Allentown

Wednesday evening, March 17, 2019, 8:30pm.

I just moved in with my partner, Luke. We live in Pittsburgh in the slopes of Allentown. The balcony that hangs over our tiny backyard has a beautiful view of the city. From where we sit, we can see over the top of the notorious party-town of South Side and across the Monongahela River right into Oakland. The lights are very pretty at night.

           “Terra.”

           “Yes,” I jerk my head towards Luke. I was in a daze staring at the blinking horizon of my new metropolis.

           “Do you need a light or are you just gonna let that hang there in your mouth like that?” He smirked and held up his lighter for me.

           “Oh!” I laughed out loud. “Thanks.” I blushed and reached for his lighter. It was a one of those cheap clear ones.

           “No, I got it.” He chuckled and smiled. “Lean in here.”

           As he lifted the lighter, I held my cigarette steady with my right hand. He flicked a flame that went out a few times before the mission was successful.

           “Thank you,” I said, again. He hasn’t lit my cigarette like that since we first started dating a little over a year ago. Maybe there is a sense of newness in our relationship now that I’ve moved in with him.

           “Something on your mind?” I love it when Luke tries to get into my head.

           “You know, I was thinking a little bit about all the trash on our street.” I said turning to look at Luke and noticed he was gazing at me. It was that kind of like that lover’s stare that some are so lucky to occasionally experience.

           “It’s definitely hard not to notice.” Luke nodded. His eyes widened and he looked back out from his stare into the sparkling horizon.

           “Do they come up here and clean it ever?” I wondered. “Have you ever seen anybody?” You’ve been living here for a few years now.” I blew smoke in the opposite direction of my lover and thought about cleaning it up myself.

           “You know. I’ve never really noticed.” He laughed. “Yeah, that’s really sad.”

Saturday night, March 27, 2019, 12:30am.

Allentown. It’s a nice enough neighborhood. It’s got a post office, a Dollar Tree, a tasty Mediterranean restaurant, and a heavy metal-themed coffee shop on the corner called Black Forge Coffee. There’s also a shady dive bar about 70 feet from down Arlington Avenue, between our place and the local Dollar Tree. I really like dive bars, but I wouldn’t ever dare enter this particular one. Of course, with any neighborhood in Pittsburgh there are a few strange characters, so it doesn’t bother me too much. The only thing that does bother me about this neighborhood is all this trash around the sidewalks.

“Thanks for coming to karaoke with me tonight! I know you kind of hate it.” I giggled. My arm was resting around the small of Luke’s lower back. We are on our way back home from South Side. It’s a wild vibe there on the weekends with a long series of bars on East Carson Street. Even still, there's less garbage there than in Allentown.

We stopped walking for moment.

“It was fun, anyway.” Luke said as he smiled and leaned down close to me. I looked up at him and gently brushed his brown wavy hair. When we kissed the smell of IPA and PBR mixed well. “You are a good singer, too.”

“Well, thank you, Luke.” I said. “One day, it’s my goal to get you to sing with me.” I joked with him as we started walking back up the hill to our apartment.

“How do you like living here so far?”

I kicked an old empty can of Milwaukee’s Best Ice out of the way and into the grass where a Doritos bag was resting for who knows how long, amongst some other trash. My dad used to drink that beer. “I love Pittsburgh so far. And I think the two of us getting along just fine too, you know?”

“I know.” Luke affirmed.

` I love Pittsburgh, and Allentown too, and Luke, but not the trash.

I reached into the pocket of my oversized brown leather jacket, feeling for my yellow American Spirits. I light one and the smoke bleeds through my teeth when I talk. “Luke, I’m gonna clean up this street one day,” I declare.

“Let me hit that?” He held his hand out, asking for my cigarette.

“Sure.”

He inhales the smoke and hands the cancer stick back to me, exhaling, “Let me know when, and I would totally help you with that.”

Monday morning, May 3, 2019, 9:01am.

