I Have Always Been Here (Part 7 of 7)

On Saturday she is a disembodied floating smile to the children whose interpretations of what genitals mean is still wide open. That being said, the water park is often the venue where people discover their terminal fascination with skin, and the exquisite architecture of the underside of her breasts alone has turned numberless future engineers into day laborers and day laborers into artists and artists into accountants. The regulation lifeguard bathing suits usually wear the employees more than the other way around, but her uniform practically does her grocery shopping. The park is old sometimes and many of the summers have few real water park days, so she finds creative ways to pass her time perched in a chair atop the water slide, which is carved into the natural rocky hills, suspended by metal pipe that has rusted into the color of pine bark. To arrive at the summit slide, one must navigate a trail that is imposed upon what should be an intimidating, jagged ravine, tamed with terraces of logs until they ran out of logs and started using pressure-treated railroad ties. Oh the splinters, the staph infections... The view is obscured by shrubs and boulders, so when she sees someone begin the trek, she slides her finger under her bathing suit and begins counting. By around 50 she reaches her second orgasm and knows to shift her gaze to a clearing and wait to see the children pass. Once she they do, she has at least 45 seconds to squeeze off what she can and adjust her smile. Her record is 8. She does not remember how this habit began, there has never been a time where she did not do this. Each session has grown indistinct apart from the incidences where she has been caught. This has happened 6 times, each by the rationalization that one more is worth the risk, and what's the risk? The kid won't understand anyway! When they arrive, however, and she quickly retrieves her hand and orientation, the reflexive shame is stamped on her flushed porcelain face. She feels guilty, then paranoid that the children will say something, then assurance bordering on self-righteousness that nobody would dare to accuse her of something so awful, but within 20 minutes she is on the edge of her seat, counting.

I Have Always Been Here (Part 1 of 7)

Monday is conceived by drunks around 3:30 AM, when she finishes cleaning the floors and shelves of the store after their parade of blessed jubilance. For reasons of her own, she decides on life. This is when she ritualistically stuffs twelve paper bags with equal amounts of danish, donuts, bagels, and if it was a slow night, a cookie or two for the newspaper couriers, who celebrate the end of their route with a bag of free day-old pastry each. "What are you doing here at this hour?", the gentleman from The Post asks every couple nights. "Are there cars on road?" she replies. "Because as long as there are cars, I am here." "Was that too strange?" She asks herself this when nobody replies. She protects them from Silence, because somebody has to. "Where's Gene and that boy with the Inquirer?" Half of the regulars will be too tired after their shift to stop in, but she prepares a dozen bags anyway. Someone always thinks, "Why does she always fill all those bags, when she knows full well there's never more than six of us here?" When someone has time to think, she waves away the Emptiness, saying something like "I gave you two of the lemon-filled, Bill. I know you just looooove those lemon-filleds..."  She really doesn't really know that, but she is a Guardian now, and Bill was so happy to seem to have a preference that he ate both of them. After the couriers leave, it is one hour and forty-five minutes until the first batch of day laborers passes through on their way pick up the Short Line bus to New York City, and she must be prepared, lest there be another problem. There can be no further incidents of Silence or Emptiness. Seamless transactions only. No more customers can be lost, not even another homeless woman who goes by "Tortoise" and her de facto husband Red Carl. The day laborers set the tone for the day as they drift through to acquire the only breakfast that can maintain a belly that hangs several inches over the waistband on someone who spends all day doing calisthenics with power tools and cinder blocks. "Not all of you can be crane operators", she teases as she fills bags with sugar, fat, and carbs, the guitar, drum, and bass of a mobile diet. The first few Short Line rushes are mostly still in REM sleep, they'll grunt affirmatively at anything she says. Once the consistent crowd starts, so do the personalities and thus the challenges. She gathers ammunition between rushes, studying whatever the radio has to say about the world and writing it down, filing down every sharp edge until everything relates to snack foods, going to work, or dogs, and never cats. When people think of cats they think of cat owners and grow reflective, sympathetic, judgmental. The last time she permitted the unfettered mention of cats, there were three more innocent faces staring back at her in the missing persons poster on the front door who were never anywhere else.

