"Strange, melancholy high..."
Jack imagined he could read in her emerald gaze a longing for highway and the hypnotic animation of telephone wires dipping and weaving through finger printed glass at sixty miles per hour.
The air was sharp with autumn’s electric and it greeted Jack briskly as he stepped out of the small corner grocery. Throughout the year, he looked forward to the alchemy of October and was invariably disillusioned when it finally came about; he hoped this time would be different.
“I can’t believe I’m still working here, Randy. Two years. Two fucking years.” Depending on the brand, it took Jack approximately three and one-half minutes to finish a cigarette; his break allotted him five. He settled his shoulder blades against the brick wall outside of the store, one knee bent with his sole propped up behind him.
“Hey, man, I’ve been here for six and I ain’t complaining.” Randy, whose break had officially ended three minutes before, stood near Jack, his eyes fixed on the crawl of traffic in front of them. A grey-haired man who could best be described as boxy, Randy let go of his smoldering butt. Before the wreckage of sparks had even lit up the pavement, he’d pulled a soft pack from his back pocket to light up another. “Good boss, quaint surroundings, decent wage. What’s not to like?”
“I’m an artist, Randy, not a goddamn grocer. That’s what.” Jack tipped his head back and let it rest against the brick, expelling a quill of smoke skyward. Randy, head bowed as he fumbled with his lighter, lifted his eyes towards Jack, the accusatory set of his eyebrows spelling effrontery. When the first fresh, thick cloud of smoke dissipated, though, a muted smile shone behind it.
“So go be an artist. What’s holding you back, the great benefits we get here?” He smirked, not unkindly, and pulled heartily on his cigarette. When he continued speaking it was through smoke-bloated lungs, a few insubordinate tufts gusting from his nostrils like from a Chinese Tatsu, “It’s all just excuses, Jack. The ‘I have to pay my bills’ bullshit. You want to have the time and energy to make your art? Fuck the bills. Don’t pay the bills. Get rid of the bills.” He exhaled before continuing, “Live in the park and beg for quarters to buy canvas. Trade your mother’s engagement ring for paintbrushes. Pick up a piece of charcoal and draw a big square on the pavement in front of the White House and live there. You are not an artist, and it’s not because you’re holed up in the Little City Grocer for nine hours a day and you go home too tired to summon your fucking muse. You’re not an artist because you’re too pussy to be one.”
At some point during the older man’s allocution, Jack’s eyebrows had shot up. He surprised himself to find that he felt more humbled than defensive. Randy, that rickety old cocksucker...he could be surprisingly sage at times. “Huh. Well, that’s a nice fairytale, Randy, but I couldn’t live like that.”
“Fuck you, then. You’re not an artist.”
Jack shook his head, defeated, and clicked his cheap lighter several times, trying to produce a flame in the autumn breeze. The fresh tension that had shot into his shoulders with the reprimanding fused with the nicotine and bled out through his pursed lips. “Yes, I am. I’m just not insane.”
Like Raptured souls, their sooty vapors stretched thin towards the stratosphere as silence fell between them. Almost as soon as they’d begun, their respective reveries were blighted by the mechanical roar of a lumbering city bus. As the raucously laboring beast plodded past, its sides plastered with the obtuse grins of vacant-eyed local newscasters, Jack glanced up. He found his gaze immediately seized by something, someone. Someone all vivid green eyes in the windowpane. A pert, freckled nose. Someone in between girl and woman, someone with chestnut colored ringlets that burned subtly; the succoring crackle of embers in a summer camp fire pit.
Her eyes seemed unfocused as they witnessed the world jerking by in fits and starts from the window of the traffic-captive bus. Jack imagined he could read in her emerald gaze a longing for highway and the hypnotic animation of telephone wires dipping and weaving through finger printed glass at sixty miles per hour. She noticed Jack staring as she passed and, though she hid her eyes bashfully beneath her lashes an instant later, she smiled at him. She must have been smiling at his expression; the cigarette dangling perilously from his half open, half-cocked smile. The eyebrows tilted upward, cartoonishly doting. The warm, stoned eyes...
Randy grinned gently and clapped Jack on the back; a jolly Geppetto bringing his boy to life. “Artists are risk takers, Jack. So...take a risk.”
Jack chuckled beatifically and pushed himself off the wall, dropped his burning Marlboro. He hastily untied his red apron, tossing it to Randy even as his worn sneakers began their beat against the pavement; loyal old shoes, determined to reach the stop before the bus did.
He came to a halt beneath the red and blue sign, fumbling furiously in his pocket for loose change. The vehicle stopped. Its doors creaked open and he climbed aboard, greeting the driver as he dropped seventy-five cents into the till. The blue-uniformed driver stopped him just as he was about to step into the aisle.
