The Hedges

Noah didn't know when it happened exactly, but it had happened. He had become a cranky old man, closed and rigidly fixed in his ways. Despite the fact that in his youth he had resolved never to grow up, never to become like the grown ups who lived in his world when he was growing up. The messages penned in his high school yearbook said, “Don't ever change, Noah” and “Peter Pan forever!” So that became his life-long goal. Teaching junior high school helped keep him younger longer than his non-teacher contemporaries who worked at IBM and made millions on Wall Street, though many of the people he met and both his ex-wives said he was just immature. That didn't matter to Noah, who actually managed to be Peter Pan, well into his forties.
And then inevitably, somewhere around fifty his resolve never to grow up dissolved. His hair thinned and what remained turned gray. His 20/20 eyesight slipped to 20/60 and below. His knees clicked when he walked and his back hurt. It made him cranky and he realized he had become like those old people who complained whenever he played stickball on his Brooklyn street and later sped his vintage Mercury with the noisy mufflers down the block. At fifty-fifth, mid bitter divorce proceedings of their very long and unhappy marriage, his ex-wife, the second one, cursed him. “You are a miserable bastard and you should end up like your grandfather, another miserable bastard who died alone – on New Year's Eve!”
After the divorce that took most of his money, all of his pride and broke his spirit, Noah was alone. Lil had taken everything including the two kids, sold the little house he couldn't afford to buy from her and moved in with her divorce attorney who had been sleeping with her long before the divorce was final. His kids from this second failure never called, and they even stopped using his last name, taking the attorney's. “Because,” Lil explained, “it will open doors for them, give them opportunities and access to better schools,” for which Noah had to pay half the tuition. The kids from his first marriage, now grown and living separate lives in other places with their families, called occasionally, but usually when he wasn't home. So they left messages on his answering machine.
In retirement Noah did indeed become a recluse. He had few friends. Those that weren't dead moved to warmer climates. He had no prostate, social life or sex. He opted to stay indoors when it was too hot or too cold, and when he did venture out of doors it was usually to fight with his neighbors playing music he didn't like, always too loud and too long. He peered through his curtained windows monitoring passers by, keeping track of the cars parked on the street and paying close attention to the dog walkers to see if they were scooping poop. He removed his front doorbell and never opened his door to sign political petitions or order Girl Scout cookies. And he always kept his house dark to discourage Trick-or-Treaters. Whenever the neighbor kids on their bicycles used his driveway for a turn around, Noah rolled out the garden hose, even in the winter, and washed down his driveway. Noah had become old man Lotito, Mr. Hell all the kids called him, a tight and nasty man who sat in a wicker rocker on his Brooklyn porch, moving off it only to gather the Spaldeens that landed in his front garden during stickball games. Mean old Mr. Hell kept all of the balls, except for the ones he cut in half with the pocket knife he carried and threw back into the street, ending the marathon games, or delayed them, until someone came up with another ball.
Noah hadn't confiscated any Spaldeens, but that was only because the kids in his development didn't play stickball. They didn't play any ball, except maybe basketball, at the curb with an expensive portable metal pole and basket that his neighbor Ed rolled out close to Noah's driveway in the morning where his kids and their loud friends bounced their balls all day and bunched up in the street. That made it difficult for Noah to pull in and out of his garage, a thing he seemed to need to do with great regularity whenever the kids were there. At night neighbor Ed rolled everything back into his garage and started the whole process the following days. One night he forget to roll it back and the pole and hoop remained in place, rooted to the street like a hulking, ten foot sentinel.
Noah didn't complain. Instead he waited until after the waning days of summer and the onset of fall, he waited for when the days were too short or too cold to play and when the novelty of basketball had worn off and the neighbor kids had turned their attentions elsewhere. That was when he set his alarm clock and acted – in the dead of night. Had anyone seen him at 3:15 in the morning, they might have thought, dressed all in black, he was a moving shadow, or a lost Ninja. Had they waited they might have mistaken him for a solitary figure raising the flag on Iwo Jima, because that was how he looked holding the pole and hoop on his shoulder. But instead of raising it, Noah pushed it down with a shattering crash that bent the hoop and shattered the backboard, and he was back inside his house before the noise had dissipated.
In the morning when the damaged beyond repair apparatus was discovered, Noah was standing there close by his neighbor's side, hands on hips, shaking his head.
“Mighta been some vandals,” Ed said. “Teenagers being destructive. Or maybe a drunk driver. Probably one of Miss Scarlet's boyfriends making his get away in the dead of night.” He nodded toward the house across the street where the recent divorcee seemed intent on making up for the lost time when she was married with a line of “gentlemen callers.” The men, strangers, came and went through her place like she had installed a revolving door. “You hear anything last night?” he asked Noah.
“No,” Noah said rubbing his chin in thought, “not a sound.”
The basketball set was never replaced.
Encouraged by his success, Noah expanded his involvement in neighborhood affairs, focusing attention on the doggie duty detail after he stepped on a fresh turd in the grass strip along the front of his house. At a restaurant supply warehouse he bought industrial sized containers of powered cayenne and course ground black pepper and sprinkled them liberally in the grass. Next he drew a number of skull and crossbones on stiff cardboard that he attached to the plastic “Warning” stakes he'd collected after the landscapers sprayed chemicals on his lawn. He stuck them at intervals in his grass along the curb. It worked so well dog walkers avoided his house completely.
When he saw a woman with a yappy Chihuahua leave a deposit across the street, the dog not the woman, he burst through his front door to confront her. “Pick that up, lady!” he shouted. “Even if your little shit of a dog leaves little shits, you still have to pick them up. It's the law. And I know where you live!” Neither the woman or the dog ever returned.
When his around-the-corner neighbor got a Doberman puppy that barked incessantly day and night, Noah filed complaints with the Code Enforcement Bureau, documenting days, dates and times. And when nothing was done through official channels to address the problem, he called 9-1-1 from his pay as you go cell phone.
“Sir,” the emergency operator asked, “don't you think the police have more important matters to deal with than barking dogs. And don't you have better things to do with your time?”
And when the barking got longer and louder as the dog got bigger, Noah took matters into his own hands. He left anonymous block printed notes on the man's door. Nothing. He bought a dog whistle and blew it whenever the Doberman barked. No results. Until finally he ordered online a Coast Guard approved, compressed-air-powered boat horn that he blasted through his open window in long or short bursts to match the dog's barking. The effects were instantaneous. The Doberman's barks turned into frightened howls and then pitiful yelps before they stopped completely. The trembling dog shook uncontrollably whenever Noah ventured to the back fence and looked in, and peed and pooped if he heard a loud noise. A few times in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep and the development was quiet, Noah stole to the back of his yard and hunched behind the stockade fence among the cicadas. Then he aimed the horn at the back of his neighbor's darkened house and sent a few quick blasts, in the hopes they would generate those same spasms in the owner.
