She snapped the valise shut and placed it by the door, then wandered to the window and looked down, several stories, to the sandlot, boys playing baseball. From a neighboring apartment, a dance orchestra on the radio, an alto saxophone crooning. She tapped a foot to the beat and sighed, “Finally, on my way home.” With that she picked up her suitcase, lugged it down four flights, down the stoop steps, hauled it five blocks to the avenue, hailed a cab. “Greyhound station, please.”
“Sure thing, lady.”
Hazel settled back in the seat, lit a cigarette and stared out the window, the city rolling by, the real estate growing more impressive, stately, as they drove south, then a left onto a busy cross street, tenements topped with billboards hawking soda pop and automobiles, the sidewalks teeming. The cabbie navigated traffic lights and jaywalkers with élan, all the while cracking wise, offering kernels of wisdom and lore, but she paid little attention. She was lost in daydreams and memories.
Hazel's hair is jet black, straight, cut just below ear length. Her eyes are hazel. As her stock line goes, "My name's Hazel, like my eyes!"
The day had begun with cyan skies, but clouds had gathered, and now, late-afternoon, storm clouds, ranging in color from slate to pitch, threatened. The air was moist, pregnant with the promise of thunder, lightning and a cloudburst.
“Well,“ she thought, “the best laid plans of mice and men and Miss Hazel March, née Heloise Marker, would-be star of stage, screen and radio.” She sighed (she sighed a lot these days), rolled down her window and tossed out the cigarette, exhaled the last smoke through her nostrils. She’d moved to the city at 20, after completing junior college, giving herself a deadline of five years to make it. In the long run she’d turned 30, the big break always, at best, just out of reach. A commercial here and there. A small playhouse now and again; once but only once, the lead. Goodbye to temp jobs, steno pools; hello to cottonwoods and whippoorwills.
At the bus station, our starlet-turned-spinster bought a one-way ticket to Plainview, and was told that the bus was delayed, at least an hour. Hazel placed her suitcase in a locker and headed to the bar and lounge across the street. At the bar she ordered blintzes with sour cream and a draft beer. A gentleman in a seersucker suit made a pass. With grace, she declined. A dwarf in a madras shirt entered the bar, hawking newspapers. Hazel bought two, a tabloid and a broadsheet, something to read on the ride. She finished her meal, glanced at her watch, paid, and held the tabloid over her head while racing across the street, the storm finally breaking, with torrential force, as gloomy August dusk descended.
Hazel turned off the overhead light, put the papers aside, lit a cigarette and watched the night’s cornfields as the bus rolled deeper into the interior, closer to home. Home? She'd left with a fanfare, would be returning tail between legs. Her old friends? Married with children, PTA meetings and Little League games and Scout dens. Ah well, there’s the Plainview Players. She’ll be a big fat frog in a small pond. And who knows? Maybe there will be a young widower, a frog in need of a kiss, a potential prince who fancies himself a thespian? And has a million dollars? Dream on, girl! As a barroom blonde once informed her, dreaming is free. To which the tall fellow standing next to her added, "Life is short, filled with stuff."
She shivered a sense of déjà vu. And more than that, she felt like a pet hamster on its exercise wheel, scurrying nowhere.
Someday, she thought, I'd love to go to Italy, to endless sunshine, to golden Venice, a city of antiquity and romance and gliding gondolas nosing nowhere. Hazel had a recurring dream of being in Venice at twilight, floating alone in a gondola, a gondola that was an enamel black coffin. In the coffin she was nude and drifting with the silent flow, drifting in an empty Venice, staring out at emerging stars, not a soul to be detected, no sign of life except for water snakes of a deep green hue, schools of happy little baby snakes near the surface, stern adult snakes, their underbellies scraping along the canal floor, searching for food for their children. To no one she would whisper, "The crepuscular air is hazel, like my eyes... Like my name..."
What will life be like, back to my old room? Just Ma at home at this point, Gene and family the next town over, Pop gone two years now. My old room, as I’d left it a decade ago, complete with high school pennant over a Grand Rapids bed, a bed of so many dreams. Can I go back, return to a time of palmettos and Indian head pennies? Of a fossilized shark tooth, a chunk of fool's gold? Of yellowing comic books and huckleberries? Of eventide gardens and their garden snakes?
I’ll get a job, then an apartment, maybe in that new complex. And a car, a Bug would be economical and with-it, although an MG is tempting. An MG would turn heads, and slightly used, might be affordable.
