cashmere socks

Mar 14, 2008

She knew it would be hers. It would be. It should be. She knew it at six. She took her first performances terribly seriously. She'd admit wasn't natural as a turkey. She forced herself toward the pantheon of turkeys ever to grace a kindergarden stage. She still watched the performance. Over time she got less skeptical of herself. She was a cynic's cynic. a wallflower who quietly spewed in corners of coffee shops to her closest friends while they played scrabble by the showroom window.

She practiced her latest vocals with Janis. She thought that Janis' eyes looked like magic eight balls. Her pupils always moved as if it was traveling on a groove. She felt that seniors has an almost obscene less pressure than the underclassmen. Janis enjoyed this.

She didn't normally wear heels or leather. Her boots shook. Her legs were clammy. She felt clumsy. She wore green, a tight vest and jeans she struggled to slip on. Her sweat beaded brim dripped dropping over her lips sloping down her chin. She blinks. She doesn't blink much. A tall frowning man walked down and out of the hall she smiled, a snickering sneer her confidence evaporates as the previous performer passes her. The performer's white long sleeve dress shirt, dirty sunlight drenched strands were clouded, lighting crackled. she wept.

She sat on the edge of her day bed. she thought of their eyes were unforgiving they were caring soothing and warm but unforgiving. Their eyes have no give. there was no look that she could give in return. It passed quickly in a hyperactive hourglass.

Her hair was tied back she wore two scarves one oversized, over her arms. It was a strawberry's red on a strawberry body sashaying down her ankles silver specks in millimeter lines in many directions, forming flowers and vines that link all shooting spun up and down her shoulders. She wore red cuffs of metal of different widths from her

wrists to her elbows.

She wore well worn sweats, her feet were cold, bare and unsaddled on the white panel floor. Her nails were painted the color of this page. She bent and touched her feet twice and thrice then the fourth as she did every afternoon that she woke. It wasn't a rebel wake-up but her norm.

She looked down. Her feet in a row cushioned by sandals. Sat chewing piece after piece of tasteless gum as she sat at the bus stop. It wooden and shadowed by two large trees that leaned forward and aside. She retraced the carvings of some bored teen on one of the wooden planks. It was cold between each were openings. On it an open wooden box, that she took where ever she went. A car sped by splashing a puddle north and toward the box. Her feet were cold and she regretted not following her routine she often wore cashmere socks on days like these.

She stared at her feet now bare cushioned by carpet barely covered by the flipped flops over her toes. She shook frantically trying failing to tap a tune. Always distracted by the ringing phone as the cajun secretary put person after person in the not so busy blue walled office. She tried not to look in that direction.

"Mary Mueller."

A name she knew belonged above awnings and on marquees. A still moment passed she was startled and stood bending her back back squared her shoulders and approached secretary.

A paper dress against her laid on the yellow leather. On command she unveiled bare breasts the doctor drew on the them with a felt tip pen. While she was conscience his his wry smile uneased her. She closed her eyes and faded into the cold metal table.

She woke in pain and bandaged. She cabbed her way back to her apartment. She unlocked the downstairs door. The elevator took her to next floor she knocked on Apartment G. No one answered. She took the elevator upstairs to the 4th floor and laid on her couch. She saw men skate through the blinds by the trees on the faux spring day as they try not to trespass on the slick grasses.

Her feet were up on the arm of the gold yarn couch they were draped in a purple comforter. On top the comforter laid a book of paranoia filled demented nursery rhymes. She shifted her head. Woke by janis.

"You've been there all night?"

"Yeah. How'd you get in? your spare?"

"You left your keys in the door."

"Did I?"

"Yeah. What with that shirt?"

"Bandages."

"Bandages?"

"I had to do something. I know its not my voice. I can always depend on my voice."

"You have a beautiful voice. I don't have your voice. I always wished i had your body. Why didn't you say something?" Janis stopped mid-word and watched her glazed eyes as she laid back quietly in agony. "That's ok. How long before you heal."

"A week before the semester."

"Ok. I was going home. i'll stay."

"You don't have to do that. You should be with you family."

"I want to."

"Thank you."

