Note: Hello readers — it’s been a minute. Back in July I took a break from doing any writing to focus on a short film project that I’ve been working on. Pre-production, filming, and now editing have taken the bulk of my time which unfortunately means writing for fun has taken a back seat. I’m excited to share the project with you all soon though; at the heart of it is still words and a story that I hope captures something worth saying.
Until then, here’s 900 words I’ve written in an effort to begin again.
The places of my past now seem to only exist as story settings burned into the present.
I just got off the phone with an elderly woman, an art patron whose husband owns one of the big three tequila companies; we had a 27 minute long conversation, 24 of those a one-sided diatribe of her asking me how I lived with myself. In case you don’t know, I sell fire insurance now — mainly to the tenants of old SoHo lofts.
At the epicenter of New York City fashion are clusters of buildings, warehouses, and lofts that sit as glorified kindling.
“You’re a fucking crook you know that? This city used to stand for something when insurance actually meant what was paid and covered for was insured. I told you again and again - I have no idea how the fire started, so why isn’t it covered? Where are you calling from anyway? California? I bet it’s California, you sound like you’re from California. God this city is over ran with you people; everything’s so expensive now cause you couldn’t have just stayed on your side of the country. What? Sunshine’s not good enough for you? How do you live with yourself - Christ.”
I don’t live with myself, but I didn’t tell her that. In fact I often take the wrong subway home after work just so I can take a loop around the city before going home to my three bedroom, four person apartment. I can’t go home too early because David’s partner Giancarlo is always practicing his new choreography in the living room and if anyone walks in halfway through his rehearsal he’ll freak out and start cursing before beginning to cry.
It’d be a lot easier if he just texted us in our apartment group chat when he was or wasn’t rehearsing but he only speaks in phrases of broken English followed by flurries of Italian. He also refuses to use anything but WhatsApp to communicate. And I’m not downloading WhatsApp - that app is for immigrants.
Anyways, the elderly woman ended up hanging up on me when I asked for her policy number and I think that about did it for my talk-time for the morning so it was time for an espresso.
I’m new to the job, old to the neighborhood; I used to work at one of the big coffee chains in the area. Not a corporate chain, but one with enough locations where they start asking you to fill out your W2s on a shitty HR website. The coffee shop is attached to a yogurt shop that also serves bagels. There’s a ten foot glass hallway between the two stores where people huddle and wait for their orders in the winter. I imagine purgatory is something like that; the world burning around you as you wait with other patrons for different but similar things.
I round the block where the coffee shop is and see a familiar face walk out of the yogurt shop to strike a cigarette. It’s an employee, a man with a boyish face, or perhaps a boy with a manish face.
The man/boy in question used to work at the yogurt shop when I worked at the coffee shop five years ago. He was a chubby guy, buoyant attitude, and would always walk through the glass hallway early in the morning before the doors opened and bellow out, “Goooooooood morning beautifuls” to me and the other baristas.
I forget his name though. Benny, Louie, maybe Gus. He was the kind of guy that I’d always just say, “hello handsome” when we saw one another. But now seeing him, thirty pounds heavier, and apparently nursing a smoking addiction, even I couldn’t facetiously call him handsome. I stopped in my tracks.
I always worry about how things change. Especially from the cafes and bars I frequent - you’d think it’d be the customers that are constantly changing, but show me a hospitality establishment with the same employee roster 6 months apart and I’ll give you my next paycheck. Or I’ll download WhatsApp. It’s the customers that willingly keep coming back, the ones to remain unchanged.
But now standing here across the street, watching Benny/Louie/Gus take huge drags of his Marlboro I was more worried about how some things don’t change.
I remember one time this thin-rimmed glasses wearing man berated me for making his cappucino wrong (he didn’t know what a cappucino was). "
“How do you live with yourself? Making coffee incorrectly everyday and charging $8 for it. I’m taking my business elsewhere,” he announced as he took 3 stevia packets from the milk station and stormed out.
Benny/Louie/Gus had watched the whole thing unfold and shook his head, “This place is gonna kill me” he muttered to himself before walking through the glass hallway back to his side of the building.
I must have stood at the beginning of the block for some time because another wave of pedestrians passed me by as the light turned. Benny/Louie/Gus took one last drag before flicking his still lit cigarette into a pile of fallen dry leaves.
“Hello handsome” I yelled out as I crossed the street.
The yogurt employee looked back first in suspicion and then softness as he realized who I was. I stamped out his cigarette after I crossed the street, “careful where you throw that thing man- you might burn down all of SoHo.”
Benny/Louie/Gus gave a shrug and a smile, “long time no see, you coming in for a coffee?”
“Nah, not today,” I told him, “I got things to do.”
I gave him a handshake and a hug before continuing down the street and turning north at the next block, towards my apartment. Back at home, in the storage space above my closet, was a canister of gasoline, a pair of gloves, and a book of matches waiting for me.