She closed her tired eyes and soon slid into a deep slumber and Technicolor dreams, dreams of walking down an empty urban avenue, sleek towering glass buildings, dark blue or sea green, on either side. She trailed down a side street that was her neighborhood, yet wasn’t. And was downtown Plainview, yet wasn’t. She stumbled upon a jazz club with a Dixieland band wailing. She entered the smoky joint and found her theater friends raising their drinks, toasting her. And the dwarf in a madras shirt manned a corner by the bandstand, snarling at the clarinetist, “Play that thing! Play that licorice stick! Play that bloody thing, you bastard!” She shuddered and laughed. He was so ugly, so mean, yet spirited. Give him points for being lively. It can't be easy being a dwarf, and all. Those stubby little legs and big misshapen head! A cross to bear, certainly.
The crowd was merry until a bulldozer plowed through the front of the club, crushing chairs and people and tables, crashing towards the stage! Pandemonium! People screaming! Hazel saw an exit door being ignored. She ran to it, hollering, “Follow me! This is the way to safety!” They ignored her except for one bawdy old broad, elbows on the bar, who bellowed, “Aw, shut your trap, sister! Quit your bellyachin’! Makes me sick!”
Out the door and into an alleyway, Hazel saw the madras dwarf. He looked dead into her eyes and moaned like a woman giving birth, “Never give up the ship, Bunky! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Tippecanoe and Tyler too! I like Ike, but I’m madly for Adlai! Sink the Bismarck! North to Alaska! Frisco or bust!”
Annoyed by his persistent presence, she muttered, “Oh, grow up!” And with that, he did. He transformed into a tall and normally proportioned man, stunning in his charcoal gray Ivy League suit, Church's oxford blacks, white shirt, collar pinned. An old school tie completed this portrait in suave, this detailed air of debonair.
“Madam, I'm Adam, Adam Kane, worth a fortune in Cuban sugar cane.” He winked a baby-blue and extended an elbow. Hazel slipped a hand through as he escorted her back to the empty avenue of sky-high glass. They came to a Gothic cathedral, practically waltzed up the marble steps, through the high and heavy oak doors, down the mile-long aisle to a priest in formal vestments flanked by a dozen altar boys with censers of incense a-burning. The pipe organ thundered a massive chord! The priest declared, "I pronounce you man and wife. No rings necessary. This is a no-ring around the collar of marriage ceremony, the yoke's on you. Go forth! Add and subtract, multiply and divide. Get advanced degrees in algebra, calculus and trigonometry. However, no degrees of separation, let alone divorce." The pipe organ thundered another massive chord as the altar boys cast lots.
Hazel thanked the priest while Adam tipped the altar boys: "Runaround Sue at Belmont, third race." The happy couple slipped out a side door and were met by a canal, a gondola waiting. Right hand raised to the heavens, the gondolier welcomed them as they stepped aboard, "Buenos! My name, it is Luigi." He led them all about Venice before docking at a rural scene whereupon they disembarked and Adam barked like a wolf. Luigi smiled his knowing smile. "Ciao, young lovers! May God be generous to you! Make many of the bambinos! Ha ha ha! Ciao!"
Hand in hand, Hazel and Adam walked a dusty dirt road until they came to a café and ordered lunch al fresco. They waited for their meal as, across the street, a small group waited at a bus stop. The weight of everyone's wait was made bearable by the uplifting light of the day.
The sky was blazing bright blue. As was the station wagon barreling down the country road at breakneck speed. The driver's head leaned out the window as he yelled, "I can't help it! Stop me before I kill again! Gangway! Ha ha ha!"
He plowed into the group would-be bus riders, mangling everyone beyond repair, whereupon his car bounced and crashed into a cornfield, the station wagon rolling three times, bursting into flames.
"Oh my gosh," gasped Hazel as she bolted awake in her sad old apartment. She got out of bed, slipped into a madras robe, padded to the kitchenette, turned on the coffeemaker. She spent the morning idly sitting by the window. Her last day in this apartment, her last day in this city, curtains closing on her big dream. Then she packed her suitcase.
She snapped the valise shut and placed it by the door, then wandered to the window and looked down, several stories, to the sandlot, boys playing baseball. From a neighboring apartment, a dance orchestra on the radio, an alto saxophone crooning. She tapped a foot to the beat and sighed, “Finally, on my way home.” With that she picked up her suitcase, lugged it down four flights, down the stoop steps, hauled it five blocks to the avenue, hailed a cab. “Greyhound station, please.”