The Rake Magazine

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  • Strong, Rugged, Somewhat Sweet

    On any list of the smaller enormities of modern life, other people’s Christmas circular letters ought to loom large. It is not the information itself that is so rebarbative. In the great scheme of things, knowing about the family’s new job/house/car/place at the lake is no more or less annoying than reading that Junior has scooped the Miss Joyful Prize for Raffia Work.

    What offends is not the list of facts; it is the impersonal braggadocio which implicitly animates their recital. Other documents in life that puff one’s importance at least do so to secure some good purpose: To get a pay raise or obtain a job. But the Christmas circular is bombast in its pure form, intended to impress merely for the purpose of impressing—vanitas vanitatum.

    How much more welcome than such cyclo-styled self-advertisement are a few words of personal greeting scrawled on a conventional card. One might even be happier to receive one of the un-Christmas cards sent out annually by an irascible colleague who experiences difficulty forgiving his enemies, even though he knows he really ought to. His concession to the Season of Goodwill consists of posting to the offenders plain black cards signed and inscribed in simple silver script: “I await your apology.”

    At least his cards are plain. The nadir of the Christmas circular phenomenon is reached when the puff sheet is accompanied by a card showing not the Holy Family heaped onto a single donkey fleeing into Egypt, but the Nuclear Family disporting itself somewhere warm. Such an exhibition can only be intended to promote envy and uncharitableness when sent to people spending December in Minnesota.

    The only one of these family snaps I have ever kept beyond Twelfth Night came from a sprightly minded graduate student the Christmas before the invasion of Iraq. The photograph showed her husband in combat fatigues standing next to his tank. Her bikini-clad form was draped deliciously across the front of the vehicle. The caption read simply “Peace on Earth.”

    It is good to know the U.S. Marines do irony.

    It is actually the Christians of Iraq I shall be thinking of this Christmas. These are not the converts of intrusive Victorian missionaries; they are communities as old as Christianity itself, long predating the emergence in the Western Middle Ages of Christmas as an important holiday. (In the early Church the great festivals were Easter and to a lesser extent Epiphany.) Their liturgical language is Syriac, a literary form of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.

    During the first three centuries of Islam, Syriac Christians were a vital link in the transmission of Greek science to the scholars of the Arab world. In the three centuries before Islam, their monasteries were places of poetry and of a spiritual endeavor characterized by considerable psychological acuity. Standing outside a monastery gate on the escarpment of Mount Izla, looking south over the little Turkish border town of Nusaybin, once a great center of Syriac learning, one can sense centuries of intellectual effort wafting up on the thermals from the Mesopotamian plain.

    Today the subtle symbiosis that has for centuries sustained these Christian communities is being brushed violently aside. Syriac Christians are leaving their ancestral land to live precariously as refugees in Syria and Jordan. And it’s not just Christians; the Yezidis, a small community whose principal shrine is in the mountains of northern Iraq, also live in justifiable fear. This tragedy seems to be little reported, though the Archbishop of Canterbury’s distress at what he saw when visiting refugees in Syria got some coverage on the internet.

    The sober consideration of this cultural catastrophe may be lubricated by a wine that, like the landscape of northern Mesopotamia, is strong and rugged and somewhat sweet. The people of Mount Izla were making their own wines in the time of Ezekiel, but I fear that today the grapes there get turned into raki (the Turkish equivalent of ouzo) or pekmez (a sort of jam). One may substitute a Parducci Pinot Noir grown in the precipitous hills of Mendocino County in northern California, which may be had in Minnesota for about twelve dollars. The color is a good deep red; an aroma rises with the alcohol as the hand warms the glass; the taste is robust and lingering.

    This wine would be good company for bread and cheese and hard thinking. Its mellowing influence might well evaporate the vanity of one’s friends. One might even start to wonder what can be done to stop the modern world from destroying all the good we inherited from the past.

  • Season's Eatings

    One of the toughest questions I’m asked is “What’s your favorite restaurant?” You might as well ask me which specific taste bud I prefer. Instead of a quick reference, this question begs a full discussion of the weather, the season, the time of day/night, what I’m wearing, who’s paying, etc. But that’s the thing about being a foodie—our hunger is unusually complex and wide-ranging.

    This means that gift-giving for food lovers can come easy; unless you give a box of steaks to a vegetarian, it’s hard to mess up. Epicures are by nature curious, so if you can appeal to even one aspect of their passion, you will earn a permanent place in their heart—and at their table.

    For the convert to “sustainability”: Alice Waters’s new tome, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, is a straightforward and tasteful discourse from one of the founders of the sustainability movement. Pair this gift with a loin of grass-fed beef from locally owned Thousand Hills Cattle Co. and the recipient will feel that all his ranting about factory farming has not been in vain.

    For the harried cook: The mise en place approach isn’t just for veggies—it can apply to a whole recipe system. The Russell + Hazel recipe keeper is both stylish and ingeniously organized so as to eliminate the 5:30 p.m. frenzied search for Chicken Diablo. Another way to save time is with the new OXO peeler: It fits in the palm and allows both speed and control over any vegetable. As a party gift, the time-crunched hostess will love the frozen cubes of chopped herbs available at Trader Joe’s. They melt perfectly and brightly into any concoction.

    For the Scandinavian locavore: Even if you didn’t grow up eating them, one taste and there’s no denying the power of the ebleskiver. These Danish stuffed pancake-balls can be filled with jam or chocolate and are made in a special pan created by the local wizards at Nordic Ware. Beyond breakfast, you can satisfy your inner Swede and support a small, local shop when you buy lingonberry fudge from The Sweet Swede. Dark and rich on the front with a deep berry finish, this is fudge even an outlander would love.

    For the dairy snob: Most of those who fall into this category are cheese snobs, and most of them believe that they must love the oddest, stinkiest, funkiest of washed rind cheeses in order to hold court. I say relax and enjoy the soft earthiness of Sottocenere al Tartufo, an Italian semisoft cow’s milk cheese that is plied with black truffle and aged in an edible vegetable ash rind rubbed with a heady concoction of nutmeg, coriander, cinnamon, licorice, cloves, and fennel. If you want to go the simple route for a lover of dairy, give a rich European butter like the salted Beurre de Gourmets—and a Laguiole spreader to use with it exclusively.

    For the adventurer: Your food-lover might never be an Iron Chef, but now she can study up with Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking. In his first book, Masaharu Morimoto gives wonderfully exact instructions on how to create staggeringly beautiful Japanese food. It’s serious kitchen work, especially the bit about how to tie up your samurai robe. Before diving in, your giftee should do an initial read-through accompanied by a nicely chilled glass of sake, that under-sung brewed beverage. Otokoyama should do the trick.

