A true story: A man leaps from the top of the Empire State Building, is blown back on by the wind, gets religion.

Barbara, a regular at Pennyfeathers: gaunt and with skin stretched as tight as leather gone stale in the sun, her face cadaverous , the sparse white hair spilling out of her scalp in disarray ; her face fixed in an expression of transcendent despair; no telling what she's thinking, what she sees. She lingers at the counter for hours, nothing to do. Pennyfeather's is her base camp. Once she leaves she sets out walking, walking for hours; at all times of day or night she can be seen, sometimes clutching a notebook in her hands. In the warmer months she wears skirts too short so that they expose her emaciated legs.

 

Another regular at Pennyfeather's, a man in his sixties, retired, his face weathered, a certain dullness in the eyes; he orders a cup of coffee or a glass of milk and will linger over it for hours. It doesn't  matter to the management; he doesn't have to order anything at all if he doesn't care to. He favors caps, has the look of a man for whom life was practically all work and now that work is taken away, all he has is the OTB and the baseball games on the radio. Oblivious of any stares he may elicit, he'll often sit at the counter, humming a tune to himself off-key, occasionally singing the words sub voce.

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AuthorLeslie Horvitz

A drunken woman sits forever in the Chock Full o• Nuts on Madison Avenue. Tufts of gray hair fall out of the kerchief she's tied about her head, and her cheeks are puffed-up and bright scarlet. Her bottle is in a paperbag. No one is serving her, but then no one is telling her to move away. So she sits there. Usually, she will tell you, she would be down standing at the bread lines. But not today -- today she met a friend who gave her a few bucks. The money she uses to buy her bottle and buy her turkey sandwich which she will order if only someone will serve her. "I'm just a bum,"  she admitted. "I used to do nothing before and get paid for it. Now I don't do anything, and I don't get paid for it."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I  wrote obituaries  for  some paper out in the woods •••But they fired me. I couldn't take it seriously. You  gotta laugh when you're doing something like  that."

Then she takes another swig, screws back the cap, "What are all the laws for they got? It says you're not supposed to bring alcohol into the park, but look at all the alcoholics -- and I'm in­cluding myself -- look at them all that come there, and drink. The sign says don 't feed the pigeons, but everyone's   feeding the pigeons. No one pays any attention, why do they have all those laws anyhow?"

She looks once more at the waiter who refuses to serve her,

They won 't have nothing to do with me because they're not very toler­ant. They think it's wrong me bringing in this bottle. They 're used to certain things eating their eggs at eight so they can be at work by nine. And work to five. I know that, I used to do it. Then I realized what it was and stopped. Well, I didn 't just stop, I had to leave.”

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AuthorLeslie Horvitz

Rain on and off all night – rain and death – no telling who is going to die, no one I know, maybe, can never be sure, how could anyone be sure?

Posted
AuthorLeslie Horvitz

She made you feel privileged with her confidences until you discovered that she revealed the same confidences to half a dozen others almost word for word, diminishing the currency of her words with every new ear she shared.


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AuthorLeslie Horvitz

Waiting for a call to rescue you, a letter, a word, the right word, a surprise encounter – that might do if it were with the right person. Waiting for the war to begin, the war they told us would solve everything or some things anyway. Waiting for the market to rise or not to fall anymore.

Posted
AuthorLeslie Horvitz