Tuesday

I showed the last one of you out the door and locked it behind you, reentered the kitchen to sweep and mop, to clean the machine, to wash and sanitize the dishes.

Standing alone against the harsh kitchen florescence, the mood was melancholy in the quietest way, but I fought the desire to easily yield myself to it. Crossing the store to turn on the music was a good decision and soon Bob Dylan's voice seized the airwaves. And so I scrubbed dishes. And so, of course, I thought.

It began with the steam wands, determining whether I'd yet cleaned them out. I thought about the other necessities in closing the store: disinfecting the toilet bowl, restocking the napkin dispenser and the like. I thought about how good our soap display in the corner smells.

The tasks were quickly completed. It was a last-minute decision to make a hot chocolate for the drive downtown and when I walked outside the wind ripped across my cheeks and I greedily gurgled hot chocolate into my mouth to warm me.

I took the Spruill Avenue route. And whether it was the cold dark night or that forsaken Snow Patrol song on the radio, or the intervals of hot chocolate sips, I do not know. But whatever it was brought a surrealism to the short 10-minute drive. The darkness was penetrating and the people on Spruill avenue continued. They continued to ride the Carta bus and exit it in groups, yelling and laughing and walking home. They continued to walk with a saunter across the road wearing dark clothes and foolishly putting themselves in danger. They continued to sit and watch, smoke their cigarettes, hold a daughter's hand as she in a bulky pink jacket waddled along.

The darkness was briefly pierced by stoplights and an occasional floodlight, everything washed in tones of sepia and sometimes black and white. I saw to my left a flashy building with the bright, white word "Polished" laden across its painted gray bricks. To the right was a homeless man and his shopping cart. I drove on.

Eventually I entered downtown and found a spot to park and planned to get out of the car. But the wind ripped and its harsh howls convinced me to curl into the driver's seat and hold my knees to my chest. I was now down on King Street, parked and waiting and watching people as they walked by with loved ones, with drinking buddies, by themselves.

I called an old friend.

And for the next 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 47 seconds I sat in the car and was reminded of what good people I am granted to know. A 69-year old woman who, best friends with my mother, had a part in raising me, who I have not spoken to in a very long time, and who answered her phone at 9:00 on a Tuesday night.

And we spoke and we laughed. We laughed so hard as we reminisced together, she at her kitchen table or perhaps on a couch and I in my car, huddled and holding my knees closely. We spoke of travels, and her children, of my business, and our families. We asked one another if we'd painted recently and realized that neither one has. And then we remembered years ago, a vacation when we awoke early and took our canvases and paints to the beach and sat in the sand and watched the sun rise. We painted what we saw. We spilled paint across the grains and onto our skin and we laughed so hard.

"I still have those paintings hanging on my wall," she said.