the ball was coming down. The menopausal ding-bat, stunted as she is, couldn't possibly see it but some one must have shouted in her ear or, maybe, she just got it from the whole bar's uproar beginning to come together like it did, because she started in screeching,

"GET READY! GET READY!"

The louder it got in the place, the more spastic those two tiny fists of hers got over her shriveled ttits and, when the count got down to eight, seven, six - off she shuffled for the door.

"GO, GO, GO...GO, GO, GO!"

Your could see from the looks we were all giving one another every one was on the same page. We all thought this proved it, what we'd known all along about the hag, about her being a dork too dumb to be real. Our Karen was a real seniority clown, too ugly even to have slept her wrinkly butt into that cubbyhole office of hers.

Still, everybody went with her, the whole lot of us barging along behind her. She looked, with her head down and her elbows in at her sides, like she expected the whole place to collapse on her as she shuffled and jiggled toward the door laughing and shrieking...

"...GO, GO, GO!"

And you know - it was just us out there!

You never saw Monroe more deserted.

Nobody else went. There probably wasn't another bar the length of the Avenue with a gangling gang of fools out front dancing around and shouting in 2010. Just us. Just Krazy Karen's Krew dancing around on the sidewalk, blowing horns and making asses of ourselves.

Some one should have got video.

Madame Karen going round and round, hand in hand and jumping up and down getting everyone to join her, adding one after the other to her circle of satan.

And, yeah, that should have been a hoot and a half! Except that she'd got us all doing it with her.

All of us kiddies, as she calls us, who'd asked her to come, to meet us for New Years so we could see what the bag looked like soused and, maybe, get a few good pics to post of her passed out in a doorway or head over a toilet barfing. There we were, instead, out playing ring-around-Rosie with T Rex, herself.

Talk about your disgusting!

The whole thing would have been a total disaster - only there was this guy there.

After a while people did start coming out to smoke and get out of the hoopla for a bit, out if for nothing else to make those calls they make just after midnight. In a bit the sidewalk in front of Oxfords had sprouted quite a crowd, after all. Traffic on the Avenue was flowing big time, again, like you would expected it to on one of the choice party nights of the year and there was a black stretch pulled up to the curb about to pile out a party.

Our Karen, the Management Mummy, was in the middle of it all trying to organize a chorus line and get them all to kick on command. And, wouldn't you know, she was having a blast doing it, being all instructive like she always is and flitting from one end to the other corralling this one and that. Half the faces weren't our lot at all any longer but just any one she could grab. And half our lot had wandered off back into the bar, maybe, or they were here and there in the crowd hooking up with other people, again, or just staggered about silly stoned on their own with drinks in their hands they shouldn't have had out on the street.

Tristan and several of the staff were busy retrieving the bar's glassware and reining in the losers.

Grandma didn't seem to notice or care that none of it was going according to plan.

"Now, on three - kick!" the cadaverous old choreographer would holler out in front of her soused section.

The half of them would fall over to one side or the other or somebody would kick the wrong way.

Mommy Mummy would just giggle.

"No, no, kiddies," she'd say. "It's left kick, right kick!"

And she'd sway showing them,

"One, two - THREE kick up street; one, two - THREE kick down street. Let's try it again."

Our Missy was looking most cock-eyed and had got in with this lot gatheed together at the corner of the Pub. Half were sitting on the window ledge and all of them wore smug sneers and relaxed attitudes like they weren't part of everything that was going down. Under her auburn bangs she was watching all their faces closely and seemed to be trying to follow what they were saying, their intimate, superior little conversation.

There was this gang out in the middle of the street trying to cross to Oxfords from the Standard Lounge up the street and not getting any where with the traffic that was trying not to run them down. And there were late arrivals hustling around to Oxfords from the alley way up the street. The door in the rear of the limo at the curb opened and some woman in a gorgeous dress was climbing out.

This great guy was standing there, off to the side. He was standing even further off to the side than that little gang Missy may have thought she was in with.

He had stepped out from the other side of the doorway next to the Pub in this sweet brown leather jacket. He looked a little like that Vin Diesel guy's shorter cousin only darker - maybe caramel.

Oh, he was fine! Dressed fine; looked fine. You could see him driving off in a BMW. Very exec but kind of kick-boxer, too.

