Little Disasters by Randall Klein

Author:Randall Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Michael Gould

Present Day: July 19, 2010

12:16 PM

I cut across 112th Street, walking in between car lanes. They aren’t going anywhere, sitting and honking, trying to get to Riverside Drive, where they’ll sit and honk some more. The parking attendants of Manhattan must have had the busiest morning of all, pulling cars out from the bowels of garages for every long-term resident seeking shelter off the island. I pick up snippets of radio as I walk between stalled drivers. The mayor encourages calm, has announced a press conference for six tonight. He asks that New Yorkers avoid going south of the park and above Fourteenth, which means that the police halo is forty blocks large and encompasses literally millions of people living and working in midtown. There’s still no information on what is causing the issue—I can’t see that far south from where I’m standing—but talk radio has speculated a bank heist, which sounds to me like wishful thinking, the old nobility of cracking the safe and making your getaway through the warrens underneath Manhattan. The screenplay practically writes itself.

It’s the semantics of having no additional information to report that leaves me more wry than annoyed. Of course the mayor knows more than he’s saying. If a sinkhole swallowed two blocks, he could say that. But instead he has nothing to report, because truth has consequences.

My father told me this moment would come, when the liberal in me would compete with the realist and the realist would put the liberal on the canvas. The mayor isn’t reporting anything because the security cameras show a guy in a long linen robe climbing aboard the train. The mayor is letting all the good Muslims of New York get behind any fortifications they can find before making the announcement and putting every single one of them at risk. Today is why my father votes for repugnant men and smugly insists that I will too someday.

A few enterprising boys walk shirtless through traffic, coolers strapped to their shoulders, bottled water dripping from each hand. Only five dollars. It’s funny to see drivers beckon them over and then watch their expressions change when they hear the price. It’s capitalism at its most Darwinian. My bottle is still half-full of bathroom water. All I accomplish by drinking from it is manufacturing more sweat, feeding coal into an overburdened train engine. I stopped checking my phone for the temperature as soon as I saw the pop-up alert that I’m down to 10 percent battery, with the ominous red button underneath asking me to dismiss. I know it’s over a hundred degrees. I can feel it’s over a hundred, and even hotter with the blistering humidity and the lack of a breeze.

On the corner of 112th and Malcom X some virgin-worthy hero has taken a wrench to the fire hydrant, sending gallons of water pouring out onto the pavement, providing a makeshift shower and wading pool. Dozens of kids in bathing suits splash each other, shin deep, bent over and flinging their arms to the heavens to rinse off their fellow bathers and the idling cars.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.