Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear [antikvár]

July 3 Oh, Benedict, It's been five days since your touch. Your touch, hell, your rib-crushing hug at the security checkpoint. I think I have a bruise, Dr. Heimlich, would you mind taking a look at my clavicle? Have I told you how easily I bruise? How easily I bruise: Once, when I was maybe seven and I was walking with my grandmother, my marvelous grandmother, Gay, across 59th Street to the Park, I darted out into the street at an intersection. She grabbed my wrist, for fear of what she called Come-Arounders—cars turning the comer at a high rate of speed and disregard—and by the next day I had developed a perfect set of her fingerprints. I thought it looked as though a freshly printed felon had taken my wrist in the middle of a booking. (Did you know that when I was little, I wanted very much to be an FBI agent?) That same aftemoon, when we were waiting for the light to change at Second Avenue, a Httle boy darted into the street in front of us, with traffic streaming close by, and Gay let go my hand to trot right after him so she could whisk him back up onto the sidewalk with a quick underarm hoist. And then the little boy turned around and hissed, "Fuck you, lady!" It was no Htde boy at all, but a dwarf, a middle-aged dwarf with acne scars and a Don Ameche mustache. He and I were about the same height. My grandmother grabbed my arm and v^e backed away together as she murmured, "So sorry, so sorry," in a tone that suggested a hmited command of English. She