There’s a chain lock on my motel balcony door. It brings me up short, something sprained in the elbow pit. Return to Go, Do Not Collect $200. Outside I can see asphalted roofs and their op-art breathing devices. You’ve heard about second-story men, but this is the fifth story; I stare down, then left/right in admiration. The drop is murderous. I have this thing about heights; I still sleep with a bed rail. It’d require needs that I can’t comprehend—or perhaps some heroic spite— to shinny along like Spider Man, then swing out/around the wide balcony divider. No tourist’s Nikon is worth that.
It’s December in Atlantic City, on the calendar and in the soul. A few good days remain; this is one of them —forty degrees and sunlit—but you can’t quite swallow bumper stickers that say there will always be an ac. Get in step with people on the seven-mile-long Boardwalk—it’s not hard, most move slowly, most are old—you pick up the death notices one by one. “I’ll tell my husband I saw you; he’ll be sorry to hear the sad news.” “Then we realized maybe it wasn’t such successful surgery . . .” “He would come down, but it embarrasses him, you know—for his friends to see.” The stores that say we’re open do not convince. A black cabdriver tells me, “This town is on its last legs. In season they. charge too much, people don’t come back. Sheeut, this isn’t Miami Beach. I picked up four guys from a bar. They spent seventy dolluhs and they wasn’t even drunk.”
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