And he says, in this very mature voice,

"I wonder if they know how young they all look."

Missy with her baby-doll bangs and the lot she was with - the guy with the goatee that is supposed to make him look older than twenty-two and his big Seth Rogin pal. His other friend out on the street in shirt sleeves and holding onto a bunch of party balloons, very apple cheeky and gangly thin. Limo girl dressed for the prom and accompanied by her ball cap date in the striped shirt and corduroy sports jacket. The porky crowd of black leather clad rappers with their shades after midnight and their exclusive attitudes on that were passing arm and arm.

The whole lot out there, actually.

Oh, yeah!

"Such kids," I had to agree.

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.

Incident Report

LEAVING THE SCENE...

THERE IS something like a

Crump!

Someone, in a voice more amused than surprised, exclaims,

"HO!"

There is some surprised laughter, too, a reactive tittering from as far off as the Gulf Station down and across the Avenue whee the lights are out, the pumps down and cars are jammed in for the after hours scene at Gitsis' Diner.



The car that is traveling south on Monroe, passing the end of Wilmer Street, is black and a sleek new model, perhaps a Chrysler. It is occupied at least four times, front and back seats, by young men who are not the driver and who are not caught in the street light from the near street corner, the streetlight that stands in front of Lola's Bistro nearer to the corner than the bus bench where we are.

The young man framed in the open driver's side window is white and in his early or mid-twenties. He has curly dark hair and has a lean face with deep set surprised eyes. And, for an instant, he stares out not back at the corner and the rear of the car that was turning into Wilmer, but over at us on the bus bench further on. He looks over at us both shocked and helpless even as the car is accelerating, leaving the scene of the accident it has just had.

The look makes him seem almost as though he is and isn't the one doing the driving, making the instant decision to go, go and leave the scene behind.

The car speeds off not that much faster than most traffic that leaves the bars this time of night for the expressway and home to the suburbs, for the further sidestreets and the near neighborhoods off Monroe.

But it leaves deliberately and without the least hesitation.



SOMEONE, near by, perhaps on the far corner of Wilmer or perhpas in the older model black car that was struck, itself, turned half into Wilmer and, now, stopped, exclaims,

"'E 'it you, man!"

The car is one of those older, old enough it has a less stream-lined look than those common today. It is one of those reworked but not meant to be classic looking cars that come into the area after hours. This one doesn't yet have the silver hub caps and dual exhausts and only has the polish.

It, too, is occupied four or five times.

It is a Friday morning, not a Saturday or a Sunday morning, near three a.m., or the Avenue would be more jammed with such traffic than it is now.

Now there is only the newer model black car speeding away for Oxford Street and the less occupied end of the Avenue's zone south toward where Monroe rises to the expressway bridge beyond the Hess Station, past the Y and the Branch Library that loom going up to the overpass.

After a moment of hesitation, the older car that was rear-ended reverses and backs abruptly, dramatically out again onto the avenue to face southward, too, and shifts into gear.

Its engine snarls and the car leaps forward.

And, as it jumps and accelerates, for one instant, too, the occupant of its driver's side window is caught in the light. He is young, black and wears a ball cap and a well-filled out white tee-shirt. Poised forward with his hands on the wheel, he, too, is caught looking over at our bench with an uncertain expression.

It, too, gives him something of the look of detachment from what he is doing, if only for this one split second.



PURSUIT...

The car that caused the accident has already passed Oxford at the other end of the long block before the struck car shifts forward.

The avenue south toward the expressway is almost dark and nearly deserted.

A last party of customers that had emerged and lingered before Oxford's is walking obliviously off between the darkened buildings and the cars still parked beneath them. Over at Rookie's Pizza and further up at the yellow rimmed windows of Subway, a few equally oblivious lingerers are on the sidewalk, too.

The pursuit is in stages, the cars receding away two long blocks south where the Hess is a well-lit and open space on the right of Monroe. The pursuit is sequenced with the shifting of the one car's gears, each increase in speed made emphatic with the renewed tearing snarl of an engine straining.

And each time the two cars are brought closer even as they become more distant and smaller.

"Now where are you going?"

"Up there."

