Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Liz Mathews

Now that the Union Square theater has become one of the few in Manhattan without a reported bedbug infestation, I had little problem winding up there on a recent half-day Friday to view Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But the movie and the theater have little to do with this.

Prior to the show beginning, I told the friends I was with to save me a seat, and dashed to the bathroom. Now, careful reader, you may recall the bathroom attendant I wrote of approximately one year ago, the one charged with standing in a bathroom without air conditioning, to direct a line of fidgety women. The one who was entirely positive even though her job left much to be desired.

At first I didn’t recognize her, this being one year later. Sure, I’d seen her a few movies ago, taking tickets and sweeping the lobby, and I was relieved yet somewhat saddened that she still had a gig at the theater. But now one emotion has settled in.

“Ladies, please take care to remember your valuables. Thank you for choosing the Union Square Regal Theaters. We appreciate your business and hope you enjoy your time with us,” the voice over the intercom in the bathroom sounded.

Except that there isn’t an intercom in that bathroom.

The voice was coming from the bathroom attendant, perched on top of a mobility scooter and moving slowly toward the sink area. As I washed my hands she moved past me to the bathroom’s exit, ever mindful of the other people in there, her voice still the canned one comparable to those featured on the new fleets of subway cars, or escalator safety reminders.

“Clear away from the entrance, please. Coming through. Please clear the entrance. Coming through. Step away from the entrance,” she sounded, back ramrod straight, all the way out the door.

And as I walked out after her, I thought of all the ways that people can change over the course of a year. And how, sometimes, the changes that occur are far from the ones we had hoped for.

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by Naomi Solomon

It had already been a strange weekend when I met Russell. He pulled up in front of the inn half an hour early on Sunday, the charter bus bigger and louder than I had imagined it would be. I fumbled my way out of the hammock and to the side of the bus, feeling strikingly unprofessional in a still-wet bathing suit mostly covered by an undershirt and shorts. If he thought I was anything but the highly-efficient-and-seasoned-yet-friendly event planner that I hoped I’d sounded like over the phone, he was kind enough not to give any indication.

We agreed that I would do a quick lap and remind everyone of the departure time while he stayed on the bus and made sure it was properly air-conditioned.

Twenty-five minutes later I was back and fully dressed, in time to see Russell helping the first guests load lawn chairs and picnic blankets into the luggage compartment, telling them how it’d be a quick ride since he lived right there in the area we’d be visiting and knew the way by heart. When everyone was on the bus I did a headcount, compared it to my list, felt briefly like a camp counselor (on Family Day, I guess, since most of the group was roughly my parents’ age), and gave Russell the go-ahead to drive on.

I sat in the seat just behind him, and explained over the combined roar of the AC and diesel engine, “We bought the tickets for tonight way in advance, and a few people ended up not being able to come. I can’t get a refund on the tickets, so if you want to come in with us you’d be more than welcome, and if you know of anyone else in the area, they could come, too—maybe your wife? We might as well use the tickets.”

“Oh yeah? That would be really nice. My wife’s home with cancer, she’s not feeling too well today, but maybe her son and his girlfriend will come.”

He said it casually, matter-of-fact but not unfeeling, as if he was used to having people dismiss a painstaking daily struggle as mere circumstance. Not inviting sympathy, but not discouraging it, either.

“Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that. And sorry we’re taking you away from her on the holiday.”

“Well, that’s the job. She understands. I mean, it was different before I took this job, but now I just kind of have to take whatever gigs the bus company comes up with for me.” He held the wheel casually as he spoke, eyes scanning the darkening road ahead comfortably. Russell seemed to assess the familiar route for helpful updates rather than check against potential hazards.

“What did you do before?”

“Let’s see, I was a real estate agent for years, but it’s a tough job in this area right now, and after a while it just didn’t seem worth it to keep up my license. I drove a truck for a while, and that’s pretty good money but it’s lonely and it was taking me away from home for too long. So this is better in a way, but they only pay twelve dollars an hour.”