Necessity forced Noah to turn his attention to the lovely Hanna Scarlet who lived directly across the street and was apparently attempting to set a new world record for sex with felons, addicts and motorcycle riders. Noah had no moral qualms about the woman's activities. In fact he was not above stealing a glimpse of her boobs if she walked past her lighted window or sunbathed naked in her yard, even if he had to use binoculars. His issues were with some of her choices in suitors. Some got into drunken brawls. Some revved their Harleys in the middle of the night. And others were barely house broken, leaving a mess of empty beer bottles, cigarette butts and crumpled packs of Marlboros and Kools at the curb. And once Noah even slipped on an unwrapped condom in the middle of his sidewalk. Although they might be practicing safe sex, many of Hanna Scarlet's men were careless with their parking habits. More than once when Noah came out to inspect the boundaries of his little kingdom he discovered that someone had left an unfamiliar car overlapping his driveway and blocking access to his garage.
He solved that problem with a single well written letter addressed to his neighbor. It wasn't a personal letter from from him, but a very official piece of business complete with the seal, letter head and logo from the New York State Department of Health. Noah had downloaded them from the Internet and copied and pasted and printed each on the letter and envelope. Then, for an authentic postmark, Noah sent his sealed letter with postage affixed in a manila envelope to a friend who lived up in Albany with instructions for him to “just drop it off at a post office.”
“Dear Mrs. Scarlet,” it began. Noah used her married title. “The Federal Privacy Acts of 1974 and 1986 prevent the New York State Department of Health from identifying any individual or individuals involved, but you may have been exposed to one or more sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and may be at serious health risk. STDs ranging from Chlamydia to HIV/AIDS are spread by irresponsible, intimate sexual contact with one or more infected partners. The Department makes no moral judgment about your sexual conduct. It is bound by New York State Health laws to require you visit your primary care physician or local health clinic immediately for a thorough examination, a complete battery of tests and treatment if that is necessary. You are also required by those laws and bound by conscience to notify every person with whom you have had sexual contact within the past three years. You must advise them in turn to contact each of their sexual partners, so all may seek diagnosis and any treatment that is warranted. Until you have been properly treated, it is absolutely essential that you refrain from all sexual activities with other people and yourself. Sincerely, Lillith C. Page.” Noah used his ex-wife's new married name. “First Assistant to the Commissioner, New York State Department of Health.”
By the end of the month traffic on his street had thinned and Noah had full access to his garage.
With matters on his own street under control, Noah began to expand the boundaries of his jurisdiction. In good weather he roamed the neighborhood mentally noting the addresses of barking dogs, cars parked over night the wrong way on streets or in driveways obstructing passage on sidewalks and under-aged teenagers without helmets driving unregistered, un-insured, noisy ATVs through Stop signs on public streets. On rainy days he filed the necessary Code Enforcement Bureau forms to correct these breaches of the peace. His rounds became a routine, a mission, a three mile walking tour that got him off the couch, into the fresh air and trimmed some of the adipose tissue that had accumulated around his waist. For Noah it was a win-win!
But it was the privet hedge bordering a corner house just a block from his that next got Noah's attention. Neglected since the previous fall and unattended all sumer, the hedges had become an overgrown tangle of branches, maple saplings, weeds and tendrils of a wild rose vine that proliferated and infringed on the sidewalk. It forced Noah and any other citizen pedestrian to move off the sidewalk and into the street or risk losing an eye.
Noah noted the street and number. When he returned home he decided to address the issue head on and cut out the middle man and save time. From his desk drawer Noah selected one of the Code Enforcement Bureau forms from the stack he kept there. He photocopied the front of the page where details of the matter to be investigated were provided. He did not copy the back of the form that asked for the name, address and telephone number of the complainant. He wasn't going to waste time with a formal complaint that might take months to address the issue of overgrown hedges, if it were ever addressed. Noah filled it out carefully, checked the box for “Obstructed walk” and printed in careful, nondescript block letters in the space provided: “OVERGROWN HEDGES.” Then he rubber-stamped the word “COPY” in red ink on the bottom of the form to lend it an air of authenticity, as well as to obscure the small print that said “Continued on back.” He reproduced the Code Enforcement Bureau logo which he printed in the corner of an official looking business envelope and addressed it to “Property Owners” at number 38. Later that day he dropped it into the mail box at the Post Office.
The following Saturday afternoon while Noah was on his self-appointed rounds, he noted with great pleasure that the overgrown hedges were no more. Someone had hacked them down to size and trimmed them into a low three foot high wall. The top of the hedge was as straight as if it had been done with a level. The sidewalk was unobstructed. Noah smiled to himself and turned the corner. That was when he noted that the quiet block was clogged with cars and the front yard of the newly manicured home was filled with running kids and somber adults.
Noah approached a group of several men in jackets and ties standing together off the stone walk smoking cigarettes in the shade of a large maple. “What's going on?” he asked one of them.
“Are you a friend of Bill's?"
When Noah heard the question he thought he might have stumbled on an AA meeting that allowed kids. “I live up the block,” he said, “in the green house.” He indicated vaguely with his head.
“Then come on in and pay your respects,” the man said. “There's food on the table and drinks in the kitchen. Soda, beer wine.” He flipped his lit cigarette expertly to the curb with a flick of his fingers. It arced in the air like a missile and made sparks when it landed in the street. The man held the door open for Noah. “Fran is in the living room with the women and her boys. All of them are still pretty much in shock.”
“What happened?” Noah asked.
“Bill died,” the man said. “The funeral was this morning. And he was buried in St. Charles.”
“Died? How'd it happen? Accident?” Noah asked stepping into the crowded house.
Family and friends filled the little rooms. The dining room table was laid out with food, covered dishes and desserts. People made way for him to enter. Seated on a worn recliner Noah saw the tearful widow consoled by the women, surrounded by her children, three of them from ten to teenagers. She barely acknowledged him when he entered, but he nodded to the others with a fixed expression of grief on his face. The widow was youngish, in her forties, though a little overweight. Still, Noah thought, even given the circumstances, she was almost pretty and could be better with make up. The youngest boy was leaning on his mother. The other two were behind her pounding on one another.
“Heart attack,” the man said. “Happened just like that.” He snapped his yellowed fingers. “One minute Bill was alive and the next he was dead. Right there on the lawn, right after he'd spent the whole hot, humid day trimming his hedges. He fell down right in front of the Fran and the boys. She called the EMTs, but they were too late. Surprised you didn't hear it in your house.”
Noah let out an audible moan. It turned the heads of everyone who had heard it. He must have been a good friend, they whispered, so deeply affected by the death.
“It isn't right,” Noah said. “It isn't fair.”
The man patted him on his shoulder.
And Noah knew that he would have to make it right, even if it meant he'd have to sell his little house, even if it meant marrying Fran and raising Bill's three boys as his own.

