A Pilgrim’s Digression

6.

Until Crabbe got out of bed at 6:15, he slept fitfully, afraid of falling too deeply asleep. He never used an alarm clock, relying instead on what he referred to as his internal alarm. It was imperfect at best, but he liked telling people he didn�t need an alarm.

He wanted to rise at 6:15 so he could be out of the house by the time Carolyn awoke to start breakfast for the family. He did not want to have to begin his day with socializing, even in the most perfunctory way. In some ways, the last person Crabbe had lived with long-term had ruined him for all other landlords. For most of the nineteen-nineties, he had rented a room from an elderly woman named Cordelia Button, whom he rarely saw. He rose long before her and went out to work (he liked to write in public libraries and coffee shops), and when he returned early in the evening, around five, she had usually already gone into her room for the evening and closed the door. It had been an ideal arrangement for him.

She had died, however, which had occasioned about a week of social turmoil in his life. The woman�s children allowed him to live in the house temporarily until he could find another room. During the week after her death, he had to suffer innumerable visits to the house by family members. Family traveling in from out of town had used the house as a hotel. Then there was the funeral, the obligatory three day long weep-fest to which everyone feels obliged to submit at which everyone pretends to feel sorry for the corpse, but in reality only feel sorry for themselves. By the time Cordelia was planted, the flowers had been taken away, and the frowny, red-eyed, head-shaking, sighing relatives had cleared off to take up their lives, Crabbe had heard enough platitudes to last him a lifetime.

�She�s in a better place…�

“We should all hope to die in our sleep, just like her…”

�If only she could see how the family has come together…�

�She passed away so quietly…�

�At least she made peace with God before she died…�

What rubbish people talk at a funeral after a death! Probably no more than three of the people at the funeral had actually seen the woman in the past decade, yet they blubbered over her as if she were their dearest mother. Crabbe had even considered skipping the whole mess and hoping no one would notice. After all, he had only lived with the woman for ten years. He did not feel he had a personal relationship with her, though on the occasions when he had come home from work and found her still up, he had suffered through enough of her rambling reminiscences to stun a cow into a coma. Would anyone blame him for not going to the funeral? Yes, probably they would.

Crabbe thought about Cordelia�s death quite frequently, though he denied thinking about her, even to himself. His own parents had died long ago, when he was younger and still had some remnants of human feeling lurking about his heart. But he rarely thought of them.

In the bathroom, Crabbe took off his pajamas and pulled back the shower curtain to turn on the faucet. He started to put a foot in the shower, then drew it back sharply. His lower lip curled in disgust. There was a clot of hair, presumably female, on the drain. Crabbe took a piece of toilet paper and delicately picked up the hair, dropping it into the toilet and flushing.

disgusting pig you�d expect a woman to be more fastidious

Later, showered and shaved, Crabbe left the house to begin his day. As he walked the short distance up the block to the Starbucks, even he could not help but notice the day dawning around him. When Crabbe reached Pennsylvania Avenue SE, he looked down the street to where the bright, new morning sun glowed orange across the low rooftops and lit the torch on the dome of the Library of Congress. For a moment, he even felt some warmth grow inside himself. The emotion he felt so fleetingly was something he once would have written a poem about.

On the other side of the library, the eastern fa�ade of the Capitol gleamed in stunning ivory. Early risers like himself ambled down the sidewalk on their way work. Others jogged with their dogs on leashes or merely stood waiting for a city bus to come by. Nine sweaty Marines from the barracks on Eighth and I streets jogged by. They wore damp olive drab tee-shirts and running shorts and panted briskly as they huffed up the street.

The Starbucks on the corner was a two level store that, like other businesses on the street, looked like a row house that had been converted into a business. The upper levels, complete with rickety-looking balconies, fancy cornices and ledges, and different colored, painted brickwork, looked like they might still house apartments. Pigeons roosted on the roofs and balconies, and as Crabbe reached for the door to the coffee shop, one of them swooped down over his head to land on the sidewalk. It stirred the faint strands of hair left on top of his head, and he ducked instinctively, then felt his pate for any trace of pigeon guano.

fucking pests ought to have a hunting season for those damned vermin

He relaxed as soon as he entered the coffee shop. Here was where he felt at home. Some soft jazz was playing as background music—it sounded like Django Reinhardt—but what was the song? Sounded like…�Oh, Lady Be Good.� The sweet tone of the music matched the soothing brown smell of ground coffee.

There was no line at the counter and Crabbe stepped right up and ordered.

�I�ll have a grande Verona and a plain croissant, please.�

The total was $1.67, which Crabbe knew wasn�t correct. He handed over his debit card anyway. After the barrista poured his coffee and sat it down, but made no attempt to take a croissant from the pastry case, Crabbe said,

�I ordered a croissant also.�

�You ordered what?� The man asked. A young man, perhaps twenty-three at most, he had a slight accent.

what accent is that probably some Pacific island Borneo or New Guinea Crabbe thought. Then, suddenly aware that the three other employees in the coffee shop also had accents, all must have gotten off the same boat.

�A plain croissant,� he answered.

�Oh,� the man said, beginning to look confusedly at the receipt for the coffee, which Crabbe had left lying on the counter.

Crabbe still said nothing.

�I� I don�t think�I charged you for that,� the man said.

�Oh really?� Crabbe said. He handed the young man his debit card again.
After running the card again, the young man took a croissant from the case and placed it in an envelope-like, brown paper bag.

Crabbe took his breakfast and went to sit down near the window that looked out on Pennsylvania Avenue. He did not even once consider that he had done anything wrong. The way he looked at it, he had taught the young man a lesson in responsibility. Even if he had received his croissant without being charged for it, he would have looked at the situation the same way.

Sitting down, Crabbe took his iBook out of his satchel and placed it on the table. He took a sip of his coffee and placed the croissant on top of the brown paper bag so it was ready at hand. First connecting to the Starbuck’s wireless network, Crabbe opened his email application and sent the email he had written his friend Frederick Smudge the night before. Then he began another:

To: fsmud@gmail.com
From: carapace247@yahoo.com
Date: April 26, 2005
Time: 6:43 a.m.
Subject: Begin again

You�ll note from the time stamp on this email that I am writing you early today. I slipped out of the house just about fifteen minutes ago and am writing you from the Starbucks on the corner. I know the bitch will be up and making breakfast by seven, and I just could not face her or her dough-brained husband or her sniveling brood of parasites.

Is this what it will be like, then, every day, skulking out before anyone wakes, before I have to say �Good morning� and exchange pleasantries I don�t mean? I have to move. But I won�t move. I never move of my own volition, as you know. I feel like I am an actor in some dreadful sitcom, you know the kind. �Grouchy poet Eugene comes to live with a family of five. What hilarity ensues!� According to the script, by the end of the first season I am supposed to be less curmudgeonly and more lovable, and I should have discovered a love interest�perhaps the nosy, middle-aged Lady Next Door, Mona. Cue the laugh track.

The cunt and her prick of a husband were at it last night. Woke me up in the early morning with their rutting. God knows they have enough kids, I hope he doesn�t plant another one in her belly. That would probably be the one thing to motivate me to leave. Their one puking mewler makes enough noise for ten babies and has a scream that sets your teeth on edge. Disgusting creature. I am going to have to buy some expensive, rubber ear plugs, otherwise I don�t think I will have any peace. It goes without saying, don�t expect any new poems as long as I live in this place.

Climbed into the shower this morning and almost stepped on a clot of female hair in the drain…

And so he continued, reliving all his miseries.