Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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.

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