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by Megan Boyle

  3:42–5:29AM: emailed masha and sara long emails. ate 1mg xanax and drank another beer. ate leftover spaghetti, put ‘prego’ sauce on it. gyno appointment is at 2:40 tomorrow.

  1:36PM: hit snooze several times.

  1:37–2:07PM: email-confirmed board meeting with apartment committee people: april 25 at 7PM. ate 20mg adderall, drank coffee from yesterday, showered, ate zeolite eyedropper supplement, b-vitamin, 60mg noopept, showered, dressed.

  2:29PM: my car got towed again. it was parked where it was night before last. my visitor parking pass is not good 20’ from the building. more than 20’ requires a different color. $340. i’m not telling dad, he paid the last time it was towed ($280). using money from the check i deposited a few days ago, so as to seem less like a fuck-up.

  called gyno to reschedule.

  funny how often my cars get towed and how often i drive. i’m going to take a nice walk to buy cigarettes and get money from an ATM and then take the muhfuggin bus. i should work for a tow truck company, i can drive tow trucks and i have a lot of experience being towed.

  3:46PM: considering eating a molly before i walk to buy cigarettes. or smoking weed. or more adderall, i don’t fucking…jesus. i don’t know.

  3:47–7:17PM: answered backlog of questions. emailed colin that i confirmed april 25th meeting with the apartment committee. he responded with something nice about being neighbors. mom called at some point, i told her about the car getting towed and she told dad. ate a snigly niblet of adderall. looked at bus schedules to impound lot. seems easier and faster and not that much more money to take a cab.

  7:18PM: raining lightly. on the phone, mom was giving mom-like recommendations about something i forget, like listing things with a worried voice. passed security guard with fake teeth. he saluted me and said ‘where’s your umbrella?’ interrupted mom to say ‘forgot it!’ mom said ‘oh, forget it, i know.’

  7:24pm: walking to Royal Farms with ATM, cigarettes, maybe cabs. Enjoying this. There is a little lightning and thunder and it’s warm and the rain is not hard.

  7:39pm: bought 12oz sugar-free red bull and cigarettes at royal farms. Standing outside under an awning by a trash can, smoking cigarette and drinking red bull.

  7:51pm: rain is harder now, I’m wet and dripping but it feels nice. Inside I asked a farmer-looking guy next to a young boy if he was in line to use the ATM. He said something I didn’t understand but I thought meant ‘no.’ He moved over to the lotto machine next to me and said ‘but thank you for asking.’

  Debit card didn’t read at the ATM but it worked when I paid for stuff. Old royal farms employee said ‘what is that, menthol?’ Employee ringing me up said ‘American spirit menthol light.’ I smiled and ‘yup.’ Receipt printed but I still asked ‘do you guys do…debit?’ Employee said a long sincere thing about how…seems boring to type. The older one was watching me and smiling. I was smiling and looking at both of them. I said ‘okay, thank you.’

  7:54pm: typed above thing standing under royal farms awning, where I am still standing. Car parked in front of me just turned on and I jumped, like, raised my hands holding phone maybe eight inches in the air.

  7:56pm: raining hard now. People running from cars into the store. Lotto machine farmer man and little boy walked out of royal farms. Farmer man said ‘shit [something I didn’t understand] really coming down.’ I said ‘hell yeah’ and raised eyebrows and nodded. He said ‘you’re still here.’ I said ‘yeah I’m not walking in that.’ He said ‘shit when it [something I didn’t understand] it ain’t [something]’ and made a noise. I smiled, looking down at phone, then he and the boy were gone.

  8:03pm: imagining asking one of these people entering and exiting royal farms for a ride to gas station/next area where there will be an ATM, a little less than a mile away. We could become best friends, maybe. Maybe they would kill me. Rape me and slice open the backs of my thighs and leave me in a Ryan gosling-style pool of blood in the back of royal farms. Even if I told them I had AIDs first. Raining extremely hard. Smoking another cigarette to wait for conditions to be more walkable.