“Boy, when’s the last time you rode the bus? It ain’t no seventy-five cents.”
Jack looked up, hands returning to his jeans’ pockets searchingly. “Heh, it’s been a while, I guess. How much, then?”
“You forty-five short, son.”
“Forty-five?” Jack widened his eyes in mock surprise to buy time as he continued to dig for change.
“Yep. Come on, people tryin’ to get to work, here.” As flustered as the driver seemed, the stoplight the bus had paused in front of was burning a plush red.
A part of him was relieved, “I don’t have it. Guess I’ll catch the next one.” He shrugged and, as he was about to turn to exit the bus, was interrupted by a sweet voice accompanied the metallic rattle of coins being collected.
“You owe me fifty.” The red haired woman from the window was dropping quarters into the box. She smiled her shy smile as she turned to walk back to her seat. Breathless, Jack followed behind her like a spaniel.
“Hey, thanks. That was really sweet, what you did. This city doesn’t have a lot of sweet left.” Jack grabbed each of the standing-room poles he passed as he followed her, eventually dropping into the seat next to her.
“You’re probably just not looking in the right places. And you’re welcome.”
“I’m Jack.” He extended a hand to her, “and probably not worth the fifty cents you paid to get me on this bus, but I do appreciate it.”
Her quiet laughter was a seraphic concert, “That’s not true. I would’ve probably even paid seventy-five. I’m Mona.” Finding charm in his spirited self-deprecation, she accepted his hand and shook it cheerily. Prolonging the moment, she observed his digits before letting go. “You’ve got paint on your fingers, Jack.”
“I do. I’m an artist. Of sorts.”
Of sorts, Jack? Maybe Randy is onto something, after all.
He continued, “My work’s got nothing on your namesake, though.”
“My what?” Her puzzled expression soon gave way to an abashed one as she realized his meaning, “Oh...right, the Mona Lisa. Generally, I try to pretend I’m not named after some greasy old Italian’s wet dream.”
“No, I think it’s great. I’m not named for anyone.” He grinned lopsidedly, “well, my dad’s favorite drink, maybe.”
“It’s big in my family. Required, even. Originality is completely unacceptable. It’s a little fascist, the way they hold to it.”
“Big Brother Travis Bickle is watching you?”
She grinned, amused. “Something like that. Only it’s a little brother, and he’s Adam. After that guy, in that book, with the rib,” spoken with exaggerated disdain.
“The Bible?”
“That’s the one. I was always a little pissed that I didn’t get to be Eve. But I guess that would’ve been kind of weird and incestuous anyway.”
Enchanted, he smiled and studied her face for a time before speaking, “what do you do, Mona?”
“I’m a curator at the Leer.”
He paused, brow creasing warily over his eyes, “you work in an art gallery...and you just called Leonardo DaVinci a pervy, greaseball wop with a fetish for abstruse ingenues?”
She laughed aloud, “I didn’t say that! I didn’t say it like that. I’m just not a big fan, is all. I prefer the cubists.”
He shook his head good naturedly. He wasn’t a fan of cubism, but he figured he’d save that for later.
They continued to speak innocuously for a time. When, inevitably, silence fell over them, she plugged buds into her ears and offered a warm and apologetic smile before turning her attention to the music player in her hand. After turning it on, she returned her gaze to the window. Jack found the gesture endearing. He chuckled lightly and remained seated beside her. Soon, he could hear clearly John Lennon’s voice through Mona’s headphones. Melancholy lilting over Mia Farrow’s sister.
He drew nearer to Mona, stealing a breath of her sanguine hair. It was so honeyed he felt faint. Gingerly, he plucked the bud from her left ear, bringing his lips so close he could almost feel the soft fuzz of her skin touching them.
She stiffened but did not pull away. When he began to sing along in a whisper into the divine cavern of her ear, she softened.
“The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you, dear Prudence...”
She felt blood rush into her cheeks, her heart pulsing in her temples. Her breath caught, and when she exhaled it was milk-warm and tremulous.
“You’re not going any particular place, are you, Jack?” a gentle accusation as she turned her face to look up at him through her lashes.
“No, Mona, I’m not.”
“Well, I’m going to work...” the spell was broken by a sharp chime as she reached up to pull the stop cord, “and it’s here, so.”
“So? So? What, can I see you again?” Still entranced, he rose, fumbling, to let her out.
“Of course, Jack. I like you.” Her tone denoted sincerity while she hurried for the door.
He shoved the window open to call after her as she exited, “How? Mona, HOW?”
“You know my name and where I work. Figure it out.” She grinned and took a few steps backward so as to hold his gaze. His smile was charmingly and happily unhinged as he lifted his left hand and pressed it against the glass. Laughing, she waved back genially as the bus pulled away, carrying Jack to his no-particular-place.
