A man with a cane stops me, “I’m a bodyguard,” he says. “A second-degree blackbelt in karate. I’m for hire. Got it?”
Archive for the 'oneiric' Category
His stiff, thick mustache has to be fake. Her ankles are almost too spindly to support her and her hair is dyed, it’s dry and frayed, the color of damp straw. Their accents are slavic and nonspecific. It’s all an illusion. They lean over their elbows on the table, heads bent close. I think they are plotting a heist.
At a stoplight, an elegant woman leans down and whispers in the ear of her frightened dalmation, “We’ll go to the park and look for other dogs, isn’t that right?”
Everywhere I turn, small children parade behind their teachers in two wavering lines.
There’s a small man in a neat suit, and he can’t keep the smile off his face. He’s replaying something, the smile fades and returns. He puts a hand over his mouth to cover its brimming delight, then begins to stroke his fresh-shaved chin. A bunch of stops go by, and he’s still smiling with his secret. Now and then, his lips move, reliving the words that caused his happiness.
Next to him is a girl with pale brown skin, downy cheeks and sly eyes. She’s reading Pride and Prejudice. I want it to be the zombie version, but it isn’t.
Three old women sit down a few tables away. Their faces are still as masks, their wide eyes look right through me.
A cop is walking her beat, seeing nothing, sending text messages as she strolls. The corner boys, unexpectedly, are harmonizing on someone’s stoop.
In the warm night the corner boys seem younger. They’re practicing footwork with invisible basketballs, pivoting around each other. One takes a jumpshot and his gaze follows it up to the shining moon. “Yo,” he says, “is the moon a planet?” He’s looking at the smallest of the boys, the wiry one who must be the answer man among them. Answer Man says, “The moon’s name is Maria.”
Three men with parkas over their pajamas, each pulled along the sidewalk by a dachshund on a leash.
The snow has just begun to drift down from the sky. The workers are late for work, the tourists are huddling onto their buses. A company of police, in dress blues with tall white spats, makes their laughing way across town, carrying gilt-tipped flagpoles and regulation lunchboxes.
Two boys, brothers, with creamed-coffee skin and halos of long kinky hair that’s just a shade darker. The older one plays guitar by the doors, the younger one sits on the bench and plays bongos, it’s a halfhearted rendition of “Norweigian Wood.” The younger one’s fingers are gifted, and he is languid. He takes off his glasses with one hand, tucking them into his shirt, still tapping the beat with the other. The song ends far short of the coming stop. The tips are collected in a plastic bag. The train jerks across the bridge. The boy puts his drums aside and makes a fist, which he tries ambitiously to shove into his mouth.
He knows I’ve been watching him. I ask, “Does it fit?” He shakes his head. He tries again, compressing the fist first with his other hand and stretching his mouth to its limit. “Ouch,” he says softly to no one, pulling his hand away. “That hurt.” There is one final attempt, again falling short of success. The train slows into the station, and he slides out after his brother just as the doors are closing.
