I Respect Your Hesitation

I wheel onto the streetcar, maneuvering my scooter past a young man who's blocking the way with his enormous duffel bag and a lumpy brute of a dog. I wedge myself into a corner and stare out the glass doors. I don't look at the man. I don't want to look at anyone. A woman gets on at the next stop with a walker and the young man says to her, “I respect your hesitation.” I don’t know what he’s referring to but I figure it must be something to do with masks. It's always about masks, or the virus, or the vaccine. I’m so tired of it all. We’re all so tired of it all. 

The young man goes on to talk about how he’s not vaccinated, that he doesn’t need it. “Every day I drink antioxidant tea. It kills everything. Really strong stuff. Nothing bad can possibly survive in my system.” He laughs. “I haven’t been sick in ten years.”  After a few stops he starts singing what sounds like a Native American song, mournful and haunting. He gets louder and louder and when I finally sneak a glance I see that he is rocking back and forth and flapping his arms. I’m surprised to see that he is, in fact, wearing a mask, one of those heavy duty ones. 

At the next stop, he and his dog and his duffel bag all tumble out and an elderly Black man in a leather cowboy hat gets in. The woman with the walker asks him to put on a mask. He says he doesn’t have one. They start to argue. I've seen this guy before and every time he gets into the same argument with people. Masks are required on all public transportation, but there’s no one to enforce it. In the beginning of the pandemic, all the trains stocked masks and hand sanitizer, but they don’t anymore. 

 

The woman asks the man to stay away from her. She sounds hysterical but it looks like he's just sitting there. I push the button for the next stop and when the doors open and the ramp descends the woman with the walker pushes past me as I’m trying to leave. “One side,” she barks to a man standing on the sidewalk with a giant sack of cans. He just looks at her and shakes his head and hoists his cans.

The Goodwill is packed with people pushing their way in front of me. A man on a motorized scooter nearly runs me down, then barks at me for being in his way. I see the woman with the walker,  muttering angrily to herself. I try to get past her in one of the aisles but she refuses to move as she fingers a statue of a dolphin. I eventually find a pair of corduroys as well as a figurine of an ant made of wired-together rocks, holding a tiny bottle of Corona to his mandibles. 

I get back on the streetcar to head back downtown. A young man is asking everyone how to get to Vancouver on mass transit but no one knows. I tell him there’s a bus but I’m not sure where to catch it. He says he woke up this morning on a park bench in Portland and has no idea how he got there or what happened last night. The last place he saw his phone or his car was across the river in Vancouver. “I admit, I think I was driving drunk,” he says sheepishly, collapsing into a seat. At the next stop he says, “ I need some water,” and jumps up and dashes out the door. As we pull away I expect to see him retching but he’s just standing on the platform, staring at the ground, swaying slightly. Resigned to his fate.

Rodney

 I go out for a delicious Italian meal and drinks with a friend. Afterwards she drops me off and I wheel into my building on my knee scooter and yank open the elevator door and slide the heavy gate and roll in and push the button for the fourth floor. Sometimes there's a delay and you have to wait thirty seconds or so until the elevator lurches to life, so I wait thirty seconds or so then press the button again, then a few more times. It's not going anywhere. I punch the wall then close my eyes and take a deep breath and push the button one last time before wheeling back out to the stairwell.

I plop down on the bottom step and sit there a few minutes, then begin to ease my ass up one stair at a time, lugging my scooter after me. It's slow going and I'm soon out of breath and covered in sweat. The scooter bumps and bangs despite the carpet. When I get to the landing, I hear a door open above me and a voice calls down from the third floor. It's Rodney.

Rodney is an extremely short Iranian man who lived for years in England and still retains his British accent. He has severely cropped salt-and-pepper hair and dark eyes which somehow look both sleepy and angry at the same time. His girlfriend is twenty years younger than him. He picked her up in a bar in Eugene, where she was attending college. She gave birth to their first child in the early months of the pandemic. We used to be on friendly terms; I'd even been in their apartment once. Rodney had corned me in the lobby one night, wobbly and slurring that his girlfriend had left him. He implored me to come keep him company, so I accompanied him into his apartment, which was twice the size of mine with about half the amount of furnishings. He poured us each a snifter of treacly sherry and read me a sonnet he'd written to her, then asked me what I thought of it. They got back together soon after.

