| Up: Then to New York | [Related] «^» «T» |
Sunday, January 17, 1999
Taste for Today
By Paul Ford
A wee stylistic experiment without much bearing on any larger reality.
Yell when shortchanged, ignore the beggar, ignore the racist teenager, scream fuck at the vanishing train as you run with futile speed down the subway stairs, holding the milled prose of the Times in your hand.
A forest of buildings, people skittering. Women who name the exact specifications of their sandwich to the furious man behind the sneeze guard. Men who punch the wall of the office and smash their black lamps, knuckles bruised.
Smooth starch of knish kissing the tongue, crumbs brushed off with self-tender fingers.
Called on the intercom to look at something--the tenth time in an hour--and I throw my head back, open my mouth, then stand and walk to the back. Love it, it pays. In the hall, a man with bags of food, a restaraunt sherpa, delivering. 5th Ave out the window all starchy faces, blue shirts, neckties, women in thin black, oily takeout fingers streaking the wrinkled glass.
Typing looking out the window. 46 email in and out, automatic, breathing the letters through my palms and fingers. The almost empty train right after midnight, the pleasing drift into sleep, black bag on lap, gripped.
A day like a crossword 10 feet across.
![[Top]](art/EndFleur_40x21.gif "Top"){kind=small}
