And now, the ill-conceived and ill-executed one-joke opus continues:
Sarah’s friends were a fun bunch from all over, having converged on Scranton for the big day. The girlfriend invited them without really considering that she didn’t live in the apartment anymore, but that wasn’t a problem. We had visitors on Parade Day before, as I suspect did many households in and around the area. It’s that sort of day, when family and friends get together and drink without compulsion or embarrassment. It’s a lot like Thanksgiving, I suppose, just without the football, giblets, and forced family bonding.
I can never keep straight where Sarah’s friends come from exactly. They are spread out all over New York State, in addition to a friend she brought from her current zip code, 60610, Chicago, where the girlfriend was going to school to become a doctor of psychology and earn big “fuck you” money. I had recently completed my Master’s in Creative Writing, which was yet to score me much of anything besides sideward glances, derision, and debt. We managed to maintain this long distance relationship through trust, understanding, and an In-Calling plan from Verizon that couldn’t be beat.
To make a long recounting of the first few minutes of the day somewhat shorter, everyone got ready. The t-shirts we slaved over the night before were all green and white and “Whoo hoo!” and “Erin go bragh” (which I’ve always suspected just means that Erin is wearing undergarments) and “Begorrah” this and “Slainte” that and so on. For an only somewhat Irish group, not including me or my girlfriend for the purposes of this recounting, we looked like a bunch of Patty O’Malleys off the boat.
It was one big estrogen fest as we descended onto town. My apartment was in North Scranton, adjacent to The Plot section of town (which floods when anyone sneezes too hard), and immediately before Dickson City (where the chain stores and restaurants now outnumber the residents 2 to 1). Downtown proper was about seven minutes away by car, a half hour on foot, forty-five minutes by pack bearing donkey, and a dozen or so odd hours by hopscotch. The girls loaded into my car, a kick ass old man Oldsmobile Achieva, which smelled vaguely of garbage and death when the temperature got over freezing, and we set off, passing a flask of Nikolai vodka around like we were trying to survive a trip to Siberia.
Seven minutes later we parked the car at the Mall at Steamtown (where later someone would throw up), and started making our way through the already bustling streets toward the hotel. It was around 8ish, and the parade was still a few hours off, but you wouldn’t know it from the activity on the sidewalks, in the gutters, and around the blow horn vendors. Clusters of four leaf clovers and shillelaghs slammed into each other in the mild crowds camping out on the curbs, and brown paper bags seemed to be at the end of every arm. Like any sensible city, Scranton has an open container law, but this is circumvented, illogically, by carrying your booze in a bag, with an open end still visible at the top. Sense? It makes no sense.
I had to pop off at the ATM, as we’d be heading to bars eventually and I don’t tend to carry cash, and found one before long that didn’t have a surcharge. Sarah and Doddy and Cherish and Ashley and Zeenat (the aforementioned girls) waited with a slight collective buzz on as I got to the machine and found a card already hanging out of the slot like a plastic tongue. I took it out and looked it over.
“Tom Pagano?” I asked the card, reading the name on it, and the card seemed to nod in response. Could this character already be so hammered that he left his ATM card in the machine by mistake? No, no, it was too early for that, surely. It occurred to me that this could be my goal for the day, in lieu of not drinking. Finding Tom Pagano.
“Why don’t you just throw the card away?” the girlfriend asked me.
“Maybe he needs money!” I responded.
“But he just came from the ATM.” This seemed logical, but I had a feeling I’d find this Pagano somehow, on Parade Day, in the crowd of three million that packed the bars and street corners.
Okay, three million is part of the fictional end of the story.
Jiminy Christmas! Is it possible even less happens in this story than originally thought? Who is this Tom Pagano anyway? Can you get “fuck you” money just from working a regular job without an additional means of income? What if you invest “fuck you” money? Do they become “fuck you” stocks and bonds? And just how long does it take for one to hopscotch across a city? These questions and a multitude of others will be ignored in the next thrillingly intoxicated episode in the account of Scranton and Parade Day, likely entitled She Drank Not Wisely But Too Well!
