Not Found

  for thereby some have entertained angels

So I'm a waitress. I work at Circe. It's a nice place. We serve duck liver with caramel and salt cod hash.

One night an old man with a cane led two young women through our door and ordered "bubbly." They consumed lots of champagne and stayed long after close. They were obnoxious.

The trio returned the next afternoon at two, right when we close down the place to set up for dinner. My manager, Brady, always calm in a crisis, served them their bubbly. They drank and drank and got silly and sillier. When I got back from break at four they were still there, and Brady's patience was wearing thin. He punched their purchases into the register. "These cats are wearing me out, Marian," he said under his breath. They finally left, and Brady let himself bitch a little. "But I was nice," he concluded. "Even though he wouldn't shake my hand because I guess he doesn't SHAKE hands-" Brady rolls his eyes- "I was nice." I start setting the china for dinnner. "Almost never a mistake to be nice," I tell him.

Next day, business is nearly doubled. Every other party that comes in the door says, "We never would've found this place, but someone mentioned you guys on the Walt Bodine show this morning." Night falls. When I see the punk boy across the street take out the trash, lock up the hotdog stand and walk arm and arm with his blonde mohawked girlfriend I know it's only a couple hours til we close, too. The old man with the cane comes in at ten minutes to close. I smile graciously, sweep open the door. "Mentioned you guys on the Walt Bodine show this morning," he growls. "Pour me some bubbly." he adds. Brady's jaw drops. "So that's our angel!" he says, shaking his head. "Almost never a mistake to be nice," I say, with a wink.   ¶ 12:52 PM

  I am offering you an ALTERNATIVE.

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

book review.

When you get to feeling like you might want to revisit good ol' highschool post apocalyptic classics like Brave New World, 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, try this:

Third World War nukes the planet. The upper hemisphere is dead, and the radation is creeping lower. The last place left alive is Australia. A group of friends and neighbors live out their last days, each dealing with the impending doom differently. (My favorite girl, Moira, chooses to stay as drunk as possible -- until she falls for an American naval officer.) This book, written in the early sixties, is too dated to be taken seriously as a futuristic novel- everyone smokes, people wear "bathing costumes" to go swimming, and the girls act like Nancy Drew, the men like Rock Hudson. This, though, makes the work all the more charming and trippy.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a wimper.-- TS ELIOT   ¶ 11:25 AM

  working girls

First Girl
1. Last summer, end of August, late afternoon. The sunlight was deep yellow. I was alone, driving my dusty little volvo sedan (RIP) in circles in the warehouse district yelling into a cellphone: "You're at the corner of WHAT and WHERE?? There's no one here!! I'm AT that corner, YOU can't be at that corner, because I am and there's- wait there's one other person here-" It was a thin girl. She was twirling around in the middle of the street, with long brown hair and a red shirt. I drove down the street and she twirled to face me and I saw she was old. Not only old- I realized what she was. She realized I wasn't a customer and her face twisted into frozen disapointment. Then she twirled away. I remember thinking . . . I didn't know they worked this early in the afternoon . . . A lonely truck sputtered down the street, and the face of that woman stayed in my head.

2. This summer, beginning of june, overcast. Peter wants to look for cheap furniture to take to New York, so we go down to the crumbling buildings where rows and rows of stained office chairs sit, lonely, waiting for someone to buy them. Also desks, and, eerily enough, used operating tables. The only other people in that building were three nuns. We didn't buy anything. Wandered into the gravel yard. Peter threw rocks at the tall brick buildings. The nuns got into their car and drove away. We wandered through an alley, filled with trash and pink and red clothes. And a car. Idling. A man was in the drivers seat, a woman shotgun. As we passed she turned her face to me. The same face from last summer.

The other two girls.

