by J. J. Murray
“Hope, do you have time to run these tonight?” Kiki asked.
Hope nodded. Sure. I have plenty of time. I have no life, no boyfriend, no lumberjack girlfriend, and no hope, apparently, of a drive-by shooting at this copy shop this evening. I already have to lock up and turn out the lights again. What’s an extra half hour of unpaid monotony anyway?
“Great,” Mr. Healy said, smiling at Hope. “Half up front, right?”
“Right, Mr. Healy,” Kiki said, taking his money.
He usually pays in cash, Hope thought. Whom is he trying to impress on Flatbush Avenue? He probably can’t afford a bank account, and from the looks of his greeting cards, maybe he isn’t smart enough to fill out the bank account application.
“Um, Kiki,” Mr. Healy said, “you wouldn’t want to maybe get something to eat when you get off, would you? I’ve always wanted to go to The Islands over on Washington Avenue, and—”
“I have a date,” Kiki interrupted.
With an eight-foot-tall Hungarian woman named Angyalka, which means, ironically, “little angel,” Hope thought. Where’s the symmetry in that? Five-foot-nothing Jamaican Kiki and Angie, whom Kiki calls “On-Gee,” the Sasquatch goulash woman. Ellen’s friends are getting taller and wider. At least Kiki and “On-Gee” have something, though I’m not sure what, especially since Kiki never says “I have a girlfriend” to stop Mr. Healy’s advances.
I used to be someone’s girlfriend, Hope thought. I had short hair and an appetite then. Why did I ever put up with Odell saying I was the whitest black woman on earth? I’m not. Just because I don’t use American slang and I carry myself with dignity at all times does not make me white. My Trinidadian-Bahamian-Canadian family raised me this way. Hope sighed again. I shouldn’t miss him still, but I do. I wasn’t in love with him, and he broke my heart. Maybe I miss the idea of having a boyfriend.
“Oh,” Mr. Healy was saying. “Well, um, Kiki, anytime you’re free, we can . . . um, go somewhere to eat, okay?”
You can’t, Hope thought. You’re not tall enough or feminine enough, and you don’t have the right plumbing. I shouldn’t be thinking about plumbing. My plumbing hasn’t been flowing since the Winter Olympics. It was during the luge. Hope rolled her eyes. Odell lasted about as long as that event, too. They need to make that luge track longer.
Kiki handed Mr. Healy his change. “Have a nice evening, Mr. Healy.”
As Mr. Healy strode out to Flatbush Avenue, a blast of cold October wind fluttered paper all around Hope as she drifted away from her machine and snatched up Mr. Healy’s latest hand-drawn card. The outside of the card read: “The best laid plans of mice and men . . .” Hope paused, took a breath, held it, and opened the card to read “aren’t really all that different, are they?” She almost smiled at a simple drawing of a stick figure man with long hair and a somewhat rodent-shaped mouse sharing a slice of cheese pizza.
Better, Hope thought. The drawings are still brutal, but... better. That Microsoft Paint program sure makes people think they have talent. I’ll bet Mr. Healy got the inspiration for this card by looking at his computer mouse. I know I can doodle better than that with my eyes closed, and all I really have to do is take off my glasses.
The clock ticked past six.
Hope ran Mr. Healy’s card through the DocuTech, then shot the copies through the Baum. She looked at the clock.
6:38 PM.
“Permettez-nous de faire la promenade à Brooklyn,” she whispered, turning out the lights and locking the door behind her. “Let’s go for a walk in Brooklyn.”
Chapter 2
Bundled in a heavy chocolate-brown wool coat, her dreads spilling out of a dark-brown hemp toque, Hope weaved through heavy foot traffic down Flatbush Avenue, the lights of the Manhattan Bridge behind her, her stomach grumbling. A subway ride to her apartment would only take nine minutes, a bus ride slightly longer, but Hope preferred to walk because a walk gave her stomach aromas to hate her for.
She skirted other pedestrians past Yummy Taco, Taro Sushi, and the Burrito Bar.
No gas-inducing food tonight. I should have gone up to Court Street to Tim Hortons for some Timbits or cheese croissants. No. Too much fromage gives me gas, too.
