The Newsstand

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V

Chapter V

After the car warmed I put on the radio: a news station, too quiet to hear the words but loud enough to fill the silence. Which hospital? Antrim County General would be closest. I moved the car back and forth against the plowed up snow until I could lift and cut through it. We drove off of my street and turned right to the 5th street bridge and got on the highway.

Leni rested her head against the window of the passenger door. Her eyes were closed and her breath shallow. Each time she exhaled a small oval condensed on the glass like an empty speech bubble. I had resigned myself not to ask anymore questions so she could rest. The drive would take close to half an hour, the roads being nearly empty, the sky capped in a gray dome, and the roads slick so we couldn't go fast. I turned up the radio a little. A story about a politician; a union strike, sports, traffic, weather, and last night, the reporter said, a fire at a kindergarten.( Read more... )

nyc

the thing about brooklyn is no matter where you live or for how long, the minute you move to another section the old area becomes a complete mystery, and every new place surrounded by gods green acre of aluminum siding. at what point did society decide that brick was an eyesore that must be covered in shame with fake clapboards, now looking so ramshackle and beautiful. is it the same that new immigrants are bent on everything pink marble and those dreadful pewter gates, a reference to some cultural architectural pattern westerners don't get, like a famous temple in Pakistan, resplendent in same?

ridgewood on the other hand feels like your polish grandmothers rags to middle class towels story, and has, as i've said, nearly no irony at all.

sometimes i'll be with people in a neighborhood i lived in five or ten years ago and they will give me directions, unrequested, to the subway. i've been told i wear an expression of looking lost. perhaps i do, but to see it as geographic would be to to mistake the deep layers of strata where it lives in earnest.

meanwhile one world trade is stepping up as a directional beacon, its impossible gigantically punch-out-the-sky quality available from even the most remote corners in the boros. the twins worked that way, but the twins died you recall, quite tragically on a beautiful fall morning.

remarking how odd it is to be without a bicycle currently. with one, the city falls out flat and in sections like a paper map. one afternoon an abandoned airport in southeast brooklyn - Floyd Bennett Field, then another about to cross the whitestone bridge and eating $5 of the most delicious carne guisada, yellow rice, and red beans, having your batteries drained and needing to fuel up. the waitresses don't speak English but you can always point, and the plate is loaded most generously. step out after and cross over into the jersey side of the hudson for some variety. glide south, take the ferry back at hoboken to downtown. there it's just the brooklyn bridge and the occasional shout "bike lane!" to scare the tourists out of your way. you wouldn't want to waste that precious potential energy you stored up on the incline, to let the downside take you as fast as you can, curve right, there's that stoplight at the end with the clunky intersection. head right up to brooklyn heights then south through brownstones that still have metal bootscrapes at the steps.