Stepping along the steel edges of intersections, people in precisely cut suits walk quickly through the icy air past elongated glass windows protecting neat arrays of crystal, ebony-handled carving sets, and thin, pale diamonds. The edges of all these things extend out in a net of lines infinitely narrow, infinitely sharp, a labyrinth of slashing blades. The people walk carefully but as rapidly as possible, watching for traps, concealed mechanisms. They move past each other without looking, but occasionally they misread subliminal signals, forget obliquely worded instructions, make missteps, fall from an edge that they meant to follow as far as the eye can see; then they are brought, however accidentally, face to face, turning towards each other sharp lips or livid cheeks, the rage of a fat man in gray, the malice of a woman with long red hair.
The air turns colder, a shrill wind cuts past the closed windows of buildings. Guns are sold and locks are tested, and the gray of the sky seems to become heavier, denser. Newspapers with large headlines and photographs of executions blow through the streets, past boarded storefronts and their bolted doors. Heavy men with hidden weapons stand alert in open squares, young men and women wearing zippered black clean their knives at the entrances of parks, and every alley rings with running footsteps.
A little man in a raincoat, followed by a number of birds, carries a crumpled paper bag to a bridge over the fast lane of a freeway. He casts crumbs over the edge in handfuls, watching intently for the intermittent explosions of blood and feathers.
[Los Angeles, 1/19/91-9/30/92]
[Picture: Elizabeth Barton, Night City]
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