    Finders, keepers: where to get the goods

    Cookbooks: online at Jessica’s Biscuit or at Kitchen Window, 3001 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-824-4417

    Thousand Hills Cattle Co. meats: Kowalski’s, various locations

    Recipe keeper: Russell + Hazel, 4388 France Ave. S, Minneapolis;
    952-358-3685

    OXO peeler: Sur la Table, 3901 W. 50th St., Minneapolis; 952-656-0045

    Frozen herbs: Trader Joe’s, various locations

    Ebleskiver pan: Cook’s of Crocus Hill, various locations, or Nordic Ware

    Lingonberry fudge: The Sweet Swede, www.thesweetswede.com

    Cheese and butter: Premier Cheese Market, 5013 France Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-436-5590

    Laguiole spreaders: Williams-Sonoma, various locations

    Otokoyama sake: Hennepin-Lake Liquors, 1200 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-4411

  • Love That Latex!

    So, maybe by now you have seen Lars and the Real Girl. It’s a comedy set in Minnesota and the title character, Lars Lindstrom, is the sort of Norwegian bachelor Garrison Keillor never mentions. You see, Lars is a social misfit who sends away for an anatomically correct sex doll, falls in love with it, and begins bringing it along on visits to relatives and out to dinner. According to gossip, the actor playing Lars—Ryan Gosling—became so enamored of his costar that he bought her and brought her home, much to the discomfort of his flesh-and-blood girlfriend, Rachel McAdams.

    It’s the ultimate mail-order bride, but of course sex dolls are nothing new. Back when I was a sweet young thing on the comedy circuit, I spent a lot of time in L.A. with a famous big-shot agent who was trying to make me the next Roseanne. Aggressive as he was—he’s actually the guy Jeremy Piven’s character in Entourage is based on—he couldn’t turn me into the next Rose Marie. But we spent a lot of time together, and he would dazzle me with tales of his clients’ eccentricities. According to him, one of America’s favorite funnymen had a thing for elaborately detailed $6,000 love dolls. Actual Austin Powers-style Fembots made of flesh-like sculpted silicone. I guess the real women in his life weren’t cold, fake, and submissive enough.

    I’m pretty sure there’s a message here about the objectification of women in our culture, but I can’t get too indignant. The way I look at it:

    A) That’s $6,000 the guy won’t be spending on roofies;

    B) This is taking exactly the right kind of people out of the breeding pool; and

    C) I have considered buying the economy blow-up doll version so I could use the carpool lanes.

    So who am I to judge? Fact is, I did once have my own boyfriend doll, Armando. I purchased him for a bit that I used to do onstage, then I ended up taking him to parties as my date. This was a period in my life when dating a fella who would dress how he was told and listen to me for as long as I wanted was pretty appealing. I was up to the challenge of interacting with actual human men, but there were advantages to snuggling up to a guy-shaped balloon. For one thing, he wasn’t afraid of my single-mother status. And a partner you can store in the back of the closet was quite practical in the cramped apartment where I lived.
    Eeeew, you’re saying. How could you cuddle with something that just lies there like a lox: clammy, slightly squishy, and unresponsive? Hey, I’ve had girlfriends who married that guy. My problems stemmed from me being the jealous type. I was worried I would come home early and catch him with a female mannequin AWOL from Nordstrom, the two going at it like the marionettes in Team America: World Police. After a trauma like that you’d probably be incapable of having a relationship with another doll.

    It was fear of embarrassment that pushed me back to dating guys with a pulse. I couldn’t imagine wandering the streets after a torrid wrestling match, looking for an all-night bike repair shop that stocks flesh-colored tire repair patches. Or what about bringing him home to meet the folks? Mom would give him a big hug, making him blow a huge raspberry and sending him whizzing around the room a couple times, only to collapse in a wrinkled heap.

    In all likelihood, guys are psychologically better equipped to have a long-term, meaningful, and committed relationship with a latex lady. Guys love stuff. They love their cars. They love their computers. They love their boats. And they could love us, too, if we were just better engineered.

    My hope would be that owning one of these dolls is a gateway for a guy to have a relationship with a lady who is warmer than room temperature—the same kind of imaginative outlet I had when my Barbie was living in sin with Ken. Looking after a love doll does require a certain degree of commitment on the guy’s part. She is harder to clean than an old gym sock; you probably need a bottle brush. And lugging Silicone Sally to the dinner table and waltzing her around the ballroom before retiring to the boudoir takes a lot of effort. These things weigh 130 pounds, which makes them only two percent more plastic by body weight than Cher.

    So I will not wag the finger of disapproval from my comfy chair of judgment. We often try to mold our partners like putty. Is it really such a reach to send for one that was vacuum-molded by Mattel instead?

  • The Cat Who Outlived Christ

    “Baby” is thirty-seven years old. This is the claim of one Al Palusky, of Duluth, who considers the black, long-haired cat to be his best friend. This is not news to Al’s wife Mary. “When we were married Al’s priest told him that he couldn’t call Baby his best friend anymore,” she said. Al just shrugged and added, “It’s true, he’s still my best friend.”

    It might be hard to argue with that, but some people have questioned the veracity of Palusky’s claim about the age of his cat. There’s actually no way to determine it, since there’s no such thing as feline birth certificates, and it’s not as if you can cut his tail and count the rings. Also, Baby only visited the local vet for the first time at age twenty-eight (if you believe he’s now thirty-seven), when he was declawed. “I had to do it,” Al said. “We were just married and had all new furniture, and Baby ran all over the house scratching everything.” Outside of eyewitness testimony, the only evidence Palusky can provide is a photo dated from June 1973, which ostensibly proves that the cat’s at least thirty-four years old. The cat in the photo, grainy and shown at a distance, does have a sloping snout that seems to match that of the aged feline. If that’s not enough evidence, well, Al simply doesn’t care.

    Baby certainly looks old. There’s the matted coat streaked with gray, the milky white eyes, and the complaining, scratchy meow. Baby was adopted from an animal shelter by Al’s mother in 1970; her friend had rescued the poor kitty from the clutches of a gang of firecracker-tossing hooligans, who had him trapped in a garbage can. Baby was brought back to the modest two-story white clapboard home where he has spent his nearly four decades. In those early years, he had to put up with a pair of dogs and another cat, but as those animals passed on, Baby became the sole pet of the Palusky household.

    The creature still has some pep, as evidenced by the way he struts around the house or squirms violently when held. He’ll still catch flies, too, according to Al. But he’s definitely showing his age, and spends most of his days asleep. In fact, “Baby will sleep so hard,” Al laments, “that he’ll wake up and suddenly just poop right there.”

