2007-08-26
inner loop
Thayer hops off the Metrorail at Government Station. I get on the inner loop. By the time I realize that he's left without me, I'm rolling down the tracks. He's got major ADD and he never eats his Ritalin. I bet it takes him ten minutes to realize I'm gone. By that time, he's probably skating around the courthouse steps with his stupid friends.
"Please hold on," says a robot voice as we swerve around the tracks. I reach into my bag and grab my camera. Next to me sits a lady with coacoa skin and a blouse decorated with sailboats. "This is ugly," she tells me. "You should stop by the Brickell station, if you've got time."
"I like the ugliness," i say, peering through glass, which is sprayed with bird poop. No doubt, she thinks I'm a tourist.
I get a glimpse of condos-in-progress, skeletal scaffolding, a homeless man peeing in a parking lot. I wonder if anyone lives in the crumbling old buildings that haven't been clobbered by the wrecking ball...yet.
"Take my picture," says a boy in a wifebeater (If girls wear them, should we call those tank tops "hubbybeaters?") I ignore him and his fat friend. They keep laughing and pointing at nothing. I scoot to the back, where the trapezoid windows give a wide-angle view of all that shimmering concrete. The rails roll past like tracking shots in a Kubrick movie.
"Please stand clear of the door," says the robot voice, as if we're going to the Magic Kingdom to visit Mickey Mouse. The boys get off and a homeless-looking dude waddles on board. He tries to sell me some palm leaves twisted into roses and grasshoppers. I pretend that I don't speak English, but he won't take the hint.
A girl in huge, insectoid sunglasses stands behind me. Her friends, a couple of boys in army-print shorts (more like capris pants) talk fast and loud.
"You could practice your pole-dancing if you were a stripper," says the one with the Andy Warhol messenger bag. He plunks beside me and stretches out, wiggling his neon-laced sneakers. He fans himself like an old lady in church. "This shit doesn't have AC," he says. "It's hot as balls in here. My shoes are pretty but they hurt."
"That's because you have fat feet," says the other boy, who needs to shave.
"Your mama has fat feet," he shoots back.
"Yeah, and she wore your shoes," his friend says, laughing. "Look. There's Macy's."
They get off at "College/Bayside," as if the stubby buildings near the water were a place of learning instead of a mall.
I gaze out the smeary window, peering through the scratch-graffiti (Thayer would recognize the tags), and stare at a bubble hovering on a roof. Maybe you can see Mars from there, if you squinted through a fancy telescope.
A dreadlocked guy marches up to me and says, "Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like a younger Sandy Duncanz?" (I like how he says, "Duncanz," as if that were her rapper name. Or the plural form of a breed, like calicos or Himalayans).
"She's old, right?" I say, giggling.
He screws up his face and says, "Yeah. Notice I said, 'Younger.' You even laugh like her. I like old actresses from back in the day. Are you British?"
I shake my head. "No."
"Got me again!" he hollers, although I don't remember getting him the first time.
I'm counting in my head until the next stop rolls around. I run onto the platform so fast, I bump into this old guy in a UM Canes t-shirt.
"Where you going, miss?" he says in this musical accent.
"Away," I tell him.
I run down the steps and hit the street. Thayer meets me at Taco Bell. He's wearing his hoodie, although it's a thousand degrees.
"Hey, shortie," he says. "Where were you at?"
Just then, a voice booms out, "Sandy! Sandy!"
I spin around. It's the guy from the MetroMover. I wave and he waves back.
"Who the hell is that?" Thayer asks.
"A fan," I tell him.
f-i-n at 8:17 p.m.