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.During the night she had covered thirty miles, maybe more.She didn’t know how much further she had to go, only that it was a straight line.The road led downhill across marsh grass and uphill to a highway interchange, the highway signs reflecting the gold sun: JFK-Belmont Aqueduct, the Throgs Neck Bridge.Just the sight of it was hard to look at, the suspension bridge rising above the grass in the distance, pale against the blue sky—just the sight of the distance was hard for her now.She hobbled slowly at a two-mile-an-hour pace as the sun rose another inch behind her ear.Her feet were damaged, and she was afraid to look at them.If she stopped to rest, she might not get herself moving again.Traffic passed her almost soundlessly.It was a quiet Sunday morning.The SUVs waited at lights and no one crossed the intersection.She was the only person walking on the street.The cars idled at the lights and she drew closer to them, walking painfully, and before she reached them, the lights changed and they took off, and she limped on in temporary silence, passing Korean businesses, automobile dealerships, showrooms.Everything was closed and in the white dilapidated houses down the side streets people were sleeping.Or they were quiet, getting up and going to the refrigerator for milk, their faces screwed up with sleep.But not with panic.They could sit down in their kitchens and drink coffee.They had their yellowing roof over their heads, an electric fan, a shower, a job on Monday, the grocery store this afternoon.She imagined red steak in a plastic package in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, the meat soft and cold and the fat hard under her fingers.Her fat was being drawn off her flesh—she felt it being taken—to operate her legs.I have to rest.She held herself on a parking meter.And the large vehicles hissed by on Northern Boulevard in the sun.There were Greek restaurants and tax and law offices and bus stop signs, a low roof of shadow under the awnings, and a Korean church the size of a hill on the corner.Behind her the sky was blue and there were puffs of clouds, a glare of white from the sun.Her shadow was losing its legs.She looked ahead up the boulevard where Skinner was, somewhere after all those closed businesses, low roofs going on and on into the uninhabited distance, and she began walking again.There was a cloud line on the horizon, and she was moving towards it.Her sandals broke when she crossed a street with a high curb.Utopia Parkway.She couldn’t put them back together, so she tried to tie them to her feet another way—if only she had some string—but she could not.She tried to walk holding the thong between her toes, but it made it harder.She threw them in the street and walked on without them, curling her feet to keep the blisters off the pavement.The sidewalk was going to take her skin off.She would need medical attention.Her face was drawn.The edges of her feet were ragged and black.She looked at her feet and saw them suppurating.She came to a place where another street began: it flowed off of Northern Boulevard at an angle like a river, and it was Sanford Avenue—among decaying buildings, a funeral home with Korean writing, park benches, small trees, broken glass, and the parked cars like rocks on the riverbank.A furlong ahead of her the railroad tracks crossed the boulevard above the newsstands and flower stands.The graffiti on the metal said DEN RIP.You’ve made it, she said and walked on not concerned by the pain.She looked for a hawk in the sky, an airplane perhaps, and saw pigeons.They were roosting under the trestles when she got there.She walked over white guano on her bleeding feet and it felt cool and wet.Now she had reached the gray sky that she had seen.It was warm and it would rain.On a board, someone had written: We Design Funeral Flowers.The Food Mart sold High Grade Cigars.Steve’s Coffee Shop.Fratelli’s Pizzeria.The 7&7 Deli Supermarket.We Accept WIC Checks.People were sleeping in the apartments up above with the windows open in squared-off brick buildings, pigeons on the ripped awnings.Beer Soda Lotto.Milk Barn Farms.Dairy Deli Grocery.Phone Cards.Metro Cards.A sun-faded ad for Boars Head meats.Adult males playing arcade games inside by the racks of potato chips.The New Asia Restaurant, here since 1989, the year of Tiananmen.Landscaping trucks.A run of boarded-up, burned-out storefronts.The notice said Victor Han Architects.The graffiti on the boards spelled Blunts.The T was devil’s horns.Die 666.Leiser’s Liquors.A sweatshirt tied around a broken parking meter.CSNR.Romer.Big Dick Fuck All Day.MS-X3.On the boards, the work order said construction by the Hua Fong Construction Corp.Feeney’s Tavern: two green turtles and a little green door, number 2401.She went down Sanford Avenue past an abandoned house sealed by the marshal, by a notice, and possibly used anyway, the siding covered in soot and graffiti too, the backyard teeming with weeds.Mexicans waited for the bus.Between the four-story ghetto apartment buildings was a sea of weeds, tall grass, tires, road cones, a piece of heavy construction equipment, the houses at angles to each other, everything coming apart.Next door there were Mexican men with engines in the yard fixing the door of a beat-up silver-gold Impala.There was the LIRR.The graffiti on the rocks said GLCS.Pocos Pero Locos.A heart and Brazalhax y Soldado.On the curb, she saw the strewn trash and the camouflage gear [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]