All Staff Retreat

It's way past my bedtime and the poker game is still going on. The construction crew has drunk all my scotch. A jovial slab of pink-cheeked Ohio Irish has outbluffed a skillet-faced hatchet from Michigan. I am standing with a man from a farm in the southwest. He wonders how he got here. I know my route has had more turns than my grandmother's spinning wheel, but I know exactly where I am.

This book is making me remember. About the man I used to date, who would crack my back by coming up behind me and squeezing me. Hard. So hard that once he burst blood vessels in my eye. About the time I got into the car with the man I was married to. There was a greasy film on the inside of the windshield. "Don't let your girlfriend smoke in the car anymore, okay?" I'm sure I could not keep the weariness out of my voice. About the men I was in love with previously, a bookend pair of blond, casual, wealthy, and insurance that we would always be playing out an F. Scott Fitzgerald of class desire with me in the soon-forgotten role of the girl who arrived at the party with the wrong shoes.

I bought the book today at the bookstore that always feels horribly barren, not much better than an airport magazine shop shoehorned between the coffee and tired pastry stand and the place that sells whatever-city-you-are-in sweatshirts and snowglobes for those who have just realized there might be value in leaving, even if value is only a 50/50 poly blend t-shirt in the size your child was the last time you thought you knew. Even if I didn't already know this bookstore is about shopping for a lifestyle, as opposed to looking for a treasured friend, that would have been borne out in the row of cash registers, a line of eight, with only one lonely skinny college boy, shuffling from foot to foot. Still, I have to work my way through a colon lined with specialty chocolates and pocket sized cat calendars to make my purchase. On my way out I can't help but notice the soaring syrupy string rendition of "Ave Maria" as I pass the Help Desk. It's prominently located and I have to give them props for understanding how helpless their customer base is. On cue, she walks up, 45 years of sun damage and so many varicose veins her skin looks like Silly Putty left on a cheese grater. With her white terry cloth sun visor acting as muse she demands, "Do you have any Rachel Ray cookbooks? On sale?"

I'll read for the rest of the night. Tomorrow, I start working again.

I'm in the kitchen of a community room in yet another worn down neighborhood. It smells like all community room kitchens, like transit terminal grade disinfectant and elementary school grade bologna. I have the job offer tucked into my bag.

I haven't accepted the job yet, but by being here tonight, I have accepted a responsibility. This night is the first public meeting for trying to give away a public benefit to a population both bitten and hungry. I've been in this position before, and it's hard not to look like Marie Antoinette with a basket of petit fours.

Towards the end of the evening, I stand beyond the exit. I can see their faces as they leave the meeting. When I let them know I am a resource for them, they tell me the stories they need to say, don't want to say. The impending divorce. The financial mistakes. The illegal housing. One man lets me know he is a stranger to this country, and is afraid to live amongst people not his own. Him I cannot help. He will have to eat cake.

There is a jam up at the off ramp and when I finally creep up past the blockage, it is two people pushing a car. The car is shiny new, too new to be broken down. The people are very young, young enough to play chicken with a gas gauge on the highway.

At the book store I am a training opportunity. It's the first back-to-school day in September, and three new empty-nesters stand behind the counter in their twin sets. This is clearly their first user experience with a cash register and as they bend their blondedness to the task, I'll bet none of them last past the shock of their first paycheck.

Another on-ramp and I am looking at a Montana license plate. Don't think I've ever seen one before. I would imagine that's because there are just not a lot of them, and this one is making up for it, jammed with images of mountains, the state bird, state flower, a tree. It's stuck to the bumper of a rusting honest pick up truck, and the way it hiccups up the grade I can tell it's a manual transmission.

The man at the loading bay at the Goodwill knows me now enough ask me why I am giving away such good stuff. I laugh and tell him that's what happens when you get married at 40--you have three of everything. It's the easiest way I can describe it, as I am not married. I'm not 40, either.