The girl could not help her disinterest. When he paused to take a breath between the listing of watches and coins and hammers, she interrupted. The girl told him about her sister and the helicopter. She told him about her preoccupation with the white men, their thoughtlessness, their flat hair, and their inevitable extinction.

  They talked to one another, but really only to themselves:

  My sister’s nose is prone to bleeding, you know, but helicopters are very safe, very safe, everyone knows this, but the white men do not, they don’t know how to pay attention; that is why they are dying—

  I like to feel the heaviness of the object, which is why I collect things. The weight of the watches and the coins, the jewelry and the perfume bottles, and for my hands to be filled with many objects at once. I try to guess their weight, and their value. My room is filled with such things, filled to the brim—

  Of course I know they’re safe, I know that they use helicopters in the wars, I imagine it’s exhilarating to be aboard one, don’t you? Think of the rotors, the thrust, to be able to land vertically—

  And I hope to collect more things, to be known for this collection throughout the county, so the Enflamed Mountain might one day be named after me, I hope to be remembered for something, for anything really, for my collection of blue and white bowls, or candles, or even for my soft unsoiled hands—

  Imagine it, oh, the sound it would make, a safe sound, the crowd would look up at the sound, they would. Even the white men would look.2

  The boy pretended to care about these theories of the white men, or the whereabouts of the sister, but could not. He was distracted by the smell of the muddy river (which reached him even here within the bedroom), and by the girl’s body, her breasts, her collarbone, and the smell of rotting food, which escaped from the kitchen. He also thought about his right pocket and the gold hoop earrings, which hurt as they pushed against his thigh.

  1 And the yellow kitchen wall had glanced patiently, quietly, at the girl and the sister discussing the purchase of the helicopter. It could sense that a decision was close. Their voices were loud, but all voices seemed loud to the kitchen wall, so it did not know if it was a loudness that was suitable or one of anger. The thin curtains moved as the girl and the sister spoke of the machine. The kitchen wall had always hated these thin curtains—a suspended material that did nothing to conceal the sibling inhabitants or insulate the large windows, or keep the light out. The thin curtains obscured the view of the river. They were a source of endless torment and distraction. Soiled dishes, bits of scallop, rosemary, and potatoes stood waiting in the sink, and the thin curtains moved like the hands of anxious children. The sister continued explaining the benefits of the flying apparatus; she came close to the wall as she explained. Her mouth opened wide, wide like a cacao pod, and it stirred a feeling within the wall. It was a feeling that a wall can only have once, it decided, and it was true, the yellow kitchen wall would never experience such a thing again.

  2 The sound of their whispering and of their feet rubbing together could be heard by the yellow kitchen wall, but it did not know that it was a sound made by feet (the bed was just out of sight). And all voices seemed loud to the wall, even whispering voices, even the sound of feet rubbing together. The kitchen wall thought this sound, a familiar sound, was coming from the attic, or the bathroom, or from outside, beyond the thin curtains. Maybe it was the sound of someone coming, a return, a flying machine.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON’S DENTURES

  Like Deana Lawson’s Nation, everything has value, even black materiality, even gold teeth, even spaces that resist authority—even the ceiling, or the corner of a bedroom, even the greased scalp.

  BARBERSHOP

  The brown hair was frizzy around her neck, and around her forehead there was some frizziness. Her ears held six piercings each and six earrings each, twelve. Her top lip was full, and her nose hung down almost to the full top lip, and the bottom lip was less full. Frozen, her profile was frozen, and the toothpick between the uneven lips, a branch between the lips. A blue plastic bag was wrapped around her neck, billowing behind her like a cape. Her top came so low it seemed as if she was wearing nothing except this blue plastic bag.

  The diner window showed her profile, her neck, the plastic bag behind her, the collarbone. The top was concealed by the wall and the restaurant siding. Her face was in the big big window. The hot sauce was being poured over everything: the fries and the chicken, the grits and the grapes. The maple syrup was being poured over everything, over the fried meat.

