Notes. From the Upper West Side. A Novel by Dan Wrench. Chapter 70.
The Routine. The morning after Junior and me did that first big listen we were both in the kitchen area together and not saying a word while we danced through the motions that ended up with breakfast being made. Yeah, danced. It's like we're being extra gracious today, I thought, as I swirled past her torso to put a milk carton in the fridge.
The kids were dazzled. What are you doing? Harry demanded. Dancin' I get cackled.
Junior just smiled. Then she split quick for Moheum and me and Sammy got on our jackets and walked Harry to school. After we got back home, Sammy went into the boys bedroom and dialed up some coloring book website he was always talking about that had maybe a million virtual crayons. Then he continued coloring this imaginary monster that looked like a feathery mastodon.
It was a big project for him. I think he'd been coloring the same feathery mastodon for over a week when he and Harry weren't watching rocking a bowling call. Ads, I said, looking over his shoulder at all the little picture boxes of commodities he could probably beg his mommy and daddy to buy for a kid his age. Yeah, I don't mind.
There's ads every place. You know, Sammy, when I was a kid we had real coloring books with real crayons and no ads. He said, they have them down in the super market. I guess if you're poor and you don't have internet, those are okay but they only give you six crayons.
I ate that wisdom like a cracker and rubbed the hair on his head and went into my room and put on these little red running shorts that I bought. And I tried to forget the day he was coming when Sammy would realize we were poor. I looked in the mirror and it was just as I suspected. Little red shorts make me look like an asshole.
I tried to shrug it off. Once the lake started bulking up I looked a lot better. I told myself. I decided right then I'd wear sweats to run in and shell the shorts.
I'm not sure now. That evening before my shift, Junior said she wanted to know more about my new diet, lots of yogurt and green super foods and cereal is really high in fiber with almond milk. Yeah, almond milk. And she wasn't interested so she could condescend or say she knew better.
It was like she was really listening to me again. Thanks, Wayne. The only time she sighed when talking about the diet was when the subject got around a cash. All these healthy foods cost too damn much but I swore to her I could afford it.
Then a day or two later she said she was going to start running too. I gave her a big kiss and thought at her skull. You know, if Wayne had kicked in a month ago I might be screwing your brains out tonight instead of cammies in two weeks. Oh well.
Right about then was when the gym and the newbie school in Sam being home made our daily schedules extra complicated. First, we got up early enough that Harry had plenty of time to make the school bell that's actually an electric buzzer. Then I went out for my run while Junior made breakfast for the little quarks in herself. Once I got home Junior split for her job at Moheum.
Sometimes she left me some waffles. Sometimes I had to make them myself who cares. It's all good. When I got done scarfing waffle me and Sammy walked Harry to school and then me and Sam went to Riverside Park or maybe some event for kids that we heard about.
Like once we went to the space dragons exhibit at the villian. Then we came home and Sam watched some television for an hour or so or maybe he kept coloring the feathers of that massive on that website before we went to the gym and Sam got to play with the other little boys and girls. Downstairs where Ms. Jan Benoit of the poor scene asks, walked them all and sucked the straw sticking out of her water bottle.
After I got done crushing my bones upstairs I went downstairs and got Sammy from the little kid zoo and took him on the bus back to our app where the teenage sitter from next door was waiting to look after him for a couple hours and Harry too when he got home. I immediately slid from home again to go right back to the Commodore hotel where they concocted what they call the best martinis in town quote unquote only I ordered gin and guzzled it and if Kurt was there I'd maybe chat with him for a few. Usually that trip from the gym back home and back to the Commodore put me in a blue funk because it reminded me of how much time I spent just traveling around down. At one point I thought I should use the travel time to read the trades but you know fuck the trades.
To get to the auditions part you have to wade through all these articles about how everybody else is doing it better than you. So yeah fuck the trades. Sammy didn't seem to mind the bus or the traveling around it was like he was a tourist. He stared out at the skyscrapers every single afternoon as if he hadn't seen them so many times already he could describe them for a sketch artist if they mugged him.
Sammy was the only part of my new routine that made it tolerable otherwise it was just rattling from point A to point B and then back to point A again. Every single day. When I finished up with that Fern at the Commodore I went back home and paid off the sitter and waited for Junior to show up and take over the fam. It was my day off I spent the rest of the evening watching the boys while Junior did newbie school but on most nights after paying off the sitter I just jumped on another bus and rattled back the midtown and the tavern for my shift where I worked till 1230 or 1 then I rattled back home watched porn went to bed got up did it again.
I guess the same routine we've gone down a lot easier if I lived in Hell's Kitchen where Parpen big craps and field lived because it's a bunch of actors and actresses down there and it's already close to midtown where I work but the upper west side is still Manhattan and most of it feels like Manhattan so your soul doesn't have the sensation of getting crushed while it's you know being crushed. Can you imagine living this existence in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis? If you're from one of those cities and you're going through this routine every day then how do you live with yourself? It's gotta suck right?
For you I mean specifically for you. Notes from the Upper West Side is a work of fiction. The people depicted in this work do not exist. Notes from the Upper West Side Copyright 2013 to 2019 by Dan Rench.