© 2012 Joseph E. Scalia

What’s That Ringing?

I am a creature of habit. I sit in the same place on the same chair at the kitchen table. Granted there are only two of them and I live alone, so that isn’t such a big deal. But I do the same thing whenever I go to breakfast, lunch or dinner at the diner – always the same booth or the same stool at the counter, and always the same diner. I rotate the filtered water pitchers in my refrigerator clockwise. I have three of them, and rotation enables me to use each pitcher approximately the same number of times and it extends the life of each filter by 2/3s so I can change all three filters less frequently and at the same time. Whenever my daughter visits she terms my behavior “obsessive compulsive’ and refuses to rotate the stock. In fact, she goes out of her way to use the same pitcher over and over. I told her she is “passive aggressive.” I also never fail to put my mail in the same place – unopened on the kitchen counter top, opened on the counter top in a clay pot one of my kids made for me years ago in elementary school, and to be mailed tucked behind the wall phone above the counter top. I hang my house and car keys on a hook I installed by the front door just above the space where I place my cell phone for safekeeping.

So all my attention to details makes what happened last week surprising.

The sun was finally shining after several unsettled pre-summer days. The birds in the maple had been extremely diligent in doing their duty, mostly on the flat roof and windows of my SUV, The Silver Fox. The late-morning temperature was mild enough to invite outdoor activities. It was a perfect opportunity for me to absorb some Vitamin D and wash both cars, the be-speckled Subaru Forester, not a Miata in the driveway, and Carlotta Miata in the garage that had been gathering layers of dust over the winter. I changed from my dress t-shirt into one more suitable for work and pulled on a pair of cargo shorts, the ones with the “full elastic waistband” from the Blair catalog where I am a “Preferred Customer.” In recent years most of my clothing came from that catalog, and pretty much all of it with part or full elastic. I grabbed both sets of car keys from their respective hooks and set out to wash away the months of neglect that had built up on the cars. In my younger years when I’d lived in Brooklyn, even in the dead of winter as long as the temperature was above freezing, I never would have allowed dirt to accumulate on my car before I rolled the hose down the alleyway and scrubbed it off. And most times after washing I added a layer of wax to keep the rainwater beading off the gleaming surface. Of course, in those days I would have chosen death over wearing elastic pants!