We talked a bit more, and then he pulled into the parking lot and the next few hours were a bustle of passing out tickets, getting the group to the barbeque and then from there to the lawn where we’d watch fireworks, entertaining the few kids in the group with goofy improv games and discussing the beauty of the surrounding topiary with the adults. That twelve dollars an hour stuck with me throughout: at this elaborate botanic garden each ticket to see the fireworks display was nearly three hours of work, and dinner passes were roughly the same. I didn’t have a wife with cancer or a stepson with (as I learned on the drive back) a history of DUIs that made it difficult to find work, and the for the money I was making that weekend confirming tour reservations and shepherding strangers from pool to museum to dinner to fireworks, I should be spending over twelve hours per day behind the wheel.

When he dropped us off back at the inn, I shouted a goodbye to Russell into the bus from the dark and perfectly-kept lawn, and wished him and his wife the best. He nodded and smiled.

“I hope she got to see the fireworks on TV,” he said. “They were really something, really a beautiful show.”

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by Liz Mathews

You
You go upstairs to the vending machines to get a Diet Coke. While there, you notice that the snack machine has Twix, for once. You drop $0.75 into the machine and step back in anticipation. The coil around the front candy bar unwinds. You wait for the bar to fall. The coil unwinds more. It stops. The Twix dangles maddeningly.

You attempt to shake the machine, but the machine is too heavy. You consider hitting the machine, or body slamming it, but then think of the people working in the offices nearby. Your shoulders fall with disappointment and you leave, the Twix still dangling out of reach.

Your Coworker Jen
Back on the 14th floor, you approach your coworker Jen. “Is there any way to get back $0.75 the vending machine stole?” you ask her.

“Email Office Services,” she replies.

So you do.

Office Services
Office Services does not respond to your email, which is mostly fine with you because you feel like an ass for bugging them. But then, on the third day, an email appears:

“Leave a note with your name and extension on the machine, and the vending machine guy will either get you the candy or your money.”

Great! you think, because here is a solution to a problem you’d forgotten about. Except then you think about it some more, and realize that everyone in the entire Flatiron building could read your note, and know that you are a cheapskate and a glutton.

But then you think about it even more, and write that note and run upstairs and tape it to the machine.

The Vending Machine Man and the Woman Who Leaves You a Voicemail
More days go by, and you forget what you’ve done. One morning you return to your desk and notice you have a phone message.

“Hi. I’m calling from the 19th floor, right by the door on the south side. The vending machine guy left you a candy, some M&Ms, because he didn’t have any Twix. You can stop by whenever to pick it up,” the voice trailed off with slight annoyance.

You’d thought you were embarrassed before, when you left the note. But now that an innocent bystander has been drawn in, you seriously consider abandoning your candy in effort to save face.

But she already has your name, and extension. So you trudge up to the 19th floor, and seek out this woman who sits by the door, who you walk past every time you decide you’d like a Diet Coke. She hands you the peanut M&M’s. You can barely look her in the eye. “Thanks,” you say, and then, “I’m sorry.” She has no response.

You, In Conclusion
That day during your lunch break you stop in the Duane Reade across the street and by a 12-pack of Diet Coke. This ensures that for at least three weeks you won’t have to show your face on the 19th floor.

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by Liz Mathews

Several years ago I helped some friends move, and in the midst of unloading the moving truck, a Time Warner representative showed up to install an Internet connection in their new place. I was supremely impressed by my friends’ planning ability—the Internet, right away in the new place!—and have tried to do the same in my own moves ever since.

Thus, one day before officially inhabiting my current place, I spent the afternoon in the empty apartment, cleaning surfaces and waiting for the Cablevision guy to appear, anytime between 2 and 5 p.m. A young man in a navy blue uniform and neon orange safety vest showed up promptly at 3 o’clock. He asked if I’d been waiting long. Naturally I lied and said, “Not at all.”

