Yd6-45(SHEb) Aetheria’s Leash: Unveiling Destiny’s Odyssey Through Harlem

 

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In “Vitrine of (Aetheria) Consciousness,” this chapter orchestrates a subtle yet powerful influence on the narrator and Francine, leading them on a random path—a child's birthday party at McDonald's. Aetheria's guidance is portrayed through Francine's unwavering determination to explore Harlem and the narrator's gradual acquiescence to her desires. A journey filled with vivid imagery and symbolism, as the characters navigate through the urban landscape to find themselves among vibrant childhood energy. This unexpected turn of events highlights Aetheria's ability to shape destiny, guiding the characters into a depth of consciousness. 

Foreseeing through my Panoramic window, Helios golden rays stretch across the courtyard lawn. Saturday held no promise to advance after losing my job. As Nyx, harbinger of darkness, retreats under the cover of the terrace into my studio. I extended a gaze, laying beside me, she opens her eyes. In a burst of thought, ’Time to get going. Take advantage of my new world.’ Francine flips the duvet, jumps to her feet, slips into her silky rambling roses black Kimono. her Frenchish musical voice filling the room. “Je veux voir . . . — I want to see Harlem,” she whispers, slipping away into the adjacent shower room.

In her absence, I slip into my pants and shirt. As Francine reappears, transformed into a rodeo girl, in jeans and a man’s shirt, a conscious leap back to yesterday when she spurred out of the taxi. Her Sun in Horse, as untamed as the American West. While she slips into her boots, compliant to her request last night, my voice creaks, “Mon Petit Moineau. . . — My Little Sparrow.” I relate to her strolling Fifth Avenue’s window shopping, a coffee for ambiance, Central Park’s photosynthetic language and providence in lower Manhattan. 

I plummet in aberrant disbelief. “You want to go where?” In my mind’s eyes the opulent Five Million Dollar apartments at the end of Central Park overlooking the street onto the dark and derelict slums. My heart and soul recoils at the thought of venturing into arid suburbs without reaping fruits. The staccato rhythm of her pointed boots - knock, knock, knock... - Through the gallery kitchen as I scramble, scheming to detour her quiet determination, I unlock the door. Francine on an orientation pause, on the sunlight bleaching driveway ramp. ghosts the taxi’s drop off yesterday in the street. I lock the door behind, leading to the sidewalk. Falling into sync stride through shade-dapples, along with the neighbors’ setback brick houses changing front yard buffers, thinking my way out of her absurdity to reach Harlem. 

I repose my argument, from voicing my mind, while conjugating our passage across the asphalt apron to the left-junction. To continue our walk by a row of townhouses peeking from the shadow through reflective sky windows, and blocks of apartments blinded by my routine past doorsteps to reach Queens Boulevard’s Metro Station. Francine sticks by with an abandonment fear -- a subway line is off-service, spurs to reminisce the day I thought to outwit my shortcomings, I opt for a city map gauging a walkover to the adjacent subway lines at street level. I walked, perspiring mile-long avenues, six blocks down the road. 

Francine wide-eyed shifts silent, absorbs across the mediocre architecture brick apartment blocks. as we reach my routine halfway milestone to the subway. The reflective silver skies checkerboard of the setback block, countless windows watching our walked narrow green strip is a wash of lawn populated by stubby bush punctuated by spiky pines, past the central gleaming marble lobby. Heading the deserted sidewalk, as I’m seeking for a ruse to inspire Francine’s change of heart for Harlem. 

After a stretch of 63rd Road, the supermarket’s whitewashed storefronts appear on the far right sidewalk. We pass the corner to slant our way to the far sidewalk. Francine’s eyes drawn to the massive brick walls rising from the sidewalk, to the far corner turning the block. we merge with the relax flow of Saturday pedestrians into Queens Boulevard along a flow of traffic. Francine’s gaze falls upon the hatchway guardrail to the subway. I guide her to descend the stairwell following the yellow “R” disk.