  8:15pm: female royal farms employee approached, kind of close to my body and reached behind me and said ‘excuse me.’ I said ‘sure.’ she said ‘mind if I smoke in your face?’ I said ‘no that’s fine, I’m smoking too’ and took out another cigarette. I didn’t really want it but knew if I was going to continue standing there while she smoked I should have a reason. We looked at our phones. She said ‘what is that, Marlboro?’ I said ‘American Spirit menthol light. What is that, it smells like pipe tobacco.’ She said ‘Black and Mild. You ever smoke one?’ I said ‘yeah, but like, not with the tobacco that it comes with.’ She laughed and said ‘I love you, you’re awesome.’ I smiled and thought ‘that’s good, that’ll be it.’ We looked at our phones. She said ‘you know, I only started smoking these cause I thought they didn’t have nicotine, but like, this thing has a hundred fifty milligrams and a regular cigarette only has like nineteen.’ I said ‘damn, nineteen.’ She said ‘yeah, eight or nineteen I heard.’ Her facial expressions were animated and she had three face piercings and cornrows. She seemed easy to make eye contact with and talk to. I said ‘yeah that’s kinda why I switched to these, there’s like, no additives.’ She said something about electronic cigarettes. I said ‘I was gonna do that, I’m not supposed to be smoking this, my other pack before this was supposed to be my last one.’ She laughed and said ‘yeah right, last one, yeah right.’ I said ‘they’re not even that much better for you, the e-cigarettes, I think.’ She said ‘yeah like, and you ever go to one a them hookah—’ a person exited the door to Royal Farms and we looked. I said ‘yeah, they’re like, hookah-style feeling, to smoke.’ She said ‘right? You breathe it in and it ain’t even like nothing.’ I said ‘plus like, they never go out, but with this thing you get a unit of time. Like I know this is going to be seven minutes, I have seven minutes.’ She said ‘right?’ I said ‘did you always smoke Black & Milds?’ She said ‘no I never even smoked, I didn’t like cigarettes ever. My friend gave me one of her Marlboro, I think reds? Marlboro reds, a little while ago, and I didn’t like it at all. But then my other friend had a Black & Mild in his car one time and I was like ‘alright.’ They make you nauseous and all, if you do it too long.’ I said ‘you’re not supposed to inhale them, right?’ She said ‘yeah, but I’m like, why you smoke anything you’re not gonna inhale, right?’ I smiled and said ‘yeah, that’s why you do it.’ She said ‘you sposed to breathe em in and breath em out, right? That’s what you do?’ I said ‘yeah, yeah, breathing it in and out. Why else, you know?’ She said ‘and just one of these? It last like twenny hours, that’s how long it takes. You said like seven minutes?’ I said ‘yeah, like seven to ten, depending.’ She said ‘see, I do this all day long. I just put it out and start it back up.’ I said ‘really? Cause sometimes I put one out to save for later, but I hate how it smells.’ She said ‘right? That’s why I just leave it out here, leave it outside and come back to it, cause when you grind it out and keep it with you it’s so nasty, that smell and that way it taste, so I just put it out here.’ I remembered her reaching behind me. I said ‘you don’t put it out and it doesn’t burn away?’ She made a big surprised face and said ‘naw! It goes out all by itself!’ I said ‘damn, all by itself’ and smiled really big. We looked at our phones again. She called someone and said ‘how is the event,’ then ‘HOW is the EVENT’ and hung up shortly after. I typed ‘8:55pm: female rf employee.’ She said ‘well, that was a short conversation.’ I made a noise/gesture like ‘I know how that goes.’ The employee who rang me up opened the door and had a phone to his ear. He said something to the Black & Mild employee and she said ‘okay okay’ and he shut the door. She said ‘shit man they’re tellin me I gotta be in here at like five tomorrow, and I got class at eight and I’m like, shit.’ I said ‘five in the morning? Are you guys twenty-four hours?’ She made a compassionate face and said ‘no, no, but we do open at five.’ I said ‘damn, so ea
rly. I would just stay up all night.’ She made a face and said ‘really? I can’t do that. I mean the earliest I ever woke up was like, three-thirdy, but then I just went right back to sleep.’ I said ‘so you have class at eight a.m. but you have to be here at five a.m.?’ She said ‘well yeah like—what’s tomorrow, Saturday?’ I said ‘yeah’ but wasn’t sure. She continued ‘so I got class at eight in the morning usually during the week, but then tomorrow they got me in here at five, and I’ll probly even stay till five!’ I said ‘jeez, long day, long ass day.’ She said ‘right? And I don’t even get a break!’ I said ‘what? That’s not allowed I think, they have to give you a break.’ she said ‘well it works like, so if you got a full shift you get one, but if you only work like a, like a five-to-ten, you just gotta eat standing up.’ I remembered that’s how it was at jobs I’ve had. I said ‘jeez. Five in the morning, so early.’ She said ‘I know. I know. I told them I’m only doin this shit once, only tomorrow. I mean it’s enough to get my ass outta bed for my eight class, not even five.’ She exhaled and I watched her cloud of smoke move towards the light slower than my smoke. She batted at the smoke a little. She said ‘man it was raining like this before?’ I said ‘no, it’s better now, I can like, walk in this now. Because my car got towed. So that’s why I’m walking.’ She paused and said ‘you got towed? How’d that happen?’ Her Black & Mild was almost gone. I said ‘well, it’s stupid, I’m at my dad’s and he lives in this weird gated community thing where they like, tow you a lot if you don’t have the right pass on your car.’ She said ‘what? How they even know what to tow, they just like, sit and wait all night? How do they even do that?’ I said ‘they just creep around, watching.’ She shook her head and went ‘pshhh.’ I said ‘did you ever get towed?’ She said ‘no, no I mean. I do a little bad stuff, like if I park in a handicap it’s only like seventy dollars or whatever but.’ She flicked her Black & Mild into the parking lot and said ‘so you gonna get your car?’ I said ‘yeah, I’m just walking to’ and was interrupted by a big metal noise at the other end of the store. We jumped, looked at the door, then at each other with big eyes and grinned. I said ‘shit.’ She looked like she suddenly remembered something and said ‘oh no, well it didn’t get towed, but the other day I parked on York road where it was like [gestured like ‘not much space’] near a sign, and I was just getting out real fast to get my friend at like seven-thirdy, so I left the car on, but I locked it with the keys inside. And it was on!’ I said ‘oh no, how’d you get back in?’ she said ‘I had to call my insurance and just wait. Yeah I waited and it was like seven-fifty and I was sposed to meet my friend at eight so I had to call and be like ‘hey, I’m gonna be late.” I said ‘oh my god, jeez, at least you got back in’ as she walked to the door. She said something, smiling really big. I said ‘good luck tomorrow, for your five a.m.’ She said ‘right? Don’t know if I can make it’ as she opened the door and, for the first time in the conversation, looked like she wasn’t sure of what she was supposed to be saying or doing. I waved and watched her walk inside, extinguished my cigarette on the trash can, tossed it in, and started walking. I felt dizzy and swerved a little. My right leg was tingly and numb. Think I had been rigidly putting all my weight on my leg and my back against the brick wall, to appear laid-back and approachable, for the entire conversation.

