Pam

DIARY

I met Pam on the corner of 31st and Union (700 W), circa 10 PM last night, after walking down Archer to Chinatown, sitting for an hour, rereading Urbàntasm, sipping Green Tea and Hong Kong coffee, and chewing Pork and Shrimp Dumpling Soup, on the way home.

She caught my glance as I walked along, and said, "Got a bit to read?" My pile was one-hundred pages thick.

She sat on the steps of a derelict business and smoked her cigarette.

She seemed vaguely Appalahian, but pure Bridgeport as well.

I told her I was a writer.

She told me about her son, how I'd finished law school and joined a law firm at which he made $150 (thousand) a year. he left.

"'It's not worth the money,' he says," she said.

He went down south and took up teaching law in grad school. Some sort of MA/PhD arrangement.

I told her I was just trying to get by until I had something published.

She offered some words of encouragement, flicked her cigarette halfway across the street, and asked me what my name was, so she'd know what to look for in bookstores.

I said, "Connor Coyne. And you are...?"

"Pam," she said.

We shook hands, and she walked off east.

I walked west, toward the illuminated ruin of Halsted, and on along 31st, a spectacular street, all bricks and greenery, florists and bleached tenements, until it reached the canal and Archer.

And then I walked the rest of the way home.