Nice girls don't go east of Troost. The place I have to go to get my liquor liscence for work is way north and way east of Troost. I call Peter for bodyguard purposes of course but he isn't around. So I gird up my loins and just drive there myself. As I'm filling out the application, a tall, dark woman with black oily hair longer than her little skirt regards me. "Are you a dancer?" she asks. I shake my head. She shrugs, buys her daughter a coke. Someone's cell phone beeps and a girl in a short pink shirt and tight, faded jeans rips through her little purse. "Hellooooo," she croons. She starts negotiating prices. Hourly vs. half an hour. Gets an address. Promises to be discreet. I thought I was in the wrong office until I saw the stack of applications next to the liqour liscence forms: Adult Entertainment Lisences, $30.

  ¶ 10:46 AM

  clothes matter/clothes don't matter.  ¶ 1:58 PM

  The Art of Teasing.

So my Dad finally got his midlife crisis Mercedes SLC (a 1978- gorgeous) and tossed his old 1986 volvo station wagon off to me. among its MANY endearing flaws it has:
no power steering
no radio/tape player/CERTAINLY no CD player
no air conditioning
one working windshield wiper (the one on the drivers side thank god.)
and its a STICK. you have to be a total stud to drive this car.

so i'm learning. here's what i sound like on the road when everythings going well:
"C'mon baby, c'mon, little car, yea, you like that don't you, yea!! Fourth gear!! You like that, don't you?!"

Sometimes I think I'm doing everything right and then I stall out at the worst fucking intersection in Kansas City- Wesport and Broadway, right in the middle of the bar district which is crawling with cops. Of course I've had a beer and there's booze on my breath and the cops are watching as I hold up traffic- "Listen, you little bitch, you're going to go in first and you're going to like it-" The madder I get, the more I kill the car. It's not like it just dies a quiet death either. It lurches and sputters kaCHUNK kaCHUNK kaCHUNK kaCHUNK while all the bargoers watch, amused. Oh, I was in third the whole time. No wonder. "I'm sorry, baby," I say to the little car. I feel like I've had a huge, public misunderstanding with a lover. I ease her out of the intersection in first, gently, like I'm supposed to.

My car likes Peter more than me. He can drive her up the crazy steep hills in stop and go traffic, can park anywhere, is the one who figured out the secret to getting into reverse. This breaks my heart, but what can I do? He's been driving stick for five years; I've been driving stick for five days. Peter understands I'm jealous. He gives me pointers. "You have to baby the clutch," he says, "And just- don't be so- hot-and-cold. You gotta tease the car. Tease it. You know how to tease, right, Marian?"

  ¶ 11:59 AM

  book junkies

i'd forgotten about the air. walking from one place to the next is like walking through thick wet flannel blankets. i used to claim i liked humidity, but now i'm not so sure.
i sat panting at a bus station, sandwiched between the usual crew of large sweaty midwesterners, with little children bearing fake tattoos and rattails, when a red truck screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. the passenger door opened and a boy in a kitten grey suit and evil sunglasses waited for me to jump in.

peter is an old friend. a talented but inconsiderate driver. we hurled towards downtown, and he ignored everything: my questions, other drivers middle fingers, stop signs.

i trusted him though. and i was right to.


he led me through heavy double doors into cold, crisp, conditioned air. six stories. marble floors and staircases. hanging gold lamps from the twenties. it's a church of books, a museum of information. this is why i love kansas city: they do this to their libraries.

"i wish i could check out books," peter sighs, effeminately. "i'm so tired of stealing them from barnes and noble."
"stealing's wrong," i announce.
"not from barnes and noble," he counters.
"of course it is! it doesn't matter who-"
"do not feed me this doctrine from that school of yours," he warns. then his tone changes. "just please please hook me up with a library card marian. come on. please. i need this."
"you don't have a card?" i'm incredulous.
"i'm banned," he says under his breath. "in both states," he adds.

he fills out the form for me, gives fake information. asks me the date.

"must be the seventh, john marie doesn't die til tomorrow."

he pauses. writes the date. we don't talk the rest of the afternoon.  ¶ 1:07 PM