So I stopped in for a pack of cigarettes. It’d been a long time since I’d smoked. Too long, I’m tempted to say, but probably it had been just the right amount of time. The season had come around again and everything happens in due course...just as it will. The check-out girl was hot as hell, but too young for me - plus I doubt Sam would approve - still I gave her a bit of charm. Not much - don’t have all that much to spare - but a bit and she smiled. I doubt lung cancer is worth it, but at least I got something.
I’d been working late. Very late - I bought the smokes at midnight - and I knew Sam was gonna be pretty pissed at me, so I didn’t want to go home. She doesn’t get it with me sometimes - the way work gets into me and I get into it and we just roll around together until at least one of us is finished. It’s not something she’s familiar with and I love her for that. I love that I can’t talk to her about it, that we’ve gotta come up with other things to say to each other. I love that she’s got no similar obsessions too. Maybe that makes me selfish, but really, when you think about it, if we were both as obsessed as this, we’d never see each other. And I like seeing her. Love it actually. I don’t much give a shit if that’s selfish. What the hell good is love if it ain’t selfish?
So I’m walking down the street trying to think of what to say or do to calm the Sam-storm I know is coming. I’m lost in thought and I don’t even see this guy coming up at me. So it’s like one minute I’m working out where to buy some flowers in downtown at midnight on a Thursday and the next this guy is talking to me. He’s a bum, I guess, but I don’t much care for that word. Bum. Too British and maybe too mean. Still, I guess that’s what he was doing - bumming - or trying to anyway. I guess you could say, begging. Yeah, I like that better. He was begging, which, makes him a beggar. Beggar. Good word. Old. Biblical.
Anyway, so this beggar comes up to me telling me he's got a wife and kids left alone in his car. Out of gas. It’s ridiculous. This guy hasn’t bathed in at least two weeks and probably longer, and he’s trying to tell me he’s got a car and a family and a home, and he just needs a bit of cash to get some gas.
‘Where’s your can?’ I ask him. Just for fun. I guess it’s mean, but you never know when you might get something good from having a bit of fun.
‘What-cha-mean?’ the beggar says.
‘I mean, how you gonna carry the gas back to your car without a can? You gonna get a palm-full at at time?’
‘Naw, man, they’ll give me one at the gas station. Can you help me? I need seven dollars and seventy-five cents. Can you help me?’
That exact dollar amount took me a second to figure. I realized he’d switched stories. Don’t think he realized it though.
‘So, what if I gave you six dollars?’ I say.
‘Come on, man,' was all he’d say.
The fun of this whole thing had worn off, so I pulled a couple of bucks from my pocket and handed it over. Here’s a tip: always keep a few bills in your pocket when walking around a city. I mean, maybe you’ll never use them - or maybe you’re the type who’d never give to anybody - but you never know. And it’s probably not a great idea to pull out a wallet.
So the bum - I mean, beggar - went away and I went back to thinking. There’s no flower shop open this late in downtown and I’m stuck taking the bus. I don’t even want to get into why that is, so don’t even ask. I can’t for the life of me figure a bus route that’ll take me near a flower shop either - much less an open flower shop. Maybe a grocery store? Sometimes they’ve got flowers. Shit, I’ll have to take three buses to get to the store and back home and it’ll be 3am by the time I get there. Flowers might work if I’m getting home at 12:30, but 3am is bordering on jewelery territory.
Oh well. I was stuck. I decided to go home and take my lumps. Maybe I’d get away with this time. I knew I wouldn’t, but, you know, might as well think positively.
I head to the bus station. It’s a pretty damn giant building - takes up about a city block. It’s got two stories, but it’s built on a hill so bottom floor is half buried and buses can enter either floor from the street. The drive is a horseshoe shape. A bus’ll enter from the street, loop around, stop at whatever numbered slot it’s assigned to and then pop out again on the same street. Pretty nice when you compare it to the way it used to be - a bunch of piss-stinking, steel and Plexiglas ‘shelters’ lining a dark street. At least this place had lights and kept most of the weather out.
