At the metro, I don’t take the escalator – too many pick-pockets. My feet crunch on the abandoned peanut shells, cigarette butts, and gnawed chicken bones littering the granite steps. A covey of young men loiter by the exit, voices excited, muscle tees framing black-inked tats. Absorbed in their furtive closed palm exchanges of rolled-up bills for baggies, they ignore me.
Outside, summer’s swelter carries the usual market smells of over-ripe fruit, worn-out peanut oil, and stale urine. I walk quickly, breathing though my mouth. Around the corner I bypass a puddle of vomit and almost trip over the legs of a woman propped against the Market’s brick wall. Sweat pours down her face; I fight the strong urge to yank off her puffy purple parka so she can cool off. She stares at me, eyes filmy from glaucoma or some other affliction, but I walk past, averting my gaze to the crab grass pushing through broken concrete, the spent condoms, the empty vodka nips rolling at her stockinged feet.
Campus security patrols the intersection. We smile at each other, as we do every day, small reassuring grimaces. The ham and Swiss hangs heavy in my lunch bag like a bad conscience. The light changes. I hurry across to the air-conditioned safety of the hospital, to the day of running yesterday’s numbers: admissions, discharges, dollars, death. But first, I stop for a latte, hoping to usher energy enough to feel the morning’s sting.
Oh, I like this story a lot, very evocative of workaday markets and their detritus, human and otherwise. Actually, it made me want to go there and see how well you had captured it!
Come on down! Lex Market is an amazing place, good and bad. Great eclectic food — Faidley’s crab cakes, sushi, Berger’s cookies, gyros, Mary Mervis roast beef, Konstant’s peanuts, Ute’s chips, and so on and so on. My treat ;^) peace…
exquisite. so well observed so well captured. “The ham and Swiss hangs heavy in my lunch bag like a bad conscience. ” yes.
Marcus, thanks so much for your generous comment — means a lot coming from you. peace…
Love that line as well. Quite evocative.
i wanted to add my cheering for that line as well. i like the piece as a whole too, but that line in particular resonates.
me too. I look forward to more. lots of subtle details, made all the more real through the narration. well done!
Avoiding ‘responsibility’ in order to take on other responsibilities? Nice approach.
From the point of view of someone who can and does do something about some of the problems, does the litany of other problem seem less daunting, or more so?
Forgot to mention, love the title as well.
Al, thank you first of all for the theme — very provocative.
What I was trying to get at with this story is the fuzzy edge of where personal responsibility begins — and ends. How much are we our brother’s keeper? And do our actions always help?
As someone who works with the chronically homeless (who suffer a host of psychiatric, physical, and substance use disorders), there is a fine line between enabling and helping. Tough call.
Peace…
Most welcome on the theme. I remember when the ‘We Are Not Responsible’ started showing up, I thought, there is something here. Then, when it was chosen here, I struggled with it. Even now, even with the positive responses, I’m unsure.
Tough call indeed. To live in a world where so much help was not needed, and where those willing to help had the time and/or means . . .
the sadness here is palpable in the urban landscape, the people she passes every day, the odors. very ultra-real and real.
Thanks Susan. This IS my walk to work. I write a lot about what happens in these four blocks walked twice daily. I feel tremendous indecision most days. Peace…
Very carefully observed and well-rendered scene. I felt as if I were there.
Thanks so much for reading. I’m glad I put you there. Peace…
I like the string “admissions, discharges, dollars, death.” There’s plenty of irony in here, but i like the way it’s put into details like the smiles, the latte or the music in that alliterative string.
This really got to me. Especially “The ham and Swiss hangs heavy in my lunch bag like a bad conscience.” The whole thing was so well done, but the last paragraph was spot on.
a micro cosmos. and so interesting that this is your real work.
perfect painful last line: “But first, I stop for a latte, hoping to usher energy enough to feel the morning’s sting.”
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I am always partly shattered and partly exhilarated by the humanity on display at Lex Market, and I wonder: doDonut Delight and Faidley’s balance it all out?