22 February 2011

The Only Good Day

(View from the deck. You could walk to Harbor Springs, if you were crazy. Photo Socotra.)
 
Yesterday was a good day- quite like what the SEALS say about their basic UDT training: “the only easy day is yesterday. “
 
I got to Potemkin Village a little late after dealing with the assholes at WalMart. I strode across the lobby and took the slow-motion elevator to the third deck.
 
My first task was going to be a make-over for Raven, since he was looking pretty rocky. I thanked my lucky stars- Sherry was in the beauty shop, working on a woman whose head was slumped forward. The woman’s hair was great, though, helmet-like, and I stuck my head in and asked if she had any slots open.
 
“I am glad you are open on President’s Day,” I said, “Any chance of getting Raven in there?” She tossed her thick rich hair back from her shoulders. It was the color of honey.
 
“Like there are any days off.” She said, making a curlicue mark on the dark helmet of hair before her. “Bring him down. I was going to take off after this last appointment. And by the way, I take Christmas and Thanksgiving off, unless they are week-days.”
 
I was suitably chastened, and apologized. Only big-city types pay much attention to holidays. Up North you work when you can, not the other way around.
 
I walked briskly down the hall and rapped on the door to the apartment. Raven was better than the day I arrived. He did not smell and was dozing in that way he has assumed, with head arced back on his neck in an impossible angle and his mouth agape. He had several day’s growth on his chin and long hair on his neck an inch long. Creepie.
 
Magpie has to deal with it all the time, so she is desensitized to the way he looks. Apparently they had been up- or she got him up- and went down to the lobby for coffee and donuts.
 
Mom was concerned about the expense of the donuts, a sort of national entitlement in microcosm, and I assured her that if the cops could afford them, so could the Village.
 
I got Raven up and took the electric razor from its place on the coffee table and got him to the beauty salon. Sherry and I did a double team on him. I shaved him, as she started in on the wispy mass of gray hair in his balding pate.

(Greg Peck in the Day. Photo MGM.)
 
I said: "He looked like Gregory Peck in his prime."
 
"Who is that?" she asked, clipping away earnestly.
 
"Movie Star," I responded. "Doesn't matter. He is dead. But tall dark and handsome in his time."
 
Sherry shrugged.
 
I cut a deal, since the haircutting ran through the luncheon hour. “Lunch out of the building,” I said, “in exchange for the shave and a haircut.”
 
“Deal,” she said.  
 
I sat in the chair with the big drier-bubble folded back. Sherry was listening to a local rock station with familiar tunes. We got Raven cleaned up, and debated whether to take him back to the apartment while I was treated to a trim. I decided it was better to give him some stimulation and listen to our banter, and moved him from the barber’s chair to my observeration seat.
 
When the trim was done, I got him back to the apartment. He seemed happy, and he certainly looked better.
 
Magpie was excited about going out- she had heard of a new place in town to dine, right downtown. I grimaced. The idea of finding a parking spot near anything worth visiting was too hard to contemplate, and it was colder than crap out there, which was an image that was more than compelling, since I discovered while smoking a cigarette on the deck that some large animal had been sheltering there in the back of the house and leaving spoor- that is the nice name- in a large and thankfully frozen pile in the lee of the brick wall.
 
Colder than shit, I thought, when I rooted through the debris in the garage and found a shovel to clear it off. I just threw it, scoop by scoop, from the deck to the road down below on the bluff. Spring will bring it back to pungent decay, and I saw no reason to let it stay there in its pristine frozen state.
 
“How about the Side Door Saloon,” I said to Mom. “Dad used to have his men’s group there and maybe it will be something he remembers. It is the home of the Oliveburger, remember? You used to like those.”
 
Magpie didn’t seem to care, though she allowed as how she might still like them. That was a good thing, from my standpoint, since there was a big production number involved in getting ready to leave the building. Coats, hats, gloves out of the closet.
 
Then dressing Raven, putting the lightweight jacket Mapie selected back in the closet, fishing out the big parka, zipping it up. Seating the porkpie hat firmly on his newly shorn head.
 
Then down the hall to the elevator, which moves with ponderous elegance to suit the users. Then to the lobby, through the double doors and the arctic blast while I race to get the car an pull it up.
 
Once we were all in the rental car, Raven buckled in, I drove up US-31 past the places I knew so well and were all brand new to Magpie.
 
“The house was over there,” said Magpie, gesturing toward the hospital complex. I nodded. “Yep. Someplace over there.” I am always relieved that she doesn’t insist on visiting. It seems to have assumed a mythic quality, a fact for which I am deeply grateful.
 
“Nice car,” said Raven, out of the blue. Damn, I thought. This crap always has the capacity to amaze me.
 
The lunch went as well as you might hope, and the trip to the Supermarket thereafter was a real adventure.
 
It was so exciting that I was pretty confident that everyone- me included- was going to need a nice long nap when we got back.
 
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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