Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
On my way to the shelter this afternoon I went by the grocery. In the lane next to me I recognized the yoga instructor Kira from the studio where I used to go. The last time we saw each other was in the airport five or six years ago. She and a friend were on their way to India. She is still as precise and measured as ever. Good to see you, she said, arching her back and blinking slowly.
I channeled some of her poise when I got to the shelter and realized I did not have my phone. I retraced my steps all the way back home. Finding it neither there nor the grocery—Seen a phone in the broccoli crowns? I asked Dennis produce man—I returned to the shelter where it dawned to me to look in my car and there it was, right under the driver’s seat, shiny, flat, black, face-down. It must have slipped from my bag and my first rule of finding lost things—to look for whatever it is where I least expect it to be—must have slipped my mind.
At the shelter Susan and Ella were working. Devan came in even though it’s the weekend. She talked to Michael on her way to her office. He was lying on the floor by the bookcase. You in a space of love, she told him. I don’t feel like it, he said. Give to God, she said, he got you! Bad Hair Day twinkled in pink and silver rhinestones above the brim of her baseball cap.
A man wrapped in a dingy white comforter insisted on writing his name to sign in instead of saying it. Ella slapped a piece of scrap paper on the counter for him along with a pencil with a blunt, splintery tip. The man wrote his name on the paper and gave it to me. Up to here with nonsense today, Ella muttered. But she laughed when I said to one man that I’d never go to a place with holic in its name. We were talking about a new bakery that’s opened called Cinaholic. I poked her in the belly with the pencil eraser when she chuckled. She chuckled some more.
That’s my cousin, said one man after I found his last name in the roster. He was not yet in the roster himself. I got out of jail 10 days ago, he said. I asked him to sign the intake sheet and stacked a sack lunch on top of a box holding baked beans and a hot dog. That work? I asked. That works, he said. Thumbs up. Evan and I talked about depression. It’s a thing! he said. He’s found relief temping for a staffing company. They hire anyone, he said, they hired me!
One call I answered was a man calling for a friend whose boyfriend had just beaten her. Another call was a woman who’d just been evicted from her apartment. Do you have any tents? she asked. We don’t, I said. I thought of Kira earlier and tried again to tap into some of her aura and even India. Frankie jumped up from a chair by the mail room where he’d been sitting and stewing, his russet-colored hair matted and his blue eyes clear and wild. Hey, Frankie! Frankie! I love you, Susan said. She put her hand on his shoulder. He seemed to consider the gesture but decided to leave instead.
On my way home I went to CVS to pick up a prescription. I arrived during the pharmacy’s lunch break. I waited it out sitting next to a big old man in overalls who fought not to sleep. He recognized a thin palsied old man on a walker who arrived with his wife. They talked about seeing each other at church. Another older woman groused about being delayed. A woman younger than I rolled her eyes. On my phone I read a story about a young woman who works for a travel agency that caters to the ultra-rich. These people never hear the word no, she says at one point, they can’t process the word. She has a good sense of humor. I hope she keeps it.
At home I finished re-reading Steve Martin’s novella The Pleasure of My Company. He has a winning, tender-hearted way with oddballs. Some books I am keeping after re-reading. Some I am not. Others I have given away without re-reading. They remind me of times in my life from which I now feel estranged or concern ideas or subjects I no longer have the temperament or intellect to appreciate. I read this? I wonder. This was me? Annotations also disorient me. Why did I underline this passage? Circle that word? The disorientation reminds me of reading the notes Mom’s friends wrote after she died. I hardly recognized her from some things people said. Did they know one person and I another? I am not sure where I could find an answer to that or even if there is one.
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I am, also, an avid re-reader of books. It is liking meeting up with an old friend.
You have a very interesting life.