"I mean for yourself."
"Hope isn't for yourself," I said.
"Night!"
His voice was gentle, affectionate. The door thwacked.
The cab went away into the torrid murk, its two little top lights blinking out when the driver threw the flag.
I stood on the corner, on cobblestones, shaded from nothing by the suffocating trees above me and thinking, I guess, about the book I wasn't going to write. All of a sudden my eyes filled with tears. I felt so lost, so lonely, so ashamed of my body and so scared that I wanted to have someone put comforting arms around me.
A couple necking on a flat bench beside the Park wall diddled a battery radio and it began to sing through its nose.
"Alllll—thuh worrrrld—is waiting for the sunnnnrise—alll—"
All that was coming up was the stone moon.
Diagonally down Fifth Avenue, I noticed the spot where the canoe-hat had poked the girl who looked like my daughter.