There’s Really No Need

Crayon Magazine/December 2023

There’s this feeling like we’re leaving Earth for a place far away, and literature feels like looking back through the window of the spaceship, waving goodbye.(Elle Magazine)

I stumbled onto the street and there she was, darkened but decipherable through my UV400s : a bun-headed woman wearing some super weird clothes standing on the sidewalk. The violent sun, white and hot streaking from the east, pressed its nasty fingers into my leathery skin. The street was, as usual, empty. I’d gotten used to that, but this anachronism lady brought out the loneliness of it all. That day it was me and her, but it was usually just me. A while back,  I found I could walk out here before anyone checked their cameras. People like me were supposed to stay in their place, but I found my morning walks to be worth the risk. I needed to shake myself out, sort of like pacing. There was so much time in those aimless days.

The woman’s jacket had like fifty buttons, a railroad track trailing up to her throat. I mean, she was wearing decent, like full leather shoes on top of pantyhose. I haven’t seen pantyhose since the early 1960s. My granny wore panty hose. 

Her presence heightened my disheveled look and not-so-fresh fragrance. Without one whiff I knew she smelled of old scents, soap or moth balls or both. So, I smoothed back my hair and hiked my shorts from their usual half-ass state. 

The shock of seeing an old lady with a buttoned coat, bunned hair, skirt (I forgot to mention that), panty hose, and shined leather shoes diminished compared to the shock of her voice, directed at me.

“Young man,” she said, “Can you help me hail a cab?”

“A cab?” 

“I have a reading to attend at the public library at 1 PM sharp and I need a cab. I’d like to arrive early.”
She spoke with – what would you call it – like every word was a little jewel rolling around in her mouth or something. 

I hadn’t been spoken to by real live person in about six months, since my sister Ruby came looking for me, found me, and then promptly returned to her cool tower.

“I just wanted to make sure you were alive. I couldn’t find your phone anymore.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

I gave up the whole phone (the irony of that old fashioned name for those things!) some time ago, mostly because I couldn’t afford one but also because I didn’t give two craps anymore. They used to call it off the grid. That’s me, off the grid. 

“You don’t do anything anyone else does,” Ruby said, right before rushing off. 

She didn’t invite me to come with her. And I would have in a heartbeat. 

Anyhow. Digression.

I still couldn’t get over the amount of clothing the bun lady wore. I mean this was like some broadloom woolen shit. This was not the high-functioning fabrics people, rich people, wore these days. I assumed she was rich. I wore old clothes, my father’s clothes, threadbare denim, cotton. I nervously ran my fingers through my lucky charms inside my jeans pocket, feeling for the smooth soothe of my guitar pic. 

“I think I shall walk. Would you escort me, sir?” she said.

Escort? To a reading? What the hell did she mean by that? Why would she need to go somewhere to read? Who would she be reading to? Sir?

“I. I. Guess,” was all I could manage. 

“Excellent. What a fine young man you are,” she said.

Fine young man. I looked at my filthy flip-flops, my horny toenails. I’d let my greying beard grow long, hiding the wrinkled remnants of my face. My mouth tasted foul. I was not a young man. I wasn’t even sure I was a man, a hu-man. I was some kind of messed up Rip Van Winkle, denied the privilege of a long, peaceful slumber.

Then, get this, she tucked her hand into my arm. She touched me. I nearly sunk to the concrete.

“It’s a good day to go to the library, nice and cool in there,” I said. The library was one of the few places people still went. 

“Shall we?” she said.

“We shall.”