  8:36pm: walked into pizza restaurant, no ATM. Walked into Alonso’s bar and ATM was off.

  8:40pm: colder now. Buttoned cardigan.

  8:45pm: withdrew $340 from Wells Fargo ATM. Surprised card worked. Now it’s the cab part.

  8:48pm: saw cab. Female cab driver. Neither of us are familiar with address or the towing place, it seems. I told her both addresses they told me. She said ‘I’m gonna use my GPS.’ I said ‘oh good good.’ I said ‘the North avenue address is the only one that shows up, I think. Or.’ A few moments passed. She said ‘is that east North ave or west?’ I said ‘west North, thirteen-seventy west North.’ She said ‘mmkay.’ Didn’t see a credit card thing in cab. I took my money out and put it on my lap. She said ‘what’s the address?’ I said ‘thirteen-seventy west North ave.’ I’m wet all over but wearing mostly black. Some kind of sexy moody slow pop or r&b song started playing on radio.

  8:53pm: it’s the song that’s like ‘beautiful girls around the world I could chase them [something] but try got nothin on you girl nothin on you.’

  8:58pm: driver stopped at red light and turned to face me. She said ‘you know what kinda place this is?’ I said ‘uh, a towing place? Like a towing…they have my car.’ She said ‘oh, I know it now. You almost there.’

