Ten of Pentacles

Our Rooming House—EVENING

Andrea is a cold fish. She complains about how small a space we live in and how physically warm we are.

“Hot and crowded!” She considers out loud, “It’s so lowbrow!”

Yet, with the whole living room available, she sits closely at my side of me. It’s a bit irritating. We both come from nothing. We aren’t doing all too poorly.

“Andrea, if you are so hot, why do you cling to me? It’s so effete. Effete. That’s what it is.” I get up to leave. As I go I bump the board game on the coffee table still set up from her earlier round with Miss Maggie. I see the game pieces, different color cubes and little duck-shaped pawns, spill on the carpet. Apparently, I am told, the game is harder than I would have guessed for something with the word “Quack” in the title.

I carry the cat litter box outside and down the drive to the trash cans.

After, I take to the porch and gaze upon the City skyline. Our next apartment will be there. Further downtown in a richer neighborhood. After a smoke I head to the dining room, where the boarders are assembling to see what Maggie has wrought for dinner.

I request some hash browns but Sailor Lou looks at me like I am a wealthy pig.

I don’t pursue the request. Instead, we all chat politely, sports, weather, and those who haven’t shown up for the meal. Including Andrea, as is often the case.

Maggie seems proud but concerned as usual. She nudges Sailor Lou and he asks me if I would help go over their finances with her. Before I can say yes or no, he produces a box of bills and a binder with checks, signed, from his personal account. He more or less shoves it at me.

“You’re good with money, right?”

I shrug and try to tell Lou I am not so comfortable about this, but he is on to the next topic.

They are showing a pornographic biopic at a nearby theater; it is about one of the artists that lived on this street back in the heyday of its artsy commune days. In the non-hardcore, “boring scenes” (as Lou puts it), he says we should be able to recognize the surroundings. It was filmed on location in this neighborhood and even our little boarding house.

I return to our room, where Andrea is still puttering with her game. Now with a maze that ball bearings run through. I bump the table again and knock one ball out of the maze, it heads towards the door and I chase it. Andrea’s cat follows but I brush him back inside and shut the door.

Sailor Lou comes over and says he will take me to meet a reclusive woman writer who has just moved in upstairs. He takes me up to the second story. She has run and hidden. I look in at all the boxes of things and the work area she has left. They have also put a drafting table in the hall and I trip over a desk lamp as I pass it. I pause to set it back on the table.

“She must be rich.” Sailor Lou whispers. I sigh. More envy. The woman peeps from the closet.

“Have you gotten him the rum I wanted?”

“I have several placed in my stash in the garage,” he says, “Frank, feel free to hit the stash as well.”

Of course, I was going to do that anyway.

I do not pry, but the sensation of her watching me from her hiding spot is too much to bear. I run out and down the stairs, leaping over the banister, then out the door.

It is nightfall. Women are now traveling between the bars and clubs. They turn their noses up at me.

Spike calls me from a spot in the bushes.

“Frank, have you heard?” he whispers, “They’ve declared martial law. I’ve told the gang to assemble here. They’ll have to evade the armed squads like I did. We’ll all go off to hide in the woods until the war is over.”

He says to pack, get what I’ll need. I am indifferent to giving up everything. Perhaps some change even sounds nice.

“Also,” Spike adds, “I’ve managed to acquire acquired a printing press.” He hands me a stack of manuscripts, some my own. “We will use the press to mass-produce and distribute these.”

A cop is coming down the street and Spike sneaks back into his bush to hide.

I take up the gear Spike left under the rose arbor: A camera and a machete. And head back inside.