on the wide concrete apron of Bruckner Boulevard, South Bronx — the warehouse facade immediately behind her, a parked truck pulling out of frame at the far edge, the street wide enough that its far kerb is a pale grey line in the overcast mid-morning flatness — the truck has just pulled away; she raises her camera to look back at the sign through the viewfinder, not yet pressing the shutter — the image she already took is on the card; this is her looking again
The man's voice carried before I saw him.
He was loading something heavy into a truck on Bruckner, the kind of loading that requires commentary directed at no one. I'd been standing against a warehouse wall for — I don't know, twenty minutes — looking at the ghost sign above me. Three coats of white over it, maybe four, and the original lettering still coming through. A capital R, then a gap, then what might have been an O or a C — the serif kind, from when that had been the only choice. Below it, something that could have been STORAGE or SERVICE, the middle letters fully gone.
He stopped when he noticed me. Not suspicious. Just curious in the direct way of someone who had somewhere to be.
a bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll in deli paper, half-unwrapped, sitting on a laminate counter beside a paper cup of bodega coffee with a plastic lid
What are you looking at.
I showed him the photo on my camera. He leaned in without touching it. And then he said a name — a company name, not a street name, not a neighborhood — said it like it was something he'd been keeping in his pocket for years. His father had worked there. The sentence was very short. He went back to the truck.
I stayed with the sign another ten minutes after he drove away.
the massive concrete underside of the Bruckner Expressway double-deck overpass seen from street level, ghost-sign warehouse facade visible at its edge, the East River waterfront flatness behind
The thermal was right for the morning — Mott Haven before ten has a cold that comes from the ground up, from concrete that the sun hasn't found yet. By Bruckner I'd pulled the overshirt on, not for the temperature but for the pockets, and because I wanted something to lean against a wall with. The heat came anyway, the flat overcast kind that has nowhere to put itself, that makes the air feel thicker than it is.
There are a lot of these signs up here. Layer over layer of commerce on the same facades, none of them winning, all of them still visible if you stood in the right place long enough.
I changed before dinner. The jeans had earned their day.
at the broken edge of a disused concrete pier at Port Morris, East River waterfront — the pier surface cracked and stained with tide-rust, its far end dropping unevenly into brown industrial water; across the river a low skyline of storage tanks and bridge cables; in the shallows below, a shopping cart on its side, one rear wheel turning slowly in the current — she has sat on the broken pier edge and gone still — elbows on knees, looking down and out at the turning wheel in the water, not moving, the light beginning its slow amber shift
I sat for a while at the edge of the water at Port Morris before the light went. A concrete pier, or what's left of one. The smell was tidal and faintly chemical, the kind of water that has absorbed a century of industry and made its peace with it. A shopping cart on its side in the shallows, one wheel still turning slightly in the current, doing something architectural.
at the waterline edge of the Port Morris pier — the brown river surface in the foreground, catching the last amber of the evening golden hour and reflecting the bridge cables and the opposite bank's tank-farm silhouette in broken horizontal bands; the pier concrete at her feet is wet from tide-pull, the chemical-tidal smell implicit in the way the light sits on the water — she has looked up from the water — not at the camera, but at something indeterminate on the far bank — her expression momentarily open, caught between the stillness she has been holding and a thought that hasn't formed yet
What she wore
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I wore the thermal because Mott Haven in the morning still has that specific damp-concrete cold that the sun hasn't reached yet.
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By Bruckner I'd pulled the overshirt on — not for cold, just for pockets, and because standing in front of a ghost sign for twenty minutes you want something to lean against the wall with.
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I swapped into the skirt before dinner because the jeans had earned their day and I wanted to arrive somewhere that still had tablecloths feeling like I'd made a decision.