Statue photo taken at J.Woeste in Los Olivos
Her story was inevident to the clot of passersby. Her face unrecorded in their memory banks as they rushed around the raw-nerved civil servants working on what seemed to be nothing directly to the right of the subway stairwell. She watched and waited unhurriedly taking in the melee of departed train riders as they emerged and collided with the world that lay above. She didn’t notice him at first, his claim to fame – the invisible one – but then she realized a kink in the flow, a sudden dam in the salmon run and there he was amidst the crowd, stopped in his tracks with one foot while the other one raised repeatedly several times, seemingly in effort to extract himself from a web of something that was presently adhering him to the pavement. Deciding it best to move out of the line of traffic, he made his way to the curb and proceeded to rake his sole against its abrasiveness. A visible sigh raised and lowered his chest and shoulders, and he ventured on – his demeanor moving from initial surprise to anger to annoyance to resignation within a matter of a minute. He knew he didn’t have time for this on this particular morning. There was an empty spot, a blatant gap in his agenda that seemed to be reserved for some reason, though he knew not why. His gut told him to just get to the office and everything would become clear.
She decided to take a more unorthodox route, as she preferred to arrive ahead of him. She didn’t want to give him the opportunity for any rehearsing. She needed him in a purely spontaneous receptive state.
It was a small dank hole of an office with no windows, frayed carpet, coffee stained cushions and the smell – a meld of stale cigarettes, Glade and history defying submission. Everything about the office screamed apathy and whispered self-loathing, from the dusty, vased artificial flowers to the hairline crack of the 70′s inspired wall mirror. The receptionist gave a curt
“Have a seat.”
Her ensemble didn’t cause much notice – a mere glance as if to say “hmph – whatevah”, as if her feathered cloak could be seen anywhere on any street corner in the lower east side. As instructed, there were to be no grand unveilings to the general public. This was a strictly one on one parley, and she would wait to reveal any glimmer of gold after he settled in and she had his full attention.
He made his usual stop in the lobby to The Corner Cafe (it irked him when others stated the obvious and tried to pass it off as cleverness) and bought his usual half decaf half regular (his doctor warned him of the perils of caffeine on those hypertensive – this was his way of a compromise) and a buttered Kaiser roll with two slices of American cheese cut in quarters. He snagged the Post, the News and the Times, folded them into a big chunky uneven rectangle, secured them under his armpit and headed towards the elevator.
The anticipation of some coming soon event of unknown origin was pulling at his tie and causing his brow to bead. Choosing to chalk the anxiety causing these manifestations up to a marginally utilized imagination, he discounted the whoosh of seemingly fresher air as he ambled down the corridor to his suite (the term obviously used loosely) – “Suite 7″ greeting him in presumed perpetuity, and he turned the knob.
To Be Continued…Sometime….Thanks for reading!
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