6/6/11

Angela and Joe
By Chris Dean


Radiant gold hair drapes about her shoulders in strawberry soft tendrils. Her eyes won’t tell you what she’s thinking and you won’t care anyway, you only want to watch those pure green fairies dance beneath their thick canopy of lash. She has a trillion smiles, each one unique. None for you though, unless you’re nice to cats and children, and to her friends.

The flat above the garlic-scented pizza store is hers by squatting privilege. Robert, a man who was silly enough to leave Boston, left her one day on the couch in tears. It’s been years and years and now he wants back. Poor Robert.

Outside on cobbled red Bradbury Street there is always something going on. She loved the mimes that stroll over from the park when the bistro erupts with happy brunchers on Sunday afternoons. They’re funny people, those mimes, and sometimes she even dreams in mime. Long black limbs surrounding those squiggly faces. Human pretzels, that’s what mimes are.

If she buys a dollar sweet roll from the wonderful old woman who sticks flowers in her hats, then Angela always wants two. There is a rule about that. But that second cinnamony delight rarely makes it all the way back to the apartment. There is a lonely aqua container sitting at the end of the kitchen counter that has never met a cinnamon roll.

Often, Angela carries a sketchbook in her braided red bag. She captures interesting buildings on the blank white pages. Or tiny things, like flapping flags that catch her eye. But she cannot draw a pigeon or a person’s face. Only buildings with windows, and people behind the windows with strange shadow faces.

She enjoys walking for hours to unfamiliar places. She meets new people that way. There are millions of faces in the city, and she cannot draw even one of them. She likes meeting them though.

One of her good friends is Joe. A very angry, bitter old man, some might say. He caught her looking at his neighbor’s house one day and yelled at her from his living room window. Straightening her coiffure, she’d set foot on Joe’s property and begun talking about things that had nothing at all to do with the situation. “I live just off Market, in the district. I walk a lot. I wear out my shoes I walk so much.”

The old man inside the yellow house had exploded, “Get off my lawn! Go back to where you live, then.”

Toeing the dry clods, she had teased, “It’s not doing so well, is it?”

“Get off!”

Sighing, she’d strolled forward, swinging arms. The orange blouse’s fringe fluttering in the breeze. Her smile was a magnificent one, as if she were going to a birthday party.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I am off your lawn, as you requested, sir.” She was now on the porch.

“Get off my property before I call the police. You know what I meant. Now get out of here.”

She’d liked him from the start. That very first day with Joe spitting his venom at her, Angela had liked him anyway. It would always be a quandary. She’d sat down, ignoring what the dirty, splintered steps might do to her jeans. “There are many interesting houses around here. It is rustic. I think I would like to draw the neighborhood. Omitting your house, of course.” She rummaged through her bag and retrieved the sketchbook and charcoal.

“Are you crazy? I said go.” Now the old man’s voice was surly, not mean. “Why not mine? Why not my house?”

“You seem shy. I thought you’d prefer it that way.”

“No. And I am not shy. I just want to be left alone. Now go.”

Swiveling her head back, she’d caught first sight of him. An old man in a wheelchair hiding behind diaphanous blue curtains. He had coal black eyes and a slobber shone over the speckled, bent chin. The warped hands looked like old roots left on his lap by mistake. His black eyes gleamed resentfully at the intrusion. She turned away in an instant and remarked, “It stinks in there from cigars. Don’t invite me in. I’m am very allergic to malodorous places.”

“What? Invite you-? You are crazy. Now get out of here.”

“You have been waiting for someone to snap at. And my legs are tired. I’ll sit here a bit and you can growl and snap, and then I’ll be on my way, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind.”

“Of course you mind. That’s the point of being an old grump, now isn’t it?”

She was halfway through the pointy, tangerine house across the street when he finally answered, “I won’t really call the police but you have to leave. I don’t like people up here. Especially crazy people like you. You should leave.”

“My name is Angela.”

“I did not ask to know your name. What are you doing here anyway?”

“Drawing.”

“I can see that!”

For the next few minutes the only sounds were her charcoal pencil scratching over the coarse paper and his wheezing. The wheels of the chair squeaked. She finished roughing out three houses before he bothered her again. “How long are you going to be here? This isn’t an artist’s colony for insane painters.”

“I’m sketching, silly. I cannot paint.”

“You need to do it elsewhere. Whatever it is.” The chair’s wheels thunked on the wall inside. “Let me see,” he demanded in an awful voice.

“Do you like it so far?” She held up the unwieldy pad.

After a few moments he said, “Yes. It’s fine. You probably do it all the time. That’s why you’re good.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

She went back to her sketching. “You may have it when I’m finished.”

“What would I do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can leave it. I’ll look at it I suppose.”

Angela spent two hours with Joe that afternoon. He complained about the annoyance of having someone like her around, but said that she could come back. She has been back dozens of times. He tolerates her ridiculous strawberry cookies and she sips his salty lemonade, while she sits out there just like that first day. Sometimes he tells her what it was like building the first bridges in the Florida Keys. Occasionally, she complains about work at the museum and about life, which brings out his grumpiness. They are good friends, close friends, but he would snap at her like a dog if she ever dared say it aloud.


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Chris Dean is an invenerate misanthrope.