One month had passed since Monika abandoned me to the sprawl of the city. Outside, a lone truck carrying fresh bread trolled the avenue below. Thank god for the truck driver, the hardened kind, the kind who takes night shifts, who rolls down the window to holler at pretty young things. Thank god for the black El Camino blasting Brazilian disco, the queen inside, cruising. Even for drunk models, dumbfounded at how they wound up all the way down in yellow town. Thank god for rows of apartment windows, figures inside dancing to Dizzy Gillespie, their bodies illuminated in mysterious twilight.
So kinetic was this city, it was famous for rejecting the basic need of sleep. I wasn’t sleeping because I had real problems. Monika had left months of unpaid utility bills, but I didn’t know this until the power got turned off.
