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  MISS TITUS OF POKER FLAT
    by Dale Feathers
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    Miss Titus had not taken the weather forecasts seriously. New
  York, as a rule, does not respect the weather, and Miss Titus had 
  an extremely New York attitude on life. In other areas of the 
  country, people may invest in clothing and machinery intended to 
  help them cope with adverse weather conditions. New Yorkers, at 
  least those who live within the city limits, have come to believe 
  that winter can be adequately coped with by the simple device of 
  wearing a lined raincoat and perhaps a pair of rubber boots for the 
  most stressing conditions. 
  
    Summer is distinct only in that the lined raincoat is removed. 
  Hats, either for thermal protection or as a block against the 
  carcinogenic solar rays that slip through the rapidly diminishing 
  ozone layer are anathema to the New Yorker, although the occasional 
  one-size-fits-all baseball cap may be worn if it has a suitable 
  message on the front. New Yorkers under the age of 30 wear their 
  baseball caps with the bill pointed backwards, like a baseball 
  catcher. At the onset of the third decade, the bill turns to the 
  front. 
  
    The only exceptions are girls with pony tail hairstyles, who 
  may slip their hair above the one-size-fits-all plastic snap band, 
  and wear the cap bill forward, regardless of age. Miss Titus had 
  passed the age of cap turning long ago, but in an act of either 
  rejection or self affirmation, it was never clear which, had tossed 
  out a modest collection of caps that advertised baseball teams,
  sneakers, a brand of cigarettes that she had never smoked, and a
  blend of Florida orange juice with other natural flavors. Head bare,
  Miss Titus asserted her essentially enigmatic nature to the world.   
       
    It was only when the snowfall had reached six inches with
  predictions of 18 inches to come, that Miss Titus realized that 
  she might actually be housebound for up to a day with her coffee 
  ration down to half a can, and no fresh bagels. Slipping on a 
  sweatsuit that she had bought two years ago in anticipation of 
  joining a gym, and an anorak that she had bought five years ago 
  in anticipation of learning to ski, she decided to walk the six 
  blocks to the nearest Gristede's. 
       
    The snow was still white and deep when she reached the street,
  and reminded her of Christmas cards. The cards always showed 
  fields of snow, layers of cold virginity stretching across New 
  England fields. Maybe the reason New York doesn't believe in snow 
  is because New York doesn't believe in virginity, she thought. She 
  giggled slightly, and let a snowflake melt on her tongue. 
  
    The wind whirled the snow around, and Miss Titus caught a
  glimpse of herself in a store window, her hair sneaking out from 
  the bottom of her hood, and catching the flakes. She made a face 
  at her reflection, and stuck out her tongue and laughed. As she 
  did, she saw a man coming towards her, and had a brief moment of 
  embarrassment, a short lived inclination to act like an adult. 
  Instead, she reached down and made a loosely packed snowball and 
  said "wanna fight?" But the man, sadly, was a responsible adult, 
  and didn't acknowledge the offer. Miss Titus tossed her snowball 
  against a wall, and watched with satisfaction as it stuck, like a 
  scoop of vanilla ice cream against the brick.
       
    When she got to Gristede's, the store looked almost empty. 
  The other panic buyers had already been there, stocking up on 
  flashlight batteries and bottled water, on hot chocolate, soup and 
  bread. Once in the store, they had expanded their goals, and 
  emptied the refrigerated section of milk and orange juice. Even 
  the frozen food section was largely depleted, and although the ice 
  cream section was generally intact, the Ben & Jerry's selection had 
  been stripped of Cherry Garcia and Rainforest Crunch. 
       
    Miss Titus wandered around, looking at the empty shelves to see 
  what things people would want in a snow emergency. The deodorants 
  were gone, but there was plenty of shaving cream, as if all the men 
  intended to grow beards, and the women thought they would survive 
  the winter a bit better if they could keep their legs warm. The
  meat counter had been emptied, but there were still a few packages 
  of tofu. The apples were gone,  all but a few with large bruises, 
  but the melons had been left behind like unwanted reminders of 
  spring.
    