I found my slot, number 18, dug out a dollar and half for fare and sat down on the bench to wait. Thinking. Seems I’m always thinking, you might say. Well, don’t let me fool ya. If that were true I wouldn’t’ve gotten myself into this mess to begin with. It’s messes that always get me to thinking. Not the other way’round. I sure hope one day I learn to think my way outta even getting into a mess instead of always having to think of ways to get out.
So I’m waiting on the bus - thinking - and I noticed the chick a the other end of the bus bench. Unlike the beggar from before, even my focus on clearing things with Sam wasn’t enough to keep me from noticing this one. She had long legs and not too much covering ‘em. A short skirt - tight - and a pair of calf-high boots. CFM-boots, I believe they’re often called. By the more vulgar amongst us, I mean. I wouldn’t call ‘em that. Anyway, this chick had a leather jacket on, zipped up to her neck so I couldn’t make out too much above her waist, but her face was pretty enough. Not model pretty, mind you, but nicer than you’d expect to find waiting on a bus on a Thursday night. Fire-truck red hair too. I didn’t much care for that. “Course I had her legs to distract me from it.
This chick saw me watching her, but didn’t seem to think too much of it. I guess you gotta expect these things when you’re her kinda girl. And I guess I didn’t seem too dangerous or anything. I’m sure I looked just about like what I was - a guy trying to get home to his girl and worrying if tonight would be the night the my key didn’t work.
When she pulled out a cigarette, I took it as my cue to do the same. We both knew it was against the rules - hell, we were sitting beneath a giant poster of a cigarette with big red line through it - but it was late and I guess we decided nobody would care too much what we did. Plus, I’d just spent good money on the damned things and I knew Sam wasn’t gonna allow them in the house. By god I was gonna have one. Only problem was I’d forgotten to buy a lighter. So I asked her for one.
‘You gotta lighter I could use,’ I said.
She looked over at me and laughed at that. She had a kinda light laugh. It danced. Out of her throat, along her tongue and right out into the diesel exhaust particles floating all around us into my ears. For just a second there I thought I must’a made a joke and felt a little bit a pride at being able to make the owner of that pair of legs giggle, but then I realized what was so funny.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ she said and started laughing again.
‘Well, shit,’ I says to her. At this point I’d decided to give another go at making her laugh. At earning it this time. Didn’t think of too much though, I’m sorry to say. All I had was ‘Ain’t we something? You know what they say? Where they’re ain’t no fire, there ain’t no smoke.’
Sad I know. I feel dumb even repeating it. But it worked. She started going at that. Laughing hard and even slapping her knee. She must’a slapped it pretty hard too, cause it left a red mark. I just about memorized that mark - had a palm and two fingers. I could draw a picture of it. If I could draw, that is.
That was when I decided she must be on drugs. But, shit, who’s not, you know? Let folks do as they’ll do, is what I say. I’m nobody to judge.
So we were sitting there not smoking and she was still laughing and I was not judging her when I noticed a guy standing just outside the bus entryway. He was a short guy, and fat, and he was smoking. I said to myself that it’s my lucky day - which was not at all true - and I got up and said to Giggles that I’d be back.
I walked over to the guy and asked him if I could bum his lighter. He said yeah in a pretty friendly sorta way and I said thanks and he handed me the lighter. I tell you that first drag was something. Incredible. It was like coming home only to find out everyone you love is there and they’ve forgotten every bad thing you ever did. Like the way I’ve heard religious people talk about heaven.
The second drag was just okay.
I was on the third and handing back the dude’s lighter when I heard a yell from the direction of the chick. It was, in fact, the chick. Some guy in a leather jacket was over there now holding a bunch of roses in one hand and her arm in the other. I turned just in time to see him yank her up off the bench and pull her to him. Then she yelled again and slapped him hard across the face - I heard it clear across the building.
So I’m kinda in shock for a minute but then I turn back toward the guy who’d loaned me his lighter only to see him headed off down the street, and he didn’t look like he was searching out a cop. I can’t blame him.
