the signs are up.
at the local mikey d’'s, at the newsstand run by lebanese immigrants, on my apartment building door, covering the weblike blemish wreaked last summer by a drunk who punched raw the shatter proof glass.
and they’'re not pretty. the signs, that is. they don’'t even look official. it'’s so ghetto, a friend described the one stuck on our building door.
on it, was the mug shot of the woman who was apparently pushed to her death from the rooftop of a five floor tenement in our neighborhood last week. must be from her heydays of doing tricks for heroin.
the woman looks dead already in the picture.
a $2,000 reward is offered for anyone who could come up with a tip that could lead to the resolution of the homicide.
that'’s it. only two grand. how much is that junkie hooker on the window? another friend coldly made fun of the reward pot to the tune of a doris day ditty.
in a society that flaunts its so called compassionate conservatism, this is just how much a life apparently amounts to. how am i supposed to respond to this insult? maybe, i am not supposed to.
but how can i not? in a huge way, my trifling daily pursuits are already altered by this woman’'s death. cops now regularly patrol not only my neighborhood but even inside my building.
last night i went home late as always and although the cop on duty in my building kind of recognized me, i still felt stupidly guilty. of what, i don'’t know. maybe, i, and the rest of this hypocritical society, is guilty of her death.
this morning as i went out for my breakfast, i noticed the sign on our building door was unglued, maybe by the surprisingly strong gusts last night. the sign was now treed among the low lying branches of the blossoming dogwood in front of our building.
the dogwood is stunted and visibly diseased. but this spring, it managed once more to be generous with its flowers, the way it was prodigal, as well, last year.
the white clumps of blossoms enwreathed the woman'’s picture. and i dared not pluck the sign from out of the branches.