Fifth Avenue

From Ollywiki

A famous young couple, neither of whom I recognized, stood outside the doorway of the Bergdorf Goodman on 5th Ave. surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. Immaculately coiffed, they had a strangely out of focus quality about them, a kind of blankess that just sat there absorbing the incoming adoration the way a black hole sucks in light. They were being whomever we wanted them to be. Unconditionally. Smiling shyly, they pressed against each other like exotic birds in a cage at an exhibition.

At the front of the crowd, a woman with no arms or legs, her stumps neatly tied up in muslin to look like fine Italian meats, sat and watched serenely from her wheelchair, while all around her people jostled with their cameras and craned their necks.

A couple of blocks later I noticed two drugged cats in the middle of the busy sidewalk. One, a tabby, sat stupified in its nest like, teal blue, fake fur cat bed. The other, all black, lay splayed out on the concrete beside an identical bed. A handmade corrugated cardboard sign spelled out "Please Help" in black, shaky, magic marker letters. It was about a hundred degrees out and I started to feel faint.