The Cablevision guy checked out the apartment and told me he’d be right back. Twenty minutes passed before the doorbell rang again. I let him in and he walked into the living room with his stapler and cables and boxes. “Nice place,” he said. “But expensive neighborhood.”

Thinking of the past two neighborhoods I’d lived in, I disagreed in my mind. But out loud, “Where would be cheaper?”

“East New York.” He paused, looked at me. “But you don’t want to live there.”

I looked out the window while he connected the cable to the wall, and wandered from empty room to empty room as he set up the modem.

“Do you drive?” he asked. “Not here,” I said. “You’d never find parking out there,” he pointed toward the window.

And then we both settled in the living room while we waited for the modem to reset itself. He asked what time it was, and it was 3:30.

“I’ll be done early today—and I’m not going to tell my boss, either. When I’m running behind, it’s not like they send someone along to help me get caught up again. Nope.” I laughed because that was certainly the way of things most of the time.

He asked where I was from, what I did. He, in turn, told me that he’d studied to be a medical technician upstate, but hadn’t finished. He had a child on the way, so having a job and not paying for school was a necessity. But he’d go back. Cablevision was just for now.

The modem reset and he tested a few websites on my computer to make sure everything was in order. It was.

As the Cablevision guy packed up, he told me he and his girlfriend were going to the hospital soon to find out if their baby would be a boy or a girl. His excitement was palpable; its glow was highlighted by the orange in his safety vest.

I saw him out, and wished him the best of everything. I will likely never see this Cablevision man again, but I was excited for him, too. All the unknowns that stretched out before him, and then other unknowns and on and on and on into the future. So much to look forward to.

I, in turn, had the Internet in my new apartment.

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by J.B. Staniforth

Part two.
Read part one.

Steve used to come into my store with a pleasant blonde woman whose name is lost to me now. She might have been called Catherine. One Saturday afternoon, the two came in drunk and giggly. They called me over to help them pick a movie, and got more and more distracted the longer they hung around. They must have been there an hour, joking with me and not really trying to leave, before Steve said, “That’s it, I’m going to close my eyes, stick out my finger, spin around, and walk to the wall. Whatever movie I’m touching is what we’re taking.” They did it that way, and as they paid, Steve said to me, “It’s a beautiful day outside, we’re drunk, and we’re going to go home and make love.” He cackled. Catherine feigned shock with a large grin, shoved him, and said, “You jerk! You don’t have to tell everyone!” They left arm in arm.

The last time I saw Steve, he hadn’t been in for a while and he explained that he’d pitched an idea to the city whereby he’d teach homeless youths wood-working skills, and they would make and fix benches and public furniture in return for a paycheck and a trade. The idea had been accepted and he was thrilled about it. In his off-time, he was making mouldings, bookshelves, and balustrades for one of the early dot-com millionaires and said he could probably live for years off of what he was being paid. He had the idea that he was going to return to Japan to learn a new carving specialty and look for his son.

It was a few months later when I saw Catherine for the first time in ages. I asked how she was and had she seen Steve lately, to which she replied with a look of horror and puzzlement.

After a moment, she said slowly, “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” I said.

“Steve’s gone,” she said.

“He went back to Japan?” I said.

“No. Steve…” Catherine trailed off. “He passed on. He died.”

I was stunned. I was now seventeen, but still had only known grandparents and great-aunts and uncles who died. No one close to my age, or even my parents’ age. As I understood it, they just… didn’t. My face hung slack with astonishment as I asked her how.

“He was feeling sick, so he went to the doctor, and they told him he had an aggressive form of cancer. They gave him six weeks to live and he died two weeks later.” Catherine was crying now.

“God, I’m so sorry,” I said.

“So am I.” She removed a wadded Kleenex from her leather-tassled purse and wiped her eyes with it

She didn’t get a movie that day. As she left, she gave me a hug, and said, “Take care of yourself. Stay well.”

