Chapter Two

Ok - this is still very rough. I'm struggling with some of the ideas for the story.

But what the heck...

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Morning.

A plastic, dark green window shade laid on the floor beneath an open window. The sun streaked through the glass and fell right upon his face. He stirred. He didn’t want to get up. He was in the middle of that dream about the beach. He was with her, walking, holding hands, talking about nothing in words that meant everything. He was determined to see how this dream would end. If he could just keep his eyes shut long enough, maybe he could go back there.

The bright light annoyed him and his mind wandered. He started thinking about that window shade. He had to go the hardware store to get this clip so that he could hang the thing up. Why do you always need to make two or three trips to the hardware store to get a simple job done? He bought a clip last week, but it was the wrong one. He needed the clip that had the round part on the end and the small hole in the middle. The other clip had a snap but the snap only worked for shades that had this little hook. Those shades were made by a different company. What a pain in the butt. Why don’t they just standardize those things? That’s like faucet valves. Every faucet uses a different kind of valve. What’s up with that? Why not have just a standard valve, or a couple of different valves? He made a mental note to buy the other kind of faucet valve when he went back to the hardware store. He hoped that he kept the receipt, so he could return the one that he bought when he picked up the mounting clip for the shade.

Damn it was hot.

It was early June. Summer came early. Must be global warming. Great, another New York style hot and sticky summer. It was late on a Saturday morning. The joggers had already taken their showers and headed out to brunch. There was little other activity on east 6^th street this morning. It was just too hot. The sane people were either at the beach or sitting in front of their air conditioners.

He could not afford the Hamptons and he sure couldn't bear the train ride to Jones Beach. It wasn't so much the train ride out there, it was the thought of the long ride back. Sitting on the train, with the sand, salt and dry sweat on your skin. The discomfort. No, that wasn't him.

How about the Sheep Meadow at Central Park? By this time, a few hundred similarly situated New Yorkers were already out there. It would be packed. Probably impossible to find a good place to lay out. It just seemed like too much effort. And he was still in bed.

After being away for three years, he returned to New York last month. He was in New York! Pizza, bagels, mortadela, stinky cheese. Maybe he could do some off, off, Broadway. There were commercials. Plenty of restaurant jobs.

He didn't know how he was going to make a living, but he knew that he would find a way to make it work. It can be tough to live in New York. When you’re under thirty, it's very hip. Do people use the word “hip” anymore? It was okay to live in the city back then. All your friends are short on cash, everyone's trying to make it, its no big deal being broke. You get a couple of part-time jobs, you do your thing. If you have to, you can share a place with a couple of buddies.

Something changes after thirty. Some of your friends get really good jobs. They have what is called disposable income. They buy useless things and go to nice restaurants. At first, they invite you and they pay for you. It doesn't take long to get uncomfortable with the fact that you don't have the money to pay for yourself. After a while, you don't get the invitations. Yup, as you get older you're more willing to admit that being broke all the time is not a great adventure. It just sucks. You get tired of paying $1500 a month for a 600 square foot apartment. You get tired of working multiple jobs – your “what you are” jobs and your “make ends meet” jobs.

It would be different this time. He was going to make New York work for him. Suzie's letter was a wake up call. After he got the letter he called Suzie and got the whole story. He knew what he had to do. He was going to get his act together and be an inspiration. He would be the man that she always wanted him to be. He would do that for her. Whether or not she was willing to admit it, she needed him now. It wouldn't be about how much money he was making or whether he was on a career path. It was only important that he loved her and that she understood that he always loved her. He had been a coward. Instead of fighting for their relationship, he left. But he felt ready to fight now, maybe because he didn't think that she would have the strength to fight back. Yeah, he was ready to stand up and be strong for the both of them. Although he wasn't sure what his role might be, it didn't really matter. He would take what he could get. One way or another, he was going to be back in her life.

She didn't know that he was back. He wasn't ready to let her know. He wanted to be settled first, so he could tell her about the positive things that he was doing. She'd like that.

