Shopping NYC
I had no reason to doubt the veracity of her statement, that the young woman had indeed stolen Lavinia's man, nor would I enter the ring of debate regarding the possibility that Lavinia's response to this (if she didn't like it, she could...) would be to kiss the other woman's ass. My feeling about this mostly, walking through the canyonlands of NYC and each and every time surprised like hell that perpendicular to the streets with no wind are often streets where the wind is blowing like a sonofabitch and the cold on those streets is biting and the swirling unknown needle-sharp particulate matter can and will inject itself into the whites of your eyes, is--I am afraid of that woman because she looks very angry and conquering, and, was I supposed to turn left or right at that last corner?
Hey, there he is, waving to me from across Delancey, I must be close. We find another place because the four tables at the first place are occupied and I only have a bagel and orange juice but he has a special that resembles in many ways the picture of it on a glossy menu. My bagel lacks the photogenic absurdity of his meal but it is delicious. I wish I had ordered ten of them although I probably would have regretted it after eating only three. I tell him, over breakfast, how many times I peed last night and that I hope this orange juice on a cold day traveling to Home Depot in NYC does not cause me grief. I am really quite the conversationalist. He explains in answer to my amazement regarding his history-term retention acumen that he learned it in high school, this term and that one. But after doing the math, what? He's talking about 20 or 30 years ago picking up a term and then throwing it out there over a runny almost too glossy breakfast plate on Delancey, perhaps near Ludlow.
Brinkmanship? How did such an unlikely term make its way to this breakfast table? What? I don't know, it seems like I peed eight or nine times that previous night.
The cab driver is milking the drop off point, even I know this. Inching up slowly in front of the Home Depot waiting for just one more incremental cash money click on the meter. Mr. Brinkmanship pays the bastard and then grouses briefly about it as we enter the store because the guy would not stop when he said, this is ok, right here is good, yeah you can stop now, your bills are not my bills, stop the damn cab so I can get the hell out, I'm on to your games mister!
While B looked for floor paint I roamed the store and made an impulse buy or two. Walking alone down an aisle stocked heavily with dangerous hand and power tools I came to a well hidden and locked case that contained the one item I really needed--a five pack of sheetrock knife blades. I interrupted a hidden cluster of employees and asked for help retrieving the blades. One of them led me on a search for the keymaster, laughing at me when I uttered a single word in what I guess she mistook for a foreign accent, and when we met, keymaster and I, he looked nervous, I think because he knew he had to ask me a ridiculous question before I could get me some blades. He had to see my ID. I showed it to him, begrudgingly, not because I really give a damn about the obvious ridiculousness of showing IDs for razor blades in NYC, but because my new license picture has me looking like I was baked in a hot oven for 35 minutes. He could barely stand to look at it and after the briefest glance he opened the cage and stood back from it so I could select the item I wanted. There were some pocket knives in the case and one of these I selected and opening up the biggest blade inserted it with a quick thrust into the keymaster's solar plexus. While he gasped his last breath I selected also the five pack of rock blades and moseyed on back to the paint section.
Outside the diner earlier while inside brinkmanship was being discussed a tired looking sad black woman cried upright on the sidewalk and when we came out she pleaded with me to feed her but I explained with a lie that I would not be able to do such a thing that day.
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