On Parmenter St. by Lenea Grace
“Where’s the parade, boys?” Jimmy’s scooping up the slush, as usual. I tell him nobody wants a goddamn slushie on a cloudy day, but he don’t listen. As usual.
Fat Morty thinks Jimmy is a regular comedian. This guy. I tell you. It’s been fifty years of this and Morty’s still snorting when he laughs. This guy. If he weren’t my cousin, he’d be yours.
So we sit and take in the goddamn parade of every day goings on here on Parmenter St. Not because we want to, but because we have to. Because if we didn’t, Jimmy’d have no one to talk to. That’s what I tell my wife after breakfast. She don’t care, anyway, except she thinks I’m wasting away my golden years. Her words, not mine. She’s always wringing her hands on that ratty red and white apron. I tell her go buy yourself a new apron. I don’t need a new apron, she says, why don’t ya take me to Florida? And there’s that little dance she does, kind of like she’s tap-dancing, only she’s in bare feet and the floor is linoleum. I could kiss her.
But we’re not going to Florida. Not this year. She’s busy with the girls and the church, and I got Polcari’s. Always spend my mornings at Polcari’s before lunch at home. Sometimes she makes me a salami sandwich, or tuna fish. Or I’ll microwave the leftovers for both of us. And if I’ve been a real good boy, sometimes she makes me a man. Haw haw.
Nothing doing today on the street. Used to be there were kids, our kids, playing all the time. Sucking down those slushies on the sidewalks, in the alleys. Lots of young mothers, blurs of shopping bags and high heels. Not so much anymore. The neighborhood’s changing, my wife says. Why don’t we go to Florida? Now we watch the slick cars speed by with Fast Eddies behind the wheel. It’s the cocaine. Morty saw it on the TV.
So we change, we change, so what. Between Morty and my wife, you’d think the world was going to hell in a hand basket. But me, I keep drinking my coffee. I wave to the Fast Eddies. I smile at the girl that shakes her tooshie on the corner. And when Morty gives her crap about how this used to be a nice street, a family street, I just tell her,
“Honey, it’s 1982. Let it all hang out.”
About the Author
Lenea Grace
Born: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Now Resides: New York, New York, USA
Online: www.leneagrace.blogspot.com
Bio: Lenea Grace is a Canadian writer and avid kitchen-dancer. An MFA candidate at The New School, she resides in NYC. Her work has appeared in Grain, Event, ditch, and Gulper Eel magazines.
