Royal sessions [9.30.1998]

I searched the dials for intelligence and found none. I stopped at the Chicago Press to pick up a letter and took the bandana off my head. One woman stared at my birds nest. She was old enough to have given birth to me. I stared back at her and noticed a touch of fear like she was worried the untamed mess might reach out and strangle her in this antique elevator which was no more than a cage in a shaft with shiny buttons smelling of oil and grease. There are many of these in the art district near north of Chicago. Here was an attendant sitting on a stool who operated the thing and I imagine whose secondary role was to watch over idiots or children tempted to extend limbs through the collapsible metal gates in the back and front. As we ascended he began fiddling with a small battery-powered radio searching for intelligence or a clear signal. Sometimes I get a feeling like elevator attendants are one with the elevators over which they preside. I know it's fucked up but I imagine they never have to leave, they have no appetites no urges no homes; that they occupy a time and space curled back on itself like an eyelash with super hold mascara: a complete circle, inseparable, unitive. I loved being in there with them and my birds nest. For a sacred moment my problems went away. The lady who could have given birth to me didn't ruin it with words. Her perfume was pungent and as offensive as my head. When I reached my floor I followed the signs in the hallways and everything went black and white. I'm in a Perry Mason episode. The frosted glass. The long quiet halls of oriental rug. The Times New Roman fonts. The antique lamps lighting the way. Film noir. A lady at a desk had my letter but it wasn't a letter. It's an architectural firm and a blueprint safely rolled inside a cardboard tube. Hazel eyes. A streak of gray in her brown hair styled around her round face. She smiles. They are not alike. I would have said this morning they are all alike but they are not. She saw something in me which I could not see in myself. A becoming? How mysterious. I did not dare ask because like many things it's better not to know. I prodded the truth and it did not yet hurt, not like the white lies. Not like the black coals that taught cats how to dance. I will hold on to this smile because it's the only one I'm going to get on this ten hour shift which will end far out past the suburbs on a deep stretch of highway, inhaling midwest farmland.   by #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.1.1998]

 10.1.1998

The cold front is here and I shut my windows which upset Raccoon who lost communication with the alley cats. Out of love for her I open one and she stretches down before me on her front paws with gratitude then leaps up to the sill. I had a cold but the cold front was so cold it killed my cold, swear to god. I am driving for a messenger company in my grandma’s Mercury Sable, may she rest in peace. I broke out my wool hat with the bulldog and pulled it over my ears and hit the road with my cell phone, pager, a boiled egg and green apple. There are leaves falling across my windshield and football on talk radio. I am waiting at a light on Ohio facing a billboard of a woman smoking Slims. I wave off a Chicago Sun Times salesman in a tan leather jacket and the junky asking for money at the gas station will have no luck with me today. The street cleaners left a neon orange ticked under my wiper blade demanding a fifty spot. You wouldn’t know they clean wallets. They don’t advertise that. Downtown a black man is passionate about how the whites are trying to put him down. A well-dressed woman in heels and a fur coat hails a cab. The modern art installments in front of the state administration buildings are eyesores to me. The sky high Amoco building gives me bearings; I am disoriented on Dearborn. I don’t get a lunch break but my mind wanders between deliveries. I am thinking of a guy I bailed out of jail in Florida last year. He called me again last night. Somehow the court has my address for him and sends letters about his failures to appear, and when he calls I open and read them to him. Are you wanted in many states? I asked him. This was meant to be a joke but he answered it seriously. Only two. He is a troubling glimpse at a chapter in an awfully frightening book. But when I think about it, he’s not that bad… it’s not all that bad. I am peeling and eating my egg. I’m curious about one thing… how did that nice guy who owed him money, die?  #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.3.1998]#2

Shadows, shadows. Sleeping on the mattress on the floor her head and feet were cold. The night before they went to the Montana for drinks. Someone told her she dressed like a common thief and she took it as a compliment. There were scratches up and down her arm where the cat thought she was a fish. She and her neighbor walked to a Costa Rican restaurant where they served up these phenomenal oatmeal shakes. Monetta kept her style big and loose to reflect her personality, and the many black curls were always reaching and playing and tangling. The world needs a good shake.

by #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.3.1998]

Her thumb under the shoulder strap she answered his questions as best she could. Questions wouldn’t elicit sex so they were to some degree harmless even if leading. He angled hard like the light triangulated on the floor by the door. He kept pulling his back up from the couch like he was being jolted from some reverie. Every answer she voiced seemed to wake him up a little more, he wasn’t invested in reality like she was. Not when he was with her. She couldn’t understand how you can turn it off and on.

by #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.8.1998]

Someone had broken the lightbulb in the hallway. Someone had been breaking into the mailboxes. Someone kept unscrewing the front door knob. Danger in the air but she didn’t mind. The landlord kept having to change the locks and the landlord’s helper slipping shiny new keys under the tenants doors. She would rather live here than in the wealthy part of town where people were often smug and pretentious and could be so entitled. She had to have another talk with the postal worker and caught him just as he was leaving. Someone’s been breaking in again. Let me show you. She keyed her slot and pulled it open and then gripped the metal with her hand and pulled and the upper metal rim that ran along the tops of all the mailboxes pulled out slightly from the wall. See? Anyone can access anyone else’s mail! Can you get this fixed? He had already lost valuable seconds on his route. Miss, I just deliver the mail. He pushed the row of boxes back into the wall. Please don’t mess with that. Yes! But who do I talk to? If I have a credit or bank card coming, it’s likely to be stolen. The man shrugged. He started to wonder if she was a thief. People were strange like that and would show you something just so they wouldn’t be fingered for a crime. You all have got to talk to one another. Find out what’s going on. Someone probably just lost their mail key, so they’re opening from the top to get into their own mailbox, not yours. But sir, she protested, the box is broken! He shook his head. You all need to communicate. Knock on doors. With that he walked out the front door and on to the adjacent apartment building. But it’s a federal offense! She yelled after him. She put her hands in her hair and sighed. She was worried less about the neighbors and more about shoddy careless government officials. The people here were kind and demure and often just trying to get by. Grounded in reality. She could hang her messed up head of hair out the window on a Sunday morning and scream at god and nobody would care.


In the drug store on the corner a two liter slipped from her hands. An older woman was pulling sugar from the shelves and the bottle was rolling toward her soft shoes. A nagging back ache prevented her from helping physically but she had kind words to speak which in her youth would have remained kind thoughts. Be sure to open that over the sink when you get home, dear … but if you put it back and get another, well, I didn’t see anything! She tried to wink but due to a faulty eyelid she blinked.


She smiled and picked up the bottle at the older woman’s feet. What, and let someone else buy it and get blasted by soda? That had happened to her before. She took it home herself and loosened the cap a little over the sink to let the pressure out. Then poured herself a glass over ice and lit a candle for company. Her face could breathe. She was tired of people and sick of being on television. Her life was a nightmare of giant human-operated cameras staring her down. She only had tonight and she would make every second count. Tomorrow it would start all over again. She would shower, make tea, dress, lock up, wait for the bus, take an elevator up the high rise, greet everyone, small talk, get made up, compose herself, become all business, sit up straight in her seat, deal with any and all last minute adjustments of lighting getting situated, check the clock, the teleprompter, look into the lights. This life was not the one she had imagined for herself but it paid the bills. At the end of every day she went home alone and, despite everyone and their mother prying into her love life or wondering why in her late twenties she wasn’t yet married with kids, it was her choice and this was how she liked it.   

by  #katyamills