Nobody wants this job. It's too much for too little. Being a Weekend Customer Service Rep in the Circulation department of the Daily Sun means waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning to work at 6 o'clock. It means that as soon as the phones are on, you're being yelled at by angry customers who think that a late paper is worth a few scathing words. But I sympathize with them. I really do, and that just makes it all the more difficult when they don't realize I am genuinely trying to be helpful.

There are two of us and I can tell Katie is leaving soon. She's an artist and I'm positive she'd rather be out painting than stuck in a cubicle. For me, it's like the old joke about the man who works in the circus picking up after elephants. He complains and complains about his job, then one day a friend asks, "Why don't you quit?" The man, shocked, replies "And give up show business?" I suppose this is essentially how I feel about the publishing world. I love being apart of it whichever end I'm at. Afterall, this is my foot in the door and I feel I have to stick with it until the end of the summer--at least. Despite the lousy pay, lousy treatment and difficult supervisors.

 

In cartoons you can wear the same outfit everyday and sleep comfortably in matchboxes and cooking pots. I ache for the flexibility and personality of an animated character. I ache for their freedom from the laws of physics and their impenetrable immune system.

I suppose I'm experiencing a regression. I am visiting my parents, drinking sparkling water, letting my mother buy me clothes, watching Woody Allen with my dad, cackling. Last Friday I saw Snow White for (really) the first time at the outdoor theater the Square becomes every weekend. I was absolutely enthralled. My boyfriend took me to the ice cream shop and I devoured "Delicious Dirt" during the film. Prior to this, the evening was absolutely adult. I dressed up for sushi in a trendy, little japanese restaurant. We didn't talk, we discussed. Glasses clinked, we sat up straight. Afterwards, forget-about-it. We sat on the ground, happy, giggling. I clapped my hands. He got ice cream on his beard. I got ice cream on my cheeks, nose, clothes.

I don't suppose writing, perhaps, (or doodling in the corners of notebooks) has been a way to access a more colorful world. Maybe a pen is the key to what Alice found in her looking glass. In fact, isn't it? My head is exploding with ideas and I can only squeeze out a light drizzle here and there. What I want to do is write a caricature of reality the way Dr. Seuss can, only really, really different.

I'd like whatever or wherever I create to be a place and people I can visit. If I could be anyone and the world could be anything I wanted it to be--the only thing that would change would be the dimensions and the rules. This world would be a cartoon. It'd be a goofy mystery or a series of overblown fantasy novellas.
 

She's outside smoking. I can't believe she's still out there.
You know, she'll drink coffee, but never touch a crumb of anything? It doesn't matter that her stomach's empty. It doesn't matter if it's raining. It doesn't matter if it's windy. The raindrops get into her coffee. Maybe she prefers their flavor to cream or sugar. The ashes from her cigarette stumble into the grass and threaten the bushes, prompted by the wind. If the whole yard was to catch fire, I doubt she'd lift a finger except to take another drag.

"It suits me," she giggled. The carefree jingle in her voice was fleeting and she bit her lip, stumbling over her words. "I mean, what do you expect me to do? I can't hold still." She smiled apologetically and lifted her shoulders, almost too nervous to shrug.

"I just wish you'd try harder, that's all."

"Well I am trying," she snapped, choking on her words and starting to cough. I patted her back, but she pushed me away. "Don't," still coughing, "bother."

She got up from where we'd been sitting, on pillows on the floor. She started walking outside, pulling out her Marlboro 72s and packing one. She stopped at the doorway to call back to me, "You see, it's the only way I know how to breathe."

Her car is wine-colored and topless like the summers she spent on the coast, baking on that solar oven of a beach. I have pictures of her. Stomach flat on a beach towel, her bare back and her feet kicked up behind her. She's wearing sunglasses and laughing at the camera. She's one of those that burns before she browns.

"Why is she out there?" My boyfriend asks, pulling back a curtain and peering out the window.

"It's a non-smoking apartment." We had wooden bowls filled with apricots and plump grapes, juicy and exploding over our taste buds.

"No, I mean, she's sitting in her car."

I just shrugged and lifted the bowl of grapes to him; he plucked a dark purple one. It looked like a bruise. "She won't have any?"

I laughed. "If she'd eat a piece of chocolate it'd be a miracle."

That's when we heard the engine start.