U See This?

Aaron at U-Haul goes looking for my rental truck, then saunters without urgency back to where I'm standing. My truck (for which I have gotten out of bed early, to come here early, to pick my truck up early, so we can load all of Katie's sculptures and displays early, so we can arrive at the market early enough to get a good parking space and not drive all over God's creation looking for one) is conspicuous in its absence.

He makes a "wait here" sort of motion with his hands, so I do, and then he comes out, ten minutes later, with a new set of keys and still no sense of urgency (I must be feeling stressed for both of us) and walks to get me another truck, since the last one apparently "wouldn't start."

I feel a certain amount of relief when he drives up with my truck, only to have my hopes dashed by the sight of, in the back of the truck, where all the stuff is supposed to go, a half-an-inch of standing, soapy water, and I call Aaron back over with, "Hey, take a look at this for me, would you?"

I Don't Listen To Enough Murder Podcasts

Katie rushes excitedly into the kitchen and shows me the foot upon which she dropped the computer a few days ago. The bruise just above her instep sulks with purple and green and pale yellow. "I have lividity!" she yells with delight.

She explains that lividity occurs when a person has been dead in one position for a long time, and the blood in the body pools in one area, and when I seem less than enthusiastic, she seems incredibly disappointed in me.

Keep Walking

The guy with the messy hair and the enormous, dirty backpack passes us from behind as we're walking down the sidewalk. He's not wearing a mask, but we let it slide because we're outside, it's a nice day, and sometimes you just can't be bothered to fight every battle.

Then he stops up short in front of a house and, pointing to the "Black Lives Matter" sign in the window, says to the person in the yard, "You know, Black Lives Matter doesn't have anything to do with the death of George Floyd...."

Whatever he had to say next is lost, though, as Katie and I walk up and Katie, with an imperious shoo-ing gesture, says to him, simply, "Keep walking," and, with a startled look, after quickly pulling up his mask, he does.

To Vibe Or Not To Vibe

"You see, I knew we were both Cancers," my customer says after I tell her that my birthday was a few days before hers. "That's why we're vibing so hard."

Just then, behind her, a large, floofy white dog, with an intelligent, carefree expression and perky ears, gets off the elevator, and wishing to share my good fortune at seeing such a creature with my new friend, I ask, "So how do you feel about dogs?"

"They're okay," she says, shrugging, and I know for a fact that we are not, remotely, vibing, at all.

Empty-A (say it out loud)

The subway is pretty empty, even for a Wednesday evening in what is still, arguably, a partial quarantine. We ride along underground for a while, me reading my book, until the train climbs up the bridge and heads out over the water.

Another train runs parallel to this one, dark beneath the shadowing trestles of Manhattan Bridge, while behind it the city still sits in the dying light of the end of day. I watch the train for a while, and turn back to my book.

The Distance

The grass is still wet from the earlier rainstorm when we walk through the park, but the clouds are quickly clearing.

"Looks like we've got the place to ourselves," I tell Katie. 

"Yeah, I booked the entire park for your birthday," she replies, surveying with satisfaction the meadow, empty as it is except for the birds meticulously combing the grass for grubs and worms. "I think the nearest person is at least a tenth-of-a-mile away," she adds as she points to tiny, distant children playing with bubbles on the hill, and they might even be further than that.

2020 Weather is On-Brand

My work keeps me below street level, one floor down, with limited access to windows, for most of the daylight hours. 

So when I come out of work this evening, the gust of wind and spray of water in my face are my only foreshadowing to the absolute deluge in progress in Manhattan. The sky has that yellowish, sickly pallor or a bad storm, while the wind vents its spleen on the construction site just down the street by ripping up pressboard barriers and hurtling them across the sidewalk. 

A security guard at the construction site and I alternate between taking video of the sheets of rain and nodding to one another until, in a howl of fury from the sky, it starts to hail, and I can't help but laugh.