strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive

Adventures with an unreliable narrator.

Nov 17 05: ny moment #39,987

So a friend has posted her personal experience of one of those New York stories. It’s not a new story, nor is it unique to NYC, but it’s a mournful one nonetheless. It’s the one about how there’s the smell that nobody in the building could quite agree on what it was, until the ambulances and the cops show up and you discover that the nice guy in the basement apartment, the one who used to play his music too loud, passed away peacefully in his Lay-Z-Boy about a week ago.

I feel the sympathy for the neighbors who have lost a friend. I feel the sorrow at the untimely death of the man in the recliner, at the way it took a week for somebody to feel his absence enough to come looking for him. I feel the chill at the smell of death that hasn’t yet left the front entryway. I feel all of these things.

But—and this is the part of which I am somewhat ashamed—I also found myself thinking, “I wonder what the apartment’s like? Does it have garden access?”

filed under nyc

Commentary

The apartment does, indeed, have garden access.

posted by James D. Macdonald, Nov 17 05 11:19 PM