ehh, this story is totally not finished and I don't think I will finish it. I had some rather complex ideas about what I wanted to do with it, but maybe they were too complex for it, I don't know, the thing is I really need to finish a book before I start playing with short stories again, so I thought I would share this. Maybe some of the wonderful feedback I get will inspire me in someway to complete the story, who knows, stranger things have happened. Well here it is.


The Usual

Everyone on the bus looked as though they were going to kill him, their faces as tight as trip wires. Eddie Daniels returned to them the same stony glare of indifferent aggression that people carried on the No 4 Bus, or pretty much any bus on the South Side. The only people even slightly comfortable were the boys who sat in the back of the bus, steeped in the bravado of their youth, but even they knew that they did not know. They did not know who was on the edge and who only looked like they were. They too made ready threat assessments and exit checks, just like he did. Only they had themselves not to assess and everyone else did.

Eddie eyed them, concluding that they were only going to be slightly louder and a little more obnoxious than anyone else on the bus, but aside from that, nothing. ‘Nothing’ was the hope on the way home from work everyday for Eddie. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing worse than anything else he had already seen, nothing that smelled too bad, nothing wet .So far today, the commute was one of nothing, so Eddie turned his attention to the September sun setting over Washington Park.

The autumnal equinox had passed only a few days ago, so the sun set in a fiery red ball directly at the end of the streets, 35th, then 47th, then from 51st down to 61st there was the park where you could catch pinkish-orange glints off of the grass, and half the sky was a rainbow, the indigo creeping west from the lake, popping out an unblinking planet or two near the horizon as well as stars that turned out to be lights from airplanes that had no intent on the city itself.

Equinox was a word Eddie enjoyed in his mind. It was not a word he ever said, there was no one to say such odd words to. He wondered for a moment what the one in the spring was called. The vernal equinox, yeah, that was it. It sounded even more impressive than the autumnal equinox did. Autumnal was a giveaway, but the vernal equinox sounded like something that would have been decreed by someone with a haughty English accent.

He looked around the bus again. Did anyone else notice that the sun was setting in the middle of the street today? How could someone not notice this? There were only a few days of the year that the sun lined up this way, or that the earth lined up the way that it did, causing the sun to look like it was setting at the end of the street. It appeared that no one else did notice. Heads were bowed down into folded newspapers, tawdry books titled after old songs and the occasional bible.

After 61st Street, the western sky was a letdown. So Eddie wiped the wonder off of his face and returned to being a murderer, like the other riders until he reached 75th Street. Once off the bus, he took a half breath of relief, and then on to the store to get some beer for the night. “Loose squares, loose squares. Got them loose squares and fat nicks.” a young, hooded man said to no one in particular, while pacing a small box in front of the door to the liquor store.

“Loose squares? 2 for a dolla!”, but this time he was talking to Eddie.

“Naw man, I’m straight.” Eddie said back.

The young, hooded man turned his attention away from Eddie and back to no one in particular. Eddie walked into the store and smiled at the familiar face of the girl behind the counter. She smiled at his familiar face as well. “Hi baby, what you getting’ tonight?” she asked.

He would rather she did not call him ‘Baby’ like that. She spoke it with a coquettish drawl that was enticing just enough so that she had all of your attention and enough of your adoration. She could do that through slits in three inch thick plexiglass and be as enticing as if she had whispered, leaving hot droplets of her breath on the lobe of your ear.

“Hey, gimme two bullets of Old E.” he said reaching into his pocket, fingering dollar bills.

If her calling him baby, were not bad enough, she would turn around to reveal a behind that snatched the breath out of his mouth each and every time he would see it. He shook his head and whispered “Goddamn!”

She gathered the two bottles from the case and sauntered back to the window. “Is that going to be all for you tonight?” she smiled again.
“Yeah, that’s all.”

“That will be $2.70” she said while putting the bottles of beer into a bag.

He slipped three dollars into metal out tray that she slid out for his money. She placed the beer on the bullet proofed last susan along with the quarter and nickel that was his change. He pulled the change into his hand then grabbed the bag, turned around and headed out the door, passing three different hooded, young men. “Hi baby…” Eddie heard her say as he walked out the door.

He made his way through the gaggle of people that seemed to be permanently attached to the corner, to the stop light. He looked up at the sky, it was now his favorite color of sky. Red tinted in the west and the color of a light passing through a sapphire in the east. Azure, the sky was such a fragile, pristine azure that it appeared it would crack under the weight its beautiful color. He considered himself fortunate to be able to see it. He walked to his apartment two blocks away, often looking up, to see the sky and the few stars that had the audacity to shine over the city lights.

Once inside his third floor, studio apartment, he put one beer in the fridge in the ‘kitchen’ and opened the other. With the beer in hand, he walked to the aquarium, bent down and peered in. The fish ignored him, he tapped some food into the top and they all swam to the top to gather the flakes floating at the top. “Oh so now y’all know who I am. A minute ago a brotha got no props at all, now y’all all happy to see me.”

Eddie turned the television on and sat in one of the two chairs in his apartment, sitting the beer on the floor nest to him. Sipping from the beer, he watched sitcoms for an hour and a half, then rose to cook dinner. He beat two eggs in a bowl, adding salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and crushed red pepper to the mix. He opened a can of string beans and put them in a pot to warm. After that he reached into the sink where a steak had been sitting since he’d left it there to thaw in the morning.

He seasoned the steak exactly the same as he had the eggs and then seared it in a pan. He removed it and then scrambled the eggs in the same pan. He fixed his plate and returned to his chair with the other beer, He ate in no particular hurry, eating the most on commercial breaks, only occasionally sipping the beer. After the one hour drama, while the nightly news was on he cleaned his dishes, then showered and returned in earnest to the not-all-that-cold beer sitting by the chair. He finished the beer, turned off the television, said goodnight to the fish and went to bed.

I do hope you finish this.

Great descriptions! His sunsets look a lot like mine.

I like the rhythm of his routine and again, the contrast--between the words people would expect from him and the ones actually in his head.