Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (C. AD 2009) in a Large City by Choire Sicha

Author:Choire Sicha [Sicha, Choire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Popular Culture, Sociology, Social Science, General
ISBN: 9780061914300
Google: sUBHLgEACAAJ
Amazon: 0061914304
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2013-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

THE CITY WAS all soft and steamy and delirious. Tree roots pushed up against slab, patient, growing every day. Down in the old former swamps of the City, where the hard schist broke up or dove down, the roots roamed wet and free, and pushed up because they could, and pushed down through garbage and broken rock and landfill. The old buildings sagged. In the bathrooms a tile would crack, and then another. One day a window wouldn’t quite close square. The old hills from the west side pushed down what was once an old former soggy cove. The rocks and burned buildings and gravel that filled in the swamps and unevenness of the east side, that mass was all compressed and thick now from decades of pressure, held together by webs of pipes and wires and roots and time. Little dirty streams appeared in the subway tunnels. Hundreds of pumps moved millions of gallons of water from the boreholes into tunnels built for wastewater, and then pumped it back into the sea. The sea shoved the water back. The more of the City there was, the heavier it got. All things settled, but not without constant tension, and often, unnoticed, a thing would quietly break. The great heap of structures made allowances one after another after the next for as long as it could.

JOHN BOUGHT A loaf of bread for dinner and was asleep by the stroke of nine.

He’d been texting Taylor back and forth, like dozens of times.

“I have nothing to hide,” Taylor had texted.

“You have my number,” Taylor had texted.

John awoke to the humming of his phone, another text from Taylor. “Don’t worry,” Taylor texted.

Then it was three a.m. and he couldn’t go back to sleep in the dark and hot and quiet, and he stayed up and watched some terrible movie on the TV.

IN JOHN’S MAIL there came a bank statement, for the period of June 22 to July 21.

His checking had 0.41 dollars. His savings had 0.85 dollars. His delinquent loan payments were 1,496.04 dollars. His Checking Plus Credit Line minimum payment due was 43.36 dollars. His annual percentage rate for interest on that was 15.25 percent. The amount of money subtracted from his bank account in that period was 2,581.07 dollars. But the amount of money he’d put into his bank account in that period was 2,272.72 dollars.

On June 14, he’d made a debit card purchase at a fast food hamburger place in the amount of 4.74 dollars.

JASON HAD BEEN to the same beach town once as well, he said.

“Oh my God, one time I went through the forest and I like totally hit my head into one of those branches and nearly lost my eye and I had to wear an eye patch for weeks but so then I went back home and I realized my wallet was totally gone and my eye was hanging out of my socket so I went

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