I wake between 5:30-6:30, depending on when The Professor and his Dog step out of the bedroom door. The click of the doorknob is all it takes to wake me usually, but barring that, the dog’s nails on the tile finish the job. They serve as my only alarm. I roll awkwardly out of the queen foldout couch, fold it up, carry my four pillows to the laundry room, push the coffee table back into place. I iron my outfit for the day, take my heartburn pill, shower. Eat breakfast, pack my lunch and work shoes into my bag, and then walk out into the morning heat in work clothes and orange flip-flops. The first couple of weeks of work, this walk was refreshing, but these days it’s already pretty hot by 7am, and I’m grateful for the air on my toes.
About 7 or 8 blocks later, I’m waiting at the streetcar stop. This stop doesn’t have a bench (most don’t), and on days like today when I watch the streetcar sail by just as I’m arriving, I really wish I had somewhere to sit. It’s usually ten minutes until the next one comes, and I spend the time standing, pacing, rocking back and forth in the shade, “ironing” out my dollar bill on a metal sign pole. The streetcar is fairly well empty between the hours of 7 and 8 am, so when it comes I almost always get my own seat by an open window, where the lovely breeze cools me down. Some days I read cases for a paper I have to write for school (I’ll squeeze it in sometime – when?) Some days I don’t bring that folder, and just sit and watch Saint Charles Avenue roll by.
There are the ritzy, showy houses, probably the most expensive and opulent in the city, with meticulous landscaping, Jaguars or Mercedes or BMWs parked in front. As we get closer to Lee Circle, the palatial homes give way to beautifully kept brick apartment buildings, with neatly clipped lawns and hedges. Scores of people jog along the streetcar tracks, many with dogs. The streets are busy. We pass The Columns bed and breakfast, where no matter how early it is, I always see at least one tourist sitting on the deep front porch staring at a laptop, or sipping a coffee and watching the morning commuters. The street deteriorates a bit more as we go, and lovely, well-kept buildings yield to the down-at-heel Garden District Hotel with its tattered sign, the aging Georgian Apartments, the Please U Restaurant, and then eventually a total deterioration into chain fast food – Wendy’s, KFC, McDonald’s. Across the street from Popeye’s chicken is Emeril’s Delmonico, a culinary example of the patchwork mix of prosperity and poverty that is a New Orleans trademark.
We stop and start, picking up and dropping off – once a blind person with a seeing eye dog, once a woman with a baby that had to be less than a week old, once an enormous group of loud tourists, up early and fumbling with their exact change. Older black ladies uniformly keep their done hair neatly tucked under a scarf, protected from the wind – this is whether they are wearing a business suit and heels or a track suit and sneakers. Small children, rarely on the car at such an early hour, sit quietly until their parents usher them off. Though I catch the car at a slightly different time every day, I almost always ride with a bearded young man who gets off at the same stop I do, walking off in the other direction. He always leaves his tie loose until we rattle under the 90 overpass and take the turn around Lee Circle – then he knots it and adjusts his collar, efficiently, with a sigh.
Once we hit this point, the skyscraper where I work is in view. Three streets down Carondelet, I pull the buzzer and hop off – waddle off. I walk up a side street that generally stinks of garbage, past a fire station, past some roadwork, past the $6-12 a day parking lots, and up to my building. I hit the blissfully air conditioned front lobby and change out my flip-flops for my work flats – I haven’t yet forgotten to do this, though I’m positive one day I will. A breathtakingly fast elevator ride takes me to my floor, which is only a handful from the top, and I’m usually panting from the ride when I walk down the hall to my cubicle. From front door to desk chair, it generally takes me about an hour.
Much more rarely, I do the reverse to go home. It is significantly hotter, smellier, and more crowded on the streetcar in the afternoons, and so I usually get a ride from some generous coworker. On unlucky days when I don’t score a ride, I will often end up standing in a standing-room-only streetcar. The only people so far who have offered to give up a seat to a heavily pregnant woman are old ladies, which I find to be shockingly bad manners on the part of the strapping young things staring insolently at me as I wobble, unsteady on my feet. Lord strike me down if I ever don’t give up my seat for a less fortunate soul than I. In any case, on these days I will usually call The Professor, who will happily come and get me from the streetcar stop. He’s happy to come and get me from work, but traffic is so bad at that hour it takes longer for him to drive the handful of miles along Saint Charles Ave than it does for me to rattle along on my public transport, so I tell him not to bother.
Long though my commute is, I’m happy to do it for six weeks. At $2.50 a day, it is much cheaper than parking, and climbing in and out of our low-to-the-ground car is almost more of a chore these days than walking to my stop. The ride is breezy, the time passes swiftly, the walk is enough to wake me up. And every time I hop onto that foldout step and drop my quarters in the box, when I sit on the wooden slatted bench and cock my elbow out the window, when I confidently pull the cord and wobble unsteadily down the car as it comes to a stop – I feel like a City Girl, the one the tourists ask for directions. I like it. I like the work I do in between, I like coming home at the end of a day
These are good days.