about the noise.
The landlord has installed a lock on our building. The lock
must be nearly unique. You turn it with a key and when you
hear a certain click you must at that second push open the
door. If you miss the click you must start all over again. If
your key goes past the click, the door stays locked and you
must complete the cycle, complete the turn, before you can
start again, so it takes even longer, and if you miss it again you
must still keep going: you must pay attention and put your ear
right up against the lock to hear the click. The fetal vagabonds
run pus at your feet and the drooping prostitutes come at you,
perhaps wanting one second of steadiness on their feet or
perhaps wanting to tear out your heart, and this is a place
where men follow women with serious expectations not to be
trifled with, pursue in cars, beep from cars, follow block after
block in cars, carry weapons, sneak up behind, rob, need
money, need dope, and you must stand there at exquisite attention and listen for the little click.
The cement on the corner has been stained by its human
108
trash: it is the color of a hundred dead junkies somehow ground
into the stone, paved smooth, running like mud in the rare
moonlight. Sometimes there is blood, and sometimes a savage
dog, belonging to one of the drunken men, chases you and
threatens to tear you apart and in terror you edge your way
inside: listening carefully for the little click. In a great urban
joke, God has given us all the trappings of a civilized society.
We have a huge intersection with a traffic light. We have a bus
stop. Across the street there is a bank and a school as well as a
disco. Next door there is a large church with stained glass and
ornate and graceful stonework. The intersection has the bank,
a hospital diagonal from us, and a fast-food chicken place.
And then, resting right next to us, right under us, tucked near,
is the home of the hamburger itself, the great gift of this
country, right on our corner, with its ascending ordure. I laugh
frequently. I am God’s best fan.*
The windows are open, of course, and he sleeps, pale and
dreamless, curled up and calm, nearly warm except that his
skin has become a pale blue, barely attached to the fine bones
underneath. Outside the sirens blast the brick building, they
almost never stop. Fire and murder. Cars rocketing by, men
with guns and clubs and flashing lights that climb five flights
in the space of a second and turn us whorish red, like great
wax museum freaks in a light show.
I listen to the music from the disco, which is so loud that the
Mozart on my poor little $32 radio is drowned out. Tonight,
perhaps, is the Italian wedding, and so we have an imitator of
Jerry Vale to a disco beat that carries across the wide street,
through air freighted with other weight, screams and blasts,
