cycloid sally

I didn’t have to close tonight. I didn’t expect it but Forager Girl met me at the bookstore and walked home with me. She was upset about something but wouldn’t tell me what. We had noodles but noodles didn’t help. Chain called and said he was going to be late. Forager Girl made me so nervous I didn’t have the heart to hassle him about skanks. Barris and Harry showed up. That was weird too: I didn’t get a chance to open the door for them because Monkey somehow did it. I don’t know how: the chain was on. And that is very high on the door. Just once I’d like to catch him at it.
So anyway we all sat down – on the floor, we don’t have four chairs – and Barris and Harry told us this amazing yarn about the forces at work in the city and I’m not supposed to repeat any of it but I am supposed to believe it all. The thing is, I think I do, and so does Forager Girl, or at least I think I believe that something’s going on that may or may not be exactly as they say it is, but is probably of some similar nature. So I promised to be careful.
Now that I think about it, I realize I’m not supposed to repeat this to anybody “not in the house.” And at the moment that Harry said that, Chain walked in. Harry changed the subject, so I guess he didn’t want to talk to Chain about it right then, but I also get the impression that he knew Chain was in the house already.
Anyway, at least now I have a reason to pin all those weird people on.

It was a long night. Mission Street wasn't like this last year. It was like everybody's going away party plus the most raucous of wakes and New Year's Eve and somebody's naff idea about Hell on a shoestring independent movie set. And that was just the early part, when it was still mostly kids. Most of the time I had no idea what the kids were supposed to be.

(note to ritaxis, who's reading this, I know: yes, Chain was grumpy about it, especially after about two in the morning and he'd been woken up six times. He had to work today and he says he likes his beauty sleep. Pretty well futile if you ask me. I mean, he's a bike messenger, for dog's sake, where's the beauty?)

Since I couldn't sleep I worked a lot. I'd have finished the stacking animals one, too, if Monkey hadn't taken it into his little doggy head to remove several of the stacks and distribute the little plastic animals all over the apartment. And then -- this was really weird, he never does crap like this -- he took the elephant stack and ran out the door when I was dealing with some adolescent trick-or-treaters who apparently weren't after the candy so much as they were asserting their right to ask for it. Does that make sense? So there I was -- Chain was out there somewhere at that point, probably chatting up some skank -- door open, dog tearing down the hall and a bunch of teenagers wanting to banter. I yelled at them to get the dog and they tried but they failed, natch, Monkey can be pretty fast when he puts his little doggy legs on the job, and I had to go after him -- he got to the street, and into the crowd, taking evasive action the whole way. Monkey doesn't do shit like that. By the time I caught up with him, he'd lost the stack and was sporting a hot pink feather boa fragment and a big poufy marigold stuck in his collar and carrying a Slim Jim, you know one of those skinny dry sausages they sell in the plastic tube. I guess somebody thought he was a trick or treater.

And then -- the doors were locked and I didn't have my key. Or a phone to call Chain. Luckily for me that guy Harry was drifting in around then -- I think it was only ten or eleven by then -- and he opened the door for me. I was only standing there on the sidewalk, barefoot, with an unleashed dog in a feather boa and a flower, for maybe twenty minutes. But somebody gave me a gummy ghost lollipop and somebody else gave me a coupon for a two-egg breakfast, so it was not all lost.

Our own door locked when it closed behind me too, but Chain got home around then, not wasted but a little smug and smelling of that damned oxygen bar down at the yuppie end of the street. It must have been a skank: there's nothing else in this warped galaxy that would get Chain into such a yuppie establishment.

And so Chain tried to get some sleep and I tried to recreate my work until Chain went off to messenge and I crashed.

Tomorrow is the first of the Wednesday Wanderings that Harry's supposed to host. I have to work that night. I hope it's not too dreadful.