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Street’s Friday night cacophony of chanting panhandlers, vomiting drunks, hip-hop thudding over hysterical speed thrash out the windows of refitted Jettas and Civics. The air a humid cloud of sugary perfumes and jockdeodorant wafting off the passing packs of high school kids in for the night from the suburbs. Breathe all of it in and let its ugliness fill my lungs. It occurs to me (not for the first time) that it’s sometimes good to stop and remember that you live in a city and envision what that entails: a clotted intersection of lives all set on different trajectories, each one indifferent to the other. There was a time, I think, when this kind of observation would have left me melancholy, but now it brings a certain comfort. The satisfaction of a suspicion confirmed, an idea buried inside yourself long enough to fossilize, its markings now permanently etched. When I open my eyes again to the yellow bath of neon in the street I step to the curb, raise my arm and hail a cab to take me home.
    I say “take me home” but where I live isn’t a home at all but a “space.” That was the way it was described in the full-page ad that ran in one of the weeklies soon after the building was re-zoned for residential use from its former function as a textile warehouse: COME AND DEVELOP YOUR OWN WAY OF LIVING IN ONE OF OUR SPACES. Not “condos” or “units,” not even “lofts.” Vacant, off-white, ahistorical, pre-personal-ized space. I was immediately drawn. Down I went to the block of rust-dirtied brick at the south end of Chinatown and bought a space of my very own the same afternoon.
    Up in the freight elevator to the top floor and down the wide industrial hall. It’s late, I’m tired, there’s plenty of work to do tomorrow before heading up into the barrens. But I’m starving for another line, and as the door swings open I headfor my stash nestled among the ceramic nectarines in the fruit bowl without turning on the lights. Spill out a serving and up it goes. Only then do I turn on the lights and think: How few things I have. There’s a sofa under the broad window which frames the compact bundle of downtown office towers, a composite portrait of my graduating law school class, Swedish-designed, buttonless stereo (rarely used, all music having become grating sometime in my late twenties) and one wall of bookshelves containing the textual souvenirs of my education. No art, flowers, rugs, mirrors. Every time I face the opportunity of acquiring such things I ask myself why and, having no answer, move on, unburdened.
    There’s one photograph though. Unenlarged, tucked into a dollar-store black plastic frame. There, on the bare coffee table, facing the corner so that an observer must stoop to make out the details: my parents, caught in a balance between posed smile and laughter, arms around each other’s waists, standing before a setting sun the color of a Singapore Sling. I keep meaning to put it away, tuck it on a shelf in the closet or maybe just turn it even further to the wall to lessen the directness of the angle, but then I forget, so that I’m always surprised by their faces shining back at me. A happy couple moving into the middle years of accomplishment without visible hints of regret, baring to the camera the familiar faces of strangers. No strain behind the smile, neither spine stiffened by the other’s touch. The sort of picture that comes with the frame when you buy it.
    I walk over to the window and open one of the glass panels wide enough to let me stick my headand shoulders through. Below, the street is a river of headlight and brakelight crosscurrents, the air swirling up in warm gushes sharpened by the rotten fish and vegetables piled high in boxes in front of the Chinese markets a couple blocks north. Close my eyes and inhale. It used to make my stomach turn, but now it’s almost welcome. A signal in the atmosphere to let you know that you’re home, back in your proper space.

F OUR
    I can move