By Rutgers the injured car has closed the gap to half the length of the next and final block and, though the pursued is not running for certain, the gap is still swiftly diminishing.

"Why? They're going to be gone! No way that boy's going to be stopping now if he didn't!"

"Don't come!"

By where Dartmouth and Canterbury come into Monroe on this side, opposite the Hess, the two are one right after the other and traveling like they are one car. The first bears left off into Canterbury at speed and, the purser follows like they are both on one rail.

Both cars are done in an instant.

"There's not going to be anything to see up there!"

"Don't follow!"

By Oxford Street the first Blue-and-White cruiser has come down Rutgers with neither lights nor siren. Only the swiftness of its passage the long way down alongside the empty lot at Blessed Sacrament, against the darkened and residential porches to the corner parking lot on Monroe suggests purpose.

It even stops at the corner before turning up toward the Hess where it pulls in off the street and stops to look around.

A second car comes, this time with lights swirling and traveling south on Monroe. It doesn't slow until it comes to Rutgers and turns right up that street's dead-end extension, along the north end of the Hess corner lot. It disappears around the old bricks of the Berkshire Building.



SHOTS FIRED...

Because of the Hess, all lit up white and flourescent, all white and Kelly green behind its canopied pumps, the Avenue seems to open up opposite the complex corner of Dartmouth, Canterbury and Monroe.

Coming up toward Rutgers more Blue-and-Whites are coming into the area from every direction some even with sirens. They go into the extension and none turns into Canterbury.

Up that way one cruiser hangs back and a knot of them with flashing overheads are gathered near the dead ending.

"Wonder if they know, now, they're in the wrong place?"

"Like it makes much difference now!"

One cruiser that has crept in behind the office furniture store on the south end is returning behind some poor civilian sedan caught back there with a girl doing business.

"Some most unlucky son-of-a-bitch!"

"So, y' got to see something, after all! What do you know!"

The first cruiser creeps, turning away of the Hess, and travels off across and up Canterbury, at last.

"Going to see the same nothing-there-anymore we are!"

Coming up to cross Dartmouth, the cruiser is already returning, slow creeping around the point and spot lighting the hedges. The crew-cut and solemn face in the driver window looks over and asks, stopping,

"You two fellas hear any shots fired?"

"No, but we can tell y' what it was about..."



EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION....

After the police, all the buildings around the Canterbury point, belwo and up the overpass rise, are silent. The streetlights leading away down Dartmouth on the low side go up that street receding beneath the deep darkness of the tree-tops. Only Hess, across the way, bright in tis expanse of blacktop, is open and inviting and the lone clerk is outside the door talking loudly with a customer pulled up to it. Loud as he is, his words are all garbled in a staccato of rap music blasting from the car stereo.

"Guy doesn't pull over and exchange insurance 'cuss y' don't on Monroe at three in the morning and other guy chases after him 'cuss he hasn't. And he, or, one of his friends, gets out a gun which is why the first guy's running..."

"And...?"

"Isn't how it's supposta be."

"Y' gotta wonder! You really are from the country!"

Canterbury, on the high side, is more open and well lighted. Past the two or three stories of the building on the south corner, the parking for the hardware is back around its east corner and trees don't begin until your are past the end of Westminster coming in from the north. That rap that is blasting and the loud conversation, which are all that is left of Monroe noise and carrying on, now, carries even up that way little diminishing.

"Now where are you going?"

"Whatever happened it was along here."

"What do y' expect to see the cops didn't not see?"

"If they got a report of shots fired took them to Rutgers and it ws those two cars turned off up this way, it had to have been right along in here."

"You expect to find that black car plugged and expiring if the cops somehow missed seeing it?"

"Hole in rear trunk, street sign; tree trunk with some bark shattered, somebody's front porch column with the paint disturbed...."

The ejected casing of a bullet it turns out is a thing so small, barely as big as the end of the little finger on a man's hand. Something laying on the black shadow and gray asphalt snake skin of four a.m. still street lit pavement of Canterbury just inches before the end of Westminster. Its brass doesn't even shine in the light. It lies thee and only casts its own little bit more of shadow.

Something so small as to seem insignificant that might have meant so much but, now, can only mean something more to add to another dull report.


September 15, 2009.