Hope passed Prospect Perk Café, Tom’s, Café Shane, Natural Blend, Coffee Bites, Teddy’s, and The Islands.
No Drano or jerk chicken tonight.
Her stomach pouted because it missed double-doubles (coffee with two creams and two sugars), oxtail soup, curry goat, and jerk chicken.
She entered her apartment building on Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights. Once inside her “amazing newly renovated charming two-room studio near the Brooklyn Museum with bright natural sunlight for only $1,400 a month,” Hope turned on her only overhead light and looked up at the high ceiling. Her rental agent had pointed at those ceilings and said, “Don’t they have lots of character?” Hope often wondered how many characters had hanged themselves from the main beam among the cross-thatch of beams in that high ceiling.
I’m thinking . . . twenty-seven. Are those scratch marks? Someone had second thoughts? Here?
She sighed and looked out the only window not smudged with grime, a lonely one-foot-square window squeezed between two much larger windows. God, how I miss birch and aspen trees and wild roses. I miss the River Valley, where the North Saskatchewan River divides Edmonton with a vein of pure green forest, the sky endlessly blue, golden fields rolling like the ocean in all directions. All I see outside this soiled window are cars, buses, taxis, graffiti, and the shadowed apartment building on the other side of Washington Avenue.
Hardwood floors, harder water, and stained steel appliances greeted Hope in a kitchen where she only saw “bright natural sunlight” on Sundays, when she wasn’t working. Her granite countertops looked and felt like old asphalt. Cabinets occasionally shut and stayed shut. The Formica table and chairs leaned mostly to the left, and her washroom fixtures only wept or dripped on days ending in Y. Warped shelving opposite the refrigerator held no pictures, knickknacks, or bric-a-brac, instead displaying nothing but a former moth or two.
She had few pieces of furniture. A red quilt tried to hide a secondhand gray futon that slumped under her windows, and a lamp-less thrift store lamp table hulked beside it. A thirdhand coffee table held down a dark-gray braided oval rug like a wooden skiff beached on an island. A gunmetal-gray metal wardrobe concealed her meager stock of clothes, its single drawer rusted shut years ago, a wire metal shoe caddy displaying a dozen pairs of shoes and boots in the corner beside it. A coatrack collected a maudlin, earth-tone assortment of toques, scarves, and jackets, none of which quite matched one another or anything else she wore.
Hope stood dead center in her apartment under the main beam. I am so exposed here. I can see everything I own in this life by turning once in a circle.
At first, Hope didn’t think she’d need a bed, so she had bought the futon. After several sleepless nights of tossing, turning, the squeal of metal on metal, and a frisky metal bar digging into her back, Hope had sacrificed some of her beach house money for a wooden platform bed, an antique hurricane lamp, and a clock radio resting atop a matching nightstand.
She frowned at Whack, a stray mixed-breed cat that had adopted her a few years ago and refused to leave, now resting on her bed from whatever cats do for eleven hours at a time in a nearly empty apartment in Brooklyn.
One day, Hope thought, that cat will greet me at the door. What does Whack do all day? She probably tries to catch all that “bright natural sunlight,” gives up, and then leaves as much of her black, white, brown, orange, and gray hair on my bed as she can. I’ve told her hundreds of times, “The futon is all yours,” and all she does is blink. I point at the braided rug and show her my claws, but she never gets the hint.
Hope looked at her used twenty-inch television/DVD combo gathering dust. She looked at the rectangular space on the counter where her Bose Wave radio had died one morning during The Howard Stern Show. She didn’t miss the music
or the noise—or Howard Stern. Aside from a Kindle, which contained hundreds of cheap electronic novels, and a decent laptop computer, there wasn’t much to see in Hope’s apartment.
She had no clutter.
And no life.
She only splurged on the platform bed, the Kindle, the laptop, and the extortionate rates for high-speed Internet and satellite TV, and she often didn’t even feel like sleeping, getting online, or reading.
Or thinking.
She glanced at her yellowing crème-white walls. These walls are so thin they may as well be transparent.