I parked both cars in tandem, shampooed them with soap, scraping the bird residue with the sponge and ran the hose until only clean water rolled down the driveway and into the street. Then I carefully wiped them dry with a real chamois, stretching to reach the top of The Silver Fox, bending to sop up the pearl-sized water droplets from Carlotta’s garnet red mica finish, erasing streaks from the windows like magic. Then came the wax and two and a half hours later the afternoon sun bounced off the gleaming surfaces of the cars making my eyes hurt, but not nearly as much as my back. I carefully stowed the cleaning supplies where they belonged in the garage, rinsed and stretched the chamois and hung it on a non-metallic hook so it would dry without rust spots, rolled up the hose and dragged myself into the house for a hot, soothing shower. Slowing to replace the keys, Carlotta on top, TSF below, I saw that the appointed place for my cell phone was empty.

“No worries,” I said to myself and went into the bedroom where my cat Ursuler was sleeping on my pants I had been wearing now neatly folded on the bed. I moved her without waking her and rifled through the pockets. Nothing. I went back into the living room and dipped into the pockets of my “Members Only” windbreaker. Empty.

I stepped over the blinky-eyed cat now watching me from the corner of the rug and went into the kitchen. The table was empty except for my wallet and pocket change and likewise the counter top where only opened mail was waiting to be addressed.

“Oh oh!” I said as Ursuler padded into the kitchen. “I must have left the phone in the car, Urs.” She was settled in the doorway looking looking somewhat like a bowling ball on legs staring at her dish in the hope of maybe getting something to eat even though she knew it wasn’t time. I passed over her squatting body blocking my path and headed out the front door.

First I checked the center console of TSF where I always stashed the cell phone and sometimes forgot to retrieve it until after I was back inside. This time the space was empty. I kneeled in the still damp grass to peer under the front seat. The dirt muddied my knees. There was no phone, but I did find 17¢ and the sour apple Jolly Rancher I'd dropped last winter. It was also phoneless in Carlotta. I scoured the garage, the grass around the garage and the bushes in front of the house, retracing my steps, peering into shadows and poking into impossible places.

Ursuler watched me from her place on the living room windowsill. This was getting serious. She could see the worried look on my face and she looked concerned too, but I suspect that was more because she was worried I might forget to feed her. I flew through the front door muttering to myself and Urs followed me as I re-checked all the places I had checked before, as well as places the phone could never be – the kitchen garbage pail, the dirty laundry hamper, inside the microwave. I even opened the refrigerator, which briefly raised Urs's feeding hopes, until I slammed it closed.

“Crap!” I said out loud. “What now?”

Urs meowed.

I grabbed the cordless from its cradle, recalled my unfamiliar cell phone number with some difficulty and punched it in. The mechanical sounds of connecting echoed in my head and then I heard the cell phone ringing in my ear, and ringing somewhere near as well, the distinctive ring tone playing the pentatonic scale that gave my cell an Oriental flavor.

“It’s close,” I said. “The bedroom.” And I rushed inside to listen while Urs trailed behind. “Under the bed,” I said dropping to my knees to have a look. Nothing. The phone stopped after four rings, so I redialed and again I heard the ringtone. I put my ear to the floor and announced, “It’s in the basement!”

A surprised Ursuler followed me down the stairs as I ran from room to room until the ringing stopped.

Redial. I listened to the four rings.

“Outside on the patio!” I said as I rushed up the basement stairs scaring Urs and burst through the back door.

Redial. This time it sounded like it was once again coming from inside, from the computer room, but it stopped ringing before I got there.

Redial. The phone was close. I tore through everything in the room, the desk drawers, the filing cabinet, the closet where I kept my supplies.

Surprise! It was nowhere.

Twenty times I redialed and each time the sound of that lost phone drew me into another part of the house, each time without success. Exhausted, I stopped in the hallway, the epicenter of my little house, and heard it coming from the linen closet. I flung open the door and rummaged through all the clean towels that had been recently neatly folded, stacked and brought up from the laundry room in the basement. Still nothing.

I punched the numbers again and heard the sound so close I crouched to get a better fix. And this time I could hear the vibration. I could HEAR the phone vibrating! Was I crazy? Even Urs seemed concerned for my mental health. Hell, I could… FEEL the phone… vibrating. And then silence.

I placed one last call, my twenty-third or twenty-fourth, and stood very still. The five-tone melody sounded, mixed with the vehrrrrr of vibration. I reached down and felt the ringing phone in the extra pocket of my cargo shorts, the ones I’d bought with the “full elastic waistband.”

© 2012 J. E. Scalia

My Father's Wallet

My Father’s Wallet

In the back of my desk drawer, behind the pieces
of broken watches, under unread instructions
for cameras long gone and mileage clubs
for airlines now defunct, I found forgotten
my father’s wallet. It is one of the tokens
I took to remember him, which I have
even without remembering the wallet,
which has been zippered closed probably
since he died in 1965. The embossed design
on both sides of the fold is flattened somewhat
by the years and the gold lettering inside says
“Genuine Leather.” Pinned to the change pocket
is a tiny silver police badge, a gift from one of
my father’s customers, a Brooklyn cop who gave
him it after a haircut as a tip. “To get you out
of trouble and speeding tickets,” he said.
My father never got in trouble. He didn’t speed.
He didn’t even drive, but he carried the badge.
The wallet’s yellowed cellophane compartments
contain my father’s life: his Social Security Card
signed as I remember from my homework assignments,
not one, but two First National City Bank cardboard
Preferred Credit Cards “issued as evidence of your
excellent record in the Personal Finance Department,”
the bank’s 1952 calendar with a three inch ruler printed
at the top, his K of C 4th Degree and District Deputy ID
from 1964, along with photos of the family as I have
forgotten we all used to be. And there, behind a
chubby crying me and Santa Claus, a folded paper day –
May 30, 1942 Saturday – lettered in my father’s hand
the words, “Joseph Edward Scalia II born 2:35 PM.
So very happy, my son.”

