Gold Street
The Trouble With Apartment One — Chapter 28
GOLD STREET
As nightfall closed over the city, I retired to Apartment Seven…
And that no man’s land between the sofa and the window—where I throw the mattress down each night—not an arm’s length away from a babbling television set.
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Do you like the new furniture arrangement?
Well, do you?
Don’t you have an opinion?
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Your aura is heavy, Thalia told me—as I passed beneath the fluorescent light of the kitchen…
You think you’re so superior.
And you’re not!
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In the early morning hours, the produce trucks roll off the Manhattan Bridge and the air grows thick with diesel…
I was driven from Apartment Seven once more—pursued by a dream I’d suffered a fortnight previous…
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Tossed from one impossible place to another, I took the 6 to Brooklyn Bridge and walked three blocks to Beekman Street…
A supermarket appeared on the far side of DeLury Square—at the corner of Fulton and Gold.
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At length I climbed back up Fulton with a bucket and a sponge, a pair of rubber gloves—a mask—and a gallon of bleach.
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I broke the seal of the office door.
I hid my face behind a particle mask.
I wrenched the toxic carpet from its moorings—as a cloud of burning dust arose and drove me into the street…
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I’ve inhaled the crime itself, I thought, as I floated beneath the feral light of the sodium lamps along a barren stretch of Fulton—
Past the pharmacy, past The Alfanoose, past ponderous and timeworn buildings lost in slumber—and down the darkening steps of the subway station in front of the Bennett…
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How long is this supposed to go on? Thalia demanded.
The poison dust got in somehow, I said—it’s trapped above the drop ceiling—it comes sifting down every time the door slams—
I’ll have to rip the whole thing out…
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But what’s the good of this when they discover that I’m sleeping here? I said.
I might restore the office from floor to ceiling—and still, at some unsuspected moment, hear the fatal tread of Management along the corridor.