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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 11 of 11. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 11:42:51
Hungry Pavement, Part 2
by Atticus
Previously: The narrator has his worst fears confirmed as New York City itself tries to kill him, but the sidewalk botches the hit and devours an innocent bystander instead. A witness casually mentions that his uncle bit the dirt sandwich exactly the same way.
I numbly shoved the remains of my umbrella into a trash bin, where it joined about two dozen others.The buses were gone, my path cleared. The Hispanic man started to cross the street, and I followed, slowly drawing abreast of him, studying his placid face and immaculate clothing.
He wore a white Cuban-style dress shirt that seemed strangely dated. His dark hair was slicked back from his forehead, perfectly groomed with a tonic that seemed to be wafting a scent to my nostrils from another age. He had a small, neatly trimmed mustache. His black leather shoes were so highly polished that they reflected the buildings. And he was perfectly dry. I supposed he’d just missed the gully-washer, emerging from the shelter of an awning or something after the downpour was over.
And yet under the café-au-lait tone of his skin, I could almost make out something else. A second layer of skin that looked like ground-up meat gone rotten. I shuddered and looked away.
“So,” he said to me. “What’d you do to piss them off?”
“Piss them off?”
“The sidewalks. You must’ve done something.”
“But … but … I haven’t …” I stammered. “I mean, I only moved here from Jersey eight months ago, for God’s sake. The worst thing I’ve done here is spit out a piece of gum on the sidewalk.”
His eyes widened. “Ahhhh. Well, that’s probably it, then.” He ran his right hand through his hair. “The sidewalks hate gum.”
I stopped on the opposite corner and just stared. “You’ve got to be fu**ing kidding me. This, all this, is about a wad of gum?”
“Well,” he said, shrugging his slight shoulders, “they can be pretty strict.”
“But … that was months ago. Months. And it was nowhere near here.”
“Well, the sections of sidewalk talk,” he continued. “Sidewalks love to gossip, you know. They’re all interconnected, like one big family. And they’ve got long memories. Eventually, word gets around. I guess they finally found you and tried to make their move today.”
“I … that is … this wasn’t their first try, I think,” I said, stunned that I was having this lunatic conversation.
But still. It fit.
It fit with the sense I’d had for the last few months that New York City, or some part of it, had decided I had to go. That I was being stalked.
“Seven months ago, the sidewalk over on First and 59th, by the bridge and the Roosevelt Island tram, it got soft all of a sudden. Just like today. I tripped and broke my left wrist.”
The man nodded somberly.
“And last week, I swear to God, it was like this big bulge suddenly formed in the middle of the sidewalk under my left foot. It threw me way off balance. If I hadn’t caught a light pole, I’d have ended up stumbling into the street and under a bus.”
I paused. “There’s been a bunch of weird sh** like that. Always on the sidewalk.” I turned to him. We’d reached First Avenue. I was getting near my bus stop.
“Damn. What am I supposed to do? How do I make it up to the sidewalks? How do I say I’m sorry?”
“It’s no good,” he said, looking sympathetic. “The sidewalks aren’t too bright, and they never forgive. The way they see it, they get walked all over every day. They’re always pissed off and looking for a fight. My advice to you is to walk in the street along the curb whenever you can.”
“Sounds like a good way to get hit by a car.”
“Beats getting eaten. And go buy a new pair of shoes right away. The sidewalks have got the scent of your soles now, and a different pair of shoes could throw them off, at least for a little while. If I were you, I’d chuck all your shoes.”
I nodded numbly. It made sense, in an “Alice in Wonderland” meets “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” sort of way.
“Anyway, you bought yourself some time,” he said cheerily. “It’ll be a while before they realize they got the wrong guy. Like I said, they’re hard asses, but pretty fu**ing thick,” he added, pointing to his head.
We started to veer away from each other as I turned left to head up the street to my bus stop, and he pivoted to head back in the direction we’d just come.
“Hey,” I shouted. “How do you know all this, anyway? Who are you?”
He hesitated, as if he were unsure he should continue, then gave that same what-the-hell shrug of his shoulders that I’d seen earlier.
“Name’s Fulgencio. About 50 years ago, I got in over my head with a mob bookie. He decided to make an example of me.”
