I thought it would be good to try on Temple Avenue, but I couldn't find any street with that name on the sign. So I walked down a street as wide and as clean, with gates and doors and window-glass so intact that only the pewter sky told our catastrophe. I saw a lady in a black coat and blue scarf cross at the corner; but she went into a side street; when I looked after her, she was stepping into a doorway. I walked, excited and hollow and knowing my shape-how my body moved, my head-a-jog on my neck, the stagger in my one-boot walk-from the inside. Lamp posts and doorways and fire hydrants came at me from the smoke—
I guess he was almost a block ahead, but for maybe a minute I wasn't sure he was there, in the smoke. So I hurried.
He had short, black hair and wore a brown corduroy
Writing this while taking a crap: small consolations-expected a really unhealthy turd, baloney yellow and spinach black after a node of mucus. Mercifully what came was mostly liquid and left the water too murky to examine.
coat with a woolly collar; it was cooler than usual, but because there was no wind, I was still in my vest. His hands were in his pockets. The coat's belt hung down on either side.
The belt was all I was staring at.
Just as I started to overtake him, I scraped my leg on some piece of crating or junk lying on the sidewalk — I never did look back at what it was. But it surprised hell out of me. I wonder now if I would have done it if that hadn't happened: I mean, trying to ignore the surprising sting across my calf, maybe I also ignored that part of my head that would have made me just hurry on past him, reflecting on how close I had come. (Does the City's topology control us completely?)
When I'd halved the distance, he glanced back. But kept walking. I guess he thought I was just going to walk past.
I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back against the fence bars.
'Hey… I' he said. 'What's
I put the orchid blades right up against his throat. He flinched and looked surprised.
'Give me everything in your pockets,' I told him.
He took a breath. 'You got it.' He wore glasses.
I dug into his pants pocket while he held his hands up. I brought out three dollar bills. (I think an orchid point accidentally knicked his neck and he flinched again) 'Turn around and let me check your back pockets.' He turned and I felt around under the flap of his coat until I realized his pants didn't
I backed away and he turned to look at me. His mouth was pressed together. As I stepped away, I realized his side pockets were much deeper than I'd thought: I could see the clustered circles of change outlined low in the black denim.
He glanced past one raised hand to the left.
A guy was crossing the street, watching us. But when I looked, the guy looked away.
The man made a disgusted sound, dropped his hands, and turned to go.
I gestured with the orchid and said, 'Hey!'
He looked back.
'You wait here ten minutes before you move,' I said, and took another step backward. 'If you call for anybody, or try to come after me, I'll cut your throat!' I turned and sprinted up the block; glanced back once.
He was walking away.
I made it around the corner, went into a doorway to take off the orchid and put the three bills in my pocket. Then I stooped down and rolled up my cuff to look at my leg. It was just the tiniest scratch, down the side of my calf and back toward my ankle, like a swipe past a nail or a broken board or a
out on the front steps, met Dragon Lady: Denim vest laced tight, arms folded (making the laces above them look a little loose), looking pensive.
Haven't seen her in a while.
Back now.
What's she been doing?
Nothing.
Where's she been?
Around.
I put my arm around her but she obviously didn't feel like being mauled. So I dropped it and just walked with her.
As we circled the house, she relaxed a little, dark arms still folded.
Baby and Adam with you?
Yeah, they'll be here.
Reached the yard (telling her, 'It's good to see you back,' and she smiled her stained-tooth smile) and delivered her up to the apes and Tarzan who were goofing around there. The atmosphere cedes us a day featureless as night. I didn't know what time it was; the noise and raillery surrounded her as she went to sit under the tree, fists between her knees, with a troubled look that did not stay on anything. Wondering how (late? early?) it was, I decided I would fix the sink in the service porch (because I'd gone into the cabinet under the kitchen sink for something else and seen some tools; again, topology preordinates) and after I'd turned off the water and wrenched off the first
I have to keep mentioning this timelessness because the phenomenon irritates the part of the mind over which time's passage registers, so that instants, seconds, minutes are painfully real; but hours-much less days and weeks-are left-over noises from a dead tongue.
nut, I decided I'd take the whole thing apart and then see if I felt like putting it back together.
I took the cap off the bottom of the elbow drain and lots of hair and purple gunk fludged out on the floor. Took the taps off. Should have done that before I took the cap off, because there was a little surge of rusty water out of each-that went down the drain and onto the floor. Then I unscrewed the collars from inside the taps.
D-t came out, squatted, and watched a while, sometimes handed me tools; finally asked, whimsically, 'What the fuck are you doing?' and helped me whobble the sink from the wall (standing suddenly when it almost fell) on its enameled claw and ball.
I've lost a name. So? If the inhabitants of this city have one thing in common, it is that such accidents don't interest them; that is neither lauded here as freedom nor wailed as injury; It is taken as a fact of landscape, not personality.
'I'm putting the sink back together,' I told him because I'd just decided to.
D-t grunted and shoved at the bowl-back. The fore-joints of his thumbs are both crooked; which I'd never noticed before.
There was some string on the window sill, and I brought in a can of putty from the kitchen. But when I'd pried up the lid with the screwdriver, the surface was cracked like Arizona. And I didn't know where any oil was. D-t came back with a bottle of Wesson, and I couldn't think of any reason why not. D-t settled back to watch.
'Now we could of got a place without no leaky sink,' D-t said. 'But then I guess there wouldn't be nothing to do.'
I laughed as much as I could holding the cold-water pipe up while trying to screw the fitting back down over it.
I asked him something or other.
Don't recall his exact answer, but somewhere in it, he said; '…like when I first got here, I used to walk along the street and know I could break into just about any house I wanted, and I was just scared to death…'
We talked about that. I remembered my first walks in these streets (D-t said: 'But I broke in, anyway.') While
