At Least They're Committed

I’d been craving Taki’s since the Thursday before last because even though Brian is in Cleveland he still knows the neighborhood I work in better than I do because he lived not so far away. He agrees that hill is killer, by the way. No matter, I needed to grab lunch because I’d forgotten mine and I’d grown weary of Subway and Wahoo’s and he reminded me of Taki’s. But first I had to get black socks because I’d grabbed my ‘short’ black pants thinking they were my ‘long’ black slacks and my tan socks accentuated that I was wearing floodwaters (just like Kevin Harvey had mockingly pointed out to me when I was in fifth grade and he was in sixth. He’s dead now).

At any rate, I snagged black socks at Walgreen’s and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” from Barnes and Noble (also Brian’s suggestion to get me off the sex books with ghosts) and I circled around on my way back to the office, heading left on Broadway thinking I’d hit Colfax, but I somehow ended up at the 16th Street Mall again. Confused, I ate cheese for lunch that day.

Friday was nuts; I didn’t get away. I was still craving Taki’s.

So it was Monday before, at precisely 11:30 a.m., I unchained myself from my desk and sneaked away to the Colfax eatery and ordered Sesame Tofu to go. Victorious, I was taking the street up from Grant back to work. Not sure what it is. Logan maybe? I was taken back to my youth watching the Catholic school children, complete with handmade posters for an upcoming event, walking single file down the street on this warm Denver day behind a young, enthusiastic gym teacher.

I’d turned down 17th and had noticed, to my delight or some such thing, that there is a Seven-11 not so far from work to fulfill my one-bite-and-out random hotdog craving, when I looked at the 17th and Grant intersection and saw it . . . and them. Step for step, we would meet at the edge of the V intersection of at the same time. A couple of chubbies but otherwise showered women with high school hair, circa 1984 — think of your third-grade teacher with jeans and a colored, knit pullover shirt, both of which are threatening to cut them in half at the middle as the fat rolls over and under the elastic — one bleach blonde and the other a brunette. The bleach blonde was closer, which was of little consolation really because as they chatted the brunette held a glistening 10-inch-blade butcher’s knife with a pearl handle in her left hand, swinging back and forth, slicing, dicing and stabbing the air as she walked.

As we collectively approached the corner I stared at the knife as 80s brown hair swung it back and forth in the sunshine, and I assessed. It’s a joke, I thought. It’s faux. But I watched it shimmer, I gauged it’s width and weight .  . . It wasn’t. I’ve been around my share of knives and guns and there was nothing fake about this blade. It was thick and clean, I noticed, so no victims had suffered before me that I could tell. As we stepped up to the curb, I stood six steps aside, enough to run if I must. The walk light was taking too long so at the first “clear” I jaywalked, threading the needle through cars passing through, semi-listening to their conversation. It was totally normal, boring people bullshit and as I crossed I heard the blonde say, “Well, she went?” as if maybe I knew something about the traffic patterns that they didn’t and I was thinking um, no, butcher bitches, I’m just thinking that being hacked to death by a couple of Abba enthusiasts is NOT the way to go. I was a half block ahead before I looked back and the women were gone.