    Eventually, Miss Titus remembered what she had come for, and
  marched purposefully to the coffee aisle. She had visions of the 
  section being empty, then thoughts that there might be nothing left 
  but instant, or maybe nothing but instant and coffee with chicory, 
  or worse than that, French roast coffee with chicory. "I am not 
  that desperate" she thought. "I will not drink French roast coffee 
  with chicory under any circumstances. Not to save my job, not to 
  save my life, not to save my sanity. But, if I did drink it, it 
  might be too late to worry about sanity." She envisioned herself 
  running down a long green corridor, barefoot, in a white shift, 
  with a candle in one hand, and a mug filled with Louisiana's Pride 
  French Roast Coffee with Chicory in the other. In the vision, the 
  candle didn't sputter, and the coffee didn't spill, but she was 
  screaming "aaaooowww! aaaooowww!" The idea was amusing, and she 
  said "aaaooowww!" very softly. Then she heard a voice asking "what?  
  I'm afraid I didn't hear you?"
  
    Miss Titus turned, and saw a man looking at her with a slightly
  quizzical face. He was somewhere in this late thirties, early 
  forties, although his face was a bit too round, his hair a bit too 
  thin to offer much promise that he would hold up for more than five 
  years. After that he would go to seed, bald, and paunchy. Other 
  women said that men seemed to age better than women, but Miss Titus 
  had never really believed that. If anything, men seemed to hold up 
  worse, because they never even seemed to care. Women fought back, 
  even if they failed. Men just let age get to them and tried to 
  pretend that it didn't matter, and maybe it didn't, to them, but 
  then they tried to pretend that it shouldn't matter to anyone else. 
       
    "I didn't say anything" Miss Titus said, "but if I had, I would
  have said that I hope there's some Maxwell House Columbian Supreme
  left,  because that's my favorite."
    
    The man said "oh" and started to walk away, then turned and
  said "maybe I could help you look. It's in a brown can, isn't it?"
    
    "That would be awfully nice" Miss Titus said, although she 
  could not imagine needing help finding a can of coffee. Pick-ups 
  are supposed to be in the produce aisle, she thought. He's supposed 
  to ask me what to do with escarole, or radiccio, or one of those 
  tropical fruits that shouldn't be sold without an instruction 
  manual. For a moment, Miss Titus' thought s digressed, and she 
  envisioned a second career as a technical writer for the produce 
  section. She could write the user's manual for star fruit, and 
  compose on-line help screens for bok choy. There didn't seem to be 
  much future in it. Her mind got back to reality.
    
    If I'm going to get picked up, I want to do it properly. I 
  mean, how do you pick up a girl by asking her how to make coffee?  
  Men are just supposed to be able to make coffee, that and check oil. 
  It goes with the chromosomes, the same way women are supposed to
  understand matching clothing and asking directions. Is this some 
  sort of role reversal?  "I think it's an aisle over, but I've been 
  afraid to look. I mean I think it may be all gone by now. I think 
  coffee is one of the things you're supposed to want on a day like 
  this. Coffee and thick socks."
    
    "Sounds good to me" the man said. "Especially the socks. My
  name is Charles, and I'm really a tea drinker. I hope that doesn't
  offend you. Green tea. It's supposed to prevent cancer."
  
    "Does it really?" Miss Titus said with a grimace. "He's a food
  freak" she thought. "Food freak with a sock fetish. He's going to 
  ask me about making coffee, and then I'll have to ask him up to 
  show him the technique, and then we'll be snowed in for the rest 
  of the winter, and he'll want to drink green tea and guarana and 
  something made with hot water and Japanese mushrooms. Then, maybe 
  by March or April, but before it thaws, he'll want to have sex, 
  only he'll want to keep his socks on, and yuk! Probably has fifty 
  pairs of ragg wool socks, and something with a flannel lining, and 
  eats alfalfa sprouts for the saponins and shitake mushrooms for the 
  lentinan. Aaaooowww!"
    
    As predicted, the coffee aisle had been nearly cleared. 
  The Columbian Supreme was gone, and so was the Brown Gold and the 
  Martinson. A lonely can of Chase & Sanborn sat on the bottom shelf,
  the two gentlemen on the label looking rather like the Smith 
  Brothers after a bad day. There was a jar of Instant Sanka, and a 
  can of Yuban stuck far in the back. Miss Titus eyes lit on the 
  Yuban, and her hand began to reach out. 
    
