Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 4

Chapter 4: Tiara & Merrillee

4. Tiara & Merrillee

It happened that Tiara was the early riser, and it had been that way since Atlantic City, and it was going on about twenty years since then. Merrillee wouldn’t have it any other way, and let Tiara think what she wanted. That, also, had been that way since then. Merrillee was simply the better charmer, so she had to get up early anyway. She did try, but Tiara couldn’t do it, and it wasn’t because she was lazy or malingering. It was an actual matter of talent; a talent Merrillee would rather have done without. So she didn’t like it, but she took her pleasure where she found it, and she found it in being better at something than high, mighty Princess Tiara, while Tiara never failed to remind her that her attitude, which should be gratitude, tended rather toward the tendentious and irritable, just as it had in Atlantic City, and no doubt before. No sooner did the Lord let her wake than she started in to grumbling, sowing dissension, and working iniquity. Merrillee let her ’buke, scorn and chastise, because Tiara didn’t know just how patiently Merrillee had held her tongue these years since Atlantic City. Merrillee would never let her know, either.

Time was, Tiara loved to brag about the fame and fortune of her men, even before the money she got out of them, and Merrillee would listen graciously, with a smile on her face and a bottle of Give Me Your Money oil in her handbag. Next to the straight razor. Merrillee had used to joke that she was an obey woman, because her men did what they were told. She had had her own plans. Nowadays Merrillee told herself that she had been playing a longer game, and it was true—today. Time was, Merrillee had entertained her own fantasies of fame and fortune, and then vicarious fame and fortune, and she had had to set both of those aside, things being what they were. She could, however, wield power and might. That was true, today. In small ways.

She planned soon to tell Tiara that she had a new secret lover, and Tiara’s precisely composed face would crack and fall off. Then she would tell Tiara that her new lover was a beautiful, well-admired and powerful woman, and Tiara’s skin would turn green with envy. She might even pass out. God forbid she have a stroke. Meanwhile, it was among her dearest small pleasures to enjoy Tiara’s performance of humility at Merrillee’s expense.

It wasn’t Merrillee’s place to remind Tiara of what Tiara surely knew and must never forget, which was the simple fact that Merrillee had always been the rain maker, and she still was. And that was all that had ever mattered to either one of them. Merrillee therefore rested on her talent, and didn’t let a word pass her lips. This morning. Things being what they were.

It would have been easier for them to split up in the morning, but neither wanted to be alone out there, in the pre-dawn darkness, under the Stickel Bridge overpass, nor exposed along the feeder road along the shore, or in those soft fields along the Passaic, where Merrillee did her best work.

So they stayed together, and Tiara came past Merrillee’s small cottage daily every morning three hours before dawn, unlocked the door with her own set of keys, and refused to make tea for Merrillee but only made coffee for herself, and only on those days when Merrillee was not already awake. And that was usually the case, because Merrillee was often still asleep, and the gurgle of the percolator and the aroma of the coffee would wake her. She only ever made Merrillee’s tea when the kettle was already on the boil. Tiara bought and brought her own better or worse coffee grounds from Cuba or Florida, via Staten Island. She stretched them with chicory or rye when she had to. Merrillee kept a cache of Earl Grey in a tin in the cupboard just above the percolator, between the BETTER BUSINESS candles and the Go Away Evil spray.

Tiara sometimes, not too often, turned her nose up and asked her her reason again for drinking tea instead of coffee like regular folks. She took pleasure in turning the tables on Merrillee, who she knew had always considered Tiara to be one of those precious, high-post, saditty bitches. She was just jealous, and always had been, because Tiara was what used to be known as high yellow, and she carried herself well. Merrillee was quite dark, descended from Jamaicans some time back, and she herself knew the tea to be an inherited Anglophilic affectation. She admitted as much, though she had come to enjoy the taste. Coffee had just gotten to be too harsh on her stomach sometime in Atlantic City. So a little Earl Grey with lemon and honey, or with milk and sugar, either one, depending. Tiara couldn’t do much with such a response, and that’s why she didn’t bring it up often.

