— He might’ve been Caucasian with some Asian, or African with some Puerto Rican and Chinese, I don’t know, part Indian maybe, too.
The boys laughed raucously. Nothing permanent could ever happen to them. It was a feeling she remembered.
Elizabeth had another feeling now, a sensation, a close feeling, something was close, too near like a bad dream below the surface. It might just be the closeness of the young night forcing itself upon her after hours of airless air-conditioning. She crossed streets several times as she walked closer to her block.
Sometimes she varied her route, just to vary it. Sometimes she crossed the street to avoid an encounter, sometimes she crossed the street because she thought she was being followed. She crossed the street to avoid an encounter with the Korean florist. The Korean florist ran out to the sidewalk anyway and waved wildly. He usually did when he saw her, especially when his wife wasn’t in the shop. Elizabeth didn’t go into the store much, ever since the florist had taken her hand, when his wife wasn’t there, faced her, and stated solemnly, I love you.
He was new to the neighborhood. His English wasn’t good. She gave him the benefit of the doubt. He might’ve meant it in a different way, but she didn’t go into his shop much anymore. Passing it was a problem. He knew she wasn’t going to buy flowers from him. He was disappointed, he was resigned. She didn’t return his love.
Korean florists were usually part of a Korean grocery store. This man was on his own, a maverick, an outcast from the immigrant Korean community. He had a small shop with the usual and limited number of flowers. He was a disgrace, scorned by his native community. As he sucked on his cigarette and stared at the sidewalk, he was figuring how to outfox his enemies. Maybe he thought if Elizabeth loved him and married him, he’d be all right, he’d get a green card, they couldn’t get him.
Elizabeth avoided him and entered the pasta store.
— Ciao, bella, the pasta man said.
The pasta man made fresh pasta and mozzarella, and he cured olives, in his other store in Brooklyn. He or his son brought the food to the block six days a week.
The pasta man cut a chunk of parmesan cheese. He bagged a pound of multicolored fettuccini for a German guy with bleached blond hair. The guy paid. The pasta man nodded conspiratorially at Elizabeth when the door shut after the German.
— I worked in Germany, in a factory, because my brother was an engineer, and he says, Come, come, you make more money in Germany, so I did, for three years, I go, but I no like it. No, Germany, no, factory. It’s not…
He pointed around the store.
— Pasta is my life. Pasta and focaccia and sun-dried tomatoes. It’s what I love.
The pasta man was an inspiration to her and the block.
Elizabeth bought a carton of milk from the corner bodega. Run by Syrians. A familiarly strange man brushed against her as she entered. He glanced at her. She glanced at him. He was the kind of guy she might’ve fucked years ago. He was a certain type, and for that type, she was a certain type. There’s an instant attraction, unquestioned, and there’s hardly any bother. Before AIDS, you’d fuck.
Three teenaged boys were at the counter. Two bought potato chips, the third couldn’t decide. He wavered, swaying stoned in front of the ice cream freezer. He held up the line. The Syrian owner was patient, Elizabeth wasn’t.
— Do you know what you want? Elizabeth asked.
— I want a woman. Wanna jump my bones?
The teenager leered at her lopsidedly.
— I’m too old for you, she said.
She didn’t believe that. Lust didn’t wither with age. Maybe he thought she was a working girl. The boys snickered.
She studied him. He was a kid and he was talking up for skeletal sex, for boning, moaning, raplike sex, not rapture, maybe rapture. Duck lips uber alles, ducks don’t have lips, no bones about it, no flesh, no sins of the flesh. He’s not cute enough.
— I don’t want to jump your bones, Elizabeth said.
The boy looked shocked, knocked back into a littler place. The Syrian grocer didn’t smile or laugh. The exchange may have been objectionable to him. But he’d heard and seen worse since he left Syria. His bodega was on the corner where Jeanine worked.
His brother had dropped to the bottom of the drug well. His brother must’ve tried the stuff one night, maybe the first time he was given it free, a taste, so he wouldn’t chase the dealers from the corner, territory that was always being negotiated, and then he did the stuff again, and more, and had to pay, and did more and more, and then she didn’t see him in the store, she saw him on the corner, she saw him wasting away, becoming weightless, becoming angrier, arguing with himself. Then she didn’t see him at all.
There are a couple of white guys in Africa. They’re captured by remote tribe. The chief says, You have two choices, Death or Ru Ru. The first guy says, Well, death’s kind of final. So I guess I’ll take Ru Ru. The Chief turns around to his 150 best warriors and he calls out, Ru Ru. The warriors line up and each one sodomizes the guy, until he’s a bloody mess and dies. The Chief goes up to the next guy and says, Death or Ru Ru? So the guy says, I guess I’ll take death. The Chief turns to his warriors and says, Death… by Ru Ru.
The young Korean woman at the dry cleaners had elaborately painted fake nails. They didn’t interfere with her picking up dry cleaning slips, writing them and handing customers their cleaning.
The young woman frowned as she handed Elizabeth her cleaning. She was ordinarily oppressively happy, especially after she’d gone shopping and found something great. But her previous customer had accused her of deliberately destroying his best suit.
— He’s paranoid, Elizabeth said.
— I don’t care he’s annoyed…
— Par-a-noid…
— Whatever, he shouldn’t talk to me like that.
Elizabeth left, carrying pasta, bread, milk, and a long and heavy bag of cleaning encased in plastic. It touched the ground. She felt burdened.
Everyone was hanging out, expecting a cooler night.
A grizzled waste of a man, around sixty, ambled toward her, he nearly collapsed, then raised himself up and hit into her, hit hard against her, bounced off her, and grunted. He produced other guttural sounds. His trousers were down around his thighs. He was blind drunk. A young Hispanic guy was chasing after him. He had a ring in his ear.
— Fucking pervert, fucking pervert! he yelled.
The Hispanic guy stopped. He was enraged, steaming. He rubbed the ring in his ear.
— What’s up? Elizabeth asked.
— The fucking pervert was taking his pants down in front of the kids — FUCKING PERVERT — I can’t stand that shit.
— The Boys Club?
— He’s going up to the kids and saying, Want to see a big one? A real big one? FUCKING PERVERT!
The Hispanic guy kept looking down Avenue A and yelling at the drunk. The old man was laughing, holding his trousers with his hands, rambling and hitting into other people.
— I fucking hate those guys.
The Hispanic guy spit. He strutted in circles. Neck straining, veins popping, bug-eyed with fury, he watched the drunken man. Elizabeth watched with him. Nothing to do. They both walked away. She wondered how many men were exposing their penises to kids, at any one time in the Western world, the part that was awake when she was.
A man goes to his doctor. The doctor looks grim and says the tests have come back. There are two pieces of bad news. You have cancer and you have Alzheimer’s. The guy’s stunned. He says, I have cancer. But at least I don’t have Alzheimer’s.
The shit was still in the vestibule. It had hardened. The stench permeated the small space. A junkie in a suit was on the floor. He was winding a tie around his arm. She startled him. He looked up. She frowned. He quickly started unwinding the tie. She looked down at him with disgust. Her lips curled.