Come on, Chemicals

Brie had already filled out the application, in her careful scrawl. She gave old man Root his pen back, and turned and ran.

BRIE: I walked precisely down the street, inhaling the dust off the community garden, and crossed over churchside before I pulled out Moose and the squarish Walkman. The words were perfect, I wanted nothing more.

Except, maybe, a ciggarette. In the words of Oscar Wilde's Lord Henry, "The ciggarette is the perfect kind of prefect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"

I coughed, stopped, crossed the street again.

Then I saw it. Beautiful. It was like the whole town- derelict, melencholy, dark and glimmering. I posed theatrically, then turned to find the fire escape.

Aretha rolled the charcoal in her fingers, feeling the old trees that had gone from beauty to beauty. She looked lazily up and sighted to the horizon, measuring four marks from top to bottom of Thallow Flats, and then one from side to side. It was a horrid old building, in reality, but that was art; taking horrid old things and capturing their soul, until they seemed almost beautiful.

ARETHA: I looked up from my sketch, my seat on the gabled roof of the Theatre. The sun was going down and the sun was cutting straight over the buildings and into my face. I glanced down to the shaded street, and saw a girl; from the flats, perhaps, or maybe not. She walked and stopped, looking up in a slow motion like the sun rise, and her face dawned similarly. She was looking at the building underneath me. As if it were an archangel, or something brighter.

And then Brie looked up.

BRIE: It was my new place. It was "back home", it was for me. It was a high-glorious shelter, a safe perch. I found the fire escape on the east side, and began to climb.

I need a Lover with Soul Power

Brie turned slightly in the stool and slid the glass to the other side of the countertop. She looked carefully back at the bartender, over the flipped-up collarof her sheepskin jacket, before sliding down over the orange vellum and fighting her way through the heavy Irish lemonwood out to the crusty city, with the cleansing chill, that frosts over all the filth and cans and cats and corpses. It was nearly time for dinner.

I wasn't really getting anywhere, on my feet, in my thinning shoes and stuffy stockings. The streets passed like warped time, and they barely registered before the feeling. It came over the world, with such force that I turned to watch the epiphanies dawn in people's eyes. No epiphanies. Dull knife faces.

The bitter cold was tears in my eyes when a warm flood came to my face from the bookshop. I let myself be pulled in and quietly felt the sun in the rank flourescence of the store. The store's smell filled me.

The man at the counter looked at me from over his computer. There was familiarity in the gesture as there was familiarity in his eyes. I turned on a heel and hid behind the books.

I left the bookstore sneezing. The street was getting a burgundy-anguished colour, a colour for seeing out a window, not for walking in. I ducked into the next door I saw, to look for a phone or something. I had hated the moors at night, and I didn't want to find out what night in a town felt like.

Inside was a large countertop; further back, rows of wooden shelves with jars and mysterious things. I liked it right away.

Rain Down from a Great Height

Fingering the small furball in her pocket, she stabbed at the ground floor button and stared wonderingly at the elevator doors till the lobby floor opened before her. Her rat, impatient to be free, streaked from her pocket and tucked itself between her nape and her hood. She left through the front doors.

I walk quickly, to warm myself up and because my head is starting to hurt already. I am carrying way too much stuff too be comfortable- a laundry bag, quarters. It is going to be a pivotal day. I can taste it in the rain left in the air from yesterday.

I stop first at the laundromat, depositing quarters and dumping week after weeks worth of laundry into the machines. They look as if they were hungry. I glare at them.

Next is the Tavern. The bartender there is new, I don't know his name. But he looks my age. I would like to know how he got the job as young as he is. It doesn't matter, anyways. I give my money to the vending machine and it spits out the precious sandy coloured box-- the Camels. I post myself at the long wooden counter, order a cranberry tonic, and pack the ciggs. Another day, and I got through it. But I wait, because I know the day is not all the way unfolded yet. Something's going to happen.