Tiara put them on a couple of eggs to boil as she sipped her coffee and went into her own thoughts in her own mind and Merrillee would take too long to pack her cart, knowing full well the night before exactly what she would need. An icy draft shot through the kitchenette every so often, and she told Merrillee that her tea was going to get cold if she took much longer, knowing full well exactly what they did every morning, and so each sip of her coffee was that much sweeter, her half of their shared morning ritual that much more exquisite. She would not reheat it but she would soon decant Merrillee’s too-cool tea into one of two antique Thermos bottles for their trip to the shore. She would take her time, pouring slowly and cautiously, from high up above the bottle, so as not to waste one single chilly drop. She would fill the other with a freshly brewed cup of hot coffee. It wasn’t a long trip, but it was cold, and while they were not old women, they were not young women anymore.

They carted and clattered their way down Central Avenue to the river. The rain was not yet hard and heavy, and the soil was not yet waterlogged. Merrillee found a spot between Division and Bridge, near some old railroad tracks. She unsheathed her wooden stake and rooping iron from their protective plastic scabbard mounted at an angle inside her grocery cart. The iron looked like a large rasp. In fact, it was a large rasp, teeth long worn down from years of rust and disuse. She laid her blanket down and stabbed the stake into the ground, as though it were the very heart of darkness. She drove it deeper, hammering it home with the flat iron. She began to stroke the head with the flat iron, as though she were filing it down. Back and forth, back and forth, at an angle here, or straight across there. She gestured to Tiara to prepare herself.

Tiara unhooked a hand-perforated bucket, a sort of custom sieve, from her own cart and was going to stand at the ready, but Merrillee was already snapping at her to get moving because nature was rising easy this morning. Tiara dropped swiftly to her knees, half on the blanket, half in the soil, to collect the worms that Merrillee had charmed out of the ground.

They were faster than one might expect, and they came out of the ground where they wanted, first there, then here, left, right, back, front. Merrillee stroked the head of the stake, grunting till Tiara’s bucket was plumb full of juicy Lumbricus terrestris, common earthworms, the best for commercial food preparation. They don’t taste the best—mealworms taste the best—but they’re the best for the cost, which is often close to free. Tiara went to wash them in the river between two rinsing racks staked into the riverbed, and she plopped them into the cornmeal bucket.

By the time they made it to Brookside, the worms could have eaten, cleaned themselves, and dug and rooted around, if they liked. They would also be properly dusted for frying with a sweet or a savory spice mix. Merrillee’s Basic B*tch! was the default option, with pepper, salt, and garlic and onion powder. It went well with eggs, diced onions, parsley and the like—any sort of savory breakfast food. Her Sassy Lass was more adventurous, and that had salt, pepper, allspice, a tiny bit of cumin or curry powder or both, garlic and onion powder, and cayenne pepper. Quite a bit more exotic, and Tiara did not like the curry with eggs, but many did.

Tiara preferred her own sweet mixes, and her favorite, Gimme Some Sugar, was brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper and salt. She enjoyed this atop open-faced buttered toast. Of course, customers didn’t care about that. They felt they were being cheated out of a slice of bread, and so it sold as a regular breakfast sandwich. Honey Chile was of course honey-based, with lemon juice, cayenne, and garlic. It didn’t escape Tiara’s notice that her sweet mixes contained savory, while the savory mixes stood alone. Tiara couldn’t blame Merrillee for that. She wondered whether she could accept that as a fact of life. And whether it meant anything that she was on the mixed side of that fact of life.

Either way, business was good. It paid the rent and more besides. Their “Crispy Crawlers” Brookside Breakfast Buggy, serving the foot traffic between the market and the towers, was as good as any, and better than many sit-down establishments. Tiara didn’t mind. Merrillee didn’t mind. It was no Atlantic City, but neither was Atlantic City.