Francine sets the pace, stepping through a flurry of people in the bright lit tunnels. we emerge onto the platform joining scattered commuters amidst the H-steel columns to a low deck. As we stand by the platform edge, to evanescent silver rails track into the shabby darkness. Until a draft arouses, a rush of air swirls around our figures ruffling Francine’s wavy hair. 

rumbling from the darkness, the train’s approach, the driver’s shadows behind the gleaming windshield. Passing to sight, wagons’ windows framing cinematic scenes of a surreal bright interior. With commuters an intangible world away reflecting their conscious soul seated and standing, and fast decelerating to a stop. the stainless-steel carriage’s parting doors, to a gateway meet the two worlds. Francine with her efface regards step onboard of the welcoming world of the cabin alternating the physical domain to our presence. I turn around, my feet brace a straddle stance, to gaze above the doorway - smack clonk - shut door. the floor tugs underfoot as I track the R course on the metro map. reach for a grip as the cabin lurch forward, and H-columns flickers by into the tunnel’s darkness. 

with a bird’s-eye view on lower Central Park, the windows reflect the cabin interior as we rumble through the dark tunnel. the ride nags at my mind; ‘How do I reach Francine to change her mind? Harlem isn’t a place to visit.’ stations flash by, each stop punctuated by doors - smack clonk - passengers swap places. Reminiscing vagabonds on the sidewalk, ducked behind corners to reach the subway, cutting alone through central park, ‘Try your luck — I am ready for you.’ My fingers fumble with the safety knob, clutching the mini box cutter on my key ring. All while I remained entangled in Francine's intrigue to her new world. 

Francine joins me in my naivete, while I’m catching a bird’s eye view along the subway line for Central Park’s upper side. We step off the R Train and weave through the tunnels beneath Times Square toward the “3” line. Join people at the platform’s edge, until a gust of air sweeps over us, announcing the train. the windshield reflects a silver sheen emerging from the darkness, shadowing the driver, trails carriages’ windows, cinematic flicker benched passengers to the bright interior, trundling to a halt - Buzz, smack - we step on board changing our world with another crowd. Pulling away, into the tunnel the windows reflecting shoulder-to-shoulder passengers. a few stations flash on our last leg, each stop a flurry of figures by the door. I’m cynic without a bright tour to convince Francine. “[French] My Little Sparrow, what do you want to do there. . . ‘_Harlem?’_” I  ask.

As we stepped away from the carriage’s closing doors, I searched for the exit, suppressing my unease about the notorious Harlem. Though I’d remained resolute underground, Francine’s silence, filled with a filly’s determination, contrasted with my dwindling resolve. My gaze toward a filtering bright sky. Ascending the stairwell, to a flare of sunlight, a snippet of flat rooftops encircling us. Retracted rows of windows, cascade down the gleaming brick and ashlar towers. facing combined architectural prows planted by gleaming trains of cars lining the curbs of deserted sidewalks.

‘But where is Central Park?’ I exclaim to myself. I pivot, the maze of the Street to Avenue in rotation. Until meeting Francine’s stance, figuring in my confusion, filling the gap between towering buildings, in vain of a No-Way East. I backtrack in mind, map the rail tracks in the station, superimposing the canyon of towers we’d just traversed. In the distance, a flocculent green spill from the wall of buildings, upper edge of Central Park, my intended entry into Harlem.

Francine’, tranquil in her marveling gaze, inches off, as I lead raising my umpteenth protest, but forceful. “Mon Petit Moineau, tu veux vraiment. . . --  My Little Sparrow! Do you really, really want to venture there?” -- Walking the deserted street block with a few cars slipping past each other, her “Oui! -- Yes!” resonate unyielding like a life-long dream just as often. We step off the curb to cross Fifth Avenue, and up the opposite curb. A short distance up the sidewalk sneaking into an eerie silence, with an augmenting dread. We sidestep a rusty and warped security fence to the abandoned plot, ghosting sinister crumbled homes, deep in invasive creeping weeds. 

