a woman flew off the roof of a five story tenement in our neighborhood yesterday morning. just three buildings removed from mine.
one can’'t make up stuff like this, you know.
today, a local tabloid described the dead woman not so mercifully as a junkie hooker. to somehow atone for its patent insensitivity, the tabloid, in the last few paragraphs of its story, touched cursorily about the woman'’s previous stint as an adjunct grade school teacher until heroin got the best of her. indeed, the good is oft interred hastily with their bones.
oh, but what sweet mess the dead woman’'s roof plunge brought to our neighborhood not so used to this much excitement. and i am not talking about her mangled body on the pavement.
as soon as the ems vans came wailing, the neighborhood seemed like the perfectly egalitarian american society the founding fathers must have dreamed it to be.
the first generation italian pancetta maker across my building was talking to his mexican helpers like they belong to the same friday night poker club. a heavy set tamale peddler was being inundated with questions by the slight croatian cashier of an italian pastry shop like they were long lost bosom friends.
it seems like nothing brings racial harmony quickly than the realization among peoples of different ethnicities that we all belong to the only phylum of humans that matters still - those who are still alive.
coming from work, i noticed a sizable crowd milling at the back of the tenement right in our neighborhood, right in the very heart of what tour guides inflatedly call the little italy section of the bronx.
i never gave it a second thought at first. i reckoned it was just a stray tour group herded by their schedule stickler of a tour guide through their itinerary early in the morning.
just before the tenement is a newstand. a huge sign outside its doors announced there were still no winners for tuesday'’s megalotto drawing. the pot was now a dizzying 205 million bucks.
i went inside, forgot about the new york times, and bought me instead ten dollars worth of quick pick megalotto numbers. i couldn'’t keep myself from reading out loud the crudely written sign pasted by the storekeeper on top of the lotto machine "“hey, you never know.”"
as i got to the crowd scene, i realized something big was really going on. i, who until now has yet to master any adult social skill, got myself quickly into a grown up conversation with a neighborhood old timer, the owner of the local dry cleaners.
he told me the crack whore, his words, was probably knocked out of her shoes after her head was smashed against the rooftop air vent. her pair of dingy moccasins was left on the roof.
the police probers has quickly labeled the case a homicide. the dead woman'’s alleged pimp is now the number one suspect.
as the dead woman’'s body, now wrapped in a slinky body bag, was being wheeled into a waiting van, the thick crowd of rubberneckers parted smoothly like a well greased zipper.
i caught the whiff, the metally, acrid smell of the blood from the dead woman as her body bag passed me by. i quickly groped for a handkerchief in my jacket pocket.
i couldn'’t find one. all I could come up to cover my nose was the megalotto ticket. the smell of the thermal ink on the paper stung as much. only that it felt better sniffing it, like i won something already.