© 2012 J. E. Scalia from Poetry In Alphabetical Order

A Yellow Cashmere Scarf

“She always wanted a yellow cashmere scarf fringed all around that looked like melted butter.”


Nora saw the yellow scarf the day the seasons changed in New York City. Although it was still summer on the streets, with the weatherman’s promise of another week of temperatures in the nineties combined with insufferably high humidity, in a blink of an eye, as if by magic, it became fall in all the store windows on Fifth Avenue. The womannequins, only yesterday posed suggestively in two-piece bathing suits and clingy summer dresses, turned overnight into fall-draped figures in high boots and wrap-around woolen skirts bracing for the cold. In the morning they stared out through windows dripping air conditioned moisture at the rush hour traffic, the passers by in shorts and flip flops, oblivious to the mid-night wrinkle in the time, the disruption in the time/space continuum.

But it wasn’t lost on her sitting in the doorway across from Saks Fifth Avenue where she had spent the night. Unable to sleep because of the heat and the traffic, she had watched the designers move into the windows after midnight like a precision military team. And before the first light of dawn summer had been replaced by fall.

She gathered her things together, everything she owned, and packed it into the U.S. Post Office crate she had appropriated and partitioned into compartments to hold and crossed the street for a closer look. Cutting across traffic in the middle of the block, she exchanged words on the way with taxi drivers who cursed her in several unintelligible languages. “Your mother is a whore and your father is a goat,” she said to one. “Your sister eats pork during Ramadan,” she called to another, flashing a one-fingered New York peace sign. “And just in case you don’t speak English,” she added, she turned it into a backhand two-fingered victory salute.

She laid down the crate on the sidewalk in front of Saks, carefully selecting the place that would be her base of operations for the day, or at least until store security or the police moved her along. She shaded the window glass with her hands to block the reflection of the lightening sky and the traffic passing behind her and she pressed her face against the window like a child peering into Santa’s workshop. Within, the display shimmered with twinkle lights and stars and streamers that moved slowly in the air conditioned breeze and sparkled like the inside of a shaken snow globe. Outside it was heading toward another sweltering day, but inside it was a winter wonderland. Her eyes, jaded by the things they had seen during her time living on the streets, passed from one new fashion to the other to another – dresses, coats, boots. And when she saw the butter-yellow cashmere scarf draping the womannequin’s neck, she almost broke the glass to get a better look. She could see its elegant richness; she could feel the softness of the cashmere against her skin. She had always wanted a yellow cashmere scarf fringed all around that looked like melted butter. She sighed.

Back at her station she rummaged through the hand printed signs she carried in the crate. She considered the one that said: “I can work, I just prefer not to,” lettered in red magic marker with the “o” in the word “to” turned into a smiley face. It was good for a laugh and sometimes for a few extra dollars. But she passed over it and opted instead for something more serious. “Here but for the grace of God….” the unfinished statement said ominously. With the continuing downturn in the economy, the collapse of financial establishments once considered American institutions, the audible pop of the real estate bubble and rising unemployment, more and more people were realizing they just might be a paycheck or two away from taking residence there on the sidewalk next to her. As if to illustrate, two passers by dropped handfuls of change into the Dunkin’ Donuts cup from the night before that still contained something like coffee. She fished them out, counted the amount, eighty-seven cents, and tucked it into her pocket.

Nora drained the cup and winced just as a car, a black 7 series BMW with limo tinted windows rolled up silently to the curb and stopped. She watched as the driver, dressed in livery and wearing a cap, crossed around the front of the car and opened the back door, extending his other hand to a woman, tall and tan, young and slender, and clean, who emerged from the inside darkness into the bright morning late summer light. Her hair and make up, even that early in the day, were perfect. Well dressed to her shoes, she had to be a model, Nora thought, or should have been. The woman was closely followed by a man, every bit as elegant, engrossed in a cell phone conversation.

Nora followed the woman with her eyes as she approached. The scent of perfume, something expensive, floated behind her in the slipstream. The woman walked past without a glance; totally unaware that Nora existed until she heard her say, “Good morning, toots. Great outfit. Love your perfume.” The woman turned, glanced down through her Jimmy Choo sunglasses at Nora’s sign before she walked through the door held open by the driver into Saks.

“Not very friendly,” Nora said when the man paused in front of her.

He stopped talking on his cell. “The price of beauty,” he said as he fumbled for his wallet and looked inside for cash but changed his mind. Instead, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear, he patted his pants pocket reached inside and pulled out several folded bills that he dropped into Nora’s cup. Then he resumed the call. “You still there?” As he attempted to replace his wallet, it caught in the material and slipped unnoticed from his back pocket into her Post Office carton. Only Nora saw it fall. The rags inside the carton muffled the sound. She threw one over the wallet to hide it, and the man, deep in conversation, continued obliviously into the store.

