$2.75 on a lazy august night

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$2.75 on a lazy august night

Story & illustrations by

Catherine Daniels-Riveros

It was on a cloud ridden Saturday. No stars in breath's reach of even the tallest buildings, but still enough hot air to flutter around sticking wet to the nape of my neck and enveloping every sweaty doorknob in Downtown.

I sat, hands pressing smugly to my chin with the hot breath of August all around me. I watched smoke wrap its body in and out of the Café's yellowed windows, and I waited for a more familiar face that would move easily through the wet warmth in the air and take me off and away. I could not bare to lift my own dirty threads that held me in a spell to the arm rests of an old Café chair and would neither let me sit smoldering contentedly nor let me leap off my sweaty perch and run, hope-filled into the night. So I sat 'till 9:00 mesmerized in all the Saturday night lazy confusion until a friend would show.

9:15, and two sandled feet, toes dirtied from every dirt and week filled

crack in the concrete sidewalk dragged a sweaty face up to my chair and a

new adventure arose. I now was on the crusade to add $2.75 to my lonely 25

cents. That 25 cents, the falling remnant of two orange Italian sodas and

before that the leftover of uneaten school lunch money. The conflict to

reach a night of bliss was apparent. $2.75 lie blocking another heat filled

body layered room. This one though, filled with loud instrumentals - the

same terrible sounds that you could hear walking down Lincoln Street, still

apparent through the dime-operated Laundromat walls, music slipping through

the cracks and dancing on the rumbling tops of the sun-yellow dryers.

And with 11 shiny quarters more I would sit, maybe even stand, feet

rhythmically hitting gray ash-smoothed floor boards. It could be another

one of those hard-to-come-by-action-filled nights before Fall came. I felt

shy about the idea of asking for quarters the way hobos do around gas

stations and party stores trying to bum cigarettes.

But eleven pleading looks later I could easily be the recipient of a

permanent marked 'X' on my hand and be hushed through heaven's door where

breath and odor smacked your senses as swiftly as the music did.

However, I was to play lonely on a Saturday night, no begging for change or

resolution made. My friend did offer me a warm 25 cents, lint adorned from

the depths of his pocket, and with that we walked down to the liquor store

to have Hostess work her saccharine spell on our mouths and make us feel

better.

9:23 we walked down the street to sulk and sit on top of the frowning gray

washers, hoping to hear the opening drum loop of the show. We sat like this

until the heat ducts began to wrestle for attention, getting hotter, making

our already wet locks fasten more limply and warm than before to our ears

and foreheads - the music was outdone and we sat more defeated than before,

as the hot air rumbled on.

Bored and sticky I sat drunk with the heat as my friend wheeled me around

in a clothing cart, wheeling wide circles on the blue linoleum tiles of the

Laundromat. 9:30 or so- it all happened so quick. Turning a corner in the

cart I rammed feet first into an annoying sunny dryer, jackknifed out

hitting my head on its happy yellow side. A sandwich bag showered silver

gold, every quarter and dime clinked sweetly to the waxed floor, sound

deafened by the angry rumble of the ducts. My eyes watched in the

smoldering heat of August, the white light of the dime Laundromat, as for

now all of my problems stood solved.

Still, I lay dizzily slumped on the cold linoleum like a child resting its

head on the motherly blue floor. My comrade, unshaken sensing victory,

grabbed my hand and with the other he scooped up the sandwich bag of

abandoned change. These coins were meant to be shoveled in a machine for

dry clothes, but instead used for a night of our heavy feet, turned light

hitting the gray ashen floor boards. My still dizzy and goose-bump adorned

head making rhythmic circles to a bass line in the lazy August heat.

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Catherine Daniels-Riveros was a full time student at  SASA  (Saginaw Arts &

Science Academy) who lives in Midland.  Her concentration of study at SASA

was two-dimensional art and wrote this piece for her language arts class.  She

is relocating with her family this fall to the Washington, D.C. area.

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