    There’s an upside to Baby’s age, however: It won him a contest held by Cat Fancy magazine to find the world’s oldest cat. Part of the $150 prize was spent on a new bed and some toys, and the rest was deposited in a savings account under the name “Baby Palusky.” Apparently, Baby will use the money for retirement.

    How do the Paluskys account for Baby’s longevity? Mainly it’s his diet. “The vets and so-called ‘people in the know’ say don’t feed cats from the table,” Al scoffs. “But Baby eats what we eat.” When Al and Mary sit down to dinner, Baby gets his own little plate of food as well. He enjoys peas, green olives—“and olive juice!” Mary chimes in—steak, and even corn cut off the cob (without butter or salt). He munches on snacks of cheese several times a day, and has an ever-present supply of cat food next to his water bowl. It’s a diet that appears to work, and not just because he’s thirty-seven—the cat is svelte, for all the calories he takes in. Ultimately, Al believes that Baby has lived to a ripe old age due to consistency through the years. “Same diet, same house, same owner,” he notes. The cat, too, is reliable: Baby serves as Palusky’s alarm clock, waking him in time to get to work as a janitor at a local medical center.

    Since winning the Cat Fancy contest earlier this year, Baby has been featured in a number of publications, on television stations as far away as Dallas and Los Angeles, and in chat rooms across the internet. Palusky is not much interested in all of this attention, though he would like to see his pet on Willard Scott’s Today Show segment honoring the aged—after all, the cat is 185 if you go by the five-cat-years-per-one-human-year-rule. The exposure has also led to a steady trickle of email from cat lovers challenging Palusky’s assertion. One of them, a lawyer, was sent a digital version of the documenting photo. Says Palusky, “The guy wrote back, ‘That would stand up in court!’”

    Other pet owners write to share tales of their own aged and beloved companions. And then there are the lonely souls who want to pay a visit to Baby and befriend him. At this, Al rolls his eyes. “Sometimes I wish people would just get a life.”

  • Born Again!

    “History dead-ends Holly Avenue,” says Michael Koop. The preservation specialist at the Minnesota Historical Society is talking about the way in which a neoclassical giant, complete with Ionic columns and a massive pediment, rears up in the middle of the avenue, disrupting the neat street grid characteristic of St. Paul’s tony Historic Hill District. Location isn’t the only commanding feature of the building, which was built around 1908 as the First Methodist Episcopal Church, and this month becomes the new home of SteppingStone Theatre.

    Constructed in an era when local church styles tended toward the Gothic, First Methodist made a statement from the start. It’s not a modest building—and, according to Paul Clifford Larson, that is precisely the point. “The church was built during a movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasized the importance of social ministry—what we call social justice today,” says Larson, who chairs the St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission. Because the church ministered to the larger community, not just its own congregation, the exterior was designed to reflect the humanistic ideals of the Classical era rather than a specific theology. Muted religious icons made it easier for people from all faiths to walk in without heresy; the church’s lone cross (now long gone) was effectively camouflaged within a circular frame. The building’s height—one must climb twelve feet of steps just to get to the front door—stemmed from the same impulse. The church leaders “weren’t looking for the highest hill, like the Cathedral,” explains Larson. Instead, he points out, their building “was always intended to be a community building. Methodists had been designing some churches with raised basements so you could enter directly into the garden-level meeting rooms” and thus avoid the sanctuary altogether.

    The architectural firm that followed that design directive was Thori, Alban and Fischer. Although this partnership was short-lived, the men had individual influence throughout the state. Martin Thori and another partner, Diedrik Omeyer—“the mad Norwegians,” chuckles Larry Millett, the architectural historian who includes the church in his 2007 AIA Guide to the Twin Cities—are responsible for many of St. Paul’s intricately baubled Queen Anne residences; while Larson credits William Linley Alban with bringing a wave of neoclassical architecture to St. Paul. Alban was also dominant as the sole partner with academic training, graduating from the Chicago School of Architecture. “He was almost certainly the chief designer” of First Methodist, says Larson.

    Like most churches, First Methodist changed along with the demographics of the neighborhood. In 1964, it became Saints Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Orthodox, and later, Grace Community, a church whose progressive theology eventually proved unpalatable to its African-American congregation. So much for the inclusiveness of the original church: Reverend Oliver White’s outspoken advocacy for gay rights left him with just eleven congregants in 2001, barely enough to fill a pew, let alone tithe for the staggering monthly utility bill.

    By this time it would have been kind to call the place a fixer-upper; estimates for repairs topped a million dollars and the tiny congregation went looking for a savior. A highly original developer offered to raze it and build condominiums. Word hit the street—on the eve of a city council meeting that would decide the matter—and guerrilla war ensued. Within hours, neighbors gathered more than a hundred signatures, enough to block the church’s sale and demolition. Another developer proved more acceptable, with plans to rent the church to a charter school. The deal was inked, but then the school moved elsewhere. The developer, David Kabanuk, was stuck with a million-dollar treasure, a locally designated landmark, a leaking, cracking, teetering entry on the National Register of Historic Places.

    Meanwhile, a bid by SteppingStone Theatre to buy the Highland Movie Theater had fallen through. The phone at the scrappy company—the only children’s theater in St. Paul, and a poor cousin, relatively speaking, to the Children’s Theatre Company across the river—started ringing. It was the Preservation Commission, it was former City Council Member Jerry Blakey, and it was dozens of the church’s neighbors. Thus wooed, SteppingStone bought the building. The city of St. Paul pitched in half a million. Corporate donors and foundations big and small, including Bush and McKnight, all wrote checks, as did hundreds of individual supporters. Ultimately, the $5.3 million gut rehab didn’t just restore the structure, it also revitalized the old church’s community spirit. Just as First Methodist did, SteppingStone’s artistic director Richard Hitchler plans to open the doors to the neighborhood, starting with a grand opening celebration December 1.

    Today the theater is a beguiling blend of old and new: both stainless steel elevator and creaking staircase climb to the balcony. Repaired walls pop out in pleasant primary colors; the original maple woodwork is buffed and gleaming. And even though the 430-seat house is outfitted with plenty of technological gadgetry, there are stained-glass windows that are cracked and popping, awaiting repair. Like any old house, the to-do list never ends.

  • Dispensing with Formalities

    A white-haired man in a finely tailored suit is breezing through the lobby of the Chambers Hotel with three black-garbed hotel employees, including the general manager, at his heels. He glides past Subodh Gupta’s stainless steel sculpture that evokes Animal, the wild-man drummer Muppet. He cruises by the bull’s head suspended in a formaldehyde-filled tank, a work by British bad-boy artist Damien Hirst, without blinking. What stops him is a throwback from the days before smoking bans. “There’s a cigarette machine in here?” he asks.

