The rusted water puddled in places, and where it puddled it dried into drifts. Sweeps of muddled red dirt from far-off distant deserts lay on every pavement, pooled between the cobblestones, gathered on windowsills and clung to window glass. It haunted the city for weeks, like the echoed calls of phantom desert dogs, prowling with the dry.
Tag: summer
It was a very New York story.
The subway was fetid with humidity. Taking the detour uptown to change my clothes had been a wasted effort. A dark patch already flourished at the armpit I had to raise to reach the overhead holds as I rode the train back down to the East Village; by the time I made it to the top of the exit stairway sweat clung to the skin of my stomach and grabbed stickily at my shirt.
Emerging onto Essex Street was barely a relief. A solid bank of dark clouds lowered the ceiling of the sky, and there was no breeze besides the cool flow of air-con escaping from shop doors.
It was a regulars-welcome kind of bar, oblong and small. The kind of bar where the very arrangement of the furniture encouraged either solitude or intimacy. It was a lovers-and-loners kind of bar.
We had the place to ourselves for a few hours. It was still the afternoon; the bar hadn’t got going yet. He poured them, and I drank. Memory licked at the edges of the picture, thick and sweet as the blueberry-flavoured liqueur in my glass.
A bar for lovers and loners. But which one was I?
An Opening (‘And With No Questions Left Unanswered’).
The carrier-pigeon waited at the window, peering into the gloom beyond the glass. Somewhere in the shadows of the room, nothing stirred; all was quiet. The breezeless summer air sat heavily on his feathers, so he ducked his head into the shade and left the sun to warm his back as he waited on the ledge. He remained only lazily aware of the movements of the few other pigeons and some scavenging sparrows that flew listlessly through the square. Still fewer came and went through open windows on errands—today, even the humans, usually so busy, with so much to say, seemed languid and idle. Yet there was an energy somewhere. Even as he dozed, the carrier-pigeon felt a buzz about his head and thought, dreamily, this day there is a tension in the sky. What significance this tension might hold was, he knew, a thing beyond his reckoning, so, with no questions left unanswered and his sense of familiar peace undisturbed, he slept, quietly waiting.
Click here to read Part 2.
Magical: Day One 