Until then, I hadn’t realized I might have to.

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by Liz Mathews

It was a regular Monday night at my part-time job, around ten-thirty. I was staring off into space and wishing I was anywhere else when my coworker, Eric, prodded me. “Look, it’s a white sheik.”

I looked, and indeed, the man standing near the hardcover nonfiction bestsellers was wearing a turban with blonder than blonde wisps of hair peaking out from under the edges. He had an equally pale beard feathered about his chin and cheeks. Along with his white turban, the man was sporting a Yankees jacket and baggy blue jeans.

“Huh,” I said, ready to go back to evening-dreaming.

“But check her out.” Eric nodded at the gorgeous pixie of a woman at the man’s side.

“Hm,” I said, trying my best to not to feel inadequate.

“What is it with the weirdos and their hot girlfriends?” Eric asked, then walked into the cash office, slamming the door behind him.

The minutes ticked by. The couple disappeared. Eric came back. More minutes passed. Slowly.

Suddenly the couple was standing at Eric’s register. She was buying a book. He was standing off to the side, sipping bubble tea from a clear plastic cup via a magenta plastic straw. Eric remarked on the book she was buying. She responded charmingly in a hybrid accent—call it Austrian-French—completing her answer with an extravagant and glittery smile. The man sipped his bubble tea and checked her out out of the corner of his eye, a look of satisfaction splattered across his whiskered face.

Eric asked if they’d like a bag for their purchase. “Oh, no plastic in our home,” the gorgeous woman with the strange accent replied. “We’re green,” the man added, and smirk-smiled. “Thanks for getting me that, babe.” He took another sip of his bubble tea.

Eric put the receipt in the book the beautiful lady had just bought for the turbaned blond man. She took a sip of her own bubble tea from a clear plastic cup with a blue plastic straw and picked up her handbag.

“Have a good night, now,” the man said to Eric and I as they went past, his left hand coming to rest below the small of her back.

The couple walked toward the door with their book and without a plastic bag, do-gooders heading out into the night, slurping up their teas the whole way.

“What is it about that guy?” Eric asked. “Some freaky mind-control sex thing? I guess that exists.” He shook his head and turned to go back to the cash office.

I waited until the glass doors closed behind the couple, obscuring my view. “Hey Eric, do you suppose they’ll throw those plastic cups away before they go inside their home?”

Eric laughed. All the way into the cash office, Eric laughed and laughed. I smiled, too.

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by J.B. Staniforth

Part one.

We were old enough to know there was something weird about a guy in his late thirties trying to be friends with us, but young enough to think that was it probably alright. And we were right. He was a nice guy, just lonely.

I started working at my first video store when I was fourteen—probably too young to legally have the job to begin with, certainly too young for a place that stocked porn. The store was in the middle-class neighborhood where I grew up, and it was the kind of place where everybody who came in was friendly with the staff, whether we liked it or not. That’s where I met Steve; it was the early ’90s, and his active-80s look—with his tank tops, Lycra shorts, mirror shades, and hair gelled up—was a stylistic throwback. But he was kind and funny, someone I was always thrilled to see come in the door. At sixteen, I was happy to have decent people come in and talk to me at my post, treat me like I was an adult, and chew the fat with me about their lives.

As a teenager, I’d go out of my way to do stuff like going to the theatre when I heard it was only seven bucks for students. More than anything I wanted to wish myself into hastened adulthood, and taking in a play on a school night suggested the cultured life I’d have when I was old enough to have it. So it was that my friend Michelle and I were at the Great Canadian Theatre Company one evening, when at intermission we discovered we were sitting in front of Steve, who was there by himself.

He joked around with us until the play started up again, and when it was over he offered us a ride home, which we accepted, believing correctly that he wasn’t going to rape and kill us. He did, however, first take us back to his house.