  The waitress carried a jug of water. This woman drank gallons of water the way her skin was. A swan. On her head a hive. When she laughed her head bent back.

  And her eyes were everywhere, her eyes traveled, they caught the whole room, and she made eye contact with the person across from her, with the waitress and with the manager. She ate cherries and grapes two at a time, spitting the seeds into an ashtray. When she ate she let the toothpick fall to the table. On her tongue there was a tongue ring and a cherry pit. The seed. Gold hoop earrings.

  Around her the diner seemed to be falling apart; the walls were stained. The counters were stained and the floors were stained. The aprons were stained with sauce and grease. The forks were not thoroughly cleaned. The flowers were drooping and dying.

  She dipped the tip of her cloth napkin (blue and white, checkered) into the glass of tap water (which contained lemons and limes, sliced grapefruit), and she wiped the top and bottom lip. She kept the damp material over her mouth, her eyes moving all around. For a while her mouth was unknowable, covered by material. Near the glass of water a cup of iced coffee or iced tea, a brown liquid.

  Next door to the diner was the barbershop with its wood paneling and a poster of men. The poster showed different hairstyles—some of the men were looking up, some were looking to their right with their profile showing, or holding their chins down. On some the faces couldn’t be seen at all, just the back of their heads and the work of the clippers. Some hair was shorter, some longer. Twenty-eight styles total. A calendar on the wood-paneled wall showed October, the corner folded over to conceal the year.

  When she finally removed the napkin from her lips, crumpling it all up and placing it back on her lap, she used her hands to speak. She rotated her wrists, she clapped her hands, she held up two fingers, then four, seven, she clapped her hands together, punched one hand into the other, the right punching into the open palm of the left, as if to emphasize something. Open, punch, wave, punch, clap, punch. Then she rubbed her hands together, as if moisturizing them or disinfecting them, caressing, and the rings were eight, none on the thumbs. She moved so often and so thoroughly that her body became a blur, the fullness of the top lip couldn’t be detected, the blurry bun, the nose, the neck.

  A blurry child grabbed onto her neck. The blurriness couldn’t hide the fact of this small being. He grabbed at her. This woman was generous with him. The child’s ears like her ears, the top lip the same, full, the frizzy hair. There had been placenta between them. They each wore a blue plastic bag around their neck; their backs were made of blue plastic. It was enough to drive anyone away.

  A TRIANGLE

  I saw the couple out of the corner of my eye. I noticed them as I stepped out of a medical building. I noticed them because everything else in my peripheral shifted but they did not. The wind was blowing the leaves, the leaves were dying and leaping, and the couple was so still. The couple was unmoving. I was too, looking at them. So it was the three of us as everything else moved, constant and full and wide. People brushed by our shoulders, sweeping our sides as they inched toward their destinations. People were busy. People didn’t care about the couple standing in the middle of the uneven sidewalk. People stirred around them like the sea, splashing against their ankles.

  The man held her arms, his manicured fingers grasping hard.

  Near the couple there was a burnt chair: garbage, darkened wood, charred remnants. That’s what had attracted my attention while leaving the building, the medical building, with the activated charcoal in my teeth—an abandoned chair all broken at the hips.

  I imagined the impulse of someone purchasing a new chair, deciding to throw this old one away—picking it up with their knees bent and their lower back engaged, a contraction in the abdomen, separating it from their other possessions, and this object (made only for laziness or rest or gathering) being moved down a flight of wooden steps, being carried and offered to this sidewalk, sloppily, an old chair left to perish, and I imagined too the person who might have burned it, probably a man (men expect things to have violent ends) with a lighter or a match and the smell of cigarette on his thumbs.

  The dead chair was near the unmoving couple.

  There was a balance there I found significant, so I looked back and forth between them for six minutes, or seven. I knew the couple must have liked one another. They stared like children and kissed on the corners of their lips, and I knew.