It was one of those situations where I found myself without a clue as to what to do, so I did what I usually do - something stupid. I yelled ‘Hey!’ and started toward them. I started off at kinda a half jog - about as fast as I’d ever go - but I soon found myself slowing down a bit. I could see her wrestling with the guy and I could see how big he was and how he was winning even though he only had the one hand because the other was still holding the roses. When I got closer I could hear him. He was begging. ‘Come on, June, baby. Come on, home.’ Neither of them were paying a bit of attention to me, and I was beginning to wonder what I was doing but still I kept walking closer.
Then a very surprising thing happened. Suddenly the beggar from earlier was there. I saw him run down the steps at the other end of the building and head straight for the big guy in the jacket. I mean, this dude went right for him and slammed himself into the guy. When they hit, the big guy let go of the chick, the roses went sliding across the pavement and everybody hit the ground. Everybody except me. I had a decision to make. Before me a scrawny beggar and a giant were rolling around punching, clawing and screaming at each other, a stoned chick with spectacular legs was pushing herself up staring at the guys fighting, a perfectly good bunch of roses were just going to waste on the pavement and out of the corner of my eye I saw my bus approaching. I had to think fast.
So, I picked up the roses. Don’t judge. I picked them up and then went over to the girl and helped her up - and had to drop my smoke in the process. She seemed in relatively good shape. I mean, she had a welt on the side of her face and was pretty much staring blankly at the fight and completely ignoring me, but given the circumstances she was doing okay. That’s when my bus pulled up.
‘Listen. June, is it?’ I said, trying to be all calm about it. ‘Listen, maybe you ought to just get on the bus, okay?’
‘I think that’s Stanley,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him in years.’ It took me a minute, but I realized she was talking about the bu- beggar. I figured then - and it seems likely still - that this was some sort of family thing. And, say what you want, but I’ve always thought people should stay outta other people’s family business. So that’s what I did. The bus door opened. I got on. The driver was already on the radio reporting the fight, so I didn’t even bother talking to him. I just paid the fare and took my seat.
As we pulled away, I looked out the window to see that the fight had ended and both guys where sitting on the pavement with their backs against the wall - panting pretty hard - and June was standing over them with her hands on her hips. She was giggling again, and then I saw her bend down and wrap her arms around the beggar in a hug. The big guy sat there watching them and I swear he had a smile on his face. Then right before we turned outta sight, I saw him start scanning the pavement around them looking for something. I’m pretty sure I know what it was, but, you know, when it comes to love they say it’s every man for himself and I believe they’re right.
And Sam sure did love those roses.
I’d been working late. Very late - I bought the smokes at midnight - and I knew Sam was gonna be pretty pissed at me, so I didn’t want to go home. She doesn’t get it with me sometimes - the way work gets into me and I get into it and we just roll around together until at least one of us is finished. It’s not something she’s familiar with and I love her for that. I love that I can’t talk to her about it, that we’ve gotta come up with other things to say to each other. I love that she’s got no similar obsessions too. Maybe that makes me selfish, but really, when you think about it, if we were both as obsessed as this, we’d never see each other. And I like seeing her. Love it actually. I don’t much give a shit if that’s selfish. What the hell good is love if it ain’t selfish?
So I’m walking down the street trying to think of what to say or do to calm the Sam-storm I know is coming. I’m lost in thought and I don’t even see this guy coming up at me. So it’s like one minute I’m working out where to buy some flowers in downtown at midnight on a Thursday and the next this guy is talking to me. He’s a bum, I guess, but I don’t much care for that word. Bum. Too British and maybe too mean. Still, I guess that’s what he was doing - bumming - or trying to anyway. I guess you could say, begging. Yeah, I like that better. He was begging, which, makes him a beggar. Beggar. Good word. Old. Biblical.
Anyway, so this beggar comes up to me telling me he's got a wife and kids left alone in his car. Out of gas. It’s ridiculous. This guy hasn’t bathed in at least two weeks and probably longer, and he’s trying to tell me he’s got a car and a family and a home, and he just needs a bit of cash to get some gas.
‘Where’s your can?’ I ask him. Just for fun. I guess it’s mean, but you never know when you might get something good from having a bit of fun.
‘What-cha-mean?’ the beggar says.
‘I mean, how you gonna carry the gas back to your car without a can? You gonna get a palm-full at at time?’
‘Naw, man, they’ll give me one at the gas station. Can you help me? I need seven dollars and seventy-five cents. Can you help me?’
