On his way to the meeting, James stopped to hit his e-cigarette, and he watched as a man in a trench coat crossed the street. The man had his head bowed and his eyes narrowed, and as he reached the other side of the street, he looked at a destitute traveler crouched at the corner building. It was unclear to James what exchange occurred between the two men, all he saw was the homeless man stand, shout something to the man in the trench coat, and proceed to throw a plastic bag of urine directly at the businessman’s head. The latter crouched, and the bag exploded on the concrete alcove as the man scurried to the revolving doors. The itinerant exuded a series of vulgarities as the light changed, and James crossed the street.
He reached the meeting five minutes early with a Red Bull in hand. He sat down to hear the lecture on proper student-teacher conduct and tried his best to discern new details through his hangover and sleep deprivation. It would be several weeks until the cohort would graduate their training, and James wasn’t sure that there was enough Red Bull in the world to get him through.
On his way home that evening, he passed by the alcove with the homeless man who had thrown the urine at the executive. The refugee appeared from around the corner, ranting to himself, but he stopped as he saw James. James had his headphones in, but he discerned something about spare change from the man’s ramblings. He reached into his pocket and gave the man his last five-dollar bill.
The weather grew colder in the next few months, but only in the way that Philadelphia does. In September, it seemed as though Fall was coming. Then Halloween arrived, and the temperatures were still above seventy degrees Fahrenheit even at night. The rains of November cooled things down a bit, and as Christmas drew near, it finally seemed practical to wear a jacket again.
A few weeks after the holidays, James rolled out of bed on a Monday morning and made a cup of tea to help him sweat out his weekend’s dose of toxins. It had rained the day before, and he had had the sense to pack his umbrella, though it didn’t seem like he would need it. The rain had frozen over, and as he stepped outside, James burrowed his hands into his jacket pocket, astutely aware of the drop in temperature as he turned onto Locust St to wait for the bus to Strawberry Mansion.
A man was waiting for the bus when James arrived at the stop. He had on black gloves and a black jacket, and he nodded in acknowledgment as James approached. They had conversed, once or twice, before the holidays, being the only two bus riders to make the journey from 22nd & Locust to 29th & Sedgley Av consistently every morning. James had no idea what the man’s name was, but he considered him a friend, at least as far as the Philadelphia transit system. James smiled as he took out his headphones.
“Happy New Year!” James exclaimed.
“Yeah man, Happy New Year to you as well!”
“How was your break?”
“Oh, you know, practically nonexistent,” A glint of malevolence crossed the man’s peripheral, and seeing that James had meant no harm with his question, he continued, “It’s like these people expect us to just have no lives outside of work, and one girl decides to quit right before Christmas, and I’m the only other guy who works in Strawberry Mansion, so they have me come in and they tell me they need the entire school spotless by the new year.”
The man was a custodian at Strawberry Mansion high school; James remembered this from a previous exchange. He listened to the man’s complaints and looked down at a used condom stuck to the leg of the bench next to the bus stop. The condom was smeared with marinara pizza sauce, and it looked like it had been run over with a baby stroller. When the man stopped talking, James looked at him with what he hoped was a sympathetic expression.
“That’s tough man… I hope you didn’t have to work Christmas Day at least?”
“Nah man… but every other day!”
The man laughed, and now James’ sympathy was genuine.
“At least you’re racking it up right?
“I guess…. hell man, these people I clean for… most days I don’t feel appreciated either. It gets to the point where I just play games in my mind. I get in… I get out… they don’t even see me. I’m like John Cena.”
“That’s pretty dope. As a teacher, I don’t get that luxury.”
“Nah man… you get a whole different caseload of bullshit.”
The bus arrived, and James boarded after the man, who hurried past the occupants and found a spot near the back. James sat down somewhere between the middle and the front. He put his backpack down between his legs and looked out the window for a moment as the bus pulled away from Locust Street.
It was a forty-minute ride without traffic. James had forgotten to do his lesson planning over the weekend, and the bus seemed like a good place to fit in a few groups on his planner and gather his thoughts before the school day started. It hadn’t been the first time he had forgotten to utilize the weekend to maximum productivity, and the voice of his literacy coach rang out in his mind.
“Remember to get at least Monday and Tuesday out of the way. Then on Tuesday night you’ll have a good idea of what you need for the rest of the week.”
“Sure Kevin,” James said to himself, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He scrambled to get his moleskin journal out of his backpack, laying out of few other items on the seat beside him and drawing looks from a few of the bus’s occupants. He searched the spreadsheet on his phone for the first several groups of the day, careful to list them in order and give a number reference so he could at least find the lessons he needed in his manual once he arrived at Perry Elementary. An elderly black woman glared at him as he returned his umbrella to his bag, but he tried to avoid her gaze as he buckled the bag shut, and the bus pulled up to the intersection at 29th St & Sedgley Av.
