Part 26

     I need a really, really strong drink. Or something. Work was completely absurd today. I don't usually work day shifts, but a coworker had “something come up.” She informed me (though she neglected to specify to the boss) that her friend had bought them both tickets to a concert out-of-town, and they just really wanted to make a whole day of it. Evidently, she knew since it was music-related, I was the one she'd get sympathy from. And since she's picking up one of my shifts in return, I'll have a three-day “weekend” (can never manage to get a Friday and Saturday off together) coming up shortly, which will be a nice little mini-vacation for me.
     Unfortunately, today is Saturday, so everything was chaos all day long, and I'm now exhausted. I had to be up at like eight, to be there by nine, and I didn't even really get to sit still on my lunch break. The other girls never remind me, until I'm on a lunch break and someone needs them, that I'm one of like two people who understand how to make double-sided copies. And it was one of those days where you have three different gaggles of tourists, each gaggle consisting of four to seven persons, either all under the age of twenty-five or all over the age of sixty-five. (I honestly cannot tell you which age group is the more terrifying.) On top of this, there seemed extra numbers of the usual customers who tie you up for half an hour, either with irrelevant stories about their own teenage years back in the 1940s (usually charming, but not when you're swamped), or with uncertainty over which ink cartridge is the one they're supposed to be getting. And while you're grateful that it's a standard computer printer cartridge they're deliberating over, and not a God-forsaken typewriter ribbon which neither they nor you remotely understand...
     After spending several long minutes flopped in the first chair I find in my apartment, I stagger over and stare into the fridge. There's a few bottles of beer that are only behind a few other things. There's a semi-ancient partial bottle of coconut rum shoved in the back, behind many other things. Somehow coconut rum and orange juice doesn't sound particularly appetizing right now, and that's about all I have to mix it with. Or lemon juice in a little plastic lemon, but that sounds far worse. I grab a beer, and flop back in the chair.
     Then I make the mistake of looking around my disaster of an apartment. I haven't swept in weeks, partly because it would take a very long time to clear things up enough to sweep. Dirty dishes are stacking up again. I really should have done laundry like three days ago, only my less-comfortable jeans are still clean.
     Groaning, I rest my elbows on my knees, and rest my chin in one hand, holding the bottle in front of my eyes with the other. Amber bottles are so pretty when the light shines through them, especially late afternoon light. Too bad empty beer bottles as décor start looking trashy really fast. Maybe I could find some really old ones, with kitschy vintage labels to them. Or I could just stash one or two of these in a box for a few decades, and save myself the money.
     Sighing, I sit back in the chair again, taking another swig and closing my eyes.
     “Yeah, diagnostic scan just does not cut it.”
     “It didn't really look like it did a whole lot when I equipped it...”
     “It's just so bad, what a waste!”
     ...while the screen door closed behind me, it seems I didn't pull shut the solid wood door. I can hear my neighbor's voice loud and clear from outside, along with a slightly lower second male voice.
     “Do be careful when you head into that instance – remember, line of sight, line of sight, line of sight! It does a shitload of damage. How close were you when you caught aggro?”
     Gamers. At least I think so. I've overheard other conversations – when enough windows are open and the breeze blows in the right direction, I can sometimes overhear the in-game chatter between my neighbor and whoever it is he plays with online.
     “Yeah, and if you get that one, it specs in at six when you have upper hand; six percent...”
     I've watched just enough of friends gaming to understand that it can get pretty emotionally engaging, depending on what you're playing, but good lord does the technical side go over my head in a second. I remember looking over an ex-boyfriend's shoulder as he was playing... oh, I don't even remember what the name of the game was, something that involved a lot of shooting, loud noises, him swearing and yelling, and jumping around oddly abstract buildings that were occasionally in outer space. When I started feeling dizzy from all of the rapid turns and jumps he was making, I glanced at the in-game chat box – and felt even more dizzy. It's exactly what I think my grandma would feel like if she tried reading my sister's text messages. While I understand general internet and most cell phone acronyms... gamers have their own unique language. Even things that aren't abbreviations, I can only guess at from the way in which the words are used.
     I liked Myst. I'll occasionally lose spectacularly at Mario games with friends, but I get stressed out when there are countdown clocks involved. Myst was pretty, and quiet, and didn't require shooting anything. Plus, it involved abandoned places that people had once lived in, and left little traces of their lives behind for me to puzzle together. Ha! No wonder I liked it so much.
     That beer didn't last me very long. I slow down and enjoy the last couple of sips – since I was only buying it for myself, I splurged a little (like, an extra dollar) and got a brand I knew I'd like.
     I get up and head over to shut the door – but pause in the doorway, looking outside. It is really nice out still, and there's probably another few hours of daylight. I look back into my gloomy, messy apartment. I see a rather large dust bunny blowing in the slight breeze from the open door. It skates blissfully across the tile floor, eventually curling up under the lip of a cabinet door.
     I'm going out.

     It's not until I'm out the door, headphones in place, sketchbook and camera in bag, that I realize I hadn't thought about where, exactly, I'm going. I could always go nose around the Mason place – but I want to have an hour or two more than this for my next walk over there, since I'm sick of wriggling through the muddy hole under the fence, and am determined to find a main gate entrance. It occurs to me that I haven't looked closely enough at the structure of that gate in the photograph to have noticed whether it could be fully closed with a gate or not. While a giant padlock might have rusted through in a hundred years... given what surprisingly good shape most of the fence is in, I'm not going to bet on it. I feel like if I'd had a brother instead of a sister, we would have spent our childhood learning much more useful things, like how to pick locks instead of how to tie our hair up in rag-curls.
     I've already started up the street in the direction of--- no, not of work, I am not going over to work. I'm going to the cemetery, where it's nice and quiet and peaceful, and nobody will talk to me, and even if a ghost arises from the ground, it won't be to ask me about what damn ink cartridge they need “for a Windows computer”. Aaaarg. (Though, I might be able to ask them to explain how to load a new ribbon into a typewriter!)
     Though it will add another five or ten minutes to the walk, I avoid the main road and take a few side residential streets in the direction I'm headed. The sunlight is such a warm, deep gold, that it makes every leaf look like it's carved from a precious stone. Even the worn cracks in the sidewalk look interesting, the shadows of every rough edge and bump so sharp and dark. There are some very pretty little gardens in people's front yards – and while some are carefully manicured and painfully neat, others are a riot of bold colors at this time of year. Low mounds of neon pink impatiens beneath sprawling old oak trees, tall plumes of blues and purples flung in front of white fences, vines swarming over wooden trellises and covering them in glowing scarlet and crimson...
     Next time I'm there, I should do some more work in the Masons' garden. I've cleared the weeds and overgrowth from a few little spots, but, I'm always so worried that I'll pull out the wrong thing. I'd feel so awful, if I pulled up something that Evelyn planted, or even Celestine. I've never spoken with her, but, she just seemed so sweet and happy, one of those rare people who never has a truly bad day, but always finds something to smile about, because they're always able to step back and see the world with fresh eyes... I wish I could know her better, I feel like she'd be a wonderful influence on me. Days like today, I let myself get so overwhelmed by the world spinning around me, that I find it hard to let go and just let it spin off wherever the hell it wants, while I stop to look at the way the sunlight falls on a flower's petal, and feel happy again.
     I don't stop to take many photos – I always feel so awkward, pointing a camera into someone else's yard – but I take a few of the trees' shadows laying lazily across the road, tiny wildflowers sprouting up between the squares of concrete sidewalk, the dramatic contrasts created by the rich light falling on a thick vine curling around the deeply-grooved bark of an old tree.