So, I thought the day seemed strange...

"Oh. My. God. My head is killing me," Rizzo thought to herself (She said it out loud too, but she was too hungover to notice.) She was sitting on a Baker Street sidewalk, leaning against a brick building while her tongue hung lazily out of the corner of her mouth. A drop of saliva rolled off her tongue and onto her hand which was perched under her head for stability. It didn't seem to be helping much though. Her head rolled right and left, whichever way gravity took it. It was almost like falling asleep during class when your head jerks and wakes you up, bringing you back from your colorful dream to the cold, dreariness of a classroom.

What seemed like hours passed as the bleakness of morning began to turn on Washington Heights. In actuality, only about 15 minutes had gone by and that bleakness was Rizzo's thought of starting life over... Again. After collecting the few thoughts she had, Rizzo slowly opened her eyes and noticed a disgusting green foam on her forearm. Hmmmmm... "Where is this from?"
She thought. "I am such a lightweight that my memory is completely gone. That is ridiculous. I'm screwed again. Back to AA..." Snippets of last night began to return to Rizzo. First, came the green goo. It was that wierd alien kid, Naublus! That nasty shit came out of his ears! "No, that's really not possible..." Rizzo thought, and she moved on. Next came the thought of Fil. She remembered the night's faint talk of his death. It seemed plausable at the time that it was all a joke. Kind of like that time he put his own obituary in the Washington Heights News. Anyway, Fil was an alright kid in Rizzo's book. Whenever he rode car #1, he smiled and offered to help Rizzo to roll up her sleeping bag.

Suddenly, Rizzo burst out into convulsive tears. She had worked so long and hard to better herself, to bring herself back from the edge of death. And it was all for nothing. The blueberry bagels with strawberry cream cheese sucked her back in.

Who Says Emotional Breakdowns Are Childish?

"That better not get on my shoes." Rizzo thought to herself as she squeezed past Lulu Lamar on the sidewalk. Lulu was taking her dog to do its business outside the grocery store (which was better than inside the store) but Rizzo had just slipped on her "I look very professional today, don't I?" pumps that matched her power suit, ripe for her impending job interviews. Just as the two women locked eyes, the dog did a 180 degree spin and somehow managed to spray Rizzo with a stream of pee.
"Are you freaking kidding me?!" Rizzo screamed as she jumped back away from the dog.
Lulu managed to look unbothered by the fact that her dog had pissed on Rizzo. "Oh yea, sorry about that," Lulu said nonchalantly.
"This is not ok at all!" Rizzo exclaimed. "This is the only pair of dress shoes I own and I have a job interview for bank teller position in 15 minutes!"
"Ya know, pee washes off," Lulu said with an air of sarcasm.
"Yea, but my shoes are gonna smell like piss for the next six months! You better buy me new pair Lulu, or else I'm gonna take you to The Court of Appeals."
Rizzo had once slept on pieces of a ratty law textbook. Sometimes, to up the intellectual factor, she used the terms in her everyday conversation. Although she didn't know it, she used the terms wrong most of the time-like now.
"Hell no," screeched Lulu, "I'm not paying you back, It was your own fault that you walked into his stream of piss!"
"NOOOOOOOOO IT WAS NOT!!!!!" Your dog has shitty aim!" Rizzo yelled.
"Nuh uh......screw you Rizzo. You think just because you live in a subway car and you are jobless the whole world should take it easy on you. Well fuck that! Guess what, I'm not gonna do that this time because the real world sucks. Get used to it.
By this point in the conversation, the veins were popping out of Rizzo's temples and her face was an abnormal shade of burgundy. "AHHHHHHH!!!! I HATE YOU, YOU BITCH!!!!" Rizzo screamed.
She threw her bagel and coffee into the metal trashcan on the sidewalk, took off her heels, and got ready. Expecting her to charge, Lulu was bent down in a ball on the ground covering her head. Rizzo ran the other way. Away from Lulu. She sped down the street and basically Tasmanian Deviled her way into the bakery. She demanded a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese. NOW.

