YD6-26 A Quirky Encounter: Sherry for a Date Night

I shake my head, the absurdity of my date and me without means is laughable — like
a painter with brushes between fingers, ready to paint on a blank canvas, my scene
eviscerated. while aware, at my reach, Sherry’s pocket agenda’s torn-out page, with
directions and her address in my wallet tucked into my back trouser’s pocket. While the fog
thickens to mind, since I’ve left behind the rear estimators’ offices. A rising city murmur,
Sherry’s slender figure peers out my fog, rhymes. “I’ll be waiting at eight.”

With a sigh of relief, cheating the chime on the hour. Restless, I steal the last minutes
to head out for my date. I dropped taking-off quantities from the 55 floors of apartments,
645 First Avenue, in Manhattan off plan sheetrock quantities. Facing the unpainted rear wall,
I fold back the drawings on the stretched worktop. Swivel in my chair trundled to the IBM
PC, beyond facing the door light, to the eerie quiescent front offices. It’s Friday, and Jerry
Brecker won’t grace the office. a transcendence of the trip, driving his Audi north, a road
stretch home to Monsey at celebrating Sabbath eve. -- I'm not conscious destiny shows me
the lead.

I'm stealing a quarter short of four o'clock, rising from my chair, daring to sneak out
the door to the landing. Facing cascading gleams the hellish narrow stairwell, descend to
pause by the door. pulling the grip, to step out in the street, closing behind. I weave through
the curb parked cars and jeeps, jaywalking toward the brownstone blind corner. The classic
facade stretches out of sight, discovering my ego tamed, to nonexistence. I passed the
condemn entrance to the mail distribution and processing center. Approaching the far
corner’s crack, opening the street while facing the pipe scaffolding shoring the brick block of
apartments. Which I'm coming to circle at catching the orange subway F disk. I descend
underground, reach the platform, my mind’s wild tentacles, like hands waving through
spiderwebs, the fog of my mind searching the pebble drops my path home.

A gust of wind whips my face, as I stand on the platform. Called to a dark tunnel’s
mouth, the current softens, passing my face, as the train emerges. the coaches trundle past
to a series of windows shining the evening seated commuters to a halt. The doors - HISS -
split, clearing on board, in the hope to move through my foggy mind, a throng of
passengers’ moves to sit. I stand by, holding myself strained, not to relay and wake up from
my lackadaisical mind. The floor draws under my feet, as I hold the pole, steadying myself,
as outside the windows the station platform slips back, easing my drag, flicking cabin light
swap to mirror my figure in the door.

I’m on the tracks of fate, to reach Sherry, while riding the mirrored coach passengers
spread abreast, breaching the glaze of intermittent trundling, coasting to stop. Commuters
trickle out the doors. Doors slap together before riding away. Until we stop and I step out. up
the stairs at street level. In my strides through the green leafy neighborhood street. I pass
by the sprawled parapet, to the long-abandoned railway line, overgrown banks, not knowing
what to think, except I’m on fate’s leash of well-being — Aetheria’s transcendent’s leading
my path.

I neared home, the curbs lined with cars shaded by trees. My landlady’s house
somewhere in the distant street’s run through the colonnade of tree trunks. I count my
approach by cracks and craggy, stoops and patches and interstice shadowing party
boundary’s yard girdled. To sash-eyes of blank glaze facing windows of eyeing neighbors.
Eager to satiate a thirst for a ripe and juicy fruit to eat, I cut short and stepped off the curb,
through car bumpers, to emerge into the deserted street, to catch the yellow taxi, like a
mechanic’s twisted body lie on the seat, legs spilling out the car’s open passenger door.
‘_The taxi driver ought to know-how, and guide me to the place?_’ I’m thinking, before
reaching the opposite sidewalk.

I fall back to step along parked cars and nearing the rear, seeing the taxi driver fiddling
under the dashboard, to reflect. ‘_What else there than a taxi meter? Docking to begin his
shift, or undocking._’ when the man slips out from the seat, and rises, I paused behind him.
Catching the taxi driver to surprise, blurting out. “Sorry…”

He throws back a surprised glance. Raises his lanky frame wedged by the open door.
“Sorry,” I repeat, pushing my open wallet with my mini diary under his eyes. “Have you got a
clue on how I can get there?” I ask.

