overran by middling italian restaurants, my street is unaccountably always inundated with tourists on weekends. but not in this afternoon just two weeks after ferragosto, the high point of italian-american summer, where the old buildings refurbished with mafia money bristle with heat. it is only i in my side of the street while a scoliotic, middle age woman lumbers along on the other side, sweat visibly outlining her low hanging breasts through her flimsy blouse. a wiry, white-haired dog, lurches out of a corner, pitches toward the nearest fire hydrant and laps up the water left unevaporated on the gutter. the street, carless and mute, springs to life with the irruption of the unleashed dog, a moment of unmerited beauty, not just silly prettiness, before it runs back to its owner who couldn't be bothered with this heat and grace made manifest.