He sighed, slowly shaking his head. “They cut off my left ring finger, left the wedding band on it, and sent it to my wife. Then they shot me, ground me up and mixed me with concrete. You know how the Mob controlled all the concrete contracts in the City back then. You couldn’t get anything built without a payoff.”
I tried to make it look like I wasn’t checking out his left ring finger, but he caught me and held up the bloody stump. “Anyway, I ended up as part of a sidewalk slab on Tenth Avenue. Hell’s Kitchen. Sucks, huh?”
I didn’t know what to say, except, “Yeah. Sucks.”
“But I hear things in the sidewalk,” he continued, tapping his right ear with his forefinger. “I hear things. And I got wind of a major hit going down in Midtown. The one they tried on you. Usually the sidewalks try to be a lot more subtle. But the dumb fu**s finally ran out of patience because they kept missing you. I thought it was time you got clued in.”
Fulgencio stared off into the middle distance for a moment, then added, “I hate mobsters, no matter if they’re made of flesh or of concrete. I guess you can understand why. They’re all assh**es.”
“I … I don’t know what to say. Thanks.”
“De nada, man,” he replied. “The sidewalks have a major attitude problem. They feel like the buildings all look down on them, like they’re nothing. They say the buildings get all the glory, but no one would be able to get anyplace in the City without sidewalks. And what do they get in return?”
He smiled wryly. “Gum spit on ’em. A century of jealousy, well, it goes a long way.”
I reached out to shake his hand. It felt like gripping raw, wet hamburger. I did my best not to wince.
“You better head for your bus,” he said after a minute, clearly relishing the human contact. “And change those shoes,” he reminded me. “Anyways, now you know why New Yorkers walk so fu**ing fast all the time and don’t make eye contact. They’re watching those son-of-a-bi**h sidewalks.”
I moved up First Avenue along the edge of the curb like a tightrope walker – just in case. “Thanks again, Fulgencio.”
“Hey, I got no love for the sidewalks,” he said, growing less distinct and, somehow, less solid in the early twilight. As he crossed the street to head back toward Tenth, I could swear I saw the traffic right through him.
“Just remember,” he said over his shoulder, his voice now like the sound of wind caressing the eaves of a brownstone on a fall evening. “Whenever you’re on the sidewalks, keep moving.
“They don’t give up easy.”
Turned out he was right. Big time.
To be continued …
Posted by JenStar on August 27, 2004, at 11:48:16
In reply to fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 11:42:51
Atticus, I like these stories about the sidewalks. They're whimsical and weird, intriguing and interesting at the same time. I find myself wanting the next installment!
JenStar
Posted by Jai Narayan on August 27, 2004, at 14:06:00
In reply to fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 11:42:51
This could win prizes....seriously
it's great.
I love the dialogue, the fresh images, the sidewalk brotherhood, the man with meat and cement in his body, his shiny shoes and envy of the buildings....
Wow. I am SO GLAD I asked you to post this!!!
If you keep posting all night i will stay up to read this. I'm serious. All night, and at my age that's an incredible thing to do.
Okay what inspired this piece? I know you were on the edge but your edge has such a sense of humor and style...
okay now I'm jealous...green with envy..quickly moving away from envy to adoration....
okay now your on some kind of pedestal.