His eyes fall onto the tiny page, he gleans my scribbled notes. He jerks to attention.
“I’ll take you there.” He exclaims. When behind the taxi driver, offside I caught my landlady's
fleeting from the upper window, leaving the curtain fluttering shut. The taxi driver leaves a
strong current for the woman, but I’m distracted to disbelief, my stroke of luck. The taxi
drive leaves the open passenger door, leaving me with a sense of scheming, for a favor in
turn. ‘_He can hook me up with his landlady._’ His thoughts echoes in mind. Cautioned, I
blurted out. “How much?”

While the open door cornered the taxi driver’s tall frame, revives after a thoughtful
gaze. “You can give me twenty dollars.” The voice offers, while stepping out, offering me his
agape spot to the passenger seat. While his lanky figure rounds the car hood, to open the
door. he slides behind the steering wheel, together meeting him inside - smack, smack -
doors close. he wiggles further for a comfort driving position, fires the engine, to a purr, and
pulls away into the leafy street.

We leave the suburb behind. The taxi driver enters amid traffic tricolor lenses toying
with the intersection’s traffic, cross an asphaltic river. Exposing the median concrete curbs,
veering onto Queens Boulevard into a sparse flow. At length, cruising past a sequence of
railings, wrapping the sidewalk hollow, and following the bright subway disks. A few shoppers
scurry past a myriad of storefronts, commerce, and fast-food, my otherwise underground
course into town.

Ahead, the wide-open skies arouse the skyline’s jugged cubist wall. wrap in our
passage street transition narrowing our passing through the amalgam of architectural portals
to blocks of fenestrated brick facades. I accustom to sinking among the changing
mushrooming structures. En route through the city’s labyrinth, chatting, while I’m thankful
over the Taxi’s prolong drive into Manhattan’s peeking interstices fragmented past the taxi’s
profile behind the windows, and consuming the skies.

in the interlocution along the highway prolongs the river. “The East River,” the taxi
driver rifles, onto pointing out “The Bronx.” after towers humble to the ground, thinned, to
congest as traffic dropped back. I feel chauffeured, with a rising conscious, as he continues
to drive. Amid a trickling traffic bending away from warehouses intermingle with houses. I’m
driven through wrought-iron girders, through the latticework reflecting the fragmented
fading daylight in the water far below, over to the other bank. The roadway bends back
toward the horizon, gathering and raising woods.

The taxi driver’s chatter dwindles, to an unsettling silence in the car’s glass bubble. My
mind scrambles for engaging topics, but I struggled in a slumping mood.Riffling to revive the
faded conversation, An anxiety arises in me, sensing the man exudes in me a sense of
capable of dropping me by the roadside, and finding myself nowhere in the woods.

I sense the taxi driver contemplating. ‘_I must be near. Better twenty dollars than
nothing after coming this far?_’

Aetheria’s transcendent puppeteering the driver’s hopes dangling a few dollars, her
destiny at a take. While I pity the driver with a pang of conscience, along the parkway’s
sways leading through incessant old woods. I glance at my wristwatch; the hands racing past
the dial’s golden notches. ‘_All this for a date?_’ reverberates in my mind.

With an eye on incessant upcoming foliage and slipping by the window, I'm catching a
glimpse into dense woods’ blurry depths. beyond the tangles of branches spread the ground
along the meandering parkway, with wild virgin hedgegrown median. I’m royally
chauffeured, by a driver sinking into a deafening retrieve of regret, with an engine hum. My
mind screams. ‘_Turn back!_’ But the words remained trapped in my mind, in fear of getting
his unwanted reaction.

As the driver’s silence chokes me, suspicion fails, being a pawn to his earlier ulterior
motive, to reach into an intimacy with my landlady, to a shenanigan’s thoughts. He escalates
spasms of fears, to blow his mind for not finding the address and ditch me wayside.

Until the taxi driver breaks the silence, lifts the eerie atmosphere. “Repeat the
directions?” He asks. With these words, he shows a bearing interest in reaching our destiny.
I recite off my diary page Sherry’s instructions. The taxi driver churns in mind, catches on.
He asks in part to repeat, as the roadway’s wooded median vanishes, crossing an imaginary
frontier to a white stippled line. I'm reassured of a continuance, losing myself to an
interlude’s leisure. The taxi driver’s eyes alerted as we cruise through a leafy cathedral’s
barrels vault intertwined branches. Puncturing my peace. “I don’t know where this place is?”
he moans.