    The machine at the Chambers is a true antique, but there are no Pall Malls for sale. As Minnesota’s first Art-o-mat—one of about ninety such contraptions in the country—it has been retrofitted to dispense original artworks for five dollars—not much more than a pack of cigarettes.

    The man who founded Art-o-mat ten years ago, Clark Whittington, is in town to officially introduce the machine and to present a slide show about Artists in Cellophane, the collective of more than four hundred artists who create cigarette-pack-size artworks for the machines.

    The crowd of three dozen is made up of mostly curious onlookers, but Whittington is a rock star to a few. There’s a middle-aged woman from Minneapolis who enthuses about her collection of more than thirty Art-o-mat artworks, and Laura Gentry, a pastor, “laugh therapist,” and resident Artist-in-Cellophane member, who drove four hours from McGregor, Iowa, to meet the self-titled Art-o-mat National Bureau Chief.

    Whittington, forty-one, is playful and approachable—he’s an artist, but also a dude, with a military-short haircut, hipster glasses, and grease-monkey shirt with embroidered patches above each pocket that say “Lucky” and “Clark.” Fresh from the Van Halen reunion show with David Lee Roth in Greensboro, NC, he’s proudly sporting a gold VH necklace.

    Art-o-mat was launched in 1997 as a one-time installation, but Whittington now cultivates the project full-time. The range of offerings is impressive, from the crafty (handmade beaded earrings, or the tiny ceramic eggplants that Gentry makes) to the political (“Bad Boy Pincushions” that feature the smirking faces of Bush, Cheney, and other politicians).

    Whittington says he was influenced by Fluxus, the ’60s art movement described by one founder, George Maciunas, as “a fusion of Spike Jones, vaudeville, gags, children’s games, and Duchamp.” Fluxus was a kind of slapstick movement that snubbed the idea of gallery art, juried shows, and exclusivity in art—Dada without the nihilism.

    Jennifer Phelps, the curator who oversees the Chambers’s cutting-edge art collection, agrees, calling it “Fluxus for the twenty-first century.” She especially likes the arcade-like aspect to Art-o-mat: insert token, make your choice, and pull the rusty lever. That carefree act creates a bond between artist and buyer, even at the five-dollar level, and the artists play that up. Christian Andrew, who makes tiny modern houses from paper, will catalog the sold artworks as “[owner name] residence” on his website. Gentry posts photos of people with her cheeky ceramic aubergines in her online “Eggplant Owners Gallery.”

    Fluxus, wrote one critic, “happens when one feels that life and art must be taken so seriously, that it becomes impossible to take life or art seriously.” In that respect, Art-o-mat’s sense of democracy—and its price point—may be right on cue. Christie’s, the famous auction house, set an all-time record for single-week art sales this June: a jaw-dropping $485 million. No one better embodies the mania of the current art boom than Hirst, notorious for displaying various animals in formaldehyde; this year he created a platinum cast of a human skull, covered in 8,601 diamonds, which reportedly sold for $100 million. He titled it For the Love of God.

    At the same time, some 25,000 pieces of art are selling each year via Art-o-mats located in community centers, cafés, and even supermarkets. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most successful machines are at places like the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

    On this night, at Ralph Burnet’s $30 million art temple masquerading as a hotel, a swarm of people has gathered around the Art-o-mat. A student who wandered down from the nearby Art Institutes International happily snaps onto his backpack an R-rated key chain, featuring an artsy photo of a nude woman. Another agonizes over whether to choose a Styrogami, a miniature Styrofoam sculpture by J. Jules Vitali, or a Bar Code Tattoo by Omaha artist Scott Blake.

    A U of M freshman is interviewing Whittington for a research paper, while Phelps gingerly opens a ceramic ArtBar, a sort of anagram game. (If the pieces spell A-R-T-B-A-R you win one of the artist’s larger works.) “Darn it!” she says, when she doesn’t win.

    Whittington, standing off to the side, is documenting the night with his camera. He laughs when Gentry hands him a tiny eggplant stamped with the words “Gimmicky Bastard.” “Yeah,” he says. “That’s about right.”

  • Renaissance Man

    A tall man in his mid-forties with long wavy hair, a full beard, and round glasses, Richard Griffith has something of a troubadour’s air about him, which is appropriate given his status as a full-time lutenist. Since live lute music is no longer the draw it was five hundred years ago, Griffith has added a few extras to his act: poetry, prose, and prestidigitation. To the extent that the Upper Midwest has a market niche for a lute-playing illusionist, Richard Griffith owns that niche.

    On a crisp evening a few weeks ago, the musician/magician was at the Mad Hatter Tea House in St. Paul for one of his usual gigs. As he sat tuning his lute—a plump, bent-neck instrument that Griffith has heard described as “a broken guitar”—his wife Ann walked around arranging chairs. A grandmotherly soul named Fran Gray was pouring tea, and the dozen or so middle-aged patrons conversed amiably. “This is good tea.” “I like tea.” “Oh, I do too!” Shortly after seven o’clock, Griffith launched into one of the greatest hits of 1611. His audience sat in rapt silence; later, they ooohed appreciatively when he introduced a twelfth-century story about a werewolf.

    After several more lute pieces, Griffith asked, “Now, would you indulge me by letting me abuse your eyes and judgments?” A giggling volunteer chose a card from a deck he presented. The audience burst into applause when, after some theatrical maneuvers, Griffith produced a red cloth bearing the image of the card his volunteer had chosen. Then it was time for musical requests. “You know what I want to hear!” one fan exclaimed. “Yes, I do,” nodded Griffith as he played the first notes of “Kemp’s Jig.” Listeners’ desires aren’t always so transparent. “Beat My Wife” was a shouted request at one show. “Um,” Griffith ventured, “do you mean ‘Whip My Toady’?” The fan shrugged. “I knew whipping was in there somewhere.”

    Griffith’s skill in working a crowd dates to the early ’90s, when he worked at Treasure Island Casino as a sleight-of-hand artist—one who performed in a sequined pirate costume. “There’d be days when someone was losing big, and they’d come over and yell at the guy in the sequined suit,” he recalls. “Definitely not wanting a card trick at that time.” A guitarist since childhood, he acquired a lute on a whim in 2001, and within a few years was playing Renaissance fairs. Initially he didn’t get quite the reception he expected—he recalls that it was as if he were sitting there teaching algebra. “You would think playing Renaissance music at a Renaissance festival would be a no-brainer, but I have not found that to be so. A group out at the Fest last year was playing Jethro Tull covers, and I thought, OK, no room for the lute guy here.”

