Intersection
What’s that racket/
He didn’t answer. All they heard was a clatter of smashed blacktop and reverse warning honks from city trucks. She turned over to shut the window.
What are they doing/ Talking into the pillow.
Putting up that new traffic light Sal… remember we saw the signs roped on the trees up and down the block last night.
Still into the pillow- I have such a headache. Can’t they start later/
Doug figured to let her get more rest and examine the situation more closely for himself. <I wonder if they’ll put up a new crosswalk button. Na, that’d be too much and the light wouldn’t change quickly enough but it would still be nice, make it look nice. And maybe have those ones with the countdown numbers in them, so you don’t haveta guess if it’s still flashing.>
There was never enough traffic to warrant a button. It only made people feel good about waiting. <I wouldn’t want one anyway. All those people pushing the same button again and again. What if they just sneezed into their hand or were bleeding. I hope one doesn’t go up and infest the corner. It’s a nice neighborhood. They should know better than to mix up our little family and all the other families here. We tried so hard to make this a nice place and now it kinda is except that all the people who moved in are jerks behind the wheel and now because of us it isn’t safe for our kids to play outside without a traffic light that they don’t need but we do. They responsible ones> He chuckles out-loud but Sally is again fast asleep in the other corner where the bed is doing its best to deliver her from the commotion outside. <need to be looked after. we are the people bringing more people into the world and this is what we do to them. Tell them to be afraid of strangers, but their friends and families are the real danger to them. We never tell them the real danger, we don’t tell them about ourselves.>
From the third story window he could see a crew of five utility workers in orange mesh safety vest. They had blocked off both flows of traffic and created the Barnes Dance everywhere should have but only a few cities have and only then a few spots in the cities have. But it didn’t matter here. It was a windy day and maybe too windy to be woking in cherry pickers and with jack-hammers. But they were gonna get thru it today cause that’s what the sign said and that’s what they were gonna do. Debris floating around or not, extension arm swaying or not, it had to be erected. Doug looks over to his sleeping Sally and then back to the intersection.
<This is the crew who would have gone out with chainsaws and bulldozers to go clear a forest, but there aren’t any more forests left to clear. So these guys get up as high as tree limbs and start making things that look like trees even though there aren’t enough trees anymore to go foresting them. At least it’ll keep the kids safe. >
Every eight or nine minutes or so the team of street workers have to stop and there is less sound in the air. It is never silent. The wind is still howling and he can’t open the corner window without getting a coating of street grime on the window sill and anything within a foot radius.
He leaves the scene and does a familiar routine to begin the day. The shower spray and grinding of the electric razor drown out all of the outside commotion but only in the sanctuary of the bath. He knows he has to leave the bathroom and the apartment and cross the intersection. the subway is two blocks from the room. Two blocks from his third story asylum and outlook.
