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cautiously the police are called, because the drunken, ruthless
men might be armed, might hit, might rape: might kill.
The sirens blast the air, wind runs wild like plague through
the rooms: and outside on the street men are curled up in fetal
position, all hair and scabs and running sores, feet bandaged
in newspaper and dirty torn cloth, eyes running pus, a bottle,
sometimes broken to be used as a weapon, held close to the
chest. The women on the great spiked heels, almost as cold as
we are, can barely stand. They wobble from the fix, their
shoulders hang down, their eyes hang down, their skin gets
yellow or ochre, their faces are broken out in blotches, their
hair is dry and dead and dirty, their knees buckle: they are too
undressed for the cold: they can barely walk from the fix: they
have broken teeth: they have bruises and scars and great
running tracks: and all this they try to balance on four-inch,
six-inch, heels; toe-dancers in the dance of death. On this
corner mostly they are thin, too thin, hungered-away thin,
smacked-away thin: thin and yellow.
In the park down at the end of the block, not far away, the
drugs change hands. The police patrol the park: giving tickets
to those who take their dogs off the leash. In the daylight, four
boys steal money from an old man and run away, not too fast,
why bother. The dealers sit and watch. The police stroll by as
the deals are being made. Any dog off a leash is in for serious
trouble.
Ambulances drag by. Cars hopped up sounding like a great
wall falling flash by, sometimes crashing past a streetlight
and bending it forever. Buses trudge with their normal
human traffic. The cops coast by, sometimes with sirens,
sometimes flashing red, just to get past the stoplight. Fire
engines pass often, fast, serious, all siren and flashing light:
this is serious. Arson. Bad electrical wiring. Old tenements,
like flint. Building code violations. Whole buildings flame up.
We see the fires, the smoke, the red lights. First we hear the
sirens, see the flashing light with its crimson brilliance, then
we ask, is it here, is it us? We make jokes: that would warm
us up. Where are the cats? Can we get them out in time? We
have a plan, a cage we can pull down from a storage place
(we have no closets, only planks scattered above our heads,
hanging on to the edges of walls), and then we can rush
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them all in and rush out and get away: to where? He sleeps.
How?
On TV news we see that in New York City where we live
people die from the cold each winter. We have called and
written every department of the city. We have withheld rent.
We have sued. No one cares. We know that we could die from
the cold. But fire— they must care about fire, they have a fire
department, we see the fire engines and the flashing red lights
and we hear the sirens. No cold department, no whore department, no vagabond department, no running-pus-and-sores department, no get-rid-of-the-drug-dealers department: but fire
and dogs-on-the-leash departments seem to abound. I am
always pleasantly surprised that they care about fire.
The disco music is so loud that we cannot hear our own
radio: we call the police. There is an environmental-something
department. They will drive by and measure the decibel level
of the sound. This is a great relief. Can someone come and
take the temperature in our apartment? The policeman hangs
up. A crank call, he must think, and what with so many real
problems, so much real violence, so many real people dying.
My pale blond friend sleeps, his skin bluish. I call the police
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
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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