Nora waited until the driver was back behind the wheel of the car before she dug through the carton and located the wallet. Yves Saint Laurent. She traced her finger over the “Y” in the soft grain leather, weighing its heft in her hand. She opened the wallet and looked at the contents. Large denominations, fifties and hundreds in size order. She did a quick count. Apparently he kept the smaller bills in his pocket. American Express Black Card issued to Sharpe Ingersol. She wondered what kind of first name that was, if that was his name. Or was it the name of his multi-national company? And there was a refillable Starbuck’s gift card.

When the driver opened the car door, rushing out as he folded his cell phone, Nora knew she had been caught. Once Sharpe Ingersol was inside the store he was sharp enough to realize he had dropped his wallet outside and called the driver to retrieve it, she thought. She hid under her blouse, fully expecting the driver’s hands to wrest it from her. But the man hurried past and into the store without a look. Minutes later he was out again, weighed down under a pile of boxes, followed by the young woman who was talking on her cell.

“Early morning shopping,” Nora said. “Great idea to beat the crowd. The early bird catches the bargains. Pick up anything good?”

The woman briefly looked down on Nora, snorted and continued to the car.
“Have a nice day–” she called, adding breath just as the man walked past holding the boxes the driver couldn’t handle, “–bitch.”

In another minute they would be gone and she could have a closer look at the contents of the wallet. Then Nora saw the folded bills in her coffee cup. They weren’t singles as she thought, but two twenties and a five. She took a deep audible breath. ‘Hey, Sharpé,” she called, sounding the “e,” as the man was ducking into the back seat of the car.

“Excuse me?” he asked coming back out of the car and facing her. “Do you know me?”

“Intimately,” she said, “but not well. And not in the Biblical sense. I just wanted to say thanks.” She held up her cup with the money in it. “‘Here but for the grace of God,’ Sharpé,” she quoted her sign.

“How do you know my name?” He came closer. “And it’s Sharpe, not Sharpé.”
“You missing anything?” she asked. And when he was slow to respond she produced the wallet from under her blouse.

He patted his back pocket. “That’s my wallet! How did you get that?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t take anything.” She handed him the wallet.

He looked inside and then at her.

“It’s all there. You can count it. Although I was tempted by that Starbuck’s card.”

He smiled. “It’s yours.” He handed her the card. “Thank you,” he said, and he went back to the car. In another minute he was back holding one of the Saks boxes. “This is for you,” he said and handed it over. “And this too.” He pressed two hundred dollar bills into her hand.

“No, no,” she protested mildly. But she took the money and the box, stashing the bills in her carton, slipping the ribbon on the box to look inside.

The car pulled away and Nora sat there. The September sun was warm on her face. Behind her she felt the security of Saks against her back. To those passing by, the ones who took the time to notice, she must have looked strange smiling in the late summer heat with a cashmere scarf, butter-yellow, fringed and soft, wrapped around her neck.

© 2011 J. E. Scalia

Daylight Wasting Time

A Short Reflection on Turning Back Time

I have come to regard the last Saturday in October as Daylight Wasting Time, a day that I have grown to hate and dread! On the other hand, I have always loved Daylight Savings Time, from when I was a kid. I eagerly looked forward with great expectations to that Saturday, which for me marked the real beginning of spring. During my weeks of anticipation leading up to the yearly event, I made plans and considered what I would do with more daylight and more day time. And long after the “Ritual of the Changing of the Clocks,” as I had come to refer the ceremony, I reveled in all of that glorious extra sunlight – except maybe when my mother sent me off to bed with the sun still up and most of my friends, whose mothers weren't such clock-watchers, still outside playing Hide and Seek or Manhunt late into the darkness of night.

I always loved helping my mother move ahead all the clocks in the house on that Saturday night before I was sent to bed, which was an hour earlier than usual to make up for the hour of sleep my mother told me I was going to lose. And years later, when the task of keeping track of time fell to only me, I took to moving all my clocks ahead with glee on Saturday afternoon, so I might acclimate myself to the new daylight several hours earlier than the rest of the Eastern Daylight Savings Time community.

Turning the clocks back in the fall has always been painful, despite knowing I will gain one more hour of sleeping time, and only partly because it means losing some of the daylight I had grown accustomed to during the spring and summer months. I hate it more because it marks for me the onset of winter, two full months before Mother Nature's actual date. And I hate it most of all because of the turmoil the yearly “Ritual of Daylight Wasting Time” night causes me in my personal life.

On that clock changing evening I always go to bed with great trepidation, knowing I have to set my alarm clock for 2 AM, and then, when it rings, I will drag myself up and out from under the warm covers in the middle of a chilly October night to turn back one hour every single clock in my house, including my three wristwatches! Even though I have grown pretty adept over the years, this whole time-revisionist thing usually takes me about twenty minutes from start to finish before I am able to flop back into bed. Then, to make bad matters worse, by the time I am on the brink of re-sleep and about to return to a blissful REM state, the alarm on the newly reset clock goes off again at 2 AM, and I have to do the whole thing again... and then again... and then yet again, until I am exhausted. On that night I am Bill Murray trapped in a Groundhog Day nightmare of my own, subtracting an hour each time I turn the clocks back, waking to the alarm and repeating the process ad infinitum!

On the positive side, if there is a positive side to all this, one year, by the time the whole clock resetting process was completed, I subtracted so many hours and gained so much extra time that I woke up on Friday morning! Of course, when I showed up at work bright and early, I was the only one there. For everyone else it was Sunday morning.


