Hiding
Do I feel good about hiding
behind the barbeque in the backyard when my neighbor with dementia crosses the
street to talk to me? Good isn’t the word for it, but I’ll say this behavior
feels absolutely right and necessary in the moment. Some days I can’t face her
questions of who I am and what the hell I’m doing at Carol’s house (the woman
who died here years before). I can’t take her lifting her thumb and trying to
smudge away the scar in my eyebrow, her talk of modeling when she was young,
her short gray hair mussed up from napping on the couch. And on days like this
I hide when I hear the clink of her gate latch being lifted, the leash of her
twelve-year-old terrier dragging on the pavement, her footsteps as she peers
through gaps in the juniper hedges and says, now where’d she go?
Fairwood
There’s a dog barking nearby and the cadence of it sounds
like someone saying fuck you, fuck you over and over. The
twenty-something-year-old asshole with the child-sized dirt bike does circles
around the block, muffler thwapping and popping, black smoke trailing behind
him. Fuck you, I whisper, but I don’t really mean it. The neighbors all come
home from work in their shiny sedans, checking their mailboxes before going
inside. But the guy who works from home is on his porch in sweatpants, smoking
and watching TikTok videos on his phone, full volume. I hate him and forgive
him all at once as he pulls the day forward into evening, as his cigarette
disappears right before our eyes.
Washington Square
He’s writing something in a notebook
while sitting on a bench in Washington Square and every few minutes he looks up
at me. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans and red Jordans. His
light-colored afro is tied back in a ponytail, and a few of his upper teeth are
capped in gold. He gets a phone call and smiles, starts speaking in a language
I don’t understand. French, maybe. I haven’t written anything down in nearly a
week, and I stare at the notebook and pen beside him with something like
desire. I realize he’s FaceTiming someone when he lifts his phone up and does a
slow 360 for the dark-haired woman on the screen. He’s a visitor here, just
like me. When he’s done talking he puts his phone away and slides the notebook
into his backpack. He lifts the bike that’s leaning on the bench beside him and
takes off without looking back. I’m sad for a while after, wanting only to know
what he was writing, what magic he was bringing forth as dogs bark nearby and
tourists take pictures of the man balancing on the bicycle, painted in bronze
and pretending to be a statue, pretending to be art.