subway scene :: she couldn't take it

"She quit, she just couldn't take it."

"Why?"

"I dunno, she just couldn't take it. She quit cuz she didn't wanna do it. She just didn't wanna do it."

"Was she making enough money?"

"She wasn't making enough money. She just didn't wanna do it and she couldn't take it. She just didn't wanna do it. She just really didn't wanna do it."

"I guess she didn't wanna do it!"

"She couldn't take it. After three weeks... she had to borrow money to pay for the taxi. She wasn't making money! And... she didn't... she really didn't wanna do it!"

"I guess she just couldn't take it."

"You got that right."

The two guys were young and spiffed up, in nice baggy clothes. Their baseball caps were new, tilted just so. Shaved and washed. Prepared, even so late at night, not looking a little worn out like everyone else. Even though it was going-home time they had nice, smelling-good bodies and didn't even smell like smoke. Maybe the car going on the going home train was going somewhere for them, and they were travelling away from home as we were hurtling toward it.

The shorter one, shrugging jerkily at the end of every sentence, his palms turned out, as if satisfied as knowing "why she quit" but perplexed still with the answer.

"I just don't know. But I do. I'd do the same thing, but, you know how it goes."

"Yeah... what can you do?"

I tried to imagine what she was doing that was so horrible. For some reason I thought of all those weird jobs people have, like professional dog walker for wealthy people, although I guess it's not such a bad job. I always hear about wealthy people offering a room in their big posh upper east side pads in exchange for a permanent caretaker for Fifi the Poodle.

Or, as if to explain the inhumanity of all these Doberman Pincers and Great Danes being stuffed into tiny New York apartments, a defiant retort that these dogs were happier than dogs in the countryside, who often were abused and neglected despite all the grass and green around them. Don't give me that look, the Upper East Side with the mammoth Golden Retriever would snap. I've got a fucking professional taking care of Baby 24 hours a day. So she's happy in my apartment. She goes to the park, so it's not what it seems.

There'd be the girl, being dragged along by a gigantic arctic husky exploding out of the building's doorway (the doormen snottily stepping aside and noting how trashy she looked), as she ran jerkily behind it. On the park, her admirers (two boys in new Calvin Klein shorts and Tommy Hilfiger t-shirts) watching wistfully and kind of fumbling forward to help her. She'd decline, no, it's ok, not even noticing them. She was so miserable anyway... it was all she could think of, how she couldn't take it, damn the free room, and not notice how absorbed the two boys were, tagging along after her. One day she'd stomp her feet in humiliation in that park, in the rain, realizing she was late for the dog's training school appointment and flushed would ask to borrow money from one of the boys, to take the dog & taxi home. She'd slink out that night with a big bag, leaving behind most of her stuff, and never come back, too cowardly to tell Fifi's mommy what she had bravely screamed in the park a few hours before.

One of the boys shook his head knowingly. "Yes, she couldn't take it... but... damn! She had a nice ass."