She closed her eyes and listened to the neighbors around her. “Limpie su cuarto ahora, Juan!” cried Mrs. Carranza, a refugee from Guatemala who had a hellion for a teenage son next door. “Che cosa vuoi dire, si non cucinare? Ho fame!” spat Mr. Antonelli, who lived across the hall, worked for Con Ed., drank too much, expected his wife to feed him the second he got home, and sometimes tried to open Hope’s door by mistake. “Vamos nos conservar a loja abrem-se depois amanhã,” said one Vaz twin to the other, co-owners of a struggling Brazilian bodega in Midwood, as they trudged up the stairs past Hope’s door. “Where the %&#! is the %&#!-ing remote control!” yelled Mr. Marusak in his thick Ukrainian accent in the apartment below.
Hope, who rarely added French to the mix of voices because she didn’t want to confuse her neighbors any more than they already were, sat on her bed and cradled Whack in her arms.
Whack didn’t purr.
She rubbed behind Whack’s ears.
Whack still didn’t purr.
Whack had never purred.
I have a defective cat. She has her own tongue. There’s really nothing wrong with that, but it’s strange to have a cat that is as quiet as a mouse. Hope closed her eyes. A cat as quiet as a mouse.
I am so tired that my mixed metaphors are starting to make sense.
Hope lay back, nestling her locks into a pillow. I work, I sometimes eat, I sleep, I sometimes dream, I bathe, I feed Whack—
I think I fed Whack today.
She left Whack on the bed and slipped into the kitchen, which smelled of Lysol, bleach, and Whack’s litter box. She looked at Whack’s water and food “bowls,” Tupperware containers that had melted into interesting Cubist art after repeated use and misuse in the microwave.
Whack’s bowls are as empty as my life has become. She sighed. Okay, it’s not true all the time. Just most of the time.
Hope poured some dry cat food into one container and filled the other with water.
Whacked slipped in and began to eat.
Whack still didn’t purr.
Sometimes, life is whack.
Hope rubbed Whack’s back.
Whack continued eating silently.
Sometimes life is whacker than Whack.
Life is a cat that does not purr.
“I am so wise,” she whispered. She shook her head. “No, I’m not wise. I actually thought Odell was giving me a present that night. I thought he was giving me an engagement ring.” Yeah, he gave me the boot instead, and he left me with an unfilled stocking.
Hope went to her bed, pulled back a quilt, and fell onto the mattress. She put her glasses on her nightstand and stared at the ceiling, which now looked like a blurry game of giant pickup sticks. A moment later, a fuzzy ball of fur leaped onto her stomach, rolled off, and disappeared under the quilt.
“Good night, Whack,” Hope whispered.
Then Hope floated off to sleep, her night as silent as her cat but as loud as her neighbors.
Will someone please find Mr. Marusak’s remote control!
OCTOBER 14
Only 71 more shopping days until Christmas . . .
Chapter 3
Early the next morning, Hope hiked north on Washington Avenue, dodging pigeons and hoping her depression would leave her alone. Her depression was as persistent as a cricket Hope could hear but not see, as constant as an atomic clock, and as rude as the average maître d’.
Hope passed Divine Connection Hair Spa.
I should go inside and sit in the waiting area one day, Hope thought. I’m sure my presence would get their hopes up and make their scissor fingers twitch. My hair would hit the floor with a sound. I know I have saved thousands of dollars these last eight years by not letting anyone else touch my hair and hundreds more for doing my own nails.
She grumbled at Love Liquors & Wines.
That’s a lot of truth in advertising there. Folks around here do love their liquor and wine. I wish there was more of that kind of advertising. A cigar store could announce, “Get cancer here! Cancer on sale now! Smoke until your lips fall off!” A fast food place could advertise, “Get fat here! Hardening of the arteries on sale now! Eat until your gallbladder explodes!”
She moved west on Sterling past Beacon of Hope House and Duryea Presbyterian.
I wonder if there’s truly any hope at either place. Hmm. Churches only seem to offer hope at Christmas. I wonder why.
Hope went north on Flatbush Avenue past Bikram Yoga.
Yoga: human pretzels in search of enlightenment. Given the choice between medication and meditation, I choose reality. It’s cheaper. Yoga is only organized yawning and stretching anyway.