© 2012 J. E. Scalia

Defensive Driving Class

There is no question that a defensive driving class can be beneficial for several reasons. It serves as a refresher to help long time drivers remember how they used to drive before all those bad habits set in, and it provides an opportunity to review the new rules of the road that have been added since the days of crank starts and hand signals. Best of all, it can lower one’s liability auto insurance ten percent a year for three years – that’s not a bad return on a $35 investment and one six-and-a-half hour Saturday morning every thirty-six months spent in a stuffy church basement. With a little research an enterprising individual can save even more money by signing up for a reduced rate defensive driving course sponsored by special interest groups and organizations such as the Elks, the Red Hat Society or the Ku Klux Klan. I discovered my class in an ad in the back of the local newspaper for only $17. It was sponsored by the National Organization of Old Drivers and scheduled at the local library.

I knew that the cheap classes filled up quickly, so I showed up early to register in the falling snow. A line of seniors, like the walking wounded was already out the library door and around the entrance.

“Shit!”

I joined the throng behind a man with two hearing aids pushing a walker and we inched along toward the distant registration desk.

According to the literature, “The National Organization of Old Drivers – NOOD (pronounced nude) is not affiliated with other organizations of old and/or retired people. NOOD is not a nudist organization, nor does it espouse or condone the philosophy of nudism. Although some of NOOD’s older and more addled members have from time to time been stopped while driving nude by the police, nude driving by the elderly is not an activity that is encouraged or sanctioned by this organization.” The disclaimer ended with the warning, “A NOOD Defensive Driving course is not a guarantee, either stated or implied, against having an accident, and NOOD is not responsible for the accidents that my occur driving to, from or after taking the course.”

I signed up for the next Saturday morning class.

On the appointed date I arrived early in order to get a good seat, fifteen minutes before the 9:30 mandatory starting time stated in bold on the registration form. But my seating fears proved to be unnecessary because the library parking lot was grid-locked with my NOOD classmates all vying for the three handicapped parking spaces close to the entrance. I silently slipped my Miata around them and into a distant slot away from the crowd. I was comfortably ensconced in my uncomfortable metal folding chair well before the others drifted in to find seats. That took nearly an hour.

After everyone was finally situated, Bob the instructor, a beefy, red-faced retired NYC Police detective began the official opening ceremonies for the remaining five hours. “I’m a volunteer. NOOD don’t pay me for this, so I don’t take any crap from anybody either. Don’t talk when I talk. Turn off yer cell phones or yer out of here.” He was in the middle of his welcoming speech when the man with the two hearing aids I recognized from registration pushed the door in with a loud bang and wheeled his squeaking walker into the room. “And where do you think yer going? Yer late!”

But the man paid him no mind and continued squeaking across the tile floor.

“I said yer late.”

“What… Me… Huh?”

“Whatayer deaf too?”

“What… I can’t hear you… I'm deaf.” He pulled out both hearing aids and re-adjusted the volume controls until there was an audible squeal. Then he stuffed them back into his ears. “There was no place to park my Escalade…”

“Find a seat.”

“…and I gotta pee.”

The man’s proclamation set off a flurry of similar comments and before Bob could stop them, a substantial number of the men and a few of the women scurried for the door to beat the man pushing the walker toward the bathrooms down the hall.

“Ten minute pee break,” Bob announced. “But no more than that or yer gonna be here until seven o’clock tonight when it’s dark out and nobody will be able to drive home!”

A half hour after the ten-minute pee break, after they were able to find their seats again, we finally began filling out the necessary NOOD forms.

“Don’t write nothing,” Bob cautioned, “until I tell yer exactly what to write and how to write it.” He held up the one I had already completed and then delivered a brief lecture on block letter and non-block letter printing. To illustrate his point he printed “BOB” all in uppercase on the portable blackboard. Next to that he printed “Bob.” “Not this one.” He emphatically crossed out “Bob,” breaking the chalk. “This one.” He underlined “BOB” three times. “Now print yer name between the lines from top to bottom line in large block letters exactly as it is on the board on yer tent form.”
“I don’t have a tent form.”

Bob held up his with the printed “BOB” and folded it in half. “Now it’s a tent form! Do it. Then put yer completed tent form in front of yer so I know yer names.”

In unison twenty-nine people copied from the portable blackboard. The results were seventeen BOBs and twelve Bobs. The five people returning from the bathroom didn’t print anything. I printed CUBBY on my tent form and put it in front of me.

It took twenty-five minutes for all the errors to be corrected. Then the entire process was repeated filling out and correcting the carbon-copy official registration forms, which took longer because the mistakes had to be undone in triplicate.

“Because yer didn’t follow my instructions there ain’t enough registration forms to go around. That means some of yer won’t get credit for the course. And that means we have to eliminate some of yer from the class, unless yer want to sit there all day just because yer find me so charming!”

A heated debate started. Some wanted to expel one or two of the non-BOB/Bobs who caused the problem, others wanted a more democratic approach like a secret ballot or drawing straws to decide. In the end, when a consensus wasn’t reached, a woman with big eye magnifying glasses from her recent double cataract surgery volunteered, and we selected the deaf man with the two hearing aids who was still in the bathroom. The over-enrollment crisis was averted.

By then it was time for lunch and a prescription medication break, to be followed by a short power nap.

