A Few Minutes At Northgate
Off the #9 onto the 20 degree sidewalk at Northgate bus terminal. Young mother, a kid herself, pushes a stroller with a cigarette hanging from her manicured claw. Her mother is in tow and yapping about the drugstore and its unreasonable prices. Middle aged native man sports a killer mullet, a real dinger, cut straight across his head in the front and dangling halfway down his back. He sweats under his denim and leather outerwear – a strange choice of garments, I think, on this perfect summer day. The headphone kid is bobbing his dyed head to the pulse of his earbuds; the hip hop guy is fading into a singularity of coolness in the fleeting bus shelter shade; the bus driver with the handlebar moustache lights a Players Plain with a wooden match, chews the butt and spits tobacco to the ground. The busses belch in the afternoon heat, one after the other, and more after that. A coupla taxis are parked just outside the bus run. The drivers sit on their respective hoods and chew the gab, wait for a fare – someone too tired to walk home from here, someone who has had enough. In the middle of the parking lot a guy sits in his rusting gray Caprice. Aviators on, head up and feet out the window. Stones on the deck. Left foot tapping.