  9:18pm: how do you tow an RV, is that legal? Wouldn’t that violate some kind of property law, like a house law? Why would you tow an RV? Is it because you’re jealous? You want an RV? You can’t just take an RV because you want it. That’s not how it works. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

  9:30pm: mom called for update. She and dad have been watching coverage of the Boston massacre terrorists. She said ‘and actually everyone had to stay inside all day today, and it sounds so boring to talk about but it’s actually very uh, dramatic, to see on tv.’ She said she had ordered room service, and hoped I was going to do something nice for myself tonight. I said ‘I am, yeah, I’m going to Wegman’s now to get some juice stuff.’ She said ‘well good, that’s a good thing to do, it’s just so shitty that you had to do this today, I’m so sorry.’ I said ‘It was all okay, it was just like. Something to do today. Everyone was really nice.’ She said ‘they were nice?’ I said ‘yeah, everyone was really nice.’ She said ‘well honey I’m glad, and I want you to know that everything is alright, dad is just on the toilet, we love you very much and don’t want you to worry.’ I said ‘I’m not worried. It’s all okay, just another thing to do. I love you guys too.’ She said ‘I just don’t want you to worry.’ I said ‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m actually a little lost so I should focus on driving.’ she said ‘okay, okay honey. Here’s a hug.’

  10:01–10:23pm: sat in car parked at Wegman’s. commented on around eight instagram pictures in mischevious, belligerent, rapidfire ‘not caring what anyone could think, just want to say things’ way.

  10:29pm: sitting on toilet in wegman’s bathroom stall. It has been at least two minutes since pee left body. Clothes and hair are totally wet. Shivering a little.

  10:56pm: bought kale, cucumber, cilantro, celery, lettuce, two coconuts, deodorant, kombucha, and a leave-in conditioner. Tense moments in deodorant aisle when faced with absence of Dove scent option I usually buy and presence of ‘aluminum free’ options. Unsure if aluminum is ‘evil.’

  Deciding factor: too many non-aluminum-free options, aluminum-free thing smelled good.

  Tense moments in the hair aisle reading ingredients of things to decipher what chemicals seemed less ‘evil.’ What I bought seems ‘evil.’ It’s called ‘moroccan oil intense [something].’

  Deciding factor: prettiest packaging, thinking ‘moroccan terrorist overlord,’ instructions seemed like they were written by a person.

  11:20pm: received email from dad with subject line: ‘not to worry…’

  11:40pm: fake teeth security guard saluted me.

  11:41pm: closest available parking spot is in a zone where I think they can justify towing. Severe parking/towing anxiety. No other available spots. Cars are stupid. Might stay at mom’s after I make juice and feed cats.

  11:42–11:59PM: sat in parked car, typed most of the royal farms employee conversation.

  APRIL 20, 2013

  1:36AM: made cucumber/lettuce/celery/cilantro coconut water juice. fed cats and cleaned box. alvie has been hiding under dad’s bed and peeing in the shower, i think. continuous water flow device is making little chug-chug noises, to which the insatiable alvie is responding with opera-like meowing. like a little eunuch opera break-out star. the first opera singer to be famous for sounding simultaneously confused and full of conviction. he is singing the ‘waiting for godot’ opera. gotta take his fine ass t
o the vet like i know he hates. ate 20mg adderall to aid in updating this, emailing maybe, finishing book packages.

  2:05AM: car is visible from bedroom window. have gotten up to check if moving vehicle sounds are a tow truck maybe four times since i sat down ten or so minutes ago.

  2:13AM: heard car drive away and ran outside to confirm that my car was still there. it is still there.

  2:37AM: saw movement in peripheral vision. walked to window. a man was handling something behind my car. watched until i saw he was helping a girl lift something out of her trunk.

  2:56AM: stood on bed to watch truck pass slowly by my car.

  2:58AM: whenever i’ve ran to look out the window alvie has jumped and ran off the bed. this time he stayed in his spot, kneading the blanket.

  3:01AM: jogged in bare feet to investigate idling noise. opened building’s main door. stared incredulously at pick-up truck with its hazard lights on, parallel to my car.

  3:02AM: back in bedroom. pick-up truck left. taking this shitshow to mom’s house. can’t take this shitshow car anxiety. thought ‘two tows in one week makes lil mami one hot cross bunny.’

  3:10AM: first egregiously early morning bird has been heard. something flashed in peripheral vision. stood on bed to check window, didn’t see anything suspicious.

  4:07AM: couldn’t remember how gollum talked, looked at wikipedia, was moved by this: