76 brief views of Cleveland: #1-2

1.

I'm in my car. I realize I've lost touch with night. Anymore, night is less a flirtatious mistress than a regular partner, someone to take to parties where she knows everybody and isn't afraid to say she's bored, she'd like to go to sleep early, this music is killing her--what, is this supposed to be high school again? There was a point neither of us noticed, when romance gave way to comfort, and so much for the afterglow.

I'm driving north on I-271, towards I-90, which I've driven before, plenty of times, and the highway lights between the north and south lanes are familiar: steadily floating forward before hooking off at the end into a squiggled approximation of a question mark, an unanswered query. But before that, just a straight line, running north and south.

It's funny. Though this city is split by a river that runs roughly parallel to that line of lights, this city seems dimensionless to me in that direction. For me, this city's defined by it's east-west roads. Lorain Avenue and Cedar Road. Mayfield Road and Detroit Avenue. The north-south roads, the Warrensvilles and the Clagues, they never really seem as existent as I-90, or the shoreway.

Much is made of the city's split, but maybe it's more of a continuous sentence than we think. Maybe there's something left of me in the night after all; maybe the city's the question the lights on I-271 mark.

2.

I was walking down Lake Road when I passed an older lady. She was maybe in her sixties. She was wearing a coat with the hood up around her head, and there was a furry runt of a dog a leash's-length in front of her.

The lady was staring at me.

The lady was not happy with me.

Being a nice guy, and being the kind of guy who likes to assure older ladies that I am not a mugger or a psychopath, I met her steely gaze with my own innocent one, put on my best "I'm not a mugger or a psychopath" smile, and said, quietly and without a hint of menace or threat in my voice, "Hi."

I took another step--I sometimes walk fast, by the way--and she didn't crack the slightest hint of an "I'm walking past another person on the sidewalk" smile. Instead, she grunted, and said, "You're so friendly you're sickening!"

Another step, and I was past her. Another ten steps, and I was starting to laugh.