the habit of being

The best place to write is in a bookstore, where you can just keep picking up things until you get inspired.

The worst place is right here, right now. I thought I was ready, but obviously I am not.

- - -

She’s sitting on green tight-spun carpet with a blue-beaded rosary round her neck, a present from her oldest friend, to match pleated skirts and an upbringing completely devoid of religion, save that one scary trip to Vacation Bible School.

She fingers the miniatute crucified Jesus hanging between her breasts, huddled next to a wooden chair in the Art section, black boots and a red volume of surrealist love poems to match her hair. She leans her head on the arm of his chair.

His black dress shoes are white in the crevices, white from salt in the snow. His corderoys are old, mid nineties, an earth tone, many more at home in the closet.
His hair is long, dark, and wavy, falling in his face as he looks to the book in his lap, something about how advertising is evil.

The last time his hair was cut, he was in a handicapped bathroom in a Diamond Shamrock station, with a chef’s knife and a girl, that girl on the floor, to clean up the ends. He cut hers too, up to her chin, and they both washed their hair in the sink, and no one knocked.

He stabbed her, twenty to the stomach and five to the heart, with the chef’s knife, so sharp, Henckles, 8 inches, stainless steal, on sale for seventy dollars.

No, he didn’t. Maybe he wanted to, maybe she wanted him to. Maybe it’d be better, but then who would write her surrealist love poem, the one that will define her?

She is alone. He’s left her with his fingerless gloves and a broken umbrella, sitting under the chair. Souvinirs. She hugs herself to the smooth wooden chair, her back to the end of bookshelf, Crafts and Hobbies.

The gloves weren’t even his! They were her mother’s, who sent them to her in the City, where she walked down the narrow streets with rubbed-dry eyes and cheeks, where she betrayed him. She let him borrow the gloves and he left them under the chair, damp from the snow outside.

She’d like to go back.

The green carpet is not just green. It has many threads - olive and forrest, and the color of the peeling hallway paint in the old house in the country, a creamy lime, before they repainted, if they ever did.

Childhood. A game of spades or go fish in front of the gas heater in the kitchen. Light it with an Aim-n-Flame. The red plastic tiles, peeling up around the edges of the heater, sticky black stuff underneith. A tin can with macaroni glued on, spray painted silver to make a pencil holder. She made it in school.

A skinny cat named Blue (she told him, giggling, last night) who’d shown up on the woodpiling platform outside her parents window and then disappeared after they’d adopted her, after their male cat had fallen in love.

And they looked everywhere, but she was so skinny, maybe she died. The little brother was so sad; he’d named her Blue, because she was blue.

The girl laughed out the story, in bed, last night or the night before, but she was not drunk. She’d just seen a movie, and that’s almost the same.

Not as good a story as Miriam’s about the owl in the freezer.

How he talked to Miriam! How happy and and excited he way, and she lay next to him as he talked to Miriam at night. She tried to assert her quiet sensual presence, pretty nightgown and long legs.

She had no words, no ideas, not like Miriam with her plans and her diagrams, her little book of things-thought-of. Her Ethiopian ear spoon holder around her neck, and her clear skin and short hair.

Miriam’s layers and ideas. Japan and a fantasy wedding in the jungle. Adventures, with red fingers from the hairdye and big moons on her nails, hands always moving, gesturing, excitement, frantically brilliant. Surrealism and books to read and oatmeal soap and a labyrinth to build in the snow.

The girl stared at Miriam and listened to her say things, and took her picture, a blurry girl changing clothes. How to be like her? How to make him talk?

She wants to be like Miriam. She must make a project. She must be excited. She must read.

Her idea is to recreate her father in words, to write a love poem, get high and write all night long. She must preserve the past. She must photograph the present.

She must capture the relationship, between the girl on green carpet and the man who has returned to the chair, to the umbrella and the gloves.

No no, forget the boyfriend, write about something else for once, no more sex, no more heartbreak. The father, find the father; he’s a more similar soul.

- - -

“I took a lickin’ the other night,” said her father, “and ended up with 1 broken rib and three more bruised ones. I’m sore as hell and it’s weird to feel your bones movin’ in you, but, needless to say, this incident forces me to start livin’ right again. It’s a paradox, you know. Sometimes what seems so wrong and painful at the time ends up being beneficial. To your health.”