 

Early on in the pandemic, I ran into Rodney in the courtyard of our building and he pointed to my mask and said, "Oh, so you're buying into all that, are you?" Every time I ran into him after that he would repeat it. "Still doing the mask thing, I see," he would say with a knowing smirk. "How interesting." 

 

I usually try to avoid him, but had already run into him twice today, the second time being at the grocery store, where he was the only one in the building with no mask on, despite the state mandate.

He is, of course, not wearing one now. "I heard someone banging around down there," he says. "Are you alright, mate?" I say that I'm fine, that the elevator's broken. "It's those kids messing around with it again," he growls. "Can I help in any way?" 

 

I tell him I'm sorry for the racket and that I'm fine, that I just have to take it slowly. 

 

"I really wish you would let me help," he says. "I can put on... you know, one of those things, if it'll make you feel better." I tell him I don't really care. 

 

He stands there watching me struggle until I finally say, "Maybe you could just carry this up to the next landing." I feel defeated. He easily carries it the rest of the way up as I grab the banister and hobble behind.  

"Call me if you need anything, mate" he says. "I mean it." I thank him and tell him I will. "You'd better," he says. "I shall be extremely cross if you don't." He slips back into the stairwell and descends to his lovely young wife and beautiful, dark-eyed child. I unlock my door and enter my little home, where the cat is scolding me for being gone so long.

Wave

 A man on the train is sharpening a knife on a whetstone, loudly, looking around to see if anyone is watching. Everyone is watching.

A man is lying against the wall of the Plaid Pantry across the street. As I roll past, he yells.that I should come over there so he can break my other leg. I think about it.

A man enters the gift shop, slips a pair of novelty socks into his pocket, and attempts to enter the galleries without paying. He is finally shown the door after trying to fish money out of the donation box.

A man makes a pile of newspapers on the wall and sets it on fire, then stands there to admire his handiwork. It only burns for a few minutes but smoke rises from it for a long time.

A man runs screaming through the streets, tearing up plants, breaking windows, picking up and hurling anything that's not bolted down.  A man writes in fat, bulbous letters on every surface, the same illegible word over and over. A man defecates in the middle of the sidewalk, a singular statement, crude yet elegant in its simplicity. A man starts tapping on his phone, initiating a transaction with consequences that branch out in all directions, ripples that turn into waves that swell and gain in momentum as they hurtle  toward the shore.

Pets

A man with long gray hair is waiting for the light to change. He holds a leash attached to which is a squat, fat dog with wispy white hair. The traffic stops and we pass each other in the middle of the street and I see that it’s not a dog at all but a pig.

Later that day, a guy wearing a Pug Lives Matter t-shirt walks past me. A little ways beyond is the World's Blandest Taproom, all concrete and metal piping. A group of people sit outside, each one of them with a small dog curled in their lap, one of which is indeed a pug.

A few doors down is my destination.The Soop does not serve soup. It's a little confusing. "Soop" is apparently how you pronounce the Korean word for "forest," and the place does resemble a sort of forest, as the windows are filled with the plants they use in their dishes, growing in hydroponic rows under eerily glowing lights.

I sit outside and slurp my glass noodles as the traffic rushes past. A man clutching a bottle in a paper bag screams at a young woman as she calmly chains up her bike. A troupe of homeless kids are dragged along by their pit bulls. A man goes into the restaurant and emerges a few minutes later with no food. His walk is something between a strut and a scurry. Ten minutes later he's back, lugging some shopping bags, a live python twisted around his neck. He goes back in and immediately leaves, strutting and scurrying, a wide grin on his face. 

The owner comes out to take my plates and we chat a bit. I tell him how good the meal was and that I hope he can stay open in such a challenging location. The man with the snake passes by again, face gnarled with rage. "It's very odd," the owner says, horns blaring over his shoulder. "We were not aware."

