PART III:

Thursday would be the office Christmas party. We would have a small get-together at Birraporetti’s for Jack’s birthday. Jack stated this bluntly as he put up a new poster in the window for our upcoming Canon Christmas Sale. He wasn’t going to ask. The risk of rejection was blatantly ridiculous.

“No shots or table dancing,” he said as he shook a finger at us, “not this time.”

The whole crew knew he was lying.

Jack Trejos, My Manager, is not a man of any particularly interesting light. His chronic disapproval is merely a professional way of encouraging us to find our inner belligerent Irishman and get one helluva drink on. To half-sing, half-mumble bar chants until we slid off our stools. To do ourselves in if it seemed hilarious enough at the time.

“We won’t,” answered the Comlardi crew.

And our chronic obedience?
It’s our professional way of saying: “Jack, we’re going to get you so goddam drunk you’ll have to hold onto the grass to keep from falling off the face of earth.”

We are Corporate America. Professional, efficient, and never resolve to bar-hopping.

I smiled at this thought while restocking our instant Polaroid film. Bright yellow notification stickers smiled back at me from across each film packet:

                                        TO BE DISCONTINUED IN 2009

The sticker designers had put it tactfully enough, but my brow furrowed anyway.

“Who all’s going to the party?” called one of my coworkers as he walked into the photo-development lab. He wore an apron and yellow gloves. His plastic fingertips clutched a small roll of exposed film. His name was Darwin, but I have always known him as Dundee.

He’s a great guy. Clean cut. Rich family. A best friend since my freshman year in high school. It’s been twelve years since his grungy acid-blonde hair crept to the tip of his nose in ’96. Then the new millennium came.
Overalls turned drab.
Lance Bass turned gay.
Dundee finally discovered that being grunge was disgusting
and made the life-changing decision to wear deodorant.
Then he cut his hair.

“Whoever shows up,” Jack replied huskily.

Jack sank off the step stool and marveled at his poster-putter-upping. The poster was only a bit larger than my hand. And it had taken him three hours. Everyone rolled their eyes.

It was My Manager’s first achievement in weeks.
Well, besides ragging on Trace.

Jack bobbed his head in satisfaction as a peanut-butter smile spread across his face.

Yes, world, I’m sure he thought, behold— the pinnacle of poster slapping.

“Good work there, Jack,” mumbled Dundee as he fled to the safety of the dark room.

Jack lobbed a newspaper roll at Dundee. “Better quit that big mouth of yours, Darwin,” he snapped, “before I make you quit your lousy job!”

Then Jack’s peanut butter smile smeared away. A disgruntled potato frown took its place.

And me? I just smiled.
Smiled like the yellow stickers.


PART IV:

Presently, I’m standing at 700 Louisiana Street, under Birraporetti’s dark green awning.
The wind bites. My black coat hugs my waist. Only the small tap of my boot on the pavement attempts to rebel against the revs of coughing automobiles. And before I forget to mention, it’s a Street-Wandering Tuesday. Maybe it’s 8 o’ clock.

And I’m people watching. Taking pictures in my head. Storying them away to ponder later.

There’s an old woman in a black fur coat across the street. She has a small black hat clinging to her threaded hair for dear life. It shivers in the black city breeze, watching me from behind its black lattice veil. Under the spotlight of an admiring streetlamp, the woman stands like an old-time actress. Black and white, black and white. Shades of gray in the shy spots. Beauty all over.

A black mass hides under her lavish black sleeve.

It’s a black clutch purse full of money, money, money.
And memories. Maybe they’re black too.

With tentative and dusty fingertips, she opens the purse and frees something dear—something very precious.

A colour.
I'm not sure what the colour belongs to,
but it's a color all the same.

It smiles helplessly as she pulls it out of her purse and into the light, into her world of black and white. She lets the color linger in her fingertips. Watches it smile against the black of her glove. Cherishing. Remembering.

Then, with a black and white breath, the Old Time Actress bends. Her silhouette nears the concrete hesitantly, as if taking her final bow. But something about her yanks at my heart strings. The string pulls me like a puppet, makes me take a step toward her—makes me want to dart across the street and tell her

Stop
Don’t let your color fade!

But I say nothing.

The Old Woman in Black stays under the streetlight, and I stand paralyzed and parallel. I freeze in the black night air; I feel it bland out any courage that might have been hiding in me. In self-disappointment, my shoulders slump and I can nearly feel the color dripping off me. Maybe this was what had made the Old Woman become black and white, black and white.

I was about to take a snap shot of her in my head. She stood underneath that Street Lamp with such poise, her silhouette in a perfect despair when suddenly my psyche’s shutter slapped closed. The lens lost focus as I heard a voice that near socked me senseless. That is, assuming that the familiar stink was not the actual culprit doing the socking.

“You know, Eliza,” Trace grinned, “There’s nothing stopping you from going over there and asking.”

I squinted distastefully. He had ruined another picture. A perfect picture at that. Vengefully, I pretended that I hadn't heard his question and swung my gaze back to the Old Woman across the street. This took particular strength, considering it's not easy to igore Trace’s grubby, two-bearded mug, nor is it much easier to ignore his stink.

But Trace kept standing there. And standing there. And standing there.

I threw my hands up in exasperation.  “Ask what?” I growled.

“Not what—who, I’m saying. And the Who of which I Am Saying is that little old lady over there. The one that you’ve been watching this whole time.”

How long had that bastard been standing there?

Trace continued. "And the What of which You Should Ask should be whatever question you got going on in your head, Eliza. It's already plastered all over your face."

I leaned away from him slowly, pretending, yet again, that I didn’t want to be around him. He just shuffled closer to me, his mismatched feet making an uneven sha-_SHUNK sound on the sidewalk.

I had to shake him.
“You can’t just walk up to strangers and ask them questions, Trace.”
He smiled in protest. “Then I wonder how you got to know my name?”

Damn.

Trace leant across my shoulder, both of us with our eyes now focused on the Old Woman across the street. We kept silent. We both sensed ourselves much too close for comfort. Or at least I did.  The stone grey of Trace’s eyes grated against my face, the fake scruff bristling my neck as he spoke.

“She wants you to ask Eliza,” he whispered, his voice much like golem. He put his hand out before him, holding the old woman’s foreshortened silhouette between his fingers. “All she wants is for someone to ask. Anyone. Because she’s just like you—just another fleshy shell full of day dreams and too many moons of emotion and a sadness as black as night.”

I shuddered hesitantly, closing my eyes. “How do you know this?”

Trace shifted away from me. “Because,” he uttered, his stare intense as iron-nails,
                                                      “I already asked her.”