I was performing a delicate operation on the Iron Horse–against better judgement I’d opened a shifter pod in its protective clamshell to reveal a startling network of springs and pulleys–when CRACK!! The Lenox Avenue Bomber struck again.
I sprang a foot vertical in my socks, involuntarily flinging the pod into the air. Liberated shifter bits tinkled to the floor as I scampered to the window like a wide-eyed animal to survey the ave.
Ever since I’ve lived here, some kid in one of the neighboring buildings buys a sack of M-1000’s come fourth of July. He savors them, likes to burn maybe one per week, tossed out the window into the parking lot of the Korean Presbyterian. He bombs when you’d least expect it, like a Sunday evening at 9pm when some poor fool may be sitting at his computer writing with his back to the window, only to have his senses filled with thunder.
But today he got more than he bargained for. The NASCAR Gardener emerged from below, ran into the parking lot with his fists pumping. This is the man who landscapes our building; he just planted the front with pansies striped in red white and blue. He rides a hoopty old bicycle with chopper handlebars that takes up nearly the whole aisle in the bike room and loves to brawl with other bikes as they try to roll past. He drinks about a case of Sierra Nevada per week, wears nothing but sweat pants and NASCAR hats.
“Goddamn you, you coward, come down here!”
“MOTHAmothaFUCKA you get down here now beeeeyatch!”
That was someone new. The NASCAR Gardener has been joined by a testosterone charged black man in a tank top. He has a huge, smooth head.
Now some of the developmentally disabled from the Clausen House joined in. There was the man with the Trash Bag Doll, always shifty yet gregarious. He likes to water (drench) the plants in the morning. In fact I noticed him this morn paying extra care to the weeds pushing up between the cracks in the sidewalk. When he sees me come home he announces, “Hey biker man! Been out racin’?” in a loud monotone.
TBD is strutting about the parking lot like a rooster in his suspenders. The shy rapper with the broken wing follows him, gazing at the assembling crowd out of the side of his head like Igor. Some chick in a tank top has joined the choir, yelling “You little chickenshit, get DOWN here!” in that terrible caterwaul women produce when they intone like thugs. She screams it over and over, punctuating the NASCAR Gardener and the testosterone charged black man while dialing 911 on her cell phone.
The crowd is growing quickly now. It is the Lenox Avenue Lynch Mob, come for the Lenox Avenue Bomber. Everyone is pointing and mumbling, squinting at windows.
But this is a story without a climax. The fire trucks arrived. Men laced in reflective tape asked, “Where’s the fire?”, then milled with the lynch mob. The men from the Clausen House were eager to shake their hands, even steal a few hugs. The firemen let their guards down, paused to leer at the Lenox Avenue ladies, out in their summer clothes. Even I, from far above, was touched as I thought, “Yeah, those t-shirts are cool: OAKLAND FIRE.”