    Still, over time, Griffith has cultivated a base of devoted fans who appreciate both his proficiency on an obscure instrument and his willingness to indulge in just a little of the old razzle-dazzle. A year ago, he left his longtime desk job at an HMO to make a go of it as a full-time lutenist on the coffee-shop circuit, doing the occasional wedding gig on the side. His income from tips is sufficient to make the performances worth his while, and his wife is enthusiastically supportive. “It’s been good for him,” she says with an affectionate smile.

    Griffith’s most dedicated followers proudly refer to themselves as “the Usual Suspects.” There’s Steve Lelchuk, who sat with a book at the Mad Hatter performance, having attended another the night before. When Griffith mentioned his CDs for sale, Dan and Brandy Gergen joked that having one in every room of their house was sufficient. They discovered Griffith one day at the Olde World Renaissance Faire in Twig, Minnesota, where they were impressed enough to listen through several of his sets.

    Other Usual Suspects have done serious time in the mead-and-wenches milieu. Janet Davis, the ebullient card-trick volunteer, attends every single day of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival—in period costume. Indeed, a performance by Griffith is something of a mellow little Renaissance festival unto itself. He brought magic tricks into his act in part as a hook for crowds, but his ultimate goal is to complement the music with illusions incorporating mentalism, alchemy, and other supernatural preoccupations from the golden age of the lute.

    After Griffith closed with a sprightly dance number, several fans stayed to chat and rearrange the chairs. “Once you’ve been to a few shows,” explained Griffith as he packed up, “you’re one of the Usual Suspects and you’re going to get a hug when you leave.” With an instrument whose heyday is ye olde, Griffith appreciates his avid following. “Honestly, can the Rolling Stones say they’ve got that one guy who comes to see them play every time?” He paused. “Of course,” he acknowledged, “I don’t charge three hundred dollars for tickets.”

  • Kicking the Reading Habit

    The wailing and gnashing of teeth continues unabated at the Strib and other print publications these days. A report from ABC, the company that audits the circulation of the Strib and most other daily newspapers, just noted that most daily newspapers’ circulation was down again. The Strib was down over six percent.

    Editor Nancy Barnes had a folksy take on the whole thing in her column on November 11. (I could show you a link to it on the Strib’s website, but the link to the story goes nowhere, which could be a small part of the Strib’s problem.) At any rate, Barnes, after noting that her college-age daughter “gets all the news and information she needs online,” wrote, “I, on the other hand, cannot start my day without coffee and at least one newspaper,” and then continued to describe the daily’s efforts to choose stories her readers want to read.

    Probably since I am much nearer Barnes’s age than her daughter’s, I can also not conceive of starting my day without coffee and three newspapers. Unfortunately, of the three that arrive on my porch every morning, one doesn’t have enough in it to last me through my cup of coffee. And when the dog needs his walk, and I have to choose how to spend my time before work, the one at the bottom of the pile never makes it to the top.

    At MinnPost.com, a new web-based newspaper that will further damage the Strib’s circulation, David Brauer wrote a piece that quoted the Strib’s circulation director as saying the main cause of declining circulation was not the Strib’s editorial “fluffiness” (as Brauer called it) but rather “no time” to devote to the paper.

    Somebody in the circ department needs to send Barnes a memo to shorten stories and make them faster to read. Oh wait, they’ve already done that. So what could be the answer?

    Here’s an idea, and I have to admit I’m just guessing here: the real answer is not that readers have “no time.” It’s that they have no time for drivel, or a newspaper that churns it out as a matter of course. And if anybody thinks the Strib isn’t in the business of turning out drivel, what exactly do you call it when its media columnist lists one of his ambitions as “bowling alongside Cyndy Brucato”?

    Oh, that’s just coy self-deprecation, you tell yourself. But you’re wrong, because he follows that up with a startling exposé of the cordial relationship between WCCO anchormen Frank Vascellaro and Don Shelby.

    Sure, they’ve got serious articles in the Strib, too. For example, they’ve got all kinds of items about Russia, and Pakistan, and sometimes even Iowa. Unfortunately, they are usually things I read yesterday in the New York Times, the newspaper at the top of my coffee-stained pile.

    Even when the Strib does serious journalism all by itself, where is it?

    A good piece by Stribber Tom Meersman on November 12, about the draining of small prairie ponds, was at the bottom of the front page, right under the story about Viking Adrian Peterson straining his knee and another about soccer star David Beckham’s appearance in Minneapolis. Illustrating the Beckham story was a four-column front-page photo of ten-year-old girls with cameras waiting to take his picture. The story itself was longer than the prairie ponds story. While the ponds story was interesting and important for anyone who wants to know whether we might have drinkable water for our children, the Beckham story amounted to a series of quotes from people who went to the game, which provided insight on the level of “teen girls feel the same way about Beckham as Frank Vascellaro does about Don Shelby, except Beckham has his own fragrance and Shelby just has a special way of tying his tie.”

    I guess Barnes put the Beckham story on the front page because, as she says, she is looking for “the right balance in today’s wired world.” Part of that balance must consist of the nine photos on the Strib‘s website of Beckham’s appearance, including one of him with his shirt off, that must have revved up girls even older than ten. The link to that story, thank God, was working.

    Figured in, too, must be Barnes’ belief that she’s laying down a solid foundation to attract the readers of the future. I can hear all the ten-year-old girls in their fifth-grade classes today: “Sally, did you see that cool story on Becks in today’s Star Tribune? When I get old enough to decide what I want to make time to read, I’m gonna get a subscription.”

  • 1984 Dodge Ram Roadtrek II – $4500

    I bought this Roadtrek II, “the motorhome that drives like a van,” from a private seller (I want to say his name was Dan) three years ago. As transportation and sometime residence, the Roadtrek II has performed yeomanly. It is only because my mental health seems to be calling with some urgency for full-time non-vehicular lodging that I’m selling her at such an act-now price. I paid seven thousand dollars, cash on the barrelhead, for the Roadtrek II, on 7 April 2004. I can’t at present access Kelley’s blue book or a similar authority (Kelley’s website only estimates values for cars and trucks dated from ’87 to the current year, and Edmunds, though in command of a richer sense of history, appears to discriminate against motorhomes), but I think my (slightly negotiable) asking price fairly reflects standard motorhome depreciation, as well as the fact that the Roadtrek II’s water pump has of late been behaving in a way that might seem to controvert its manufacturer’s name (SHURflo). Also the stove, possibly, is discharging non-alarming quantities of gas. I’ve been getting mild headaches that seem inhalation-related, though I haven’t consulted a doctor about these (mild, as was said) headaches and can’t speak with any real conviction about their etiology. I’ve been having trouble distinguishing faces as well. Features—particularly eyes (and their brows), but also noses, mouths, chins, dimples—seem indistinct, washed out not only when I try to recall them at a later time (e.g.: orig. envisaging: 02/09/07; failed facial recall: 02/21/07), but also when I stare anxiously into eyes or onto faces. Has this ever happened to you?