Reliving the Past

"Ding Ding." The Bakery's door bell rung as it snapped closed behind Rizzo. In one hand, she held a steaming hot cup of coffee. In the other, a half devoured buttered plain bagel. She avoided cream cheese at all costs. When she still drank, a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese was her drunken snack food of choice. Yup, a plain buttered bagel was a safe route. It didn't bring back any of the cravings. Speaking of what USED to be, Rizzo spotted Charlie Slicks on a shiny new BMX bike-it was probably stolen. He was casually sitting sideways on it, talking to a man inside an unmarked black van. Oh no. Some shit was about to go down. Rizzo could feel it. Charlie was always stirring up some sort of trouble. A couple of months ago, she used to be friends with Charlie. That was, until he drunkenly raided her jewelry box. Of course, she was passed out inside the bar and had no idea what was happening until the next day. That was the start of her realization that her life needed to change.

Really, her downfall wasn't Charlie's fault. He didn't help either though. A cool breeze blew through Rizzo's damp hair just as the drizzle of acid rain turned to, well-acid sleet. Great, now she was wet, smelled, and she still didn't have a real job. On the bright side, some of the other people inside the bakery told her about the annoying above ground happenings from the night before. (Thank God she missed out on those.) Supposedly, some kids made a plan to all call the police department at once and tell them about a warehouse fire just outside of downtown. All at once, the cops jumped in their car with their sirens blaring (the fire department too,) and rushed to the scene where they found no fire at all. Amy Ryan, (Rizzo's old neighbor in the high rise,) said that the sirens "peppered the air" for more than an hour, disturbing her beauty rest. Rizzo would never put it like this. After all, Amy Ryan was kind of a pretentious bitch. So, living in car #1 had its benefits despite the inconvenience. She missed the sirens, and missed having to see Amy Ryan french kiss her "precious" (horrendous) fluffy little dog. Ewwwwww!!!! Even reliving it gave her the creeps......now she knew why she resorted to drinking.

Is stripping below me, or does it fit?

Before Rizzo even fully stepped out of the subway station, she heard a woman yell "Shit! Where the hell did that puddle come from?!" From the foul language, Rizzo knew that it was probably Washington Heights "klassiest" stripper, Molina Rose. Even though it was impossible to tell that Molina might spell "classiest" with a "K," Rizzo had a sneaking suspicion. She realized that mocking an employed Molina was out of place, especially coming from a basically homeless and unemployed woman- herself.

Trudging through the wet, dirty streets on a day such as this was made bearable when she wore her father's black army boots. Dirt couldn't penetrate those suckers. Not even Washington Heights' dirt. She looked both ways before she crossed the street and headed for the bakery. "Stripping is such easy money," Rizzo thought to herself as she spotted more girls (skanks) exiting the strip club after a thriving night. She could barely afford to eat three meals a day on her fixed income- that would be zero dollars. She scrubbed dishes from time to time at the bakery for a bagel or something. If anyone at a local Washington Heights' restaurant called in sick or didn't show up, their managers knew to go walk into to car #1 and wake Rizzo up to fill the position that day. It just so happened that most of Washington Heights' residents were losers, so this was a daily occurrence, and this was usually how she ate dinner. Once she filled in for the Rabbi during Sunday school classes. It was a toddler level class. They probably couldn't distinguish between the bearded Rabbi and Rizzo anyway.

A wad of cash fell from the pocket of Miss Kandi Jones, the strip club's "naughty teacher," who was walking in front of her. "Holy shit! That is more money than I've ever seen in one place! Did she make that ALL last night?!" Rizzo's inner voice screeched inside her head. She picked it up off the ground, and enviously handed it back to the smug Miss Kandi. Maybe she would rethink this whole stripping thing after all, but she had to wonder, "Is stripping below me, or does it fit?"

Trudging Along...Again

Rizzo had approximately 19 more minutes until the train returned back to the uptown station. This was just enough time to pin up her frizzy, wet hair into a tight bun, apply crumbling mascara, and line her baggy yet shimmering eyes with a stubby eye pencil-all the while using the subway car windows as her mirror. Through the graffiti words and symbols, she saw the image of a hopeless case reflecting back at her. When her parents divorced at the age of 7, she was required by law to go to a therapist. She used Dr. Cole's words of advice everyday, even now. "Take a deep breath and think of all the great things that make you smile," Rizzzo heard her voice like a tape recording on repeat. She inhaled a large, calming breath which was laced with the smell of gasoline and plastic. Beginning to ease up, she slipped sideways into a hard seat and blended in with all the other passengers. Even though some of them knew that she lived on this very subway car and was without a proper job, to an outsider she looked like an average working woman on her way to the office. Rizzo's fitted black pantsuit hugged her body as if it were custom made for her by a designer. Only she knew that she had fished it out of the bottom of a cardboard barrel at The Salvation Army last year.