  If I followed the couple home it was because of her hair.

  The building they entered was severe: red brick, steel, iron, and glass. Ugly. I waited to see what would become of them, now that they were inside a familiar place.

  Time passed and it began to rain. I thought of the burned chair sitting outside the medical building, the consequence of this location, its wooden frame peeling.

  When the light turned on in the fourth window from the right, on the second floor, I felt relief. I became aroused. There was sweat, sweat on my nose, and my bowels were ready. There was water—the rain that was still coming down and the sweat that was still coming.

  We were a triangle.

  In the fourth window from the right, I saw pieces of them: the corner of a yellow painting, a bookcase filled to the brim, the light fixture, the tip of a houseplant’s leaf, a purple sofa, the blue walls, and then finally, finally her face in the window, her hair, her closed eyes, his hand wrapped around her neck like a scarf.

  Hers was a plain face, really, as unremarkable as a piece of furniture. A face marked with freckles.

  She had the most average of lips, the dark right eyebrow, and the left just as dark, long eyelashes, a nose with a bump in the middle as if it had been broken in childhood, the freckles covering her cheekbones like sand, and her resting eyelids.

  I couldn’t see her eyes.

  So I waited to see how long she would stay, unsmiling. The rain fell hard on my hands.

  Her skin, her hair had distracted me.

  It was the curl of it on her neck and on her forehead, the way it looked like a question mark, circuitous and pleading. It was the hair that had caused me to follow, to walk closely behind and wait on the street as they shuffled for their keys, the locks clicking and unclicking, their wrists turning, pressing their shoulders into doors, stumbling in, laughing, her name being called, Cannella, it sounded like Cannella, Can—cursing, letting the door slam, fast, fast up the flight of stairs, taking two steps at a time.

  It made me stay longer than expected, and the rain wouldn’t stop. The rain continued. It felt heavy on my shoulders, and it rose. I could feel the water reach the back of my knees, a flooding.

  I did not think to leave, instead I walked back and forth in it, in front of the red brick, steel, iron building, her building, and in the middle of the street, which now looked like a swamp.

  The gathering water rose to my thighs. It smelled of things in the moment before their dying. Invisible objects moved near my shins—empty condom wrappers and large pears and extension cords, wet books full of soft paper (paper like cotton), nail clippers, peppermints, plastic spoons, dead mice, jars of unopened whipped honey. Rising water. This flood wasn’t like the ocean, but I pretended that it was. I kicked my legs. Waves formed, the current was taking me and the rain wet my hands.

  Floating, I looked at the fourth window from the right. The couple resembled a photograph, so still, the man’s manicured hand, his beautiful hand on the neck of the woman, her eyes shut, and her dark eyebrows reaching up in mild surprise.

  I don’t know how long she stayed like that, unmoving, but we must have been a sight to see—the current pulling against my ankles, the thunder, me almost submerged, but looking up, up, staring at the glass, at this person with the closed eyes and the imploring hair, the neck, freckles everywhere, skin like a burnt chair.

  THE FOOT OF THE TAN BUILDING

  A woman jumped from the top floor of a Northeast Bronx building, from the 33rd floor of a building, at around 10:40 in the morning (10:40 AM, a time that seems too early to jump from anything at all). The woman might have recently lost a child. The photograph online shows the body at the foot of the tan building, near a patch of grass. Under a white sheet—a waiting body. Before the woman’s final decision she might not have considered the possibility of this white sheet, its thinness, or how it would not cover her body fully, the birds moving around her, how her legs would peek through at the bottom, her running shoes exposed, her childlike ankles exposed, and the woman certainly would not have considered someone taking her photo, this photo now posted online for anyone to see, capturing her ankles exposed in such a way.