    "Is that the one you want?" Charles asked.
    
    "No, not at all" Miss Titus said. He just wasn't worth it 
  for a can of Yuban. "Okay" Miss Titus thought. "Suppose it were 
  Columbian Supreme, and it were the last can of Maxwell House 
  Columbian Supreme in New York City for a week. Or Brown Gold, a 
  full pound, 16 ounces." She looked at Charles. He was wearing a
  Navy woolen overcoat that looked foolish with his duck hunter 
  boots. The snow on his thinning hair had melted, and ran in little 
  streams across his round face. He looked like a little boy in a 
  Norman Rockwell painting, or something from the illustration to a 
  Dickens novel. "Yes, maybe I will take it" she said. 
    
    Charles bent down to reach the Yuban. It was far in the back,
  and he started to slip. Miss Titus grabbed at his arm, and tried 
  to pull him back up, but he was too heavy. She held on as Charles 
  continued his slide, so that they looked like two professional 
  wrestlers. Briefly, Miss Titus wondered if she should complete the 
  tableau by putting her foot in the small of his back and declaring 
  victory.
    
    "Got it" Charles said, and righted himself, the elusive can
  grasped in his hand.
    
    "Oh, thank you!" Miss Titus said. "I can't imagine being snowed
  in without coffee." It occurred to her that of course she could 
  imagine being snowed in without coffee, which was why she was here 
  to begin with. "Thank you" she said again.
  
    "You're welcome" Charles said. "Of course, I don't understand
  coffee myself. How do you make it?  I mean, what's the secret?"
    
    Miss Titus shivered. "I can't cope with this" she thought. 
  "Maybe I can swing him around to the cabbage and lettuce, or at 
  least to the laundry detergents. There are social protocols for 
  produce and laundry, but Ann Landers never said anything about 
  men in the coffee section." "What kind of coffee maker do you have?" 
  she asked. "Braun? Mr. Coffee? Salton? Maybe a percolator? There's 
  something nice about a percolator, you know, traditional."
    
    "I don't have any" Charles said. He looked like a child
  admitting that he had never owned a puppy.
    
    "You'll have to get one" Miss Titus said. "If you go right now,
  you might be able to find something at Service Merchandise. Get 
  one with a cone filter, get a four cup, unless you have a lot of 
  company. Never make less than half the capacity of the pot, and if 
  you try to make two cups in a ten cup pot well it's just awful. 
  That and a water filter, unless you buy bottled water and there 
  isn't any left anyway. I shop here a lot, so come back as soon as 
  you have a coffee maker. You might want to buy your own grinder 
  too, just in case you get really into the coffee thing. 
  
    They're cheap, and you can grind your own beans, and that's 
  a lot better. Get that and come back and I'll tell you what to do 
  with everything. You'll need size 2 filters. The unbleached costs
  more, but they're better environmentally. I'll see you as soon as 
  you have the equipment. Hurry, before the snow builds up and you 
  can't get home, and they find you in the spring, frozen in a snow 
  bank, clutching your coffee maker to your chest. You know those 
  ambulance attendants don't turn everything in, and they'll probably 
  claim that you didn't have the coffee maker or the grinder with you, 
  and you'll have no way to prove that you did. That and your 
  wristwatch. You'd better hurry."
    
    Miss Titus turned and ran with her can of Yuban to the express 
  check-out. There were two people ahead of her, one with a badly 
  squashed loaf of white bread and a jar of peanut butter, the other 
  with a package of lamb neck for stew. Out of the corner of her eye, 
  she could see Charles walking to the produce section. He picked 
  up a red leaf lettuce and started sorting through the Portobelo 
  mushrooms. It was only when she was safely out of the store, with
  snowflakes sticking to her eyelashes, that Miss Titus realized that
  she hadn't bought bagels. "There are more important things in life
  than bagels" she thought, although, for the moment, she couldn't
  recall what they were.    
  
  Copyright 1995 Dale Feathers, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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  Dale Feathers is a free-lance writer based in New York.  Past works
  have focused on politics and economics, with an unabashedly liberal
  slant. Misguided rants and ravings can be directed to him via email:
  uretss01@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu.
  ======================================================================
  
