Coextensive LinesIt's Tuesday morning. You're putting stock away between cups of acrid coffee and casually avoiding the boss. Everything looks routine and unspecific; everything looks thoroughly stunned, yet ardently florescent. Then something slowly drifts toward the back of your skull: you notice that you've missed a very strong beginning in a girl found browsing in the bookstore. She is a plain girl full of haphazards, sudden starts, that in a curious way afford you no conjurements for her acne, her source, or a sex for her organs. So, once again you must stop and review your life in random series of coextensive lines, and these broken only by bed slats, table knives or unbuttoned sleeves—which you could accept as a small achievement.
But she speaks to you: a short query for a Rostand play and you bite back the image until the pen bleeds down your chin: It is an autumn Saturday at dusk. The scene presents itself as if it expects your participation. You are walking down a street on the lower eastside when you brush shoulders with another man. Intrigued, you stop, hoping to question him about his ancestry. But he continues on, offering spirited quips to some rather indecent-looking women leaning against a storefront.