Hipster Holocaust

 

Hipster Holocaust Chapter Five

 

Buffy Winship poured last of the water from her watering can onto the Impatient in the front of the nursey. She had finally finished watering and pruning and cosseting all of the flowers in the independent nursey on Van Brunt Street down in Red Hook. Buffy loved flowers. She had always loved them ever since she was growing up as a child of privilege in Connecticut. When she was known as Elizabeth before she got the nickname of Buffy from the neighborhood knuckleheads who worked with her in the hardware store. She wore their contempt as a badge of honor.

As a young girl she would love to work in the gardens. In fact her best friend as a child was the elderly Italian immigrant gardener who tended the gardens on her family’s thirty acre estate. At least until her mother found out and fired him because she was scandalized that she had become friends with the help. That actually was one of the main factors in her leaving her family and cutting off all contact with them.

She had moved down to Brooklyn with the then boyfriend to become an artist. They got a small apartment on Coffee Street in Red Hook and posed as Bohemian lovers. Sort of Scott Fucked Up Fitzgerald and Zelda. It didn’t last. Her boyfriend went back home to become a Wall Street drone and she replaced him with ever increasing cast of lovers both male and female and some who were somewhere in-between.  After six tattoos, seven piercings, nine different hair colors and four bouts of   chlamydia she decided to go it alone. She had sort of fallen into working in the nursery because of her love of flowers. She had a gift. Not for art but for agriculture.

It wasn’t so bad. She did four days at the nursey on Van Brunt and three at the Hardware Store on First Place and Court. They had a side business of selling flowers out of the sidewalk from the closed in courtyard of the Ace Hardware store. She didn’t do so much of the grunt work of watering or pruning. Instead she specialized in tutoring the dilettante wives of hedge fund managers who came and had their maids pick up flowers and topiary shrubs that their illegal Mexican gardeners would plant in their multi-million dollar brownstones. She was very popular. Tall and whip thin with blond patrician features she was the prototype of the suburban hipster who was slumming in Brooklyn. They recognized one of their own and went to her for advice.

She pulled the gate closed and put the big rusted Master Lock on the heavy chain that kept out the causal crack head thieves who might have wanted to grab a few plants to make a couple of bucks by selling them in front of the subway stop on Second Place. She picked up her PBS tote bag with the dog eared copy of Simone de Beauvoir and her thermos that she brought her chai tea to work.  She walked along Van Brunt deeper into the bowels of Red Hook. The neighborhood mooks were amazed that she walked so causally through the streets because they remembered the crack epidemic in the eighties that made Red Hook into a war zone. That never concerned Buffy. She strolled through the streets as if it was her birthright. Like a Queen.

As she turned right off of Van Brunt she heard foots steps behind her and glanced over her shoulder. She saw a tall figure in a black hoodie following behind her. She really couldn’t tell who it was but in the dim light of the street light she could see that it was a white guy. She relaxed a little. Then she got angry with herself. She didn’t want to be a racist. Sure a black guy had raped her. Another one had stolen her bike by pushing her off it and kicking her in the face. Still she couldn’t be racist. So maybe she should be just afraid of a white guy. Or if not afraid than at least cautious.

She thought about ducking into one of the hipster bars that had sprung up in the last few years. She didn’t frequent them all that often. The men in there were really boys after all. Posing as feminists when they were just run of the mill misogynists with Amish beards and flannel shirts. She walked into a pool of brighter light thrown off a relatively intact street light. She decided to wait and see if the guy would walk into the light. Surprisingly he did.

“Oh hi” she said. She knew him. He had bought flowers off her several times. He was harmless. “Are you walking home? Don’t you live around here?” she asked. He nodded. “Why don’t we walk together on the way home?”

As they walked past the bar and out of light he fell slightly behind her as he dodged the mountain of garbage bags on the sidewalk. When they got to the head of the alley he reached up and grabbed her by the throat and pulled her into the alley. She tried to scream and struggle but a diet of kale and chai tea didn’t lend itself to upper body strength. All of sudden she felt wet. He dropped her on the floor. She wanted to scream but noting came out except a gurgle. The man leaned over her and smiled. He had a blade and he leaned over and stabbed her. Over and over again.  She wept quietly until she didn’t feel anything anymore. He wiped his blade on her blouse. He rubbed himself while he looked at her. He reached under her blouse and felt the small mound of her breast. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She never did because she had the tits of elementary school girl. He felt her up until his greasy fingers encountered her distended nipple. It was engorged in the rain. He took his blade out and cut it off and put it in his pocket. She deserved it the puta. He put his arms under her and picked her up and carried her over to the dumpster and threw her in amongst the refuse of the restaurant bar. He put his hand in his pockets and looked at her one last time.  He turned and walked away.

Two.