Day 147: Fear Steals the Light

A banner day for the flu resistance! A saint from UPS saved me. He took every package that was due to go out, even waited while I raced to seal everything. (I was so shocked to see him that I wasn’t quite ready.) I caught up with raging demand.

The guy was wearing a mask that was worn and torn and barely covered his grin when he saw how happy I was to see him. I gave him a couple of masks and goggles and gloves.

POE WASN'T AFRAID OF LIGHT: HIS BRONX COTTAGEHis arrival would have allowed me to visit Ric’s Place—and Ric’s home, if necessary—but some neighbors turned up to trade plywood for protective gear. A lot of people are barricading their windows in the wake of yesterday’s assault. They’ll have no natural light, not even indirectly. No sights. No hope. I’ll never do that.

The bartering visitors in the hallway wouldn’t shut up.

I’ve returned to the purple twilight of my porthole, where I listen to a symphony of alarms from cars and stores and apartments, punctuated by shots and shattering glass. The city sounds like a haunted house in a techno amusement park.

Edgar Allan Poe, New York's poet laureate of personal doom, would celebrate our mass hysteria with a chilling story about the comeuppance of some pompous idiot who thought he was above it all.