"
An hour on the 7
Train. 98 in the shade, only there wasn't any. And now here they were. The uncle, the aunt, the cousins and Lynne,
walking around and around Chinatown looking for a
restaurant that didn't
want to be found.
It's Chinatown, the uncle said. The cousins laughed.
It stinks, Lynne said.
She doesn't get it, the cousins sniggered.
I get it, Lynne said. Maybe she did and maybe she didn't. She
practiced limping for later; a
blister already blooming on her left
heel.
They filed past purses of every
description, hanging under storefront awnings like bats from the
roof of a cave. Lynne clutched her new over-the-shoulder purse, its
plastic parts gone soft in the heat. They marched on: the uncle, the aunt, the cousins and Lynne, always in that order.
Past stacks of scarves, belts and umbrellas; past armies of watches,
faces turned to the sun; past heaps of leafy
greens, spiky fruits and
regular old oranges. Past scaly banks of dead fish piled atop long sloped ice-packed
tables. Stench spilled out into the
street."
J. R. Carpenter,
CityFish,
http://luckysoap.com/cityfish, 2010
