The Trouble with Bliss
Page 6
With the box of crackers in hand and his nose running, Morris wanders the East Village. The avenues are crowded with graffiti-tagged newspaper boxes, people returning from work, and Chinese food delivery boys on bikes. Bicycle delivery boys terrify Morris, the way they zip, cut, and race through traffic. He witnessed a woman plowed down and killed by a bicycle delivery boy from the Sun No. 1 Chinese restaurant. It was a direct hit, the front wheel and handlebars of the bike catching the woman and slapping her to the ground. Her head cracked the concrete; she was dead on the scene.
The delivery boy tumbled over the bike, executed a somersault that landed him on his butt. He nimbly jumped to his feet, yelled an apology that sounded like “Scurvy” then picked up his bike, and swiftly rode away, oblivious to the extent of the injury he’d inflicted. Morris chased after him, yelling for him to stop. “Scurvy, scurvy,” he repeated, peddling off.
Morris’s account of the accident and a Sun No.1 menu dropped at the scene gave the police the lead they needed. They found the delivery boy calmly sitting in the restaurant’s kitchen smoking a hand rolled cigarette, waiting for his next dispatch.
Arrested, the delivery boy was assigned a state lawyer and a Chinese interpreter with the habit of fondling her left breast. Morris testified, and after a two-hour trial, in which the accused showed no remorse and said only that accidents were the cost of living in the city, the delivery boy was sentenced for manslaughter. He served two years, then was deported for being in the country illegally.
Turning onto East Fifth Street, Morris heads past his building and walks on toward N.J.’s, just off of Second Avenue. It’s the time of evening Morris dislikes the most, when the day’s light stops being light to start being something else. His mind sets to churning; he worries about money, his father, where his life is heading. And now there’s Stefani.
He stops by N.J.’s place, hoping to talk. Buzzing his apartment, there’s no answer. He hasn’t seen N.J. in five days, since Sunday. Last he spoke with him was Monday, on the phone. “Can’t talk, man,” N.J. told him, out of breath like he’d run up six flights of stairs. He lives on the ground floor, in a studio apartment. “I’m blowing up here, man,” he said, overwhelmed with something. “Fucking. Blowing. Up.” He promised to call Morris later, tell him all about it. He’s yet to call.
Settling on a bench in the small strip of park across the street from the ninth precinct police station, Morris rests. The park is littered with hamburger wrappers and credit card applications. A plastic I ♥ NY grocery bag skips by on a breeze while three teenage white boys in oversized Spurs basketball jerseys amble past. Smoking peach-favored Philly Blunts, they shout at each other, call one another whacked niggas and bitch hos. During the week, they wear Catholic school uniforms, say their rosary.
In the flickering street light, Morris studies the detail work chiseled on the precinct façade. The building’s over a hundred and twenty years old, built of thick limestone quarried from Indiana. To the right and left of the main entrance are huge double doors that once led to the horse stables. It’s beautiful, a Hollywood set; it was Kojak’s headquarters and the precinct where the officers of NYPD Blue battle through their days. A half a block from his home, it’s been a mainstay of Morris’s life.
Now the building’s slated to come down.
Someone from the City said, “We got a budget. Demolish the ninth precinct house on East Fifth Street.” An exact replica of the building, only with two more stories and an elevator and better office décor, is to be built in its place. Tens of millions of dollars will be spent and no one will be able to tell the difference from the outside. The project’s to take three or five or seven years, depending on who’s talking. In the interim, while the building’s brought down then put back up, the entire ninth precinct, all the men, the cars, the scooters, the guns, the copiers, handcuffs, pencils, pens, computers, records, and radios have been packed up and moved in to the new Police Service Area building, the permanent headquarters for the Lower East Side’s meter maids and school crossing guards. The building, Eighth Street and Avenue C, is designed to please everyone.
No one likes it.
Brand new, it already looks old—like it was built in the late fifties by a committee of community college graduates with too much vision and not enough skill.
The demolition of the ninth precinct was to begin the week after the police had vacated six months ago. But due to delays, false starts, petty arguments, and failed agreements, it’s still not begun.
Morris opens the box of Cajun curry barbequed beef crackers, tastes one. The crackers are awful, like smoked cardboard soaked in Tabasco sauce. Forcefully, he swallows it down.
The Stones of Venice. Ruskin. Stefani mentioned the book. Morris has read it, read many books on architecture. He knows the difference between stones, what part of the world they are quarried in, though he’s never seen a quarry or traveled the world. All his information he’s gotten from books.
Morris recalls the basics of construction. To build a building, he knows, one must dig down, have a firm foundation that runs deep, roots the structure. Without this, all is in danger of collapse.
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