It's the fifth of the month. My rent and car insurance and car payment are paid but damn.
Pops has mail and bills he needs help with. He doesn't realize that it's Labor Day and the bank is closed. So I'm meeting him here.
I skipped breakfast because I prioritize sleep since school is starting Thursday. I kept my breakfast ( lunch) cost to 99cents. These sour cream and onion chips will hold me for a bit.
I sit patiently perched on the banks huge stone blocks that once probably held lions remembering the last time I say atop this block getting dressed to be killed in effigy. On my way to the stone perch I saw someone try the door and walk away; no cash for him today. Like pops he forgot or never knew about Labor Day or never cared enough to remember. Across the street I hear an argument getting louder and louder. No big. It's expected here. This feels like a hub of the discontent. The female voice gets louder and my squint picks her out. Pushing a babycarriage and pulling on a man. At the crescendos I can hear her pleading for him to give back the money and his dispassionate "I don't care". I stood ready to jump down and intervene if I saw violence but all I saw was tears and a woman pulling herself back together and strolling on.
No pops yet.
A man and his young son (I assume from the bond) come to the steps and ask me if it's closed. I tell them I guess it is and they change course. As others folk get on and off buses, set up tables for outdoor patios, and begin to congregate on the ramp of the corner store the father and supposed son come back by my perch. The father has a smile and a pile of twenties. He kissed them and raises them so slightly up. As they walk and I watch he holds the cash down to his son's level and the little round faced boy mimics his Poppa and kissed the crisp bills with a smile as a chaser. Good luck for them it seems.
A pair of older women in my peripheral vision as I'm writing about the arguing couple approaches the gargoyle post and louder than need be ask and answer the obvious rhetorical question. Yes it's closed. They utter exasperated curses so we know how they feel. One more example of the temple's disappointing the masses. The dependence on the green God on the day set aside to contemplate labor.

Pop just called. Someone just told him the bank was closed. He's at home.... Never mind. His bills are rubber banded together to assume a sense of order. Financial responsibilities are important you know.  Bills and insurance co-pays and interest and accrued this and that is all too much for him but he won't admit it. I know it is because it's too much for me. As much as this shaky dinosaur frustrates me I empathize because I recognize in myself the same brutish and beautiful simplicity but at another level. Education and experience in the modern world aside I often want things simpler.
The cost of this wonderful world full of glittering screens and daily updates from the geniuses amongst us is that old migrant workers turned janitors turned pastor/custodians end up sitting in one room apartments making friends with entropy. The price of the glorious excesses is the tension and struggle when the first of the month bills bump up against last month's debts. The check to check folk crowdfunding the new millennium just like the old one. Happy Labor Day.