    In general the Roadtrek II’s interior could use some TLC. Surely it’s not unique in that respect (:>).

    To pay for the motorhome, manufactured collaboratively by Ontario’s Home and Park and Michigan’s Chrysler Corporation, Dodge division, I used seven-tenths of an inheritance I received upon the death by ischemic heart disease of my mother, Leotine. The wisdom of the purchase was questioned by my vaulting younger brother, Shane, on whom more later, but I suffered no buyer’s remorse. In many respects I have “babied” the Roadtrek II. The metaphor is inapt in my case since I don’t like babies, but let it stand. In 2005 and early 2006, I was able to have the Roadtrek II’s toilet patched, replace its timing belt, and approve some two or three other tweaks to its Herculean V-eight engine, using money earned as a part-time—to the extent that thirty-five hours per week (give or take, mostly give) is part time—flooring installer for the Green House Effect, a Minneapolis seller of eco-friendly building supplies, and my benefit-withholding employer till six months ago, when the emotional hurdles I indicated above began to impede my ability to remove and install floor coverings with sufficient reliability or friendliness.

    During my stint with the Green House Effect, I spent much time laying cork or bamboo flooring and recycled-glass tile, to make way for which I’d have to rip up and discard perfectly good carpet, linoleum, or Pergo. The other, increasingly fuzzy installer didn’t speak much English, so I was the one forced to deal with the customers, mainly dishrags. Had I been in Kevin’s shoes (New Balance), probably I would have fired me, too.

    As you will see, for the purposes of this notice I forbid my camera access to the Roadtrek II’s penetralia. I have never been much of a housekeeper. My mother could testify to that, were she not dead. When you come to inspect the Roadtrek II, however, you will see that she (the pronoun now refers to the motorhome) is only messy and dirty, and, to repeat, in general need of some TLC, rather than damaged in any serious/prohibitive way. I may as well point out here that the blood on the Roadtrek II’s not excessively punishing queen-sized stern bed is mine and commemorates no stageable drama (nosebleed, 12/19/06). To my rare good fortune (“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”), my nose hasn’t hemorrhaged in four and a half months, though lately my skin has answered with raised, reddish marks to all but the most feathery touch or scratch. Any thoughts on this last malady? My Googling was inconclusive.

    I explain the bloodstain because I’m aware that long-term van habitation is a cliché of failure, and that single men in such situations are closely associated with creepiness. As it happens, thanks to the “kindness of strangers,” some of whom were not technically strangers, or, ultimately, kind, I have never really lived full-time in the Roadtrek II. (But try explaining that to the folks at Match.com.) (I haven’t, but you get my drift.) I mulled diligently over these stigmas before purchasing the Roadtrek II, from a Wisconsin rustic named, if memory serves, Dave, a Dave of the sort who says, “Hang on a sec; I gotta take a piss” before he even says hello. When you and I meet, at a spot of your choosing (if you’re stumped for an idea, one humbly suggested rendezvous is pictured directly below), I think you’ll find straightaway that I don’t fit the type.

    I am only kidding. We can negotiate the sale in a more public place. I have the title and an extra set of keys in the glove box (latch broken). The transaction could easily be accomplished on your lunch break, should you be granted such a thing. For many employers, a lunch break needn’t afford time for proper digestion, much less an efficient test ride.

    It does seem fair to say, speaking experientially and with no wish to impute unbecoming thoughts to other motorhomeowners, that certain distressing yet provably normal male heterosexual fantasies can yield increased anxiety when they enter the mind of a man in the driver’s seat of a disorderly (“garbage-y,” I’ve been told) twenty-three-year-old Class B motorhome. One worries that the Roadtrek II, serving as a conduit of bachelor-van-dweller mythology, is encouraging profligate /lawless ideations/behavior in its owner that might not otherwise surface. For instance, in the parking lot of a Chicagoland Jewel-Osco, I spotted and was palpitated by two milky-skinned, strangely spectral young women, women most likely in advance of legal maturity, probable girls would be another way to put it, and it is true that I fantasized, with traces of serious intent, about offering them 400 dollars to perform (really quite routine) sexual acts on and around the Roadtrek II’s handsome central table and surrounding quartet of comfy swivel chairs (minor upholstery wear and tear). This fantasy, no cinch to dislodge, never occurred to me in the precise form described above (in scant detail; I am no pornographer) when I owned Ford’s Aspire, teal with pink brands and accents. Granted, the Aspire didn’t offer much privacy or room to stretch out in creative positions, such as the “Moravian pony,” but then again, when I owned the Aspire I was living in a proper home, pictured below, where an assignation might have been played out with somewhat greater civility.

    Probably I should depart from this line of my sales pitch. Early in life I became convinced of the salutary effects of relaxed self-censorship, but the practice has gotten me nowhere.

    The above photograph no doubt reveals that the proper home I spoke of three sentences ago was not Hearst Castle, nor was it “proper” in the sense of belonging to me through a rental, mortgaging, or gentlemen’s agreement. And talk about cold! Still, prior to my mother’s passing and my consequent flushness, the white country home was about as good a home
    as I could imagine mustering, though it’s true that my imagination has frequently been self-sabotaging or at least self-limiting. I did a good amount of thinking and reading in the white country home, and for a while was happy there, till various mental and physical ailments recrudesced or emerged, most distressingly the aforementioned problem with faces, which at first were blurry only sporadically and only in memory (though including short-term memory), but then, as explained above, became more and more amorphous even in the present. This condition, incidentally, can obstruct gender determinations, especially during winter, when people around here are bundled in form-concealing clothes, excepting some young people who make a display of underdressing, as I myself once did, refusing as a teen to wear winter caps, regularly emerging from the shower just minutes before having to hotfoot it to the bus stop (you will find that I have since come to value punctuality), so that my wet, gelled hair would often freeze en route to the corner and compel my bus-stop-mate Melinda to pat my hardened “do” in a way that I later (too late) realized was flirtatious.