"Was there any doubt?" hey smiled and and janis earnestly asked;

"What about your parents?

"They already gave me my gift."

Mary saw the front approach. There was no where to run. The winds woke many whose days were still swimming among the lakes of slumber. Windows flew open and shook back and forth flopping popcorn colored

drops upon metal in the bright faux night.

She wore cashmere socks and flip flops, a skirt and a sweater top. Long johns beneath them. She walked with Janis to her Volvo. The stopped at a cluttered store for gas. Mary bought Altoids in a chilly blue and sliver bottomed tin and soon after they joined the herd. Slipping in through a narrow blurry claustrophobic hallway below the dormitory when they both once lived. The slipped behind a door up a familiar old jagged hallway. Where everyone waited. Everyone nervously partook from the tin.

A tall frowning man walked down and out of the hall she smiled. She stood in front of them. She belted her best.

Mary passed the offices of purple haired nuns and arts professors. She turned down the long arm of the wing, where her professors gather and judge. She walked to the end of the hall and the bulletin board. she scanned each sheet.

She watched the flakes fall from a wooden chair at a wooden table far fetched from those offices in another burgh far from campus. Her wooden box laid on the table next the brownie crumbed white saucer and the plastic purple labeled cup with an opening on top that reminded her of an old boyfriend's explanation about the Dallas

Cowboys and how they don't actually play in Dallas but texas stadium in Irving, Texas.

She saw the reflection of the sixteen bulb lamp that helped light the structure in the show room window and a two thirty-somethings on a shy loudmouth first date. While single girls in wind breakers run to their cars with coffee cups in their leather gloved hands.

Behind her a wooden table with silver speckled see through chess pieces next to a checkerboard and a backgammon board to it's left. She watched the game. Two men played fiercely as a man and a woman watched. The board was on a coffee table next to a large inexpensive candle in a fat metal base on the lilliputian table.

She approached the coffee bar and asked for a manager.

Her feet were cold wet from blocks of walking past cathedrals and paused projects waiting for spring. She bought a newspaper from a snowcapped street-side machine and a career sheet from a free bin snuggled next to it. She could see them from her seat. She watched the couples pass by and scrap off their cars from the inclement weather. While new ones feed meters. she did not understand their grins.

Her toes grew icy with every passing minute. Soon she packed away her CD player and her purple notebook and quickly became a reflection in the window.

Her parents house was a yellow one. An even numbered house on the corner of a street and a parkway. she saw a volvo on the corner. She parked her younger sister's car behind it. She knew the vanity plate "U KNO U'RE RITE" after her favorite song.

Mary sat in the passenger seat of the volvo uncomfortable. The silence was deafening. Janis didn't clean her car much. Mary looked down at the mess and the bumper stickers and covering her dashboard. Including a new one with a circle with a coat hanger split by a red lipstick line. it caught her attention.

"Your parents are nice." Janis says "Wish my parents were that nice."

"I'm quitting school." Mary says meekly staring at the hanger.

"No you're not."

"I gave it my best. Already got a job. Gonna try community college."

"At least you know you'll be the smartest in the room."

"Stop it."

"Sorry. You can't leave. I won't let you."

"All that's left is the paperwork."

"Maybe you could see a therapist."

"I already do."

"What did she say?"

"How do you know it's a she?"

"I see a she, and there are four of them three are she's so" she paused "What did she say?"

"Do what i think is best?" Mary said. Janis giggled. "She trusts my judgment"

"Have you ever heard of not making decisions when you're angry. I think you're just angry."

"It's not just that. I'm better then a supporting voice. I'm better then a choir."

"I know. So you're gonna let them bully you out."

"If that's what this is.... yeah sure. I'm not sure that's what this is. This is two and a half years of... this is... I need something else."

"Ok."

"Ok?"

"Yeah, Ok."

"I was thinking we should say yeah a little less. We'd sound like adults." they both laughed.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do without you. What did you do before me?"

"I can barely remember. I don't really want to. I gonna move to New York. Keep in contact, you're not that far away. Tell me you'll come when you find your way."

"I swear."

"Cross your heart, hope to die."

"That's morbid." they laugh Mary continues, "Stick a needle in my eye."