I love my apartment, and I love my roommate, but I have to say I miss the old place. The idea of separate rooms at all is one I once enjoyed, and we had a backyard for Newcastle to poke around in. We also had a great neighborhood. In the spring, all of the bushes became soft and colorful.
It’s a mile walk to the 7th Street Hill Café, which I’d long ago adopted. On Saturday mornings, I liked to sit in an easy chair, sip a latte, and watch them assemble the Eastern Market, a cross between a crafts fair and a Farmer’s Market.
I came to the 7th Street Hill Café, located on North Carolina Avenue, on Saturday to do just that. Riding high on bipolar disorder, I needed to get out of my apartment and experience the world. I settled into the chair, pulled my markers out of my bag and eat my breakfast sandwich, resisting the urge to devour the whole thing in two bites.
After I returned it to the end table, the old man in the opposite chair said, “You have egg on your shirt.”
“Gross.” I plucked the solid yolk and dropped it onto the plate, keeping it far from the last bites of my sandwich. I said, “Speaking of eggs, I saw a Cybertruck downtown. I’m gonna crunch some numbers, and I’m gonna get a second job, and I’m gonna go to the bank, and I’m gonna get a loan, and I am going to egg that piece of garbage.” (It’s one of the funniest jokes I ever made. I’m going to use it until I run out of people to say it to.)
“Or,” the old man, whose name was Glen, said, “You could fill up two—no, three—no, two coffin coolers with eggs and sell them at the farmer’s market. That’s what Dan did, you know Dan?”
It was 8:13am, and I accepted that I was going to be in this conversation until the Post Office opened at nine. “No.”
“Dan used to sell eggs here at the Eastern Market. I used to truck them in from his farm. So many eggs. Dan died of a stroke. Not kidding, he just keeled over and died. That’s why nobody’s selling eggs at the farmer’s market anymore. Do know that you can tell what a chicken ate by looking at the color of its yolk?”
I gasped. “No!”
The old man chuckled and looked a bit smug. “Oh, yes. If the yolk is this deep amber, orange color, it ate a lot of marigolds.”
He smirked at me through his beard and waited for my reaction. I had to formulate one, and the only way I could prove I was paying attention was to ask a question. “You feed them marigolds?”
The old man chuckled. “No, no, no, they’re free-range. They can eat whatever the fuck they want. And if I ever want to eat a chicken dinner, all I need to do is grab a rooster who’s getting too big for his britches and hold him upside down and slash, motherfucker! Decapitated! Heh-heh!”
I didn’t know what was going on, but I buckled the fuck up to see where it was headed. It was difficult to follow along, but not because it was a bumper car of thought. No, Glen stubbornly clung to one subject until he veered off into a completely different direction, like he was jumping from train of thought to train of thought at a crowded depot.
Glen once punched a “shepherd bitch” (a dog) in the head, and she was nice to him after that. He recounted why you should never piss him off through the parable of a tense standoff with the owner of the Eastern Market. He already had his Halloween costume ready to go. (Hooded cloak, Goblin nail extensions. A paper machê Satyr mask a friend in Venice made for him.) He couldn’t remember why he didn’t exchange a word with his half-brother for two years while they shared a house. He kept me up to date on the lifespans of his siblings, including his “bitch sister” (a person), who is still alive. For a coup de grace, he unloaded on me how people are always on their “fucking phones” all the time. He could tell you how to get from point a to point B. “You know how? Not through your fucking phone, that’s for sure. Not on a map.” He tapped his temple.
Suddenly, he was gone.
I finished my drawing in peace.
I packed up and wandered off, my first destination being the Post Office to mail a package I’ve been meaning to mail for six months (sorry, Donna). I made it halfway up the block before the generous application of the color orange, my favorite, caught my eye. I’d walked past it on impulse, but I yanked my emergency brake and skidded over to the side to see more paintings.
They were collages coated in a thick layer of shellac, and a figure, bald, faceless, and strangely sexy, appeared on many of them. She said, “I love watching people come in for a second look.” We talked about color, I told her everything I liked about her art, and I bought a piece. She told me her name was Quest, and she gave me a big hug. The visible part of Quest’s hair was made of gray feathers, and she wore a robe, not a dress. I don’t think she was human. In a good way.
I was in and out of the Post Office at the speed of someone who’s done it a lot.
Even though I have Ember’s number, I decided to walk the ten blocks to the House of the Devil to see if she was standing up for us. On my way, I acquired a lava lamp, and I attempted to take a picture of a street called Justice Ct. until a Latinx man accosted me. He knew English nouns, and that was it. He shouted at me an incomprehensible string of them that told the story of an immigrant succeeding in this country, and something about that was making him angry.
A middle-aged couple across the street, surrounded by Chihuahuas yelled, “Sir, can you help us with our dogs? Sir?” I realized who they were talking to me, and I separated from the loud man to join them.
The woman yelled, “Thank you for helping us with our dogs!” The angry man continued ranting, impossible to understand. I never got the names of the couples, but I thanked them profusely.
Ember was not at the Pit of Despair. She later told me she was taking the weekend off. She’s earned it for sure. I look forward to resisting next week.
Exhausted and overstimulated, I headed straight home. But first, there is a big sign at the stop before mine labeled “Arts Walk.” I’ve been meaning to go there for at least two months. I hopped off the train to check it out because I was still jittery. It was okay. It was no Eastern Market. I bought a belt made of an old bicycle tire.
Also this weekend, a relationship that lasted well over a decade came to an end. I’m not going into details because I like to keep it classy in this joint. Also because it was enormously frustrating.
Culture doesn’t put as much value on a friend breakup as it does a romantic one, but they still hurt. You’re closing the door on all that history and intimacy, even if it ended badly. You have every right to mourn.
The truth is, we’d broken years ago, and I just wasn’t ready to let go. I already mourned.
Sunday, I dedicated my day to my project, the fruits of which you’ve seen yesterday. I’ve received no feedback on them from any of the St. Mark’s Players, and now I’m frightened to go to the show on Thursday.
My next project is finding a light bulb for my lava lamp.
Jeremiah Murphy 