Hot. Just as hot as Manhattan. It's the first weekend in July. With the help of a friend, an 18 foot Budget truck and an indispensable, god-saving dolly, most of what I own is in my new apartment. (Sorry, Mom, I decided not to move my old stereo, dolls, high school and college notebooks and Christmas ornaments out of your basement after all.)
The night before I was to return the moving truck, I parked it across the street from my apartment. Tired beyond speech or caring, I managed to wedge the truck onto a tree. I left it there to deal with early the next morning. I need to sleep.
The next morning, I discovered it's illegal to park a commercial vehicle on the street and that it was also much more difficult to unwedge the truck from the tree than it was to jam it under the branch. Still wiped out and without coffee, and unable to calculate trajectories or vectors, I tried to force it off that damned tree. A few forward and reverse maneuvers later and a woman with her head wrapped in a bandanna came screaming out of her house, yelling at me to stop. She said I was killing the tree. "I know," I said. I tried to remain calm and friendly. After all, she was right and she was also my new neighbor. I asked her to help me, and the two of us managed to get the truck off the tree without too much further damage.
Though I left a pretty big notch in the tree. Sort of like carving my initials, like the couple who owns the house where I live. They carved their names in the concrete stoop in front of the door. They must have been so excited to buy this place together. To own something. To start a family.
They picked a good street. There are lots of kids playing on this street. A muslim family, a chubby girl who sits outside with her grandmother, a few precocious boys with dirty mouths. And it's quiet. I can hear planes flying overhead and the occasional chorus of locusts. Not that I like Brooklyn. Not even close. Not yet.
