For the second time in her life, Lowellita has met someone at The Club Diner that has piqued her interest. Has she finally found what she is looking for?

I erupted from the womb of the tin building into the damp dawn air. Above me the sky seemed to toss aside its thick opaque blanket to reveal a softness underneath. The sparkle of the stars had been smothered by a more prominent background light that was beginning to sprawl across the tip of the horizon. The street light was still on outside The Club Diner, but I produced no shadow standing in its delicate gleam.

There is something bewitching about this time of day, if it actually is a time. There is a stillness. To me it is the part of day I savor the most. To insomniacs it is a scourge.

When does a day end and the next one begin if you have not actually said your prayers and shut your eyes?

The calendar had put an ‘X’ through yesterday and went onto tomorrow leaving me one day behind. Not that I minded. To some, staying out all night only to shuffle through the daylight with your eyes half closed is destructive behavior. To me, a spontaneous moment that may only happen once is much more important to relish than the doldrums of what many call their everyday existence.

I noticed that the hair began to stand on my arms and that my clothing was starting to get damp, clinging to my body from the heavy dew in the morning air. The moisture had cleansed away the film of second-hand smoke, spilled Pabst and maybe some sins that I had accumulated from my travels that evening.

I lost track of how long I had been lingering on the sidewalk and then recalled that I followed my counter companion out the swinging metal door. The rogue who had offered me a smoke and left a $10 bill atop his scrambled eggs as he floated out into downtown Lowell.
He had put on his faded Army green raincoat and began to walk down the middle of Dutton Street. I found it strange that he was carrying a trench at all since it was not raining or in the prediction. The farther he headed away from me, the more his outline began to fade into the backdrop of the mill buildings. Eventually the only thing visible was the lit end of his cigarette dancing like a firefly in the wet air.

I could easily let him slip into the abyss that Lowell seems to possess. The black hole where people that are lifelong residents of this city meet once but never cross cobblestone paths again. Or I could follow after him and look the rising sun in the eye — side by side. He took the corner at Market Street and I watched as he flicked his still lit Camel into the canal only to light another one without missing a step in his swagger. I followed.

We walked the length of Market Street without saying a word. He was chain smoking, I was keeping a watchful eye on his movements. He was not much older than I, but had a thick tough layer of skin that seemed harder than his years. He had developed wrinkles at the corner of his eyes that I believe were not from too much sun, but his affinity for tobacco. He held his cigarette between his thumb and index finger rolling it back and forth over his calloused finger tips. His eyes resembled those of a figure of Jesus on the crucifix — lamentable but optimistic yet almost empty.

We both didn’t have to say anything to each other. It is one of those feelings that you experience when you meet a person that is the mirror image of yourself internally. You are both elated that this person exists, but there is an overwhelming feeling of impending doom. It is the simplest rule of life — there is never a high without a low.

I hadn’t even realized that we had stopped walking and were now standing under the ominous green rusted arches of the Cox Bridge that hung above us like menacing mistletoe. It was eerily silent, enough that I could hear the shifting bolts of the bridge clanging. The sun had now began to illuminate Christian Hill, but still left the rest of lower Centralville in the dark. He made a motion with his chin toward the neighborhood.

“Strange how that reflects life there,” he said softly.

I knew from this point on I was crossing into a new adventure in my life.

Where will Lowellita’s travels around the Mill City take her next? E-mail lowellita@lowellsun.com.