Month: November 2002

A steady rain of leaves. Neighbors bent over, plowing through a thick blanket on the sidewalk with their arms. The leaves end up in a pile on the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and street. What I first understand to be a quick effort to clear the sidewalk without the benefit of a rake turns out to have a different motivation – when it’s tall enough, the two of them stand over the pile and look at it with satisfaction, before jumping into it with a, “Wheee.”

“‘Curiouser and curiouser.'”

“. . . ”

“It’d be interesting to go back and read that book now.”

“Wait. What book is that from again?”

“Alice in Wonderland.”

“Oh right.”

“I’d probably get something entirely different from it now. You know, as the person that I’ve become.”

The bike cop wears a pair of those little velcro fingerless gloves. There’a an oversized pair of gloves clenched to the handlebars of his bicycle – starch-stiff and disembodied.

The Chinese restaurant is drafty. The girl dishing up fried rice wears sanitary plastic gloves over her black knit gloves.