That exact dollar amount took me a second to figure. I realized he’d switched stories. Don’t think he realized it though.
‘So, what if I gave you six dollars?’ I say.
‘Come on, man,' was all he’d say.
The fun of this whole thing had worn off, so I pulled a couple of bucks from my pocket and handed it over. Here’s a tip: always keep a few bills in your pocket when walking around a city. I mean, maybe you’ll never use them - or maybe you’re the type who’d never give to anybody - but you never know. And it’s probably not a great idea to pull out a wallet.
So the bum - I mean, beggar - went away and I went back to thinking. There’s no flower shop open this late in downtown and I’m stuck taking the bus. I don’t even want to get into why that is, so don’t even ask. I can’t for the life of me figure a bus route that’ll take me near a flower shop either - much less an open flower shop. Maybe a grocery store? Sometimes they’ve got flowers. Shit, I’ll have to take three buses to get to the store and back home and it’ll be 3am by the time I get there. Flowers might work if I’m getting home at 12:30, but 3am is bordering on jewelery territory.
Oh well. I was stuck. I decided to go home and take my lumps. Maybe I’d get away with this time. I knew I wouldn’t, but, you know, might as well think positively.
I head to the bus station. It’s a pretty damn giant building - takes up about a city block. It’s got two stories, but it’s built on a hill so bottom floor is half buried and buses can enter either floor from the street. The drive is a horseshoe shape. A bus’ll enter from the street, loop around, stop at whatever numbered slot it’s assigned to and then pop out again on the same street. Pretty nice when you compare it to the way it used to be - a bunch of piss-stinking, steel and Plexiglas ‘shelters’ lining a dark street. At least this place had lights and kept most of the weather out.
I found my slot, number 18, dug out a dollar and half for fare and sat down on the bench to wait. Thinking. Seems I’m always thinking, you might say. Well, don’t let me fool ya. If that were true I wouldn’t’ve gotten myself into this mess to begin with. It’s messes that always get me to thinking. Not the other way’round. I sure hope one day I learn to think my way outta even getting into a mess instead of always having to think of ways to get out.
So I’m waiting on the bus - thinking - and I noticed the chick a the other end of the bus bench. Unlike the beggar from before, even my focus on clearing things with Sam wasn’t enough to keep me from noticing this one. She had long legs and not too much covering ‘em. A short skirt - tight - and a pair of calf-high boots. CFM-boots, I believe they’re often called. By the more vulgar amongst us, I mean. I wouldn’t call ‘em that. Anyway, this chick had a leather jacket on, zipped up to her neck so I couldn’t make out too much above her waist, but her face was pretty enough. Not model pretty, mind you, but nicer than you’d expect to find waiting on a bus on a Thursday night. Fire-truck red hair too. I didn’t much care for that. “Course I had her legs to distract me from it.
This chick saw me watching her, but didn’t seem to think too much of it. I guess you gotta expect these things when you’re her kinda girl. And I guess I didn’t seem too dangerous or anything. I’m sure I looked just about like what I was - a guy trying to get home to his girl and worrying if tonight would be the night the my key didn’t work.
When she pulled out a cigarette, I took it as my cue to do the same. We both knew it was against the rules - hell, we were sitting beneath a giant poster of a cigarette with big red line through it - but it was late and I guess we decided nobody would care too much what we did. Plus, I’d just spent good money on the damned things and I knew Sam wasn’t gonna allow them in the house. By god I was gonna have one. Only problem was I’d forgotten to buy a lighter. So I asked her for one.
‘You gotta lighter I could use,’ I said.
She looked over at me and laughed at that. She had a kinda light laugh. It danced. Out of her throat, along her tongue and right out into the diesel exhaust particles floating all around us into my ears. For just a second there I thought I must’a made a joke and felt a little bit a pride at being able to make the owner of that pair of legs giggle, but then I realized what was so funny.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ she said and started laughing again.
‘Well, shit,’ I says to her. At this point I’d decided to give another go at making her laugh. At earning it this time. Didn’t think of too much though, I’m sorry to say. All I had was ‘Ain’t we something? You know what they say? Where they’re ain’t no fire, there ain’t no smoke.’
