An Untelevised Emergency
AN UNTELEVISED EMERGENCY
There was a woman once with straggly black hair and battered Clarks trainers who received daily letters from the debt collectors that she left in the shared hallway, unopened. Her name, which I read off those letters, was Ellen Tyler. Being smashed to smithereens until they went away. Well, we made friends again, Banny and I, but it might have been the blood loss or perhaps the alarm that had started and would not stop squealing though we couldn’t find it. The fire alarm we broke up after three false accusations and after that there was no doubt it was coming from somewhere else. Soon it was time for the football so I allowed that we could watch it, hoping the adrenaline would block out the noise. After all, Banny was bleeding more heavily than At the time, I was dangerously in love with her, though as far as I knew she had never given me a second thought. She did not think about me every time she opened the front door, did not dream about laying her neat hands on my crinkled smoked-out face, did not imagine us in swimsuits holding hands on sunset beaches, did not, most probably, know my name.