The train pulled into the Washington Heights Station and she stood up and joined the other passengers as they systematically made their way out of the car and onto the platform like a group of cattle. Continuing with the bovine theme, they were herded up the dirty, cracked cement steps only to find that the day was going to start of badly-it was beginning to rain. Rain in Washington Heights was like no other that Rizzo had ever seen. It was dirty, it smelled bad, and much like a full moon-it brought out all the weirdos. Not that Rizzo considered herself to fit in that category though...As she scrambled to pick up some newspaper off the steps and open it above her head, she saw Clio Ford (who she went to high school with) slowly making her way down the same flight of stairs carrying a large bouquet of red roses. She was probably making a delivery. Each woman politely nodded in the other's general direction and gave an awkwardly tight, closed-lipped smile. This was not an uncommon interaction for the once best friends. Finally having reached the top of the stairs, Rizzo turned to her left and made her way to the bakery for breakfast. This was only the beginning of her never ending day.

Rizzo Sprayberry-A New Day?

As her house began to fill up with the usual strangers on their way to or from work, Rizzo folded her bed back into a duffel bag. She didn't care that all these passengers were seeing her in her pajamas, that was the case every morning. Besides, a couple of years ago she was so hot in the middle of the night that she slept naked. When she woke up late the next morning, Oscar the butcher was staring down at her with wide eyes, her nude figure barely covered by a sheet. Nothing could be as embarrassing as that. This morning, he was sitting in his usual red plastic seat, the one closest to Rizzo. She understood his knees were bad so he had to sit near the door, but why did he have to sit practically on top of her? Anyway, she rethought sleeping naked.

Every morning, the train left the Washington Heights station at 5:30 and arrived at the Washington Heights Uptown station at approximately 5:34. She slipped on her second-hand snoopy slippers and trudged out of car #1 and into the Uptown station; her clothes were squished in a Manny's Grocery plastic bag and her frayed towel was slung over her shoulder. The bathroom in the station's far left corner was dank, poorly lit, and smelled vaguely of turning dairy products. She was still trying to decide if that was really the way the bathroom smelled, or if it was just Jessica- the homeless transsexual who had spent her life savings and sold her condo to be surgically transformed from Jason. It killed Rizzo to see her living like that. Even the subway car was better than a bathroom. That bathroom was absolutely disgusting, but for some reason, it had a shower. She showered off quickly, using a crumbling bar of soap as shampoo and body wash. At the same time, she skillfully held her nose to avoid the deadly stench. She dried off, quickly got dressed, and still managed to have time to hand Jessica the leftovers from last night's dinner. She did all this and ran back to the platform just in time to slip through the doors of car #1. In the 19 minutes that it took Stephan to return back to the Uptown station, Rizzo had prepared to start a new day. Since she had gotten clean six months ago, any day where she could speak in coherent sentences was a new day and a fresh beginning.

Rizzo Sprayberry, Subway Car #1

Even with her eyes closed, Rizzo could see the fluorescent lights flicker frantically through her paper-thin eyelids. She could smell the fresh, buttery crust of a croissant in her midst. Every morning at 5 AM, Stephan restarted the train's service in time for the residents of Washington Heights to make it to their minimum-wage, dead end jobs. He had clearly visited the bakery before he walked into car #1. He bent down towards Rizzo and got just close enough so she could smell that as usual, he hadn't brushed his teeth. "Do you believe in hygiene at all Stephan?" Rizzo sarcastically commented as she hesitantly opened her droopy eyes. His cracked smile was staring back at her. "Good morning darling," Stephan exuberantly said. Even though Stephan had been waking Rizzo up every morning for 4 years, he still didn't understand that she was not a morning person. He also didn't understand that in Washington Heights, if you are fortunate enough to own a toothbrush, using it would be wise.

Stephan walked to the front of car #1 and placed his coffee, newspaper, and croissant inside his conductor's booth, fully loaded with bulletproff glass of course. He turned on all the train's electricity and started the motor. This line of trains stopped running at 11 PM everynight, Rizzo's favorite part of her day. At 11, She would curl up in the back corner of the car, snuggled with lots of pillows and blankets, and read Stephan's newspaper from earlier that day. She loved learning about current events from all over the world and on Sundays, cutting cupons occupied an entire hour. When she read about places like Indonesia and Spain, Rizzo closed her eyes and using her imagination, transported herself there. She really couldn't even afford a newspaper of her own let alone a vaction, and besides, Stephan only read it for the cartoons.