Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A big woman on the corner of 51st and 6th, a worker in some capacity or other. Security guard, maybe. She was chatting with the FedEx man, a thin, bent figure with a cumbersome cart in tow. She pulled out a Kool and stuck it into her mouth.

"How she doin'?" the man said.

"Who she? Michelle? She doin' great. She back in school now."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," the man nodded.

"She enjoys school very much."

I looked to my left and a Hispanic family was standing at the crosswalk, squinting into the glaring traffic. The woman was petite, sexy, and the man was just a little taller than her, with a short, thin beard and a baseball cap. He was pushing a carriage with a young girl who appeared to have some deformity, perhaps a palsy. An excited boy stood beside his mother and pointed something out up in the air. They all looked.

Behind them a vagrant fumbled ominously with his fly.