She shook her head as she passed Victoria’s Secret.
Why is there a Victoria’s Secret store on Flatbush Avenue? Real women walk to work here every day and night. Those aren’t real women in those windows. Those brainless models would freeze to death in Edmonton on a normal winter’s day, when the temperature barely rises above -17°C (1°F) all day. Those so-called “angels” are already wearing Santa hats. It’s freaking October! Buy these wisps of fabric, ladies, and keep Christmas and your man coming all year long. Wear these little nothings so you can keep jingling his bells throughout the holidays. Waste your money on these spandex Band-Aids so that we can have a merry profitable Christmas.
They look like ho, ho, hos.
Hope marched past the U.S. Army Recruiting Station.
Where they failed me because they don’t allow blind soldiers to join. Hope blew out a steamy breath. So they said. I’ll bet it was because I was once Canadian. Americans don’t trust foreigners, especially if they speak the same language. I told them I spoke fluent French, and the recruiter said, “They don’t speak French in Afghanistan, and it’s highly unlikely that the French will ever be a threat to the United States.”
Hope shuddered. That was the last thing I will ever do on a whim. What was I thinking? Odell dumped me, I stopped taking care of my hair, and I nearly joined the U.S. Army. I actually walked in and filled out all the forms. I could have been in Afghanistan, speaking two languages the Afghans don’t understand while straining to see what I was shooting at.
She stood in front of Thrifty Digital Printing, two doors down from Siri Pharmacy and the 99¢ and Up Store. For another penny, it could have been a dollar store. Why does ninety-nine cents seem larger than a dollar?
As she reached for the front door handle precisely at nine, Justin opened the door.
My lovely boss, Hope thought. Misery loves company. Hmm. If misery loves company, why are so many people alone?
“Right on time as usual,” Justin said, sighing a rank breath past Hope’s ducking head. “You’re always on time, aren’t you?”
Why does Justin make it seem as if being punctual is a problem? Hope thought. Did I interrupt you doing something you shouldn’t be doing, Justin? Like working? Please don’t sigh at me with your brutal breath. She looked at his outfit. White boat shoes, no socks, brown khakis, and a purple polo. This is his managerial attire. This is a problem. This man is at least forty, but he dresses like a child. Balding, tubby, bad breath, stick fingers protruding out of fat hands, no fashion sense. This is what passes for a store manager in America. On top of that, he’s a die-hard New York Rangers fan! I know I’m supposed to be an Edmonton Oilers fan, but the Montreal Canadiens have nicer uniforms.
Hope moved past the self-serve copier and around the front c
ounter to the back “paper wall,” where hundreds of reams of paper rose to the ceiling. To keep these old walls from caving in. She draped her coat over a heavily duct-taped rolling swivel chair, donned her smock, and checked the mainframe computer for overnight Internet orders.
“Um, Hope, right?” Justin said.
Hope nodded. I’m right on time as usual, and as usual, Justin, you don’t remember my name. You’ve had months to learn my name, and it only has one syllable. You must be on drugs. I wonder what kind. I should ask him. I’d like to be able to forget other people’s names, too.
“Kiki called in sick,” Justin said, “so you’ll have to run front, um, too.”
Hope blinked. Maybe Kiki’s Hungarian lumberjack smothered her, oh no. I’ve always been worried about the size difference. If the “On-Gee” tree falls, Kiki the braided shrub will die.
“We shouldn’t be too busy, um . . .” Justin said.
“Hope,” Hope said.
“It’s Wednesday, right, Hope?” Justin asked. “We’re always slow on Wednesdays, aren’t we?”
You’re slow every day, Justin, Hope thought. It must be part of your job description. The owner, Mr. Yarmouth, whom I have seen at most a dozen times in ten years, interviewed five people, and you were the slowest. Therefore, you were hired. Why can’t you run front, Justin? There are a dozen orders back here, and all you’re going to do is go into that office, get on Facebook, and look at porn. Oh, wait. That’s right. You can’t run front. You’re in charge of the back, where you do the daily totals. Can you add? Please don’t multiply. If I could subtract you, I would.
Justin sidled up to her, looking over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Are there many overnight orders?”