New York in the Night, A Little Bit

It’s not even 1 a.m. and I have been attempting to sleep. But I can’t sleep. That is because my neighbor, the one who comes and goes at all times of day at night, for, at most, 20 minutes at a time (tell me what he does for a living—any ideas besides a drug dealer? Anyone?), has begun to play video games, as of tonight. And not just any video games, apparently, but the kind that have eerie sounds and lapse into silences broken by rat-a-splat gunfire. I considered banging on the wall, but realized that I’ve lived here for five years now and never, ever banged on the wall. It seems a bad precedent to set now.

So I thought I’d get up and write to you.

I thought I’d tell you about the air, which is cold, but just damp enough to make me feel sweaty.

And I thought I’d tell you that I saw a skinned lamb, stiff and legs-up in a red, plastic shopping cart being wheeled across a sidewalk on Atlantic Avenue the other night. It might as well have been Lebanon. In fact, I believe that was my out-loud response: “Are we in LEBANON?”

[And please, this is not morbid. Just putrid.]