The air was sharp with autumn’s electric and it greeted Jack briskly as he stepped out of the small corner grocery. Throughout the year, he looked forward to the alchemy of October and was invariably disillusioned when it finally came about; he hoped this time would be different.
“I can’t believe I’m still working here, Randy. Two years. Two fucking years.” Depending on the brand, it took Jack approximately three and one-half minutes to finish a cigarette; his break allotted him five. He settled his shoulder blades against the brick wall outside of the store, one knee bent with his sole propped up behind him.
“Hey, man, I’ve been here for six and I ain’t complaining.” Randy, whose break had officially ended three minutes before, stood near Jack, his eyes fixed on the crawl of traffic in front of them. A grey-haired man who could best be described as boxy, Randy let go of his smoldering butt. Before the wreckage of sparks had even lit up the pavement, he’d pulled a soft pack from his back pocket to light up another. “Good boss, quaint surroundings, decent wage. What’s not to like?”
“I’m an artist, Randy, not a goddamn grocer. That’s what.” Jack tipped his head back and let it rest against the brick, expelling a quill of smoke skyward. Randy, head bowed as he fumbled with his lighter, lifted his eyes towards Jack, the accusatory set of his eyebrows spelling effrontery. When the first fresh, thick cloud of smoke dissipated, though, a muted smile shone behind it.
“So go be an artist. What’s holding you back, the great benefits we get here?” He smirked, not unkindly, and pulled heartily on his cigarette. When he continued speaking it was through smoke-bloated lungs, a few insubordinate tufts gusting from his nostrils like from a Chinese Tatsu, “It’s all just excuses, Jack. The ‘I have to pay my bills’ bullshit. You want to have the time and energy to make your art? Fuck the bills. Don’t pay the bills. Get rid of the bills.” He exhaled before continuing, “Live in the park and beg for quarters to buy canvas. Trade your mother’s engagement ring for paintbrushes. Pick up a piece of charcoal and draw a big square on the pavement in front of the White House and live there. You are not an artist, and it’s not because you’re holed up in the Little City Grocer for nine hours a day and you go home too tired to summon your fucking muse. You’re not an artist because you’re too pussy to be one.”
At some point during the older man’s allocution, Jack’s eyebrows had shot up. He surprised himself to find that he felt more humbled than defensive. Randy, that rickety old cocksucker...he could be surprisingly sage at times. “Huh. Well, that’s a nice fairytale, Randy, but I couldn’t live like that.”
“Fuck you, then. You’re not an artist.”
Jack shook his head, defeated, and clicked his cheap lighter several times, trying to produce a flame in the autumn breeze. The fresh tension that had shot into his shoulders with the reprimanding fused with the nicotine and bled out through his pursed lips. “Yes, I am. I’m just not insane.”
Like Raptured souls, their sooty vapors stretched thin towards the stratosphere as silence fell between them. Almost as soon as they’d begun, their respective reveries were blighted by the mechanical roar of a lumbering city bus. As the raucously laboring beast plodded past, its sides plastered with the obtuse grins of vacant-eyed local newscasters, Jack glanced up. He found his gaze immediately seized by something, someone. Someone all vivid green eyes in the windowpane. A pert, freckled nose. Someone in between girl and woman, someone with chestnut colored ringlets that burned subtly; the succoring crackle of embers in a summer camp fire pit.
Her eyes seemed unfocused as they witnessed the world jerking by in fits and starts from the window of the traffic-captive bus. Jack imagined he could read in her emerald gaze a longing for highway and the hypnotic animation of telephone wires dipping and weaving through finger printed glass at sixty miles per hour. She noticed Jack staring as she passed and, though she hid her eyes bashfully beneath her lashes an instant later, she smiled at him. She must have been smiling at his expression; the cigarette dangling perilously from his half open, half-cocked smile. The eyebrows tilted upward, cartoonishly doting. The warm, stoned eyes...
Randy grinned gently and clapped Jack on the back; a jolly Geppetto bringing his boy to life. “Artists are risk takers, Jack. So...take a risk.”
Jack chuckled beatifically and pushed himself off the wall, dropped his burning Marlboro. He hastily untied his red apron, tossing it to Randy even as his worn sneakers began their beat against the pavement; loyal old shoes, determined to reach the stop before the bus did.
He came to a halt beneath the red and blue sign, fumbling furiously in his pocket for loose change. The vehicle stopped. Its doors creaked open and he climbed aboard, greeting the driver as he dropped seventy-five cents into the till. The blue-uniformed driver stopped him just as he was about to step into the aisle.
“Boy, when’s the last time you rode the bus? It ain’t no seventy-five cents.”
