Fat Jersey Blues

Waiting for the Bus in the Reading Room of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, Haggard in a Leather Armchair

5 Waiting for the Bus in the Reading Room of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, Haggard in a Leather Armchair I still had the Army-surplus field jacket & the beige-leather work gloves, six of eight finger-seams shot, but rabbit-fur lining warm, oily, redolent of smoke. I was happy as I ever got in those days to have missed the 61B that ferried me to a private hell lower in the dank spiral than I can fathom now. I still had the watch cap I bought at Kress & the hunting boots my father gave me, the jeans & flannel shirt of my daily uniform & the dust motes left of a woman’s love & mine. What book did I carry in the jacket’s big left pocket? Such consolation to have one ready-to-hand in the cold. What satisfaction to have a corn muffin in the right pocket & money enough for coffee & let’s say Galway Kinnell or Daniel Deronda or maybe even Proust to read. How dutiful to watch the clock so as not to miss a chance to sink into the quiet chaos of that chopped-up Point Breeze Victorian. Miss Frick lived five blocks away. The lawn bowlers did their flanneled best on Sunday mornings. On each layover, the pilot fucked a new woman overhead. They shrieked up there over the good coke & each other. ...