Inevitably a regular will compliment her attire like a child tossing a Freudian cheese fry to a bluebird, unaware of the Freudian pigeons preening themselves behind him. Her daily tolerant smile at one Jimi Hendrix of sexual harassment permits a dozen Billy Squiers, which takes her through most of the morning rush. The Bunn-O-Matic always breaks at around 9:30AM, so she makes coffee in small batches using a maker she brought in from a home she only remembers. The coffee grows more burnt, and apologies grow more necessary as the customer emotional maintenance decreases. That last part is significant, because apologies can actually mean something to people. No apologies at all to frantic people who woke up late or the brittle vacationing families who failed to get that early start, but a distant "sorry" for the numb drunks with finally enough courage to show their face, followed by university students too overwhelmed to take an apology seriously, then finally the homeless, to whom she never apologizes at all because she gives them the coffee for free so they leave before people grow cautiously self-aware.

She is never seen eating, and is accepted as the picture of equanimity. Everybody knows she is never not there, they accept that as well. Some of them hurry because they are glad they are not her but may become her if they linger, others hurry as though if they are fast enough, another less indicting face will greet them when they return for more cigarettes after their shift. Some are outright hostile, hostile the way we are to our mistakes 2 years later, or hostile towards someone who watches bad television, or hostile over their success while they watch her doing the same duties, their years reflected in one daily cycle.

The Assist

Yeah he's still back, slash never really left. ... He commutes to school, (our) mom just... She bought him pants ... I was so upset, like, I told her to return them. 
...

Like, with a degree in that, you need to intern while you get your degree. Otherwise it looks terrible on paper. ... And he wants to work for Facebook? Facebook is like “Go get your experience somewhere else, we don’t want you until you do, we’re not here to train you. (There is a hidden agenda to this level of enthusiasm for his role as the "bearer of tough love".  Is he bitter about the way the world has treated him?  Or is he angry that other people have priorities that he does not understand? I already hate him, is it because of my sympathy for her boyfriend or do I just hate aggressive vain pricks? The latter.)

Speaking of indecision Oh yeah, how is ? I just don't know where it is going And neither does he, and I guess he's taking it out on me?

...

Maybe it’s because I’m hearing it all at once, because we haven’t talked in a while, but it seems like you’ve been bottling this up for months. (Exaggerating her barely audible gripe. This guilt trip serves the following purposes: A) puts her on defensive so she won't notice that her misfortune makes him act slightly jovial. B) Casts him as sexually threatening, as though he can't be around when she is in a relationship or else they'll do something, that there is some palpable sexual tension.)

He's just ...  ... But I still love him ...

This guy just sounds like… a drain on society. Like, this guy is the reason socialist countries can’t work. (Silence. This could be when she shuts herself off to him for his vitriol. Will he take the hint?)

You need someone who is invested so you can take a break every now and then, maybe take some time for creative endeavors. Part of the problem with hipster type guys is there are relatively few of them who are reliable. (Don't you know? Creativity and financial instability is for women. So you should date me, and after we move in and get married I will convince you to take some time off of work for creative endeavors or to find yourself or some other bullshit so you’ll become more dependent on me. From there I will easily convince you that we should have children, and I will own you forever!)

...

I was an idiot, why didn’t I date you? (Likes giving people what they want so they'll leave her alone.)

...
You don’t need to feel guilty because you don’t get to that point unless shit is really fucked up. If you’re upset about this, you are already at the point where you’ve done enough. (I hope the glaringly faulty logic of this sentence overshadows my bias)

I know, but it’s just hard… (I like venting to you, but nothing you are saying makes me feel better)

My goal…

Is to take over my life.