    Interestingly, photographs of faces are clearer to me than actual faces. See, for instance, my portrait, below, of my brother Shane,
    whose downtown St. Paul apartment, where I am at this moment,

    is quite elegant (“Oh for fancy!” my mother might have said), as you might conclude from my admittedly evasive photographic composition. Shane works in product development at General Mills (or, in the unaccountable and unfunny Frito Bandito accent he affects for the name, “Mjels Xenerál”), for whom he spearheaded the “underpublicized” (per Shane) 2006 makeover of the Boo Berry mascot. Shane was always the achiever of the family, always the one to secure an extra letter of recommendation or deliver the more tasteful (dishonest, omissive, sentimental, unctuous) filial encomium at certain sparsely attended Twin Cities funerals. He was patronizing me before he was out of knee pants. If there was a time when he looked up to me in the usual fashion of younger siblings, it must have been during my prehistory. It will do to say that little love or even comprehension is lost or even misplaced between Shane and me, and that it was only after a traumatizing incident at the Minneapolis central library’s computer hive that I reluctantly petitioned to use his apartment as command post for the composition and design of this classified ad.

    I will also be here, over the lunch hour, while Shane is at work, responding to what I expect will be a Noachian inundation of queries regarding the Roadtrek II, which already I have begun to miss. I am nearly weeping. Under different medical and financial circumstances, I would happily be the one to add the expected 112,648 miles to her current 187,352 actual miles and 360 intangible (though recorded) miles. Sorry to confuse you with that last bit; in confusion we are united. I don’t mean to say that the Roadtrek II’s fully functional odometer (fuel gauge broken, by the way) has been jiggered. (Why would I set the thing back a measly 360 miles?) What I mean is that I once went to sleep—get this—in the passenger-side single bed of the Roadtrek II, parked at a rest area in western Wisconsin, and woke up to gray-tentacled dawn in the driver’s-side single bed of the Roadtrek II, stationed friendlessly and bewilderingly in the “Coyote” section of a shopping-mall parking lot in Schaumburg, Illinois. I wonder if you’ve ever experienced anything like this before.

    My schedule permits responses only to the obviously sincere among you. I will try to answer your questions by e-mail, but bear in mind that I am here for only part of each day. It might be best to simply arrange to take a look at the Roadtrek II. When we meet, I’ll want to begin by asking you to pose for a Polaroid headshot. I’ll return the photo to you at the end of our transaction/meeting. I have an immediate opportunity to sublet a reasonably priced if felinely scented room from an unaffiliated fraternity of Hamline University, and I could use the money for the deposit and some basic furnishings, and so, in hopes of hastening a sale, the Roadtrek II’s price, as I said, is (slightly to somewhat) negotiable. Let us talk further soon.

    This item has been posted by-owner.
    Location: arrange meeting place with seller
    it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

    PostingID: 428675309

    Dylan Hicks’s fiction, criticism, journalism, and hack work have appeared in several dozen publications, including the Village Voice, The New York Times, City Pages, and the website Pindeldyboz. His previous short story for The Rake was anthologized in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2007.

     

     

  • National Guardsmen Roamed the Subway

    Things changed. National Guardsmen roamed the subway terminals now in their fatigues and black berets, brand-new assault rifles cradled in their arms. The homeless were suddenly visible again. Irony had reached the far end of its arc—Johnny Cash was covering Depeche Mode’s homage to Johnny Cash. It was a confusing time for me, after my neighbor went missing.

    “Who?” Jenny said.

    “The guy in 2B,” I said. “I forget his name. But it’s been days since I’ve seen him.”

    At 6:45 every evening, my neighbor and I would converge from opposite ends of the block like somebody walking up to a mirror. Once at the stoop, we’d grimace at each other and say, “Hey, what’s up, thanks, cool, alright.” We’d enjoy the mailbox moment, inspecting our envelopes with the focus of men at adjacent urinals; then, eyes on the floor, saunter in a way that suggested we were not following each other up the stairs. After a round of key jangling, we’d open our doors at opposite ends of the hall and, with a last glance-and-grin before crossing the threshold, shut doors and lock locks.

    Static from the outer reaches of the universe came to me through the phone receiver. Finally, Jenny said, “So what are we doing this weekend?”

    “I think it was Maximus.”

    “Anyway, that whole thing with the ringing turned out to be nothing. Did I tell you?” She knew she had. Telling me a second time was her way of chastising me for forgetting to follow up about it. “I got them irrigated and now my clothes hiss when I move and the sound of my own chewing’s driving me crazy.” Truthfully, I had trouble keeping up with the various ailing tracts in her body.

    “Geronimus?” I asked. “Heronimus? Something Roman. You told me so obviously you know.”

    “I’m talking to a deaf person here. Can we talk about something real for once? Can we? And not some bullshit fantasy of yours?”

    The residue of past arguments made it impossible for us to ever have a pure moment. It was combustible stuff, this residue—and each word a spark—making every conversation an exercise in damage control, in taking and offering the least offense.

    I unscrewed the cap on my beer and, holding the phone’s mouthpiece to my forehead, pulled a long, sudsy gulp. “OK,” I gasped. “When are you coming over?”

    The real problem was that Jenny was just Jenny to me. Her lips were no longer the kiss-raw genital echo they’d been those inaugural weeks; now they were plain old Jenny lips, cracked and bleeding in winter, greasy while slurping Thai noodles, painted on increasingly rarer occasions. She had become, as of late, so unmoored from me that we found ourselves—on our way back, say, from Sunday brunch somewhere—drifting as far as five or six paces from each other. A stop-and-linger at the local kitsch store window led to half a block of catching up on days I felt like catching up, or—on days that I didn’t—a phone call (after not finding her at my apartment) trying to untangle the misunderstanding around what the plan after brunch was exactly. “I told you I had work to do.” “You don’t just disappear!”

    I interpreted the permanent interment of her contacts in their little screw-top coffins and the donning the black horn-rims as an act of hostility. I couldn’t remember the last time she took her hair out of its ponytail, pulled back so tightly that dead-on she looked bald. And it wasn’t like she didn’t own slinky dresses or a decent pair of fuck-me boots. These days on “date night” she bounced along beside me like someone being baby-sat. She came to me on the days she worked in her chinos and bleach-yellowed oxford smelling of fried onions and boiled chicken. All of this I took as personal affronts, so that by the time she opened her mouth to say something at the end of a day, she was already at a disadvantage.

    And who had I become—to her, to myself? Lately, with Jenny, I seemed to be someone else entirely. He was a mask, a foil, some part she had driven me to play. I detested this guy.

    As I started in on the dishes, I continued our bickering in my head. I squeezed out some dish soap into the stagnant pool. An orange grease-slick dilated like something shocked, revealing a sunken pot with burnt meat sauce stuck to the bottom. I turned on the faucet and let the water froth, then left the dishes to soak. Wandering the confines of my apartment aborting tasks, I imagined myself being filmed—opening a pile of mail, looking for a CD to play, separating the strewn clothes into a Mine pile and a Jenny pile, leaving the two mounds as I went on to start something else—an imaginary camera on me the entire time, my self-esteem bolstered by millions of viewers, fans and critics interpreting my inability to stay focused, my meandering around the house as meaningful meandering, important meandering, a semiotic-generational meandering. I pictured this raw, aimless footage—me staring into the empty fridge, me flipping through the Daily News television insert for twenty minutes before realizing it was three months old—being edited into something funny and tragic and hopeful.

