COMMON BOSTON

the midsummer light at the edge of the time zone at seven in the morning comes in through the east facing windows of the eleventh floor of the boston ritz-carlton with a vengeance. and "with a vengeance" is a stock phrase that they're allowed at seven on a monday morning as they decide that they might as well get up with the city for work as well, because they're tired from working the weekend and because fierceness is terribly, datedly overused as a descriptor, even if that is quite what it was when the [what was i going to call her?] tolerated her hipster clown entourage of two through three airports twenty-four hours earlier. they could, of course, have drawn the curtains (although there was nothing to be done the morning before when project venezuelan hand job was double blindside fucking foiled by the marine sitting across the aisle in business class on the way from philadelphia and then by the incompetence of the airline, which ultimately took the mark -- or the john, or whatever his name was in venezuelan -- off the plane).

it wasn't, however, as if their night out in the south end had been anything to keep them from keeping their plans with the morning. dinner at that popular charcuterie place had been fine -- very good even -- and neither the popularity of charcuterie places nor the popularity of the place itself could have done anything to undermine the quality of the food. the problem was that boston is a city without style; although, they admitted, it was possible that the all polo shirts had nothing at all to do with sublime following 311 on the stereo. that might have been an ugly oversight -- or intention -- of the service, which apologized a few minutes after the arrival of the coffee for having been just about to spoon the [how was i going to refer to her?]. insult to injury, it seemed, for hipster clown number one (i was going to call him jim), but they'd been at it all day already (a big day for little piggy), and not so late as it might have been, it was time to call it a hard day done, driven, like all driven people, by the desire to succeed. come to boston, early retirement at the ritz-carlton.

to be fair, the sun hadn't actually beaten the alarm; but the volume of the chime wasn't anything compared to the vengeance of the sunlight coming through the windows of the east facing corner room on the eleventh floor to which the clowns had been put to sleep. (tolerance only goes so far.) and as long as he was up, thought number two, he might as well go the distance, which the night before had only been planned so far as the pool at the sports club, but, since with the sun and all and return flights in the afternoon, became a walk across the river through cambridge. maybe they would have been more so in the fall (the leaves! they're told), but neither the institute of technology nor harvard (and there, neither the square nor the yard) were enough to justify what they wanted for postcards. better, maybe, he thought, to have saved the sweat and stayed in beacon hill where he'd bought the stamps. there didn't, he thought, remain much question that the liberty hotel would have easily outstyled that charcuterie place -- although he admitted again, to himself this time, that the food had been unquestionably good. "take ivy" had, he thought, taken the rest of the country at least three years back, but sandals and starbucks had taken harvard square.

the bar at the ritz, however, had held its own. and the night before, before early retirement and after a long afternoon session, the band had posed for the cameras under the drowsy lights in front of the mirrors that reflected all of the worst artwork: bad, yes, but well displayed amid all of the best walnut in denmark. old unprofessional indiscreet fatty femme seeks same for celibate pen pal and games wasn't the shortest name that the trio had come up with, but it was the finest, at home both with the walnut at the bar and the unquestionably good food at that charcuterie place; and that magazines, anyway, have taken to calling them oui. and that's funny, because whatever i was going to call her, she's always saying no.

it's possible too that day number two (for clown number two) had been tarnished even before it had had its chance to shine as a result of so much having happened so early -- and of so much having been spent on the band's sunday afternoon session. wieners to the left had said the sign at the clam beard bar near the charcuterie place, and, earlier, pictures of erotically photographed gourmet burgers flying between smart phones past the memory of another sign, spotted well before the band's pending early retirement but which was nonetheless a summary of their esprit de corps throughout the evening and the preceding afternoon: old money wanted. and it's possible that the rest of boston had just been so easily paled after the band had seen that picture of advanced style downtown not long after leaving the cab from the airport. that woman, seated, smoking, with her white hair and her crimson lipstick in her white half trench printed like a printed newspaper might just have been a phantom orderly on that morning's escape from the emergency psychiatric ward, but she was also, the members of the band concurred, why paul revere had ridden so hard to tell the british that the americans were coming to blow it up at the 2012 olympic games. the rest of the city may not have been using it to its full advantage, but that was why they had invented freedom. and in boston, she could have married any of them. oui. wieners and old money wanted. i do. i so motherfucking do.