He made it to Perry Elementary school just as the freezing rain began to fall once more. He greeted the front office secretary as he signed in, just as he did every morning, and made his way to his classroom on the second floor. As he hung his jacket over his chair, he reached into his backpack for his moleskin lesson planner, only it wasn’t there.
Frantically, James began to check every pocket of his canvas backpack, he emptied it onto the ground, startling his coworker on the other side of the classroom, but he was too panicked to answer her inquiries. The planner had everything, an entire semester’s worth of lessons accumulated and catered for each of his 21 students. As the rain pattered against the window, he looked at his umbrella, dry and unused on the floor, and James realized what must have happened.
“I left my notebook on the bus!” He told Martina, his fellow tutor on the other side of the classroom.
“Did you check everywhere?” Martina asked.
“Yeah… I need to call them.”
“You still have time.” Martina, a woman in her sixties, set down her own lessons and looked at James with concern. “Try to catch them on their way back downtown.”
James called Septa’s customer service line, and the woman from the lost and found department told him that the bus would not be returning to center city, but that she would give him a call if anything was found. James hung up and looked at Martina with dismay.
“It’s not like it would do anyone any good to steal it.” She told him. “I’m sure it will turn up.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
James looked at the clock. He had ten minutes until the school day started. In a frenzy, he began to copy out his plans onto a piece of printer paper. Throughout the day, he called Septa repeatedly between lessons, but the notebook was nowhere to be found. He imagined the various possibilities as to its fate: maybe another teacher had found it; unlikely, but probably the best-case scenario aside from the bus driver handing it in to the lost and found at the end of their shift. A teacher would have the integrity to call him. His name and number were printed in the front cover, after all.
But no, as the day wore on and James wrapped up his patchwork lessons, he realized the most likely scenario was that the moleskin had simply been thrown out, or perhaps used as toilet paper for a vagrant behind the Fine Wine and Good Spirits on N 22nd St. As the school day ended, he called Septa once more, but to no avail. The planner, it would seem, had disintegrated into the underbelly of Northern Philadelphia.
James returned to his apartment. Defeated by the day’s events, he didn’t even bother to use his umbrella as the frozen rain drenched his jacket and began to draw a fever. He bought a six-pack of cheap beer from his local bodega, and after a few drinks back in his flat, he found the inspiration to head out to Target and purchase a new notebook.
It was larger than the moleskin but somehow less pretentious. A multi-layered Five Star, bound between a black cover and a sheet of hard cardboard, James felt satisfied with his purchase as he returned to his flat and began planning out the rest of the week’s lessons. It was late when he finished, but as he began to prepare for bed, he thought again of the moleskin, somewhere out there in Philadelphia. It had been a gift, probably for Christmas or a birthday, but as he drifted off to sleep, James realized that he couldn’t even remember who the notebook had been a gift from.
The next day, he got ready for work and made his way to the bus stop on 22nd and Locust, wondering if he would run into his friend, the custodian. The man was nowhere to be found, and as James boarded the bus to Strawberry Mansion, he asked the bus driver if they had seen his notebook, but they told him that they had been driving a different route the day before. He looked around as he sat down; it wasn’t even the same bus. He realized that it didn’t matter however, as he was fully prepared for the day ahead, and he allowed himself to relax.
His anxiety returned as the bus pulled into Strawberry Mansion. It wasn’t raining, but it was still only slightly above freezing outside, and James wasn’t wearing his usual jacket. His usual jacket, still soaked and likely gathering mildew, was drying out on the curtain rod in his apartment’s bathroom.
The intersection at 29th & Sedgley Av, right near the U-Haul center, was only a 2-minute walk from Perry Elementary, but on any given day it had an unregulated traffic flow and chaotic vibe that tacked on an extra couple of minutes to James’ commute. As he exited the bus, he paused to hit his e-cigarette, shivering in his Carhartt as a dark sedan pulled up to the stop, blasting hip-hop with a growling bass that pierced through the cold and made James falter before he crossed the bustling intersection.
“Yo man!” A voice called out as the passenger side window of the sedan began to roll down. “You lookin’ cold out here!”
“Yeah man… it’s freezing!”
The young man laughed as he smiled out of the window.
“You on your way to work?” The man asked.
“You know it.”
“Well here, these should warm you up a bit.”
The man extended his arm out the window, holding a pair of gloves. They weren’t fancy or hand-knit, they were the type of basic factory-made cotton gloves that one might find at a CVS or a Dollar General, but they were new. James noticed the tag as the man offered them to him.
“You sure?” James asked him.
“Hey man, we all gotta look out for each other. Have a great day!”
James held the gloves in his hand and watched as the Sedan sped off down Sedgley Avenue. He removed the plastic fastener that held the gloves together and slowly put them on. In truth, he felt warmer as he watched the traffic flow through the avenue, and when he felt ready, he stepped down into the street and began to cross the intersection.