    But we were careful with each other that night. I opened the door to Jenny, flushed and pink-cheeked, snow melting into drops on her coat. She found the odd root vegetable or two in my crisper. She cut off the flowering portions and popped open dried and canned stuff I didn’t even know I had. She boiled a pot of water. She chopped and sautéed dinner, the peculiar odor of dust baking off the long-disused broiler preceding the more pleasant one of things being caramelized.

    At that moment I was grateful. I felt as though I were being rescued.

    The evening, however, went downhill after that. We sat on my futon. I wanted to say something but she preempted it by switching on the tube. We descended into a labyrinth of reality game shows and cop dramas and fell asleep without a word. I woke at three and turned off the television. Jenny, in a stupor, undressed. I did the same. We lay naked next to one another. I slipped into a dream where we were fucking and got up several hours later to find her, and her pile of laundry, gone.

    I hesitate to mention what I did for work in an effort     to avoid it defining me. I am not what I do, contrary to what’s said about that; or rather, I am not what I do for a living. Who would hold a person to the eight hours spent sleeping as a measure of the kind of man he was? My eight hours at work were just as compulsory, and as inert. It required of me a certain mode of dress, a certain conduct toward others. My interior life there was busied with the usual fantasies: that gust of courage which might allow me to say certain things to my superiors, to coworkers I despised, to subordinates I longed for. I was required to remember things and relay these things to others. I gave input when prompted. Sometimes I delegated. There were lunch breaks, coffee breaks and cigarette breaks (until I quit smoking, at which time I began taking fresh-air breaks). I went to this place five times a week, no more, and took off the occasional nationally appointed three-day weekend. My work schedule made me a good candidate for one of those cards you could swipe through a turnstile every seventeen minutes for a month, but I found myself these days walking back to the apartment rather than completing the circuit on the subway.

    Then it was Saturday. I was coming back from an overnight at Jenny’s. A postal handcart with its rubberbanded handle was parked by the front steps. I unlocked the front door and caught the mailman mid-sort: the entire row of mailboxes was tilted forward so as to allow him access to each through the top. We exchanged hellos. He asked my apartment and then offered several envelopes out of his stack.

    “You wouldn’t happen to know by any chance,” I asked, “if the guy in 2B did a change of address in the last month or so, would you?”
    “No,” he said
    , “but if he doesn’t come for it soon I’ll be filling out a fifteen-oh-nine on him. Will you look at it in there?”

    I peered into the box and saw a tubed mass of envelopes and catalogues. “I could hold them,” I offered.

    “And I could go to jail. I can’t just hand this off to you, just like that. He gives you the key, that’s between you and him.”

    Shortly after that, however, my neighbor’s mail began appearing in with mine, and as a result I learned some things about him. For instance: his first name was “Darius,” last name “Mies” or “Mieskowicz”; he was eligible for several major credit cards; and apparently his subscription to Guitar Player had run out. Also, I learned it was exactly five brisk strides from my door across the hall to his and with an ear pressed to the door, one got a thrumming, submarine hum—which was either coming from the apartment or from inside one’s own ear. The door handle was icy and, when turned, opened. The mail I’d slid under his door lay scattered on the other side among an accumulated litter of take-out menus.

    “Hello,” I asked into the darkness. I felt something move, and as I was piecing together a reason why I was bothering him, I heard a voice.

    “Hey there!”

    I stepped back and shut the door.

    The voice had come from above me. It was a neighbor, coming down the steps. She appeared on the second-floor landing holding a potted plant.

    “Locked out?” She was young, pretty.

    “I wasn’t thinking,” I said, and then, patting myself down, “I must have left them in my other jacket.” Even as I said it I realized that I wasn’t wearing a jacket. Or shoes.

    “Do you have a fire escape?” She leaned the plant onto her hip and jingled the keys in her pocket. “Because, if you promise you’re not a burglar or a rapist, I could let you climb down through mine.”

    “No,” I said. “I mean, there’s no fire escape.”

    She gestured with her chin at my neighbor’s apartment. “You live there?”

    “Yes,” I said. We both regarded the crooked gold sticker-stencils, “2B,” on the door with the measured silence one gives to a painting at an art gallery.

    “Because the guy I’m staying at’s is right above you,” she said, “and there’s a fire escape up there. That’s weird, isn’t it? It should come down right outside your window.”

    Sweat prickled my scalp. I felt strangely disoriented in this lie, expecting at any moment my neighbor to open the door and ask what was going on. “The problem is,” I said, “I do, but the window that goes out to it’s locked.”

    She seemed satisfied with this. A moment of silence passed.

    “It’s probably best,” she said. “I’m only crashing there while he’s away. He’d be pissed if he came back and found out I let some stranger into his place, right? I’m totally the worst housesitter! Look at this thing.”

    She held out the plant, which I noticed now was dead. It rattled as she turned it this way, then that, dry husks floating to the floor by her feet. “I need to find a replacement. But do you think that’ll work?”

    I shifted my posture—the whole time I’d been holding onto the door knob, which had become warm in my palm—and before I knew what I’d done, my wrist turned and the door clicked open.

    This, of course, didn’t escape her notice.

    “Wow,” she said. “That’s lucky! You should have that fixed, huh? Just think if you actually were a burglar or a rapist. Well of course if it were actually you, you’d be doing it to yourself, so I guess it wouldn’t be so bad, or at least not a crime. But if it was me? I could just go on in there and do whatever I wanted, wreak havoc, which for me is, like, not watering your plants.”

    She seemed to be waiting for me to make a move.

    I said, “There’s a hardware store down on Seventh that has plants in the window. I don’t know if they’re for sale, but it’s worth a shot, I guess.” My cheek muscles ached from smiling politely. I examined my socks. It occurred to me that she knew I was lying, and was, for some reason, playing coy. Was this a dare? I let the conversation lapse, but she continued to wait there. I stood my ground until I couldn’t stand it anymore. The only place for me to go now seemed to be through my neighbor’s door. “Well,” I said, “Good luck.” I turned and stared at the rusty nameplate beneath the peephole for a moment before stepping inside.

    It was cold in here, and still. I swayed awhile just on the other side of the shut door, listening for her footfalls down the steps. Through an open window somewhere a truck rumbled past. I felt along the wall for a light and turned it on.

    The place was empty.