table he found a short glass of tomato juice sitting on a five-dollar bill.
He thumbed the rim of the glass and sipped at what seemed almost a sauce. “You ready for another? Something else?” His waitress’s voice came from behind him.
“No… I don’t think so.” He lifted the glass into eyeshot.
“Oh. You haven’t done much with that one,” she said. “But take your time, you still have a while till the next one.”
“Thanks,” he said. He reached into his pocket and dropped the twenty onto the five and left.
■ ■ ■
The wind had grown stout on Fenton. Stagg fixed the throat-latch of his coat and squinted as the gusts drew tears from his eyes. He walked toward Harth, where the familiar portion of his route began (eventually this too would be shifted). A dust of plaster and wood filled the air as he approached a stretch of buildings under renovation. The sidewalk scaffolding shielded him from the worst of the thickening winds, though it also narrowed his vision.
The ovoid headlamps of a Lotus blinded him, just before bringing light to the grainy currents whipping about the metal framework. The car, of a dark, indeterminate shade, drifted down the street, and as it passed, he made out a long-faced man in a blazer behind the wheel and a woman with small bones and bronze skin beside him. Only the future could tell him if this was worth knowing, if it suggested anything, or if it was just one more of the thousands of observations that pointed only to themselves.
Stagg left behind the thin stream of people walking Fenton for its more sparsely populated cross-street, home to walk-ups punctuated by the occasional convenience store or gas station shining gauchely in the night. He came upon very little tonight on Harth: a few streetwalkers, a car parked with a small-time dealer he recognized behind the wheel, waiting, and two red-faced drunks, possibly a couple, in skullcaps and oversized coats, sitting on the curb collecting cigarette butts that had been stubbed out early. Nothing worth reporting.
A hundred yards on and the street darkened. The blue lamps gave way to dim yellow ones that appeared at ever-larger intervals. Finally the overpass came into view. The headlights of cars streaming along the bend in it combined to throw a pulsing beam over the edge, perpetually twisting leftward, as if on a pivot, with no clear terminus in the night sky.
The beam disappeared as he entered the passage beneath the overpass and walked alongside the short gray brick wall that ran the length of the massive structure. Long tubes of light encased in PVC lined the walls. Many had burned out; some only flickered. There were also those that had been diligently smashed by vandals, their casings caved in at the joints between lights, their weakest point.
The cement sidewalls bore a deep aerosol patina. Whirling outsize letters and images in washed-out colors that carried the trace of a former garishness, layer upon layer of them, applied over many years—they sealed the pocked surface like a primer. Scattered atop this base were more recent images, vivid, sharp-edged, soberly stenciled rather than freehanded: parasols, perched birds, nimbus clouds, and mathematical operators, the integer, derivative, and inequality signs among them. Other stencils were built from phrases in non-European languages: Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and several African scripts. These palimpsests brought Stagg’s other work to mind, particularly his would-be draft about the Buddhist monk, Darasa. Even after months of mulling, that scene was no more than notes and thoughts. Maybe, he thought, he could just start at the fortress wall, the monk’s own palimpsest, and let the material find its own shape from there.
So far all his conscious efforts at tracing a vector between the monk and Haas had failed. Including Darasa in the series of writings always felt essential, though, and perhaps this was precisely because Haas’s cultural
He thumbed the rim of the glass and sipped at what seemed almost a sauce. “You ready for another? Something else?” His waitress’s voice came from behind him.
“No… I don’t think so.” He lifted the glass into eyeshot.
“Oh. You haven’t done much with that one,” she said. “But take your time, you still have a while till the next one.”
“Thanks,” he said. He reached into his pocket and dropped the twenty onto the five and left.
■ ■ ■
The wind had grown stout on Fenton. Stagg fixed the throat-latch of his coat and squinted as the gusts drew tears from his eyes. He walked toward Harth, where the familiar portion of his route began (eventually this too would be shifted). A dust of plaster and wood filled the air as he approached a stretch of buildings under renovation. The sidewalk scaffolding shielded him from the worst of the thickening winds, though it also narrowed his vision.
The ovoid headlamps of a Lotus blinded him, just before bringing light to the grainy currents whipping about the metal framework. The car, of a dark, indeterminate shade, drifted down the street, and as it passed, he made out a long-faced man in a blazer behind the wheel and a woman with small bones and bronze skin beside him. Only the future could tell him if this was worth knowing, if it suggested anything, or if it was just one more of the thousands of observations that pointed only to themselves.
Stagg left behind the thin stream of people walking Fenton for its more sparsely populated cross-street, home to walk-ups punctuated by the occasional convenience store or gas station shining gauchely in the night. He came upon very little tonight on Harth: a few streetwalkers, a car parked with a small-time dealer he recognized behind the wheel, waiting, and two red-faced drunks, possibly a couple, in skullcaps and oversized coats, sitting on the curb collecting cigarette butts that had been stubbed out early. Nothing worth reporting.
A hundred yards on and the street darkened. The blue lamps gave way to dim yellow ones that appeared at ever-larger intervals. Finally the overpass came into view. The headlights of cars streaming along the bend in it combined to throw a pulsing beam over the edge, perpetually twisting leftward, as if on a pivot, with no clear terminus in the night sky.
The beam disappeared as he entered the passage beneath the overpass and walked alongside the short gray brick wall that ran the length of the massive structure. Long tubes of light encased in PVC lined the walls. Many had burned out; some only flickered. There were also those that had been diligently smashed by vandals, their casings caved in at the joints between lights, their weakest point.
The cement sidewalls bore a deep aerosol patina. Whirling outsize letters and images in washed-out colors that carried the trace of a former garishness, layer upon layer of them, applied over many years—they sealed the pocked surface like a primer. Scattered atop this base were more recent images, vivid, sharp-edged, soberly stenciled rather than freehanded: parasols, perched birds, nimbus clouds, and mathematical operators, the integer, derivative, and inequality signs among them. Other stencils were built from phrases in non-European languages: Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and several African scripts. These palimpsests brought Stagg’s other work to mind, particularly his would-be draft about the Buddhist monk, Darasa. Even after months of mulling, that scene was no more than notes and thoughts. Maybe, he thought, he could just start at the fortress wall, the monk’s own palimpsest, and let the material find its own shape from there.
So far all his conscious efforts at tracing a vector between the monk and Haas had failed. Including Darasa in the series of writings always felt essential, though, and perhaps this was precisely because Haas’s cultural
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