‘_Why are you turning?_’ I blurted my mind. To see the relentless dense foliage yield a
crack, and amid massive dark tree trunks opening to a filtering daylight. We crawled the dirt
rudimentary road shoulder, raising a concrete curb to lawn carpets, sidewalks blending the
mowed lawns to looming mansions bathing in an evening daylight. The taxi driver
stone-faced his grip walks the steering wheel. Passing a cluster of mansions to a side street.
We trundle through a tucked-in street corner, and steer us out an S-course coasting to a halt
with a whispering engine. A cyclops’ oversight notion washes over me. Calling my gaze
adrift toward a woman peeking out a kitchen’s wide window questioning. When the taxi
driver by a sheep dog couchant silence and gaze glues on the asphalt. calls my eyes back.
‘_This is it?_’

The taxi driver thaws and casts a glance toward my footwell, as I’m oblivious of the
meter under the dashboard. “This should have cost you forty dollars,” he rasped.

Disappointment and restlessness gnawing at me. ‘_Hours on the road and forty dollars,
is a date worth it?_’ swallowing my doubts, I reminded him. “Right — but you gave me a flat
rate.” My fingers fumbled in my purse, flicking a twenty-dollar bill, which bill I handed,
holding myself back. But he didn’t plead. The taxi ride’s transaction is concluded. I step out
of the cab, to the driveway apron. glimpsing at the yellow taxi, my expectancy of a continued
regal ride, slips out of my eyesight’s grasp. Distancing, I’m left stranded. ‘_Right…_’ I spare
a thought. ‘_I have no option than to take whatever is coming to me? _’ Taming my ego.

I stand under the slit window over the pair of gleaming garage doors, with the
woman’s asphyxiating stunned stare. ‘_A yellow cab? Really?_’ Echoes in my mind.

Offside, a distractive gleam washes one of the wooden doors, hinging to Sherry
appearing from the shadows. She descends in fairy slippers, disappearing behind swells of
foliage, to reappear stepping to the driveway. She approaches, scooching by the Cadillac in
the driveway. Along the hip-high retaining brick wall, emerges to the broad driveway, to
exchange a casual greeting, “Hi!”

“Hi,” I respond, shaken by my audacity. ‘_On a date without means?_’ Sherry’s eyes
leads. ‘_Come. . ._’ Turning around. I melt to a skeleton, joints roll to a hydraulic pace,
follow in her steps scooching the Cadillac flank until the planter retainer brick wall stops.
After Sherry, I swerve, climbing wide creamy brick stairs curving right toward a castle’s
entrance, Sherry vanishing.

I step across the doorstep I stumble to an elaborate hallway. Catching Sherry offside in
a doorway light, a gazelle leaps, calling her mother to uphold, stirring simmering a pot, along
pans on the stove. “Can we have the car to go out?”

I pause -- like a little toddler standing by from a heated discussion from disturbing a
mother daughter scene playing out — while not in absenteeism, as Aetheria’s transcendence
puppeteers the minds to her favor.

Sherry’s efficient controls. I am ashamed. Understandable, as a mother doesn’t budge

to a daughter’s folly? But Sherry, quibbles until a mother’s beach-bird’s arms embrace a
daughter’s wishes — the mother’s hand poses the wooden spoon on the edge of the stove.
She brings her fingers forward to the fascia at rotating the stove’s knobs, and lay to repose
an entr’acte Shabbat super, conceding. “I’ll take you to the mall.” She says, eyes sweeping
the floor gleam behind Sherry pivoting away.

Sherry’s mother rolls hands front to back around her waist, in the hollow of her back
releases her apron’s waist ties to fall. Turning away, she lifts her hands onto slipping her
head out of the neck strap. With a head shake presses Sherry head on, and trailing, she
leaves her apron draped off the worktop’s edge exposed to the doorway.