Bad News

It’s a different assistant. It’s always a different assistant. This one looks like a male model. He carries himself like he’s striking poses. He leads me into what I assume was, until recently, a storage closet. There is barely room for the two of us. A folding screen does not quite hide a pile of boxes of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. The assistant rips my bandage off a little too enthusiastically and suddenly there is blood everywhere, dripping all over the linoleum. The assistant casts a sultry eye across the pile of supplies on the tiny counter but does not see what he wants. “I’ll be right back,” he breathes, and slips away.  The blood looks too bright and there’s too much of it for such a tiny hole. I feel a little light headed.

He arrives with some rolls of gauze and tape, which there seem to be plenty of on the counter already. Because the doctor is going to be looking at it in a few minutes, he wraps my foot very loosely. The wrapping falls off almost immediately. He picks it up from the floor and put it back on my foot. “The doctor won’t be long,” he says, and is gone. 

The doctor arrives and says he has some bad news. This will be the last time he sees me as he is leaving the hospital. I ask if he’s leaving to join a traveling band of acrobats. He says no. He says he will put me in the very capable hands of one of the other podiatrists. I make the mistake of asking him how long he thinks it’ll be until I can walk again. He gives me a rough estimate that is around three times as long as I was hoping. I know I should know better than to hope at this point, but even so I can feel a little part of me I didn’t know was even still intact become crushed as he says this. The good news is he doesn’t seem concerned about the blood. “Blood is good, blood means the flesh is healthy,” he says without enthusiasm. He wraps it up tight so I don’t bleed all over the place, and leaves without saying goodbye. I make an appointment to see the new doctor and on the way home I see a woman standing in the middle of the street with skin like leather, wearing nothing but a diaper.  Cars stop for her and she strides across confidently, very focused on wherever it is she’s going.

Neighbor

There's a light rap on my door. It doesn't happen often, and my first thought is that it's someone complaining about my music or the litter box or something else I've done to be a lousy tenant. I yell "Coming" and haul myself up from the couch and throw on a robe and grab the cat, who is eager to dash out. Standing there is my neighbor from across the hall. She lives in my old apartment with her oafish boyfriend and a nondescript dog, though I found the place small for even just one person. I tried chatting with them when they first moved in but found that they weren't overly friendly. They drive a lemon yellow Vanagon which has been parked illegally in front of the building for months. No matter the season, I have only ever seen her wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and today is no exception. She has a wild mess of dark hair and pale, meaty thighs which fairly glow in the dim hallway. She's holding a flat white parcel. "I think this is yours. They must have mixed up the keys," she says.. I thank her and tell her how excited I am to get it, that it's a record I've been waiting for. She just stares so I stop babbling and shift the squirming cat and take the package and tell her I'll run down and bring hers up. I get dressed, hop on my scooter, and go downstairs, where there is indeed a key waiting in my mailbox. How it works is, the carrier puts the key in your box, you use it to unlock the proper compartment, and the key stays stuck in that lock, unable to be removed by anyone other than the mail carrier. I try the key in the lock of the package compartment but it won't turn. I check the number on the tag and see that the number is for the box she's already opened. She apparently put the wrong key in the wrong lock and it somehow opened and the key is still stuck in the lock. Or maybe the oafish boyfriend did and doesn't want to fess up so he's having her deliver the package and say it was her fault. I can just see him doing that. Struggling with it, wondering why it won't turn, getting angrier and angrier and finally forcing it to yield to his will, only to find my record inside. For some reason I think of the yellow Vanagon, sitting out by the curb for months, never getting a ticket or being towed, even though the parking authority is notoriously ruthless in this neighborhood. I jiggle the stuck key to make sure but it's tiny and I'm afraid of snapping it off. I try the other key in the other box, just in case. It doesn't turn but it doesn't get stuck either, so I pull it out and ride the elevator back upstairs and knock on their door. My old door. The only one in the building that is solid wood instead of paned with glass. She opens it and I explain the issue and hand her the key, for all the good it will do her. I hear the rumble of the boyfriend's voice but I can't make out what he's saying. The woman looks puzzled but takes the key and closes the door. I go back inside, collapse onto the couch. The afterimage of her pale thighs lingers for a long time. I finally get up and open my package and play my new record and, imagining I'm the only one living in this building, I play it loud.