Steve was a classically trained Japanese woodcarver and rented a gigantic wood-shop, in the back corner of which he had built a small, windowless living area, separated by hand-made Japanese screens. As he showed us around, he explained that he’d moved to Japan to apprentice his craft, had fallen in love and married there, and had moved back here with his wife and son. After only a few years, his wife left him, taking their son, and had moved back to Japan. She left no information with which he could find them. In their absence, Steve had no more need of his house, so he moved into the shop.

He showed us the living area: there was a tiny kitchenette, a table, a love-seat near a television, and a single-sized futon on the floor. Around it were pictures of his son, pictures of him with his son, and pictures of his family before it was disbanded.

I wanted to get out of there. A man I only knew as a friendly customer was telling us this story of sadness and abandonment, the intimacy of which felt like an exhibition I was too young to bear. The longer we stayed, the more it seemed like his confidence was a pretext to something creepier. Michelle was more sensible and patient than I was; she listened, asked questions, and tried to console him, silently signalling me to stop my uneasy fidgeting. She was right in what she later told me: he didn’t seem like he had a lot of people to talk to.

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by Naomi Solomon

Small and slightly crumpled-seeming—from her ponytailed hair, frizzy and dyed reddish-brown, to her gently wrinkled face, to the crinkle in her lilting voice—Nadia will lead you from the carpeted locker room where the front desk attendant left you into small side room that looks like a cross between a hospital room and the waiting area of a therapist’s office, all soft lighting and sheet-draped beds. She introduces herself several times during the short walk: “I am Nadia—easy to remember, yes? Nah-dee-ya.”

Inside, she closes the door, adjusts the lighting imperceptibly, and holds up a large white towel that easily devours the full breadth of her armspan, forming a droopy barrier between you and her. She turns her head ninety degrees and tells you to hang your robe on the hook behind the door and lie on your belly on the bed. You do as she says, feeling awkward as you raise your arms in front of your naked self to hang up the robe, and lie on the bed, wriggling on your knees and elbows to center yourself on the white expanse. Nadia has followed you over, walking sideways so she can continue to hold the towel between the two of you. Once you are settled, she covers you in one big efficient swish, as if she were an expert picnicker laying out a picnic blanket on a smooth lawn, before she sets to work tucking and folding the towel to reveal everything but the crack of your buttocks, essentially transforming the giant swath of white cotton into a bulky g-string.

Whatever treatment you have asked for, Nadia will assure you, “You will love it, you see. Your skin afterwards is soft like the baby, you love it. Do not worry, if it tickles that means it’s working, making skin soft and nice.”

Then she sets to work, doing whatever you said you wanted when you called to make the appointment: a mud wrap, maybe, and she covers you quickly, her latex-wrapped hands smoothing thick green sludge all over the uncovered parts of you; or a sea scrub, and she rubs something gritty and fresh-smelling quickly and fiercely into your skin. Midway through she steps aside to refill the small metal mixing bowl of mud or all-natural exfoliant, and while her back is turned she tells you to flip over. When she approaches you again it is behind another towel, which this time will stretch from just above your nipples to end in a neat V over your pelvis. Again you are slathered or scrubbed, Nadia’s hands darting briefly under the towel to cover your belly.

After letting it soak or tingle or harden for fifteen minutes, she sends you to a very hot shower to rinse off, and when you come back warm and pink and shiny-feeling, and open, as if your pores and mind and lungs have shed anything that had stuck in them too long, she’ll tell you she wants to give you a hug, brief moments before she does so.

On your way out you see Nadia with her next client, and you stop her a moment to slip her some money—she smiles and nods, maybe hugs you again, and slips it into a pocket beneath her apron without looking at it—wondering what a good tip is for someone who coats strangers in mud or sea salt paste and has not-quite-seen you naked.

by Rose Annis

You enter the grocery store; sliding doors part like a lazy red sea and immediately you know to avoid her. She has arranged herself casually amidst the produce section. On either side of her makeshift display, mangoes and avocados sit fat with rot. Gracelessly, you try to maneuver your cart around her cardboard sign, but a stack of canned goods block your way. She shoves a coupon into your hand.

