a new sink.
"and an empty jar for fresh, shiny coins."
“They were lucky in so many ways. They were healthy and happy and fine. They had spent every penny saved on moving in and moving out, even the coins from under the sink. Now there was a new sink, and an empty jar for fresh, shiny coins.”
- Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story
Yesterday James and I took the F train to a stop we’d sailed past but never been to. The subway car came above ground, as it frequently does on this particular route to the far reaches of Brooklyn, and sped past weatherworn and multicolored cornices of buildings built long before the tracks went up. The train doors opened at neat intervals, letting in a rush of hot air from silent subway platforms. Heat mirages shimmered above the glaring yellow of the tactile warning strips and then disappeared behind the closing doors.
Inside, the car was cool. We watched a plastic cup, with cubes of melting ice floating in the dregs of milky iced coffee, roll itself in wide circles on the floor. The woman across the car from us was listening to something with a bop through oversized red headphones. She rolled out her neck, pressing cheek toward sunburned shoulder on one side and then the other.
We got out at a stop where the train is still elevated and walked down two flights of steps to a sidewalk underneath the tracks. We picked our way over broken bottles and pieces of shopping carts. A man throwing plastic bags of recyclables into the back of a truck paused his work to let us pass, grunted.
We looked for a shady side of the street, and finding none, walked melting in the midday sun toward the address we’d been given by phone. When we arrived we found a sign written in English and Russian, with an arrow pointed up. At the top of the stairs, we rang the buzzer.