Dizzy

Zigging, mid- block, he’s off: on a torn-up, trafficked slab of Second Avenue— his cane sweeping over broken asphalt, like a sapper or an open skiff on back-splashing seas. For a few seconds it’s unclear if he gets the risk, as yellow cabs swoop down and flock at the light. Then, safe home on the other side. And I for one cannot take my eyes off him as he pivots, compassing north. We’re never truly clear. Now he jams himself at pace between a giant planter and cross-braced scaffold newly set up at Finnegans. And wham. The guy is smack on his ass, un-staring up to heaven, stunned. Damn, I think, what in hell was that? It’s not like the pain of loving someone who doesn’t want you back (though that once ate up years of my life and left me blown like an artery after too many bypasses), nor does it compare to frittering away in a job that I’m ill-suited to and which I’ll probably lose. It’s more as if a hammer dropped from a sill and laid him out cold. That scaffold just appeared there overnight. And for all my hard-won bile I’m not worse off than he is, except in this: I’ve come to think I am.