“Five portraits for seven dollars, honey,” she brays at you.

You try to hand the coupon back. But it’s too late. To her, once that crummy piece of paper has stuck to your sweaty palm, the transaction is guaranteed.

“Take a picture with your family. Pay now, pick ‘em up later”

She gestures to the gallery behind her. Shots of terrified babies, each framed by airbrushed borders, gape at you. Unhappy-looking Latino families dressed in communion best stand rigid, captured forever in 8X10 glossy.

“No thank you,” you mutter, terrified that she might make you leaf through the binder she clutches to her sagging chest. You’re really not interested in a wallet sized option.

The key is to break eye contact. Once that connection is severed, her attention is turned towards other customers. Stealthily, you slip into the first empty aisle. Over the noise of unlubricated shopping-cart wheels and indefatigable salsa music, you can hear her proposition other shoppers. She is trying to make them feel at ease, relax them, seduce them into her Kodak coven.

You wander into the deli section. Wet slabs of spongy pork and gnarled chicken feet lay frosted in the coolers. Sausages, bursting from their casings, hang more for decoration than for sustenance. You can still hear the photo lady hollering. She has found a customer, or a friend, someone who is willing to listen to her talk. Although you’re not sure who or what she is responding to you hear her say, in a loud, righteous voice, “Work? Yeah. I work hard. One time I had a lacerated colon and I still showed up on time.”

You glance once more at that dangling string of fetid sausages and then longingly towards the exit. Slowly, you take your place in the check out line.

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by Liz Mathews

You could say morale is low. Variations on the phrase, “I have to get out of this place because it’s eating my soul,” are commonly heard at my second job, where I have the opportunity to work two shifts per week to add padding to my income. Coworkers commonly call out, others have ulcers, and still others are constantly muttering appalling things about customers under their breaths.

Kenneth does not work at our store. Kenneth has probably never worked at our store. But Kenneth has worked for our same company since 1989, and he has never missed a single one of those days. For twenty years, Kenneth has not been ill. Kenneth has not been hungover. Kenneth has not had a family emergency. Kenneth has not felt too depressed to get out of bed. Kenneth has not pretended to be sick so he can go to a movie instead. Kenneth claims that guilt spurs him to go to work, and plays a large part in his perfect attendance because he doesn’t want his absence to burden the people he works with. He would rather be useful, he says, instead of sitting at home and thinking about all the others having to carry on without him.

From the standpoint of our company, Kenneth should be an inspiration to the rest of us, one who we should all strive to emulate.

But at my store, at least, Kenneth’s story had the opposite effect. “Did you read about that shmuck who’s been here for twenty years?” my supervisor asked as I clocked in on the day Kenneth’s story broke. He pulled me to the nearest computer, and called up Kenneth’s article. “Never missed a goddam day. What the fuck.” He gave the computer monitor a solid flick with his index finger.

This display of bravado drew a crowd of coworkers.

“There’s got to be something wrong with that guy, Kenneth.”

“Wow. That is so depressing.”

“I wonder what they gave him. Like a bonus or anything?”

“Not like he’d use any extra vacation days.”

‘He’s not even a manager—just a lead! ‘This is a great place to craft a career,’ my ass! Dude hasn’t moved up at all!”

“What’s wrong with him! We should call that store—see if they gave him anything.”

“We should track him down and punch him in the face, is what we should do; see if he goes to work then. Maybe kick him a few times, give him a reason to use his sick leave.”

On that note, we dispersed.

But for the rest of the evening, Kenneth hovered at the back of our minds, his twenty years of perfect attendance flashing like a strobe light behind our eyeballs. But none of us did our work any better or more efficiently. It’s possible we did an even worse job that evening, to prove a point.

If we were not who we are at my store, Kenneth might be an inspiration. But as it is, you could say morale is low.