We step down the curb, to a mirror reflection four-floor brick apartment block derelict to fear before reaching the opposite sidewalk. The sorry state of punctuated dark wooden windows and doors, to a terracotta wall stretching out of sight blend the abutment to an overpass railway bridge. As Francine's eyes darted across crisscrossed pockets of curb, junkyard cars, skeletal wrecks and spare parts. I stick to the middle of the street, reckoning with security buffers. with wheel wobbly bald tire patches, glass soot film, rusty chassis on collapsed suspensions, while she gazes in wonderland. Francine’s neck strap dangling her wide-lens camera, twitching my nerves as we sneak past a sprouted spanky shiny double-parked two-door Cadillac midway up the deserted bleached asphalt to the railway overpass.

My third-eye, awakens a beacon of sight to strobe, after the two-door Cadillac figure raises suspicion. His figure flits behind the crack to a distant muffled door slam. My sight breaches the walls to empty floors. Until I’m pointed to the glaze, of shabby drawn curtains, to a floor above the entrance. waxing out the hollow dark depths to a room’s walls. The Cadillac man’s abrupt side door entry, to a confronting pause. At a stance overseeing subordinates lounging few men. Their eyes withdraw from a television broadcast —  I’m alerted to the milieu, anxious over Francine's innocent attitude. I refrain from voicing fear into her, thinking only. ‘You better be more discreet with your camera here.’

From the overhead massive ribbed steel riveted beams that span the railway above, we break out the shade to the deserted street. My mind’s beacon of sight strobes, breaching another similar run-up block, but in yellow bricks. While boarded-up, sunlight slants through vagabond’s entry crack, in the shadows outlining the gutted shell within, echoing the ghosts of neighborhood kids — ‘is this prophesying?’ — Francine’s little girl wonders, strolls through the eerie mute haunted Halloween park, as I remind myself. ‘So far, so good.’ While the imposing yellow brick block relaxed into rows of townhouses beginning across the street and curbs stretching without a car, we’re advancing to step across a right, obtuse junction. 

The street character to a ghost street procession of a dozen clone townhouses, detaching gable weatherboards, squeaky doors, rattling glass windows. Until a black woman perched atop the porch amid frail handrails. to avert floundering fears, I whispered. “Mon Petit Moineau, je pense que tu ferais mieux de cacher ton appareil photo - My Little Sparrow, I think you better hide your camera!” Francine startles out of a little girl’s dream. 

Francine tucks the camera away, buttoning up her leather jacket. I regret not capturing the slender woman we pass—a legend to the southern states. Her skin is thin and withered, etched with deep wrinkles. Her stone face, eyes throwing dagger, taming her reach — a powerful image lost to my ego, from telling francine shoot  the woman’s unsettling gaze, conscious of the lens of a camera capturing one’s soul. With an unwavering gaze, a silent dare, following us passing, naked to the deserted street, erasing us as an oddity in passage.

Francine tucks away her camera, buttoning her leather jacket, in the guise of a street clueless little girl. I regret not capturing the woman we just passed—a stark portrait of a life marked by hardship. Her stone face and dagger-like eyes, filled with a smoldering anger, hint at losses that have worn her down. Thin, wrinkled skin speaks of a harsh life, a powerful image lost to my hesitation. Her unwavering gaze, a silent dare, follows us as we pass, as if the street itself is swallowing us whole.

Amidst the half-dozen run of paint flaked desolated doorstep down the street, and window sashes dropped in a silver regard alongside three young colored women sitting perched on the top step of the stoop. As Francine and I strolled up, I sensed the emptiness behind fugal glaze echoing upper floors of the derelict house. We pass the alternating genre, individual colors and individual sculptural facades, to indiscriminate peering regards, awakening a triplets’ photographic pose. Their eyes fixed on Francine with a mixture of curiosity and hostility. Lingering along what Francine has, unwavering attention to what they didn’t have.

In the middle of the last row of stoops, to tailored houses, Francine’s naive watchful eyes on a grandmother,  a sentinel of the decaying neighborhood. she lingering by an ajar door to the derelict. On hold, her chat burgeoning bygone days across the entrance door to her Black daughter. spurs from her prying eyes. ‘You’re not one of us — You’re trespassing — What do you want here, anyway?’ 