           I am waiting at the bus stop right now. I usually take the 51A from Allentown to Downtown for work. I do have a car, but parking in the center of the city is tragically expensive; and I would rather to ride a bike, but I still need to buy one.

Anyway, my bachelor’s degree in English is currently sitting on my aspirational shelf waiting for me to put it to good use. My mornings, for now, go like this: riding Port Authority transportation for about 15 minutes, meandering through a barrage of people in nice clothes and suits, and ascending the inside of a large, pointy tower. I always sit next to this Art major. As she doodles waiting for her next call, I take mine and begin explaining away all the major points of a newly retired American’s health insurance.

My workday typically ends around 3pm. As I get off the bus and start up the hill to my new home with Luke, I think about the job I want to leave, and the trash I want to clean up in this neighborhood. I play with my cigarette. Tell myself that I’m gonna leave this dead-end office gig, run off and start my own candle-making business or something, and I may as well clean up this neighborhood while I’m at it.

Tuesday evening, June 25, 2019, 7:30pm

           Luke and I are walking down Arlington Avenue to go pick up some snacks at the Dollar Tree. We hop over puddles in the sidewalk and almost get splashed by a passing car. It’s raining if you can’t tell. I hold my umbrella high over my head so it can also get over Luke’s. We are gonna watch a movie tonight, probably some kind of superhero movie. He loves those, and I love him for that.

           “Watcha thinking, babe?” Luke attentively asks me. I realize now that I haven’t spoken since we left the house.

           “Oh, sorry. Nothing just enjoying myself.” I smile and squeeze his hand while straining in my other arm over holding the umbrella. “I love just going to the store with you.”

           “I love that you like the little things in life.” He chuckles. “And it’s raining too.”

           There is an old lady about 20 feet ahead of us. She bends down and picks up a piece of trash off the ground. As we start to walk past I see that she is holding an old pack of cigarettes. We nod to her as she stands there. Just as we walk past, she speaks and it sounds like Katharine Hepburn.

           “Chelsea’s.” Her raspy voice startled us out of our dreamy love walk. We turned around and looked at her.

           “They discontinued these in the late 1980’s.” She said as she ruffled her long colorful flowery skirt and put the old pack biodegrading Chelsea’s in her purse. She shrugged and laughed. “They were my favorite.” Her long grey hair was in a loose French braid. She pulled it over her shoulder and caressed it in comfort. She stood by a section of the sidewalk that had more trash than grass, and she let out a long sigh as we kept passed.

           “Oh, wow.” Luke politely addressed

           We kept walking but when I looked back at the elderly woman, I noticed that she had formed a DIY trash bag with front of her blouse. She had pulled up the bottom of her silky shirt and was stuffing what trash she could fit into it. Only a little bit of her skin was showing because her skirt sat high on her waste above her belly button.

I handed Luke the umbrella and pulled out a cigarette to light.

Thursday evening, July 11, 2019, 3:30pm.

         “You just gonna stand there and blow smoke or are you gonna come help me?” Her gruff voice resonated through each corner of my brain.

           It was that same old lady I saw about a month ago on my walk to Dollar Tree. I just got off the bus, and I was on my way up the Arlington Avenue hill on my way home after a boring and stressful day at the job I don’t want to be working. On the other side of the street, I noticed her in that same graceful, flowery skirt. But she had a large, brown sunhat on this time. She was there in a

patch of grass with a trash bag and gardening gloves. I guess I must have been looking at her long enough for her to notice.

           I blushed. “Sure!” I reflectively said, while taking one last drag of my cigarette before stamping it out with the toe of my high heels and storing it in the pocket of my grey suit jacket. I was enthralled. I looked both ways before crossing the road, and I pranced across the street. I noticed that she had a full sleeve tattoo on her right arm with birds and trees.

           ‘That’s a beautiful piece.” I said while excitedly picking up some dirty Bud Light cans.

           “Thank you.” Her green, creased eyes smiled at me. “And hey, thanks for putting that butt in your pocket.” She handed me a trash bag.