Sad I know. I feel dumb even repeating it. But it worked. She started going at that. Laughing hard and even slapping her knee. She must’a slapped it pretty hard too, cause it left a red mark. I just about memorized that mark - had a palm and two fingers. I could draw a picture of it. If I could draw, that is.
That was when I decided she must be on drugs. But, shit, who’s not, you know? Let folks do as they’ll do, is what I say. I’m nobody to judge.
So we were sitting there not smoking and she was still laughing and I was not judging her when I noticed a guy standing just outside the bus entryway. He was a short guy, and fat, and he was smoking. I said to myself that it’s my lucky day - which was not at all true - and I got up and said to Giggles that I’d be back.
I walked over to the guy and asked him if I could bum his lighter. He said yeah in a pretty friendly sorta way and I said thanks and he handed me the lighter. I tell you that first drag was something. Incredible. It was like coming home only to find out everyone you love is there and they’ve forgotten every bad thing you ever did. Like the way I’ve heard religious people talk about heaven.
The second drag was just okay.
I was on the third and handing back the dude’s lighter when I heard a yell from the direction of the chick. It was, in fact, the chick. Some guy in a leather jacket was over there now holding a bunch of roses in one hand and her arm in the other. I turned just in time to see him yank her up off the bench and pull her to him. Then she yelled again and slapped him hard across the face - I heard it clear across the building.
So I’m kinda in shock for a minute but then I turn back toward the guy who’d loaned me his lighter only to see him headed off down the street, and he didn’t look like he was searching out a cop. I can’t blame him.
It was one of those situations where I found myself without a clue as to what to do, so I did what I usually do - something stupid. I yelled ‘Hey!’ and started toward them. I started off at kinda a half jog - about as fast as I’d ever go - but I soon found myself slowing down a bit. I could see her wrestling with the guy and I could see how big he was and how he was winning even though he only had the one hand because the other was still holding the roses. When I got closer I could hear him. He was begging. ‘Come on, June, baby. Come on, home.’ Neither of them were paying a bit of attention to me, and I was beginning to wonder what I was doing but still I kept walking closer.
Then a very surprising thing happened. Suddenly the beggar from earlier was there. I saw him run down the steps at the other end of the building and head straight for the big guy in the jacket. I mean, this dude went right for him and slammed himself into the guy. When they hit, the big guy let go of the chick, the roses went sliding across the pavement and everybody hit the ground. Everybody except me. I had a decision to make. Before me a scrawny beggar and a giant were rolling around punching, clawing and screaming at each other, a stoned chick with spectacular legs was pushing herself up staring at the guys fighting, a perfectly good bunch of roses were just going to waste on the pavement and out of the corner of my eye I saw my bus approaching. I had to think fast.
So, I picked up the roses. Don’t judge. I picked them up and then went over to the girl and helped her up - and had to drop my smoke in the process. She seemed in relatively good shape. I mean, she had a welt on the side of her face and was pretty much staring blankly at the fight and completely ignoring me, but given the circumstances she was doing okay. That’s when my bus pulled up.
‘Listen. June, is it?’ I said, trying to be all calm about it. ‘Listen, maybe you ought to just get on the bus, okay?’
‘I think that’s Stanley,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him in years.’ It took me a minute, but I realized she was talking about the bu- beggar. I figured then - and it seems likely still - that this was some sort of family thing. And, say what you want, but I’ve always thought people should stay outta other people’s family business. So that’s what I did. The bus door opened. I got on. The driver was already on the radio reporting the fight, so I didn’t even bother talking to him. I just paid the fare and took my seat.
As we pulled away, I looked out the window to see that the fight had ended and both guys where sitting on the pavement with their backs against the wall - panting pretty hard - and June was standing over them with her hands on her hips. She was giggling again, and then I saw her bend down and wrap her arms around the beggar in a hug. The big guy sat there watching them and I swear he had a smile on his face. Then right before we turned outta sight, I saw him start scanning the pavement around them looking for something. I’m pretty sure I know what it was, but, you know, when it comes to love they say it’s every man for himself and I believe they’re right.
And Sam sure did love those roses.
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