Jack looked up, hands returning to his jeans’ pockets searchingly. “Heh, it’s been a while, I guess. How much, then?”
“You forty-five short, son.”
“Forty-five?” Jack widened his eyes in mock surprise to buy time as he continued to dig for change.
“Yep. Come on, people tryin’ to get to work, here.” As flustered as the driver seemed, the stoplight the bus had paused in front of was burning a plush red.
A part of him was relieved, “I don’t have it. Guess I’ll catch the next one.” He shrugged and, as he was about to turn to exit the bus, was interrupted by a sweet voice accompanied the metallic rattle of coins being collected.
“You owe me fifty.” The red haired woman from the window was dropping quarters into the box. She smiled her shy smile as she turned to walk back to her seat. Breathless, Jack followed behind her like a spaniel.
“Hey, thanks. That was really sweet, what you did. This city doesn’t have a lot of sweet left.” Jack grabbed each of the standing-room poles he passed as he followed her, eventually dropping into the seat next to her.
“You’re probably just not looking in the right places. And you’re welcome.”
“I’m Jack.” He extended a hand to her, “and probably not worth the fifty cents you paid to get me on this bus, but I do appreciate it.”
Her quiet laughter was a seraphic concert, “That’s not true. I would’ve probably even paid seventy-five. I’m Mona.” Finding charm in his spirited self-deprecation, she accepted his hand and shook it cheerily. Prolonging the moment, she observed his digits before letting go. “You’ve got paint on your fingers, Jack.”
“I do. I’m an artist. Of sorts.”
Of sorts, Jack? Maybe Randy is onto something, after all.
He continued, “My work’s got nothing on your namesake, though.”
“My what?” Her puzzled expression soon gave way to an abashed one as she realized his meaning, “Oh...right, the Mona Lisa. Generally, I try to pretend I’m not named after some greasy old Italian’s wet dream.”
“No, I think it’s great. I’m not named for anyone.” He grinned lopsidedly, “well, my dad’s favorite drink, maybe.”
“It’s big in my family. Required, even. Originality is completely unacceptable. It’s a little fascist, the way they hold to it.”
“Big Brother Travis Bickle is watching you?”
She grinned, amused. “Something like that. Only it’s a little brother, and he’s Adam. After that guy, in that book, with the rib,” spoken with exaggerated disdain.
“The Bible?”
“That’s the one. I was always a little pissed that I didn’t get to be Eve. But I guess that would’ve been kind of weird and incestuous anyway.”
Enchanted, he smiled and studied her face for a time before speaking, “what do you do, Mona?”
“I’m a curator at the Leer.”
He paused, brow creasing warily over his eyes, “you work in an art gallery...and you just called Leonardo DaVinci a pervy, greaseball wop with a fetish for abstruse ingenues?”
She laughed aloud, “I didn’t say that! I didn’t say it like that. I’m just not a big fan, is all. I prefer the cubists.”
He shook his head good naturedly. He wasn’t a fan of cubism, but he figured he’d save that for later.
They continued to speak innocuously for a time. When, inevitably, silence fell over them, she plugged buds into her ears and offered a warm and apologetic smile before turning her attention to the music player in her hand. After turning it on, she returned her gaze to the window. Jack found the gesture endearing. He chuckled lightly and remained seated beside her. Soon, he could hear clearly John Lennon’s voice through Mona’s headphones. Melancholy lilting over Mia Farrow’s sister.
He drew nearer to Mona, stealing a breath of her sanguine hair. It was so honeyed he felt faint. Gingerly, he plucked the bud from her left ear, bringing his lips so close he could almost feel the soft fuzz of her skin touching them.
She stiffened but did not pull away. When he began to sing along in a whisper into the divine cavern of her ear, she softened.
“The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you, dear Prudence...”
She felt blood rush into her cheeks, her heart pulsing in her temples. Her breath caught, and when she exhaled it was milk-warm and tremulous.
“You’re not going any particular place, are you, Jack?” a gentle accusation as she turned her face to look up at him through her lashes.
“No, Mona, I’m not.”
“Well, I’m going to work...” the spell was broken by a sharp chime as she reached up to pull the stop cord, “and it’s here, so.”
“So? So? What, can I see you again?” Still entranced, he rose, fumbling, to let her out.
“Of course, Jack. I like you.” Her tone denoted sincerity while she hurried for the door.
He shoved the window open to call after her as she exited, “How? Mona, HOW?”
“You know my name and where I work. Figure it out.” She grinned and took a few steps backward so as to hold his gaze. His smile was charmingly and happily unhinged as he lifted his left hand and pressed it against the glass. Laughing, she waved back genially as the bus pulled away, carrying Jack to his no-particular-place.