My anxiety fades as I glance at Francine’s watch, a relic of bygone days, life drained from the terraced houses, to a remaining family. A grandmother and daughter, from the top of the stoop. Their soft and peaceful eyes overseeing a pair of young boys, heads tufted in the sunlight, seated at the foot of the stairs. Puzzled by the tourists who stroll through their desolate street. 

Through the silent street, in our approach to the rising brick facade disappearing into the distance. In a  gazelle leap from a doorway crack, figures a hurried petite woman carrying a bouquet. In a few strides, beneath the architectural punctuated cracks of low and upper scattered windows. She pauses, fidgeting with flowers. As she uncoils, to her vibrant steps and disappears back inside, leaving a myriad of colors blooming outside the storefront, a token of her opening shop for the day.

With the sun’s timid rise, a street phantasmagoric language awakens, with the plumpish woman further across the way. Ghosting her exit from the hollow somber interior, alongside the storefront, to a floral display behind the dark glaze. She had crossed the broad paved sidewalk, to the curb. Regret in her stance, a doorstep away from the lucrative corner shop. While at her shoe toes the yard broom, bristles idle. The woman flounders a tedious regard across her back-hand of overlapping palms atop the broomstick. Envious of her competition across the street.

My anxiety over the bulge of Francine’s camera under her jacket had faded. The angst that claimed walking through the middle of the street, dissipated. Gazing around the corner, the folly of my mind awakes the fat and thin females of Laurel and Hardy. Francine sighs in surprise over my shoulder. “Mais! Ils sont tous noir ici — But! They’re all black here?” Peering deeper into the side street, a white stone church portal protruded from the sheer brick facades. Two slender women at odds on the elongated stairs. 

We step onto the corner’s parting sidewalk, continuing straight into a crevice between brick facades punctuated by the checkered crack of vis-a-vis windows. apartment blocks streaming people onto the sidewalk of an intersection buzzing with a contest of traffic, to flood the main street of retailer stores. 

Francine and I face the daunting whooshing of traffic. The hurdle in continuing our path across the street, through architecture, flourishing. Lowered, genuflecting, saddled, pitched roofs standing before leafy swells of branches.

I search for a break in traffic’s rhythm to chaperon Francine across. In the far lane, cars’ glaring headlights by the glinting muzzled radiator grille, and in the near lane. I gauge the passing rear fenders to the receding taillights, carve a path across the intersection. 

The villagey main street is a distractive kaleidoscopic of bright-colored retailer signs. cluttering amidst a supermarket in the guise of a casino’s glittery portal. ghosting a traffic officer in the street patch of sunlight. The traffic calms accordion squeeze to a standstill, while shoppers on their course vanish from the sidewalk. Others emerge and leave the supermarket entrance, blending within a flurry of people to blur into a glut of glittery trains of curb cars at the curb. From a still patch of sunlight, a car’s driver struggles to maneuver, backing up to park. I tug Francine by a head nod, as a car in the supermarket’s lane also backs up. My Air sign blasts her Fire Element, stir her flame, weaving through the coasting traffic, stepping clear to the opposite curb.

Across the street, we cross a middle-aged man in brisk strides down the sidewalk. Brushing shoulders with the bare brick gable wall to the main street’s store, he left behind the warped security fence with open twisted gates to a beaten earth and under-used parking lot behind the stores to a few stray cars. Abreast the language of a living tapestry — Aetheria’s volition. ushers us through strings of vignettes. A vigorous woman steps has emerged from the gates, her car among the few in the neglected backyard.

The vegetation brings massive dark and deep-wrinkled trees’ bark creeping up from the woods to the sidewalk. thick leafy branches bend low, a dark arcade over our path. Across the street, puzzling flecks shine and shape suburban houses looming at odds in the woods. As the woods clear, along the sidewalk we’re strolling, dabs of sunlight reveal a lone jacked-up car. Beside a lame front wheel, a lone figure squats in the darkness of the gaping wheel well. A wrench gleams in his hand, tucked by the drive shaft of a dismantled wheel’s bearing.