Sherry shortcut the corner, her gentle eyes calling me along, passing me by for the
juxtaposed ajar door. I follow Sherry out into the twilight. Flexing jean’s legs, descending the
broad stairs, curving before overbearing swells of plants. Steps onto the driveway, to around
the Cadillac’s muzzle, by the far headlight fenders on the paved driveway, pauses by the
passenger door. I pass her by to the rear door. Together, eyeing across the Cadillac’s roof,
Sherry’s mother’s slender figure appears descending to the driveway.

Avoiding eye contact, Sherry’s mother veers, scooching the gap by the yard wall,
facing the door she unlocks, slips into the driver’s seat. As Sherry pulls her door and lower
with a door swing - smack, smack - closing. With a self-esteem, I pull the rear door open.
Step in, sit, kicking my other foot over the doorsill. I wiggle knees behind the backrest to
Sherry’s seat - smack - as upfront, Sherry’s mother, with a flank gaze by the retainer wall,
backs out of the driveway into the street. She relapses in her seat, toggles gears to drive,
driving away, leaving the driveway to the house’s garage doors aside.

Sherry’s mother bears distant, as we sail in silence past the earlier cluster of looming
mansions against the woods. We crawl by the Chestnut Oak woods, yield exit to engage the
deserted thoroughfare. She continues my earlier taxi arrival. We cruise through the leafy
cathedral barrel-vault, until a clearing distances the woods. a sparsely lit dark pool circling
expanse skirting shine glitters in the blurry shadows unveiling a squatted sprawling complex.
We pass a dim lit filling station, at the opposite extreme, Sherry’s mother heeds to the
oncoming deserted lane. Coasting, and steers across, entering headlights sweeping asphalt
heading into the darkness. Trundles toward a building’s glittery barrier, approaching the
publicity, to narrow in at the extreme to a bright cutoff corner’s entrance.

We pulled up in front of the glazed luminescent corridor, the car door flings open. I kick
my feet out of the car to step on the ground - smack - to pause behind Sherry with a hand
hold on the open door. She's hearing out her mother. “Sherry, call me — I’ll come and fetch
you.” - smack - the door closes. Sherry and I, we step away toward the plate glass corridor,
while the Cadillac circles the sheen vanishing with taillights gates into the night.

Sherry presses the plate-glass swing, behind I catch the plate-glass, catching up in
step a deserted hallway. Chatting as we pass the glazed wall whitewashed with posters,
overseeing a soft lit closed supermarket for the night. Abreast, Sherry broaches her persona.
“I’ve just married and divorced… Within two years.” Laughing off her stress, to my surprise.

I’m stuck unresponsive, leaving my boys behind, isn’t to talk lightly about. Chatting in
our strides, before I reciprocated. “Right — I’m divorced.” I said.

After the taxi ride, I brush off my life, seeming as irrelevant as the deserted corridor.
Toward the end, Sherry veers offside facing a dining hall. She presses the door glaze swing.
We enter a ghostly plush benches and tables shimmering down the aisle. Midway up to a
horseshoe bar counter, in the depths of the dining hall, Sherry pauses for a brief reflection.
She lowers herself to the seat, I follow suit on the opposite bench, scooting, extending a
hand toward the wall. We pick up the bistro menu, unfold, glancing across the page, when a
waitress approaches.

Sherry orders. I follow with my request. The waitress leaves our side, walking away to
disappear behind the bar. We talk while waiting for the follow-up. “What is your
ex-husband’s zodiacal sign?” I ask.

“He’s a Libra,” Sherry says.

“Do you mind?“ I ask. “What’s your birthdate?”

“I’m twenty-six. . .”

Surprise escapes my lips. “A Libra too?”

The waitress returns. She places the pair of glasses filled with ice cubes, alongside
bottles of coke. While I’m counting the twelve-year spiraling staircase around the sun tilting
into heavens. ‘_Sherry’s thirteen years younger than me? Chafing with my maturity, to a
disappointing aging aesthetics?_’ I’m arriving at the Rat. Jean’s combined Libra-Rat, and just
divorced.

Sherry triggered the lamp’s scent, vaporizing to mind the powerful, Dragon, Tiger,
Monkey arousing the genies to mind, to wonder. ‘_The Cat, gentle, elegant, and kind,
sun-signs could have brought the Rat of these two’s existential need to control characters in
symbiosis and be their undoing?_’
 I glimpse around my shoulder, catch the waitress approaching, at arms’ length, two
dishes. She squares up to the table. Serves our meal, leaves our side. We nibbled at our
food. “What sign is your mother?” I ask.

