TROOPS

doctors will be giving the drug to real patients who are diagnosed with ‘flu-like symptoms’

Five Minutes Chance

As a last resort we had lunch at an anonymous Italian place in Hammersmith, no music playing. A strange couple occupied the table by the door. It was hard to know whether they were married or mother and son. They were disheveled. Their body language said we ain’t payin’. Legs stretched out too far. Chairs not facing the table.

The proprietor was the only staff. He alternately waited on us courteously and engaged in a strange dispute with the others. At one point the woman shuffled outside, probably to have a smoke. “Why are you her puppy dog?!” he snapped at the man in his weird Italian-British accent. “Why are you her poodle?”

There never was a reply from the shabby man. It continued like this—the woman returning, the man getting up to pace outside awhile, the man coming back, the woman leaving again. The owner chiding them vaguely—maybe for loitering, maybe for something more. They didn’t seem related to him. They seemed stuck to him. Always leaving but always coming back. Were they waiting for money? Free food?

Finally they shuffled down the sidewalk but you knew it couldn’t be for long. The owner peered unhappily out the picture window. The police had arrived to ticket cars.

“It’s ridiculous!” he declared. “They hide ‘round the corner. They supposed to wait five minutes, five minutes!” He shook his head.

Outside a young cop had his pad out and was moving in for the kill.

“They supposed to give five minutes after the cars run out of time!” he went on. I made some polite, assenting rejoinders: Yes. It is ridiculous. He didn’t seem to hear. He kept looking out the window.

“They supposed to give five minutes chance for people! But they hide ‘round the corner. They hide in the bushes five minutes and they come out!”

He kept staring a few more seconds then turned around to get our check.

“And a double whiskey for the little girl?” the bartender said after I ordered the pints. It was a great pub for a cold and rainy night. Intimate, convivial, hidden away on a back street. Framed newspaper pages lined the walls on the way to the loo. One was of Hitler becoming chancellor upon the death of Hindenburg, 1934. Propaganda Minister Goebbels issued the requisite niceties. All appeared to proceed in the correct way. How is anyone to know. Another one was of John Lennon’s death, 1980. Yoko weeping in David Geffen’s arms. It was hard to know which event was more dire.

TROOPS

we put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the present rate, or an increased rate, or a decreased rate

TROOPS

In his experience, many of the world’s greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards.

Fuck 'Em

I got drowsy on the train and missed my stop. I got out at 15th Street, by the park. A fat guy sat on a bench, talking on his phone. As I approached I knew I’d overhear something great. Here’s what it was:

“They didn't much like Michael bringing the pizza in. But fuck ‘em. Who cares. Fuck ‘em.”

There was a guy on the platform this morning, zigzagging close to the edge, babbling. I was lost in thought until I realized he was coming my way. I backed away and hid behind a beam, a little worried that he’d be offended and lash out. We got into the same car and he sprawled out on the bench across from me, chanting and moaning to no one and nothing. He had a belt in his hand and began whapping the buckle against the back of the seats. It made a hell of a racket. He seemed pleased by it, like a baby banging on the bars of his crib. Others in the car peered over their books and tablets at him for a moment, then didn’t give it another thought. “It’s too damn early for this,” said a woman across from me to the right. We caught each other’s eyes and smiled just a little bit.

Sometimes when the computer gets stuck, you get that spinning wheel or whatever the case may be, it feels like time itself enters a strange, inhuman realm. Something that once took a tiny fraction of a section, directed by humans in programming language, facilitated by unimaginable processing power, now takes, potentially, any arbitrary length of time. Could be 25 seconds. Could be three days. Could be 5,618 years. The machine doesn’t care. It’s just going to do what it’s supposed to do. We constrain machines with our imperfect, wishful thinking. But they don’t give a damn.

I'm OK!

About a week ago on the subway steps I was in the crowd going down past the one going up. Two men passed by and the first one stumbled on a step, falling back a bit onto the second one, who helped keep him up. “I’m OK! I’m OK!” he said. Angrily. Like: I don’t want your help. It fills me with rage that you had to touch me, hold me like that. I can’t stand that I just needed you right now.

There were flashing lights down on the street tonight, an ambulance. Voices in the hallway. Unintelligible. The voices of two disparate neighbors, I thought—from 1 and 3. Outside the driver walked back to the door, unrushed. But I guess that's how they always are.

Drivers are worse and worse these days, weaving back and forth across the lines as they text or tap their apps or God knows what. When I see a car like that I hold my breath and pass it, to put the impending calamities behind us.

Feel tired and a little nauseous now, after three days of weird eating and drinking, of too much at once, then not enough for too long, then too much again. And all of it under this cloud of grief, this funeral that doesn’t end.

But there is always something to look forward to: the empty page, another day, and death.

Ten Years Ago

I walked down the ramp to the platform at West 4th. One of the crazy musicians was there, not the Rasta who plays the same wuffly-shuffly chords forever, or the guy with the keyboard, but the white guy with the acoustic guitar, a sort of Hemingway-looking guy, but demented too, just not right at all. It seemed he always ranted more than he played, and this time he was right in the middle of one. His gibberish was notable for being articulate and clear. Often, street crazies make so little sense that you can barely distinguish one word from the next. Like stars, the more you focus, the more they fade away. But this guy, you knew what he was saying, and you knew it was pure insanity, and that made it scarier, really. Here's what he said, leaning over his guitar, the moment I walked by:

“She died or disappeared or whatever she did ten years ago.”

TROOPS

She wore a big, brown barrette, and when she turned her head I caught a glimpse of a small, white ear.

TROOPS

And there were other things in those photographs that he didn't like, either.

TROOPS

and he felt a kind of panic bloom in his heart.

When Black Friday Comes

Overheard on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, a woman tells her man: “On Black Friday I want to get you that TV.”

TROOPS

Macro crises get disaggregated into localised events

TROOPS

“Is that so? Too bad. Anyway, Helen —Mrs. Wilcox—says that Mrs. Patterson visited regular as clockwork,

TROOPS

The stars had all been stifled by the spreading ink of the clouds.

TROOPS

After these visits I would return to the unit, with its faux-homey look, in a black mood.