Safe driving videos were on the agenda for the afternoon session. However, setting up a VCR proved to be an even more daunting task than winning World War II for members of the “Greatest Generation” who grew up electronically impaired listening only to AM tube radio. There were several unsuccessful attempts to get the VHS tape to rewind. Then 87-year-old Cpl. Vincenzo Ragussa, a 19-year-old Pathfinder when he parachuted into France the day before D-Day on June 5, 1944, took charge and set out on a reconnaissance mission to the main floor of the library. In minutes he returned with an iPod-wearing teenager. The kid switched the TV to channel 3, pressed PLAY and the screen crackled to life, all without removing his iPod earbuds. The room filled with sounds of car crashes, people complaining that they couldn’t see the screen and the occasional snoring from the back of the room, where several people were extending nap time.

A brief question/answer period followed clips from “Cops” and “The World’s Greatest Car Chases.” Bob announced (a) why the “Three Second Following Rule” was the best way to calculate a safe distance between your car and the one in front of you. “Unless yer need yer calculator with the big numbers to count to three and crash because yer have to get it out of yer pocketbook, ladies!” and (b) how his extensive record of near-fatal car accidents and DUIs best qualified him to teach the class. “We had a saying on the job, ‘If yer want to stop a thief, yer don’t call a cop, yer get advice from another thief!’”

At 4 PM, when the shadows had grown longer across the parking lot and the group had reached meltdown stage, graduation commenced. Bob pulled from the desk drawer the official forms we had block printed a lifetime before and in exchange for our positive course evaluations and a blood oath that we would never admit, even under torture, that he had released us early, the ceremony began. Bob mispronounced each participant’s name and handed out the diplomas.

I clutched in my sweaty hand the hard-earned guarantee of lower insurance rates and rushed through the library door, hoping to be gone and home before the others even realized the class was over. Outside in the fading daylight I was surprised to see the man with the hearing aids expelled so many hours before still trying to steer his dented white Escalade out of the parking lot. I called to him and waved my diploma. “Class valedictorian!” I shouted, but he didn’t see me or hear me.

Then I steered my Miata around the small pile-up of Lexus, Infinity and Lincoln SUVs that had turned the library parking lot into… well, into a parking lot. And I sped off into the deepening darkness toward safety and home, knowing I had three years before the next time I’d have to take the class.

© 2012 Joseph E. Scalia

I Hove You

I love pizza. I love a good movie. I used to love swimming, but only in pools, not the ocean, especially after the movie Jaws, which really scared me, though in retrospect I loved the original version. But they were comical by the time they got to the IV and V sequels. I can say the same for Rocky and Rambo. I loved both the originals. I thought I loved the movie Chariots of Fire. While I was watching it in the theater I was mesmerized and resolved to turn my life around. I promised myself that I would take up jogging to the strains of that movie music in my headphones, that I would jog home from the theater. But as I walked up the aisle further from the screen the resolve faded with my opinion of the film. And by the time I got through the lobby and out into the daylight, I was shaking my head at how lame all that slow motion running really was.

I love vacations in big rental houses in exotic places with old friends cooking and drinking and laughing, though I definitely don’t love getting there. I used to love flying, but I don’t love it anymore. Maybe that’s because of 9/11, or maybe it’s because the airlines have squeezed all the love out of the experience.

I love spring. April is my favorite month. No matter poet T. S. Eliot called it the “cruelest month,” I love April because it is so filled with optimism that may never be realized in the chill of September. I love a cold beer on hot summer afternoons. “Would you care for another beer?” “I’d love one.” I love my kids of course, and I try to make it a practice of telling them “I love you” whenever we talk on the phone or video chat on the computer. Sometimes they say it first and I usually reply “Love you too,’ which I mean as an affirmation of how I feel about them and not an indication of my taste in music. That also goes for other family members from grandchildren to cousins, as well as close friends. I can even say it to some of the people I barely know. “I really love you, man” or “Dude, I love you.” It’s because that kind of “I love you” is very non-threatening, almost automatic, like saying “God bless you” when anyone, even an atheist, sneezes. But saying the words “I love you” to a person I might in reality actually love and/or make love to, someone who has seen me in unflattering positions in intimate detail in compromising states and not always at my best, is quite another matter.

It must be a guy thing, or maybe just my thing. I blame it on two divorces and a string of romantic entanglements that ended badly, but I think that just might be an excuse.

I can always manage the other “L” word, “Like,” with very little effort. It trips easily off the tongue without all that “Luh-luh-luh–” stuttering. “I like you. I like you a lot. I mean, I really like you a very lot. A lot more than those other people that I like a lot.”

I did get close to saying the words several times, once in particular, after my second divorce when I began seeing a younger woman where I worked. In the four years that we were “a couple,” she sent me no occasion greeting cards to tell me how much fun I was to be with. She always signed them “Love.” When I reciprocated I signed mine the same, but the “L,” because of my poor penmanship, looked more like an “h,” as in “I hove you.” It became our little private joke, and my little handwriting gaff made it easier for me to express my feelings for her. And that’s the way we went on, loving and hoving, until she fell out of hove and loved someone else.

It’s a lot of water under the bridge, and I am not looking back with regret. I just wanted you to know that I hove you very much. I hove you as much as I have ever hoved anybody. I hove you. There, I said it, even if I can’t find the right word to tell you.

© 2012 Joseph E. Scalia