We left the street mechanic behind with the loss of leading concrete curbs, passing behind the figure in a silent aperçu. swift as a raw median, had cleared the man by the jacked up car on the adjacent nearby street. The street bends away, leading us deeper into the woods. City life is a distant notion, and our path narrows along eroded asphalt to a slender dirt strip along the encroaching wall of foliage.

Ahead of our strides, the asphalt dissolves into a single track ribbon, wiggling through dabs of sunlight wavering over the hill, to be swallowed by rural wilderness. A quiz, unquestioned. ‘where are we walking to?’ But we stumble upon a perplexing contemporary glowing yellow pointer, nailed to a legendary moss infested random-stone plinth. A boundary insinuating that man has lived here. The stone masonry squared-off corner splitting forest roads, stands up to thickets’ clawing twigs, a breakout call from behind the warped and rusted security fence. 

“McDonald,” the pointer insisted, “5 minutes.” I discard an initial, ‘a jet flight?’ to weigh up, ‘a car ride, or a walk.’ I ask, “Mon Petit Moineau, as-tu faim. . . — My Little Sparrow, are you hungry? Or, would you like something to drink?” Francine sighs, “Un petit peu — A tiny bit.”

I pace off, sensing a trailing void. turning around, to find Francine, on a whim, pauses gazing at the steel pipe planted on the corner in front of the stone masonry. Unbuttoning her jacket to the streaky green “196 St.,” nameplate timid deep into the encroaching thickets. Francine unleashes her camera lens from her jacket, fine-tunes the lens, and again, points and captures a milestone in her life.

Francine catches up to me, where an abandoned property of wild-grown thickets in thick clumps on a prison-break presses the warped rusted wire mesh. Twig and branches yearning to reach the asphalt lost road vanishing over the nearby ridge. As I’m laughing off in quest of a jet’s flight or a snail’s pace, the red pointer on the moss stone masonry, “McDonald.” underscored, “1 minute.”

Along our path, the swell of leaves abandon clawing the age-old warped wire mesh. The security fence on a naked run skips from sight over the rugged ridge and the skies stretch down to a taut, dark hazy barbed horizon across expanding gleaming blue waters. The approaching expanding deep blues shimmering millions of silver fish scales across an upcoming weather change. At an angle, off right, peeks a bright curiosity gloss, from the unhindered ridge as the rugged terrain rises. rolling up to our feet the straight asphalt ribbon to lie down the steep, bushy plants meandering through the crazy terrain of raw granular boulders. 

At the pace of our descent down the steep track, the rugged ridge gives way. unveiling the golden arches, my gaze from the perched iconic arches atop the pole, to the red pitched and hipped tiled roof. I'm scanning lower in the eaves’ shades, the hidden character of the roadhouse base corner’s plate-glass walls, for the entrance. I resort to searching the strip of lawn girdling plinth, in the paved path cutting through the lawn, a strange oasis in the remote landscape.

Francine reaches for the grip, pushes the plate-glass open. As we step through the airlock. A shimmer dances through the crystal cubicle, echoing Aetheria’s silent, ‘tra, la, la!’ Opening the door to a dining hall’s transformed kaleidoscope of vibrant bright colors, preschoolers in fairy dresses and suits birthday party. 

A stunned Francine eases her footing, exudes a woman far from the realm of motherhood, overwhelmed by a vibrant nursery milieu of chaos. By the shadow of a mother across the dining hall policing the crowd of children, Francine shakes off her hesitant stride. to my chivalrous lead through the central aisle, nearing the little children’s scrambled queue at the left end of the stretch counter. curtaining their eyes from the deserted trio cash tills and a kitchen backdrop to the staff serving them.

I linger behind a cluster of little children, a little girl’s excited butterfly flutters, as a meager queue of eager kids, into a left curl before the counter’s return end. Staffed by a dynamic young woman in uniform, slip up trays across the counter to the imposing dark-dressed mother. With a twist, the mother bends, hands down to the impatient little boys’ gazes. 