What can I say, I've embarassed myself and revealed my inner weakness.Jai Narayan
back at the feet of the ever wind swept Atticus with his lovely hair waving in the breeze
Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 19:04:43
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2 » Atticus, posted by JenStar on August 27, 2004, at 11:48:16
Thanks, JenStar. I really appreciate the compliment. I'm glad you're enjoying this piece. I guess it's whimsical and weird because I am. ;)What kind of surprised me about this section of the story is how tongue-in-cheek the writing suddenly gets after a rather slow and oppressive beginning. Considering that I slit my left wrist about three weeks after writing this and wound up in lock-up under watch, I'm a little taken aback by how flippant and energetic the dialogue is. What doesn't surprise me is that there was an abrupt swing in mood and tone between the first and second sections of this story. I was really all over the place at this point mentally and emotionally. When I put up the third (and final section), which I looked over today, you'll see yet another mood swing. One of the reasons I decided to split up what had been originally one piece is that these changes in tone kind of make "Hungry Pavement" seem a bit disjointed when it's read in one fell swoop. I had no idea when I was struggling to write this what lay just around the corner. :) Atticus of Manhattan, who always puts his gum in a trash can
Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 19:29:46
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by Jai Narayan on August 27, 2004, at 14:06:00
Hi Jai,
As I wrote to JenStar, I was kind of surprised by the darkly absurdist tone of this section of the story myself when I reread it after not looking at it since the suicide attempt. There's are real mood swing evident on my part, and I do remember that I wrote the second section of this story a few days later than the first. Fulgencio's line at the end of part 1 was actually the first thing that popped into my head at my second writing session. I included it at the end of part 1 mainly because I thought it made kind of a nice cheeky teaser. I remember struggling to write "Hungry Pavement" -- the first writing not associated with the ads and press releases I had cranked out at work over the previous decade -- because I had a sense there was something seriously wrong with the way I was thinking about and perceiving things and I hoped that this exercise might help me regain some of the mojo that I'd lost in a sea of meds and booze. I was just so desperate to take pleasure in doing something, anything, again. Especially something genuinely creative, as opposed to the "pay the rent" type of writing I do at the university. The first part was a real slog (and it reads like it, unfortunately), but somehow when I came back to the piece, this whimsical character Fulgencio had horned his way into the story. It's interesting that what the unnamed narrator is trying to avoid is being pulled "down" and "consumed," even as the depression was doing precisely that to me. Maybe Fulgencio was a bit of wish fulfillment -- a case of me hoping that someone kind would come along and explain what was going on in my mind so I could somehow cope with it all better. I don't really know. But I really liked Fulgencio and felt a lot of affection for the character right away. I do like this part of the story the best, because it does revolve around the peculiar relationship between two individuals -- even if one is a ghost. That relationship angle is probably what makes the story pick up in this part. If I ever tried to get it published, I'd have to do a top-to-bottom rewrite on part 1, though, trying to match it more to the feel of part 2. Ta. :) Atticus, who snuck Jai onto a pedestal weeks ago when she wasn't looking
Posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 19:57:27
In reply to fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 11:42:51
I envision "Hungry Pavement" as a play (I would have the grandest time designing the set.) I have to think about the mechanics of this and will get back to you :P The dialog would be easy enough to incorporate but I also have to think about the narrator's piece which would be indispensable. I've always wanted to be involved with theater. I love seeing a play in winter when you have to scurry along on snowy sidewalks, freezing, and then entering the warm playhouse and the theater itself. Then there are all these people together, not like in a movie theater, being transported by a live show. The smells of different women's perfumes blending together, thinking of the actors backstage and what they might be doing, the anticipation as the curtain rises, the feeling of witnessing a slice of life from a secret vantage point, how scenery is changed with perfect choreography by black clad stage hands. Oh, I wish it were a snowy winter night and I was going to the theater to see "Hungry Pavement".
This piece has a "Luigi Pirandello" flavor that is quite yummy.
malthus
Posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 20:13:33
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 19:57:27
Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 20:14:40
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 19:57:27
I love the theater, too. I remember crying like a baby when Cosette died in the Broadway production of "Les Miserables" (also one of my favorite books; I chose French as my language in high school principally so I could read it in Victor Hugo's original language). I'm not sure how well the guy getting bit in half would go over with theater-goers who've just come from a heavy meal at a nice restaurant, though. ;) And there's a sequence coming up in the third and final part that would REALLY require you to be inventive; it's the kind of thing you can normally only do in movies with computer animation. I'd forgotten how much I like the character Fulgencio (even if he is a ghost); I hadn't looked at this story since I did the dirty deed to my wrist and arm. If my balky computer holds up, I'll put up part 3 over the weekend. :) Atticus
Posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 20:22:41
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2 » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 20:14:40
If your balky computer doesn't hold up...
GET THEE TO A LIBRARY
and use any computer!
You have many fans who will not be content until they can read the last part <:)
malthus
Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 20:51:29
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2 » Atticus, posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 20:22:41
That's so sweet, you serious puppy. ;) Atticus, who wishes to add, "Woof!"
Posted by malthus on August 27, 2004, at 21:24:28
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2 » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 20:51:29
This is the end of the thread.
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