my friend friday

    My friend Friday spends Tuesday afternoons looking for things that no one else can find. These things are small and blend with the everyday so suitably, that they elude most of us, even after our morning coffee or cigarette. But invariably Friday finds them with ease, and sets them upon my doorstep every Wednesday morning, pawing at my breakfast with his fresh wonders.
    “I saw a boy die yesterday!” He howls, the door slamming behind him. He is not in the same room as I; he is yelling this across my house at 5:30am, eliciting angry grumbles from my somber roommates. Sending the saloons doors clacking and banging, he gushes into our kitchen and tosses a mangled G.I. Joe on the table in front of me. “The boy was in the car in front of me. I was driving to work, laughing at NPR, as ya do, and there in front of me, a man was flying, this man!” He grins, snatching the disable veteran off the table and waving it in front of me, too close to my nose for this hour. I shook my head and shrunk back into my chair, holding up my Irish coffee in front of me in warding gesture. “Too early, Friday.”
    “Exactly. Precisely!” He said, tossing the poor little man down on the table again. “This little man was flying! The boy had him out the window, swooping him up and down and side to side with irreverent joy; nevermind the traffic, nevermind his mother badgering him to ‘pull that arm back in before you loose it to some Gypsy Jew’, she said that Maggie, she really did. Can you believe it?”
    “Yes.”
    Friday frowned. It was uncustomary and it looked painful on him. After a moment, I was a little ashamed. So I sighed. “So what then? He dropped it, I assume.”
    “I’m getting there, Mags, I’m getting there,” he said, faith and fervor restored. As he spoke he puttered around my kitchen; fridge to sink to fridge to coffee pot. “I was watching because the boy remind me, of me, or me at that tender age during which all children are destined, sadly, to die. Anyways, his whore mother reaches back to grab his arm, presumably to pull it in, but in the process his little wrist hits just so on the half-erect window. See, it hit that pressure point that cops use to disarm badguys, so his eyes go wide and his little hand pops open.”
    He stops, takes a sip of his pilfered coffee, a dramatic pause.
    “It was at this point, Maggie, that the boy died.”
    I waited for an explanation. The G.I. Joe waited for an explanation. The withering ferns on my kitchen window waited. And Friday watched all of us wait for an explanation, choosing to fill the time by examining the neckline of my bathrobe. As I caught his eyes, exasperated, he grinned. “I don’t know how to say this, Maggie dear, but I can see your tits.” I looked down and found that there were indeed tits to be seen. As I covered myself, I noticed Friday filing that sight away for later.  
    Another wonder.
    “So, Friday, what does all this mean?” I said, a little harshly. I had two trains and another coffee to catch.
    Friday shook his head. “Do you not realize, Mags, what happened? That little boy, I saw the light leave him. The joy of childhood, gone, all for some daycare dumping whore’s attention to limb care. It’s awful. Really.” Friday said this, all the while his eyes were darting again and again from some innocuous sightline back to my robe. “That is awful, Friday. My condolences to the boy.”
Friday didn’t hear me though. He had the mangled toy in between his thumb and forefinger, holding him up at eye level. I can’t explain it, condone it, or relate it properly, but it looked like Friday was about to cry. “Nothing sacred in this war, friend,” he said to the road mangled beard and eyes. “That kid might as well grab a tie and get off with mommy at the local corporate graveyard for the dead heart piggies.”
    Friday likes to pretend he’s a communist. He’s not a communist. He’s fond of vodka and he’s loud and he’s reasonably well read, but he still chases green just like the rest of us. He’s convinced that communists get laid twice as often as the rest of us.
    “You do know capitalist pigs have sex something like half as much as we comrades do. And with fifty percent fewer partners.”
    See.
    “I’m going to be late for the bourgeoisie trough, comrade,” I said. I put my cup in the sink and filled it half full with warm water. When I turned, Friday was a few inches in front of my face. “But, I also watched a man live yesterday, Mags.” His breath smelled like my harsh coffee. And precisely flavored tobacco. Friday and I kissed each other when I was in college and he was pretending to be. We had sex one very sober night a year later. Since then I have tried to keep him at least 16 inches away from my lower half at all times, but not because of him. Because of me.
    “I watched a man live, Maggie May,” he repeated, pulling me back to my chair, and then sitting down adjacent to me. “He walked up, all slick and wet from the sweat of the midday crunch out to lunch. He was a little pudgy, but it looked like he was workin on it. For someone else I think. Anyways, I may have added that later. But yes. He asked me for a pack of Red Apples, and paid exactly the amount I asked him for.” Friday works at a cigarette and magazine stand at 13th and Ash, something that suits his attention span and habits well. I met him at that stand, buying my freshman favorite: Djarum Black Clove Cigarettes. Six years.
    “I used to love Red Apples, I said to him, ya know, tryin to pass the moment. And he smiled. ‘Me too,’ he said, lookin a little sad all the sudden. But in a flash, the guy smiled again, and without blinking, chucked the brand new, shiny pack of Red Apples I had just handed him into the little bin beside my stand. And then he started whistling. He walked away as I stared at him. He was whistling, Mags.”   
    Friday was looking into my eyes with the same reverence and wonder that I have seen in the eyes of the dying, the free, and the newly in love.
    I wasn’t surprised that I was smiling back at him. A little smile. The same little smile that Friday always gives me every Wednesday morning, after my coffee but before my cigarette.
    We each smoked a Red Apple from the pack that Friday had fished out of the trash bin. And as Friday lit my cigarette, I let my hip bump into his and he laughed, all light and no shadows. I tasted the poison fruit of my kind, and smiled at what Friday had brought to me, all pawing and pure and proud.