The little boy steps away, balancing a brown plastic tray, anxious eyes darting to the frilly, bright marquise purse, teetering toward the far edge. Turning around on a horseshoe course, his gaze torn across a precarious purse and searching for a gap amidst the first crowded rectangular table. Little figures huddled around their colored party purse, tiny hands ripping for the hidden treasure. 

“Can I help?” the voice calls out, snapping me to attention. I sidestep out the children’s queue, glancing back to rouse Francine. inching closer behind me to the middle cash register. Hesitating to engage in speaking English. I lead, translating Francine’s order: “A hamburger and a Coke.” in answer to the male attendant’s gaze, thinking. ‘Can I, not have anything, watching her eat?’ My eyes wander, drawn left to salads on display and to the right the tempting French fry warmer. 

The young man turns away, left of the stainless-steel rack screening the kitchen’s preparation area, from where the kids’ marquise purse goes to the mother. Reaches for the salads behind paired tall refrigerator doors. He drafts drinks from the fountain to our trays. Steps to the extreme right, scoops up potato sticks from the French fry warmer. shakes the cardboard cup and returns, as I’m eager to pick those sticks spilled on the tray liner. grabbing behind the cardboard box to the tray, the attendant sidestep, squaring up to the cash register. My twenty-dollar bill rings up, while Francine grabs her tray, turning off right scanning the dining hall, to find her scanning the adult occupied dining hall, with the returns change and till slip in my tray. 

Francine, weaving through a few scattered patrons, places her tray on the round table, and sides into a seat along the flank wall. I mirror her, setting my tray down opposite hers. In a sweep of eyesight, fixated hungry on the burger box, her hands hinged the styrofoam cup open to the burger. As I settle into my chair, Francine’s spatulas of fingers torquing her hand dig underneath the bun. Her thumbs clamp the bread roll lid, scoop, lowers her head as she raises the thick burger and bites through. She gnaws and bites a pang of relief. 

Aetheria orchestrated Francine’s hunger, drawing her eyes to lift from her meal. Lingering behind me. After a while, I pursue her curiosity abreast, diving into the group of preschool children. Lingering on a little elf in costume, stirs a primal urge within Francine, hinting at an Oedipal and Electra complex awakening her latent maternal instincts. I’m eating while in the corner of my eye. The elfin boy balances his big leading tray, eager for a place to sit. Spots a gaping space around the busy table. He turns the far corner, vanishing in the blur of his seated preschool mates. reappears in the daylight to a vacant chair. The elfin boy’s greedy eyes were on the yellow zebra purse, stretching his arms to pose his tray to reach the edge of the table. pushes further, climbs the chair, fingers itching to unclip cardboard purse’s grip, to claim his price. Blending into mates excitement, his eyes darted back and forth — ‘What toy did you get?’ their toys discarded, diving into their meal. 

Aetheria teases me to gaze toward the dark-dressed mother as she straightens up from her serving duties. The mother overlooks the little blond head, for the joyful mute crown sprinkling colors at exuberant little fingertips and sparkling eyes around both tables. Against the mother’s tight black denim pants, Aetheria echoes angelic and last, a little blond head turning away. itching fingers on the forefront corner edges, in a struggle brown tray, at a precarious tilt, torque her hands. Wide eyed over the French fry cup, the spilled potato sticks teetering on the far edge for an imminent dive into the void. She tempts to free her right heel of the thumb, to steal the potato sticks from jumping, as she snail-paces. Her eyes pick a coveted chicken wing, beyond her reach to satiate her little hunger pangs. Undeterred by the chock-a-block table. However, she pauses her nimble little fingers to resort, head high. Eyeing the next chaotic table, where I lose sight of her, behind the hall aisle lined planter to the cluster of little children.

I pinch a single, unsalted potato stick from the cup’s spill on the tray liner, nip and relieve heating fingertips, while swirling through my chewing teeth, nibbling down the potato stick savoring the French fry swallowing in my saliva. Refreshing a french fry taste, I pick another potato stick, and another as Francine munches her burger away. While at her disposal, Francine picks salad leaves from my tray. 