Sherry’s Libra fostering a love for balance, chatting with my playful Gemini in the
shadows of a cosmic wilderness. “Virgo. . .” She says.

Virgoan’s pesky niggle of self-doubt, isn’t so obvious, but the genie’s masters of
organization, self-critical perfectionists with a quiet drive to excel, raising De-Bon-m’ma,
paternal grandmother, ruminates in my mind our childhood.

When I noticed Sherry’s eyes wandered across the table, but refrained from jumping
off the edge into the aisle. I followed her innocent cue, reaching in the shadows of the dark
wooden bar. Against a backdrop of gleaming bottles, shelves shimmering hanging by the
food crystals of glasses. As my pinched fingers scribbling on an air writing slate, moving the
waitress. The waitress approaches, to stand by our table clearing dishes, and glasses from
the table, turns away to disappear in the bar counter’s background. She reappears and
cashing in, turning away with our “Thanks.”

Sherry scoots to the edge of her seat, rises to her feet, pivots away, to pauses, as I’m
following suit, until I fell into step. Her eyes short and thoughtful on the leading aisle’s floor.
Extending her patience, congenial abreast, we head toward the glazed corridor. She presses
the glass door hinging, to a pause, I caught her handing door grip. she falls in step,
thoughtful such as siblings’ minds updating on lost time. We walk abreast through the middle
of the wide shoppers' corridor, and nearing the far framed pitch-black glaze. When alongside
the supermarket’s glazed wall to a waking dim light to the store, we cross the seam to the
hard core wall. Out of the blues. “There is no chemistry,” she says pulling away diverts
toward convenient soda and snack dispensers. She flits toward the telephone booth affixed
on the wall, drawing to a pause.

While I’m stunned by Sherry's straightforward word, “Chemistry. . .” My mind conjured

a laboratory’s interior void of alchemists. While Sherry unhooks the handset with fingertips.
Her index playing the keypad. Her lips blind, but after a brief pause with the receiver’s cup to
her ear. She hangs up, paces away converge, and stepping toward the night held back
behind the glazed doors. We pursue past the swing of the glaze to the dark pools. The
horizon traced by glitters, when out of streetlights flares a pair of headlights. The eyes’ glare
prowling closer to a sheen. The dark Cadillac pulling at our fleet to a halt.

The interior lights up, with Sherry’s mother behind the steering wheel, as Sherry steps
into the passenger seat. I pull the rear door with Sherry's pull of the door - smack - to step
into the rear bright interior, profile a mother’s staunch grip on the steering wheel - smack -
the door closed. To highlight dashboard lights, and a dark break over the hood to beaming
headlights sweeping asphalt around the bare parking lot, toward the horizon’s streetlights
against the patchy shadowing woods. The leading headlight dissimulates among the blotchy
thoroughfare’s lights until along the leading asphalt duck to glows the undergrowth. She
veers off the straight, dimmed to prolongs the street through looming clustered mansions.
Until with a sweep of the driveway, flash the paired garage doors at a halt die to its shadows.
 I rush to step out of the car - smack - as Sherry’s mother makes a beeline and short of
the garage doors, turns away, to disappear behind the shrubs.

With Sherry falling into step, edging toward the Cadillac’s rear fender, along the open
driveway by the trunk. In the corner of my eyes, Sherry’s mother reappears upstairs from
the shadows of the castle’s entrance. Descends the curving staircase, disappearing behind
the thick foliage. She reappears at the bottom of the stairs, turning to scooch along the
retainer wall by the car. She emerges by the rear fender’s taillights with a crude extended
hand holding a ten-dollar. ‘_Are you a shenanigan? _’ The woman’s thought echoes in my
mind.

Virgo’s embellished daughter’s date, couldn’t deal with a jungle survivor, of my earlier
in the evening, stepping out of a yellow taxi. As I’m skeptic of the handouts, I decline her
money. Trapped myself by circumstances. ‘_Showing up in a taxi Oughtn’t to determine my
being?_’ Then, for riddance to the Virgo’s persistence, I allowed the bill to slip into my hand.

Sherry’s mother retrieves from the driveway, scootching by the Cadillac to turn at the
stairs. disappearing behind the bushes, I turn my head away, as headlights creep up in the
street, I head away from Sherry’s side, advancing toward the driveway apron.

A taxi pulls up, and in a boyish comfort, circumstance rolled me throughout an evening
cared for. I wish Sherry, a farewell. I climb in the taxi - smack - leaning forward to address
the driver. “The train station, please,” I request, with an engine purrs. I sink into the plush
seat, as in the corner of my eye, the overgrown foliage blotched over Sherry’s figure.

The taxi driver silhouetted in the front seat, the street leading into the night. ‘_It’s
obvious by Sherry’s mother’s brief absence, she had gone for a call._’ Flits in my mind. Then,
I contemplated sherry’s mother’s intentions. ‘_Did Sherry’s mother wish me money as a
token of good luck, in my venture for a relationship? Or. . . _’

The driver pulls up alongside a blotchy dark embankment, the headlights beam on an
overgrown staircase shining the first stairs. As over the driver’s shoulder, I rid of the
ten-dollar bill, nagging in mind. As Sherry’s mother hadn’t said a single word and left me
with the riddle. ‘_Woman? Did you mean -- Here is the money for the taxi?_’ I step out -
smack - pockets the ride’s change, with the car’s sleek gleam slipping ahead to disappear in
the darkness.

I’m left in the lurch on an awe-inspiring night -- sensing an eerie cosmic outpost to a
spatial vacuum the day’s residual ashes refreshing my brain -- As I step onward along the
dirt driveway. Reaching glim lights flickering within the thickets. I turn to a towering flight of
staircase through the shadowing rambling brush.

I reach, a dim lit train’s platform, a draft carrying a last departed train’s wake. Came to
stand by the evanescing gleaming rails, hit by the realization. ‘_I’m in for a long night?_’

Footsteps scuffle the concrete stairs to a lamentable figure, awkward breaches the
foliage to the platform. Prowling eyes shifting along the open platform’s dark extreme, and
shift a glance past me through the sheltered lighting counting past me, to comfort not other
commuters. In an old man’s gait, dressed in a freaky, long, dark a puffed overcoat. ‘_On a
summer night?_’ I’m left to reflect. ‘_He’s wearing his mattress and bedding?_’ Wrapped in
his cocoon, tubed-sleeves from the shoulders for an overnight lair. His eyes creep closer to
me, alongside the shelter, avoiding eye contact.

I set my security rules into action, gazing at the man moving closer, and behind me, to
a stop, eyes for a pounce. ‘_Don’t stay still?_’ I tell myself, I turn away. I walk away by the
gleam of sleepers in the dark ballast, prolonging a platform sheen at my feet into a
pitch-black ocean. Obliged by the end, to turn around and track back my steps along the
gleaming rail’s elevated edge. My eyes daunting the injudicious man, I dare inch past the
figure planted in the middle of the sheltered platform and retrieved from the edge toward the
rear wall.

I brush a shoulder past, my gaze targeting the youthful man. ‘_I don’t trust you?_’
Passing a telling message, while I’m disillusioned by his deliberate avoiding eye contact. I’m
leaving the man in his late twenties behind, but my eyes rolling my head, to see over my
shoulder, crossing from the platform shelter, past the thickets’ crack to the stairway, pacing
into the darkness, turning around where the platform ends and tracking back. I’m nearing
with my beaming eyes flush the man my thoughts. ‘_You’re up to no good._’ With ongoing
precautions, I sense midnight sitting in the depth of the distant western countryside. Staring
the man to discomfort. ‘_I’m not afraid. You try anything, and you’ll regret it._’ I’m passing
on.

Engaging my return eastward, maintaining eye contact, walking a strong posture, as I

neared the hobo, the creepy creature shuffled away, to vanish in the crack of foliage. My
imagined night on the platform, is cut short by a looming train out of the western darkness,
rumbling along the track, trundling slipping past coaches with lit windows to a deserted
interior. A door opening at my feet, the bright interior inviting me to step, step to the aisle to
sit, and let myself ride as the station slips to the rear, leaving the station, for my journey
home.