1.

Chlorina opened her Monet garden umbrella and scurried down the sun-drenched street. For two blocks the umbrella, a museum catalog gift from her daughter, was the only greenery in sight. After the first traffic light, her blue-striped seersucker skirt drooped about her sturdy legs. By the end of the second block, her crisp matching blouse clung like a wet paper towel. Her dark biscuit face was soggy and salty; her throat dry as pepper.

It must be 90 degrees in the shade, Chlorina croaked to herself. But where's the shade? And where's that bus?

The bus ran both ways on Chlorina's street, the northbound stop a few paces from her front porch. Yet, when southbound to Center City, she never waited on the opposite corner. Instead, she always walked one or two blocks beyond whether in her rain boots or her orthopedic sandals, during an occasional blizzard (remember the ice storm of '96?) or the annual drought alert.

She despised the house opposite hers. It growled like a motorcycle club held at the red light. It screeched like skate boarders taking a curve. It thundered and shook like a middle school at three p.m. Sometimes it rumbled like a huge empty stomach; other times it yowled like a bushel of wet alley cats.

Are there humans inside? They call that music? Chlorina griped.

Of course, she never complained to the occupants; she never saw the aliens. She simply trudged two blocks to an unsheltered corner, breezy as a hurricane in winter, an open-air oven in summer. There she stood while cars, trucks, SUVs rolled by with air conditioning humming or windows trembling from volcanic decibels inside.

Today the bus was late, and Chlorina's umbrella wasn't doing much good. So she stood and wondered about the state of the nation.  

Didn't I read somewhere that deaf people have safer driving records than hearing people?

Why don't people with good taste fight back? Blast their own Johnny Mathis or Barry Manilow or Burt Bacharach?

Didn't I read somewhere how a man played a barking record so his neighbour's dog would bark back, then he could report the mutt for disturbing the peace? Too bad, the man with the record got fined.

Yes, the world was going to the dogs, Chlorina opined while cars, trucks, SUVs snorted at the red light, their engines panting like something rabid, their CDs scratching like the zoo in flea season.

 2.

The southbound bus into Center City was criminally late. Chlorina watched three northbound busses chug by like an elephant train. The first two wheezed as their passengers squeezed the last inch of air from their lungs to get on board. The third was empty. Its sign flashed: Take the Next Bus. Its driver flashed a smile and waved.

What does he think I'm doing on this hot July corner? Waiting for the Mummer's Parade? Chlorina almost sputtered, then she remembered her New Year's Day resolution and began to chant: have a good day... have a good day... have a good day...

Five minutes... ten... fifteen... Chlorina stood like the Statue of Liberty's alter ego. In her right hand an unfurled umbrella, but nothing in the left. Her favorite motto was: Keep one fist free. On her left hip was a small straw trunk at the end of a leather strap slung over her right shoulder. At the end of the chain around her neck dangled a shine-in-the-dark watch and an official hockey referee whistle. On each foot were three-lb. sneakers full of air bubbles. Great for emergency sprints. Chuck the high heels: that was Chlorina's second favorite motto in these guerrilla war times.

Twenty minutes... twenty-five.... Chlorina fumed in sync with the 24-hour gas station across the street. Trucks the size of subway cars rumbled in; convertibles the size of yachts sailed out. Showoffs! Chlorina coughed. If the heat doesn't kill us, the petroleum will. Turning her back to it all, she asked out loud, What company pays the better dividend? Gas or electric?

The tiny row house on the corner where she stood spoke not a word. Not even an echo. Behind white wrought iron bars all the window shades were down. Pretty flowered aluminum furniture sat on a front porch encased in white wrought iron. Lots of swirls and curlicues. A high wrought iron fence and gate surrounded the front lawn. A very tiny parched grass lawn.

The place must have cost a fortune, but not Chlorina's style. Too much like a bird cage, she sighed as the southbound bus finally crept over the horizon. Or the penitentiary.

3.

Alleluia! The big black rat was gone. For weeks, teeth bared, ready to attack, it sat in front of the excavation next door to Chlorina's job. It made her sick to her stomach. She started bagging her lunch-- almost reduced herself to celery salad-- rather than get a bite to eat at the Healing Soul food truck down the block. Once she was in the office, she stayed put until four o'clock. By then it was gone.

Somebody should call the Board of Health! Chlorina sucked her teeth in disgust. She did that whenever she confronted a hopeless situation. The law can't exterminate a big black rat when it's nothing but a huge grimy plastic rodent on top of a grimier pickup truck. A pickup truck full of construction workers on protest. An eye sore, yes. A communicable disease, no.

Anyway, she was pro-union. If some fat cat boss was a so-and-so... Amen.

4.

Televised traffic snarls looked too much like her office. Anonymous telemarketers inspired caterwauls. The whir of the overhead fan put her to sleep. Chlorina almost whined like a six-year-old,

"Too early to go to bed."

So, after the local news reprise... when most on her block switched to BET... when others in the state popped SPAM into the trash... when across the nation everybody else was cursing off Interstate whatever...

Chlorina slathered on insect repellent. Then she laced up her new   sneakers. White with a touch of lavender-- how she hated that all-white medical look! Into the pockets of her jeans for a mature figure she shoved door keys, four quarters and I.D. Turn on the lamp by the window, she reminded herself. Then she stepped out into the twilight.

The ugliest city block can be lovely in the twilight. The entire sky is a soft umbrella for a treeless sidewalk. Somewhere in the air-- in a backyard, on a front porch-- pungent incense warded off mosquitoes. Like fireflies night children flickered: not so loud, not so jittery and reckless as in daylight. Even the brash house across the street is a monotonous, but muffled drum.

Chlorina ventured away from her homely neighborhood with its avenue of dull roll-down gates on all the closed stores, its thick, greasy fast food smell, its garish convenience store signs. Here and there a beauty salon buzzed; a tavern throbbed.

Venturing north, not more than ten blocks, Chlorina encountered... how could she define it? how could she find the words for herself... because she was thinking and her thoughts at that moment were all for herself...

To say she was encountering, not more than a half mile north of her tiny rowhouse, what a little more money over a few generations could buy, was not enough... although the thought had fluttered at the edges...

It was not enough... because she didn't quite feel anger... nor anything as corrosive as envy... she was too old for all that kind of disturbance... leave it to the young people... it took too much energy and for what?

Chlorina walked in the twilight under some very old trees. No wind stirred. Their silence was massive. Chlorina was drenched in it and she wanted to believe the trees sensed her small presence. How silly! Yet she was grateful and she wanted to believe they were aware.

Chlorina walked in the twilight. It was strange that she hardly glanced at the stars and the clouds and the moon. If she held for them a sense of wonder, it was far...

In the twilight along the lovely tree-hovering streets with the faint and heavy fragrance of earth and grass and flowers... here and there a dog barked, a cat mewed, but she met no one, saw no one along the way...

Chlorina was looking at the lighted windows... the graceful curving frames, the beauty within... just a glimpse... how many times when she was a girl, she had walked with her mother like this... in the summer twilight like this...

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