Francine dawdles, poking her straw through the lid of her drink. lifts the disposable tumbler, her head down lips smack the straw. drawing a few soft sips, her gaze straying to the adjacent table, by the daylight niched of plate-glass to the adjacent airlock entrance. Francine’s eyes sparkled watching a toddler boy squeezing french fries through his fingers to mush. Raise attention from the incessant cackling Hispanic roundish women, one of them the mother, ought to take a breath. The boy cloistered in a highchair vying for attention abreast the rugged terrain picturing our earlier arrival, as I’m eager to leap, freeing the boy to the floor. 

Parents trickle up through the transparent airlock, emerging by the swinging door up the aisle, to stand gathering before the dark-dress mother dishing out the last gadget after she had served the children cake. As the last elfs and butterflies, climb down from their chairs, clutching a toy, vanishing amid parents turning away. A crew of student bussers in deep-pocketed uniforms swoop in, facing scattered bright debris on the first table. Parents and children thin out at the adjacent table. Wielding massive plastic trash bags the bussers collect and flip the litter away. As the last parents, cowboy-walker at hand along the aisle to the glazed airlock doors. The magic bottle spray clouds,  to vibrant cloths wipe. Leaving a gleaming table top, as the bussers move to the second table. The mood catches Francine rising, pacing around the curved table, gathering our trash, heading for the exit. She stops short of the door, dumping the trash, stacking the trays to the trash-cabinet and heading on. Pushing through the airlock doors, we step out to a chilly waft of air. 

The chill, rather than deterring Francine, she pushes at the encounter around the plate-glass corner. Stepping across the strip of lawn, to the asphalt track curving alongside a panoramic shimmering body of water. Silent in her strides, the path straightens, to a picturesque etching of the evening azure sky. A model of cathedral pillars to the suspended decks spanning and blending into the rugged, blurry, bland riverbanks far downstream. We step lost in our own perception, to flank suburbs along our path, while the bridge elucidates a screen valence of suspension cables evanescing into the bland riverbanks. We near the towering stonework, revealing the windows of latticework and the brims of the double-deck glittering in a vibrant span of crossing traffic. In our strides, the blues’ shy away and fragments remain subtle behind the stone bridge abutment. Conceding to the street’s brick wall of checkered fenestrated facades. After walking through the deserted street, and in the midst of upcoming dull constructions, Francine raises a sigh, whispering. “Je t’offre un café — I’m offering you a Coffee.”

“I’m sorry?” I blurted, approaching a lone middle-aged man passing by. He points across concrete parapets to a crevice rising from the earth’s entrails with a continuous whoosh of traffic. A soot darkened W-lattice arcade — Atlas, burdened with holding up the squatting concrete structure. Parting ways, he voices, “The bus terminal.” Leaving me reassured, from venturing into a concrete derelict. 

Francine’s eyesight clutches with curiosity. ‘What was that about?’ as we head on. We reach the street corner, step off the curb and cross a couple of traffic abandoned lanes. At the parapet, I peek over the guardrail onto a pergola of concrete balks. underneath long-haul trucks swooshes in the midst of swishing passenger cars and utility vehicles. 

Baffled by the city engineers, I raise my eyes from the traffic channel across multiple lanes in corrals outbound. without a pedestrian crossing in sight bridging to the imposing W-trellis base. we follow inbound the parapet’s guardrail, for a block. Arriving at an intersection, the asphalt flows across the median. Passing over, we track back in the street, a distance from the W-concrete columns’ shaded arcade, in angst by a soot film clinging to the row of a smoked plate-glass wall. The passage’s shade on an anxious run into sunlight. But reaching the end of the building, Francine presses the plate-glass swing back to clear an epoch in the sixties. In a curved pathway ghosting the vast dining hall bustling crowd to desolation and empty. Francine pauses at a solitary stand, a brilliant quilt of snack wrappers. She selects a packet of chips and paces off. We approached a lone cