Unsettling In - New York Times
Yes, it could be anywhere. But it is here (NYT).
Laughter. Hawking, spitting. Cigarette smoke wafts into my room. It is night, late spring, and the air in Brooklyn already feels hot and still, foreign and oppressive. I am actually sleeping naked, which ordinarily I never do. In the heat and humidity, I can’t tolerate the feeling of a nightgown against my skin. Music from a bar across the street twaddles out plaintively like a lost child. I live on the ground floor of a prewar brick building in Bay Ridge. A group of teenage boys are leaning against the wall of my building beside my window, smoking and shooting the breeze. I turn on the light beside my bed, thinking that perhaps if they know I’m here, awake, and listening, they will go away. They don’t budge.
The question is. What does she do? The answer is here.