  THE BALCONY

  Serendipità eats the watermelon alone. The whole melon, she cuts into it alone and halves it alone, she digs in. She makes bright pink squares, she digs them out with a knife and a spoon, and whenever the juice accumulates she tips the thing and drinks what she can. When she takes breaks from eating, she covers the flesh with a paper towel. Her fingers are covered, and when she’s ready to begin again, she does so greedily, the light pink paper towel set aside.

  The balcony is covered in green mesh netting; it isn’t safe to sit on. Construction is happening throughout the home, there are wooden ladders about, nails, tarps, a saw, and on the floor white dust. The pipes are exposed and the wiring is exposed. The yellow building exterior and the brown shutters are covered with green safety netting. The church bells ring.

  When it comes time for the construction workers to begin, Serendipità moves to the balcony. She carries the white dust under the soles of her bare feet, it’s useless to sweep it, the white dust accompanies her.

  It isn’t safe to sit on the balcony, the one hundred construction workers tell her. She defies them. When draped across the balcony, Serendipità tries to make herself as light as possible. She holds her breath or breathes slowly, lightly. Also, she doesn’t move much or at all, only to scratch an eyebrow or a forearm, or to look down at the traffic lights. It doesn’t seem entirely dangerous or unreasonable for her to be out there on the balcony. If she can make herself light, it doesn’t seem unreasonable. She chooses one position to hold while on the balcony, and she remains in this position for the next eight to twelve hours. Behind her there’s the clamor of work.

  And across the street a man in a white t-shirt is cooking. Serendipità can’t see the food being prepared, only his moving arms, his elbows in a cutting motion and a grating motion. He seems skilled, practiced. His knuckles are bent. In this kitchen across the street there’s a rotation of strangers, different people occupy the space, a cast of characters. Today it’s this man in the white t-shirt cooking.

  Downstairs, on the street and on the sidewalk, there are empty chairs and empty billowing tablecloths. The backs of the chairs are made of a wicker or straw material. Outside, it’s windy. There’s the smell of fresh paint; church bells vibrate.

  On the balcony she eats the tepid watermelon. When the construction workers come close to the balcony she pretends to sleep. They admire her buttocks. With one eye open Serendipità notices someone new across the way—a woman. The man in the white t-shirt is gone and a crocheting woman has taken his spot. A shadow of the woman’s hands is moving on the appliances, fastidious hands, knotting and unknotting. The hands are not old or new, they’re just hands, there’s nothing special about them.

  Below, the crosswalk signs flash and beep, a countdown to pedestrian safety. But there’s no one outside; at this time people are in church or in their kitchens. Serendipità consumes raw things and sits on her balcony.

  The distant bounce of a basketball, a hissing, a kite in the air, all of the sources unknown. Finally, a man walks across the street below her (the mass ended), his eyes closed, his chest exposed and his white chest hair. Above, the sky: pink and blue and purple. On the balcony there’s a plant with small leaves. The sound of construction. There’s exhaustion in the sound, even laziness, and a sense of general melancholy among the construction workers. The closed-eyed man makes it to the other side.

  Serendipità goes to grab her wallet, to get the cash. On her way through the apartment, she touches a woman’s lower back; to get through the mass of construction workers she touches a man’s elbow. The bedroom is dark, pitch black, the curtains are drawn but she knows the room well and finds the money easily—in the second dresser drawer, on the right, underneath the third folded cashmere shirt, in a small wooden engraved box. Serendipità distributes the funds. She opens the front door, she closes the heavy door behind the workers, and she curses under her breath, a fuck or a motherfucker.

  There doesn’t seem to be progress. There are new holes in the ceiling and in the walls, and a container of off-white paint is left dripping and unsealed.

  Serendipità goes back to the balcony where it’s cooler. An hour has passed since she gathered and distributed the funds, and since the hundred workers exited the property. The sun’s almost gone. Across the street where the man with the knife cuts things and the woman with the hands crochets things, someone is now hanging items of clothing from a clothesline: wet jeans, wet t-shirts, pink shirts, blue shirts, lavender shirts.

 

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