But it wasn't just about her. They had a child. More than anything, he wanted to be a father. He wanted a relationship with their child. He didn't want to be a stranger. He wanted to be in her heart . . . .

The wail of a passing ambulance broke his chain of thought. He opened his eyes and winced at the morning light. He turned his head from the sun and the world came into focus. He felt a strong urge to pee. “Shit.”

He sat up and took inventory. He slid around and let his feet drop to the tile floor. He reached down to an open box laying on the floor and tore off a piece of last night’s pizza. He took a bite. “Cold.” If its so hot in here, why's the pizza cold? Chewing, he stood, shuffled his way through a week’s worth of laundry and made his way to the bathroom.

It was a tiny bathroom. It needed cleaning. He stepped up and leaned over the bowl but it took too much effort to stand. He kicked off his boxers and sat down. He let his head hang down, stared at the floor and let out a small groan. A wave of relief.

The phone rang. “Doodely-squat.” Why do they always call when you're on the can? He tried to squeeze the little muscles to cut off the stream while he sat more upright and twisted around to get the cordless phone that was on top of the water tank. Straining to get his eyes to focus, he located and pressed the “Talk” button. The phone battery was dead. “Shit.” He looked around wondering what to do.

Two more rings and silence.

He leaned forward and dropped the phone on the floor. Elbows on his thighs, his head sank down and he stared at the checkerboard on the tile floor as he finished his morning's constitutional. Wow, that was pretty cool. The longer you stared at the floor, the more it seemed like the black and white tiles were moving. His lower back felt stiff. He leaned forward even more. It felt good to stretch in this direction. Dropping his shoulders between his knees to maximize the stretch, he lost his balance and almost fell off of the seat. He managed to escape hitting his head against the wall. He chuckled at himself for being such a bonehead.

The phone started ringing again. “Man! Shit, doodley-squat!”

A quick tap, a wipe with a small piece of toilet paper to remove and excess, he got up. Without taking the time to either flush or put on his boxers, he stepped out of the bathroom and started looking around for another phone.

The small studio apartment was a mess. It was a railroad car style apartment, long and very narrow. His platform bed with the uncomfortable fouton mattress was at the far end. There were windows on the east-facing wall. The western wall wall was covered with framed posters: Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks,” Yousuf Karsh's portrait of Audrey Hepburn, Gustav Klimt's “The Kiss,” Saul Steinberg's “A View from Fifth Avenue,” Vincent Van Gough sunflowers, Joan Miro's “Dog Barking at the Moon,” Roy Lichtenstein's “Forget It, Forget Me,” a Wolf Kahn Landscape, a vintage Museum of Modern Art poster, and an Al Hirshfeld limited edition print of Mr. Spock.

There were books all over the place: books on art, food, cooking, theatre, and spirtualism. A collection of plays: “The Iceman Cometh,” “Cyrano De Begerac,” “Man and Superman,” “The Unseen Hand,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” There was a cardboard box of movie scripts and screenplays: some famous, some by friends, a few originals. On the Ikea coffee table, a biography of Chuck Jones.

A NAD stereo system sat on the floor, framed by a pair of PSB Avente II speakers. Several stacks of CDs sat nearby. One of the stacks had been knocked over, the CDs lay across the floor: Pato Banton, The Radio Luxemburg Symphony Orchestra, The Cars, Buena Vista Socia Club, Sergio Mendez, Santana, Vladimir Horowitz, The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, The London Symphony Orchestra, The Boston Pops, Mariah Carey.

The phone sat on his Ikea coffee table. The one covered in rings because he never bothered to use coasters. He picked it up.

“Josh, it's Suzie.”

“Hey Suz.”

“Josh ... oh my lord Josh. I'm so sorry." She had difficulty speaking. She was choking back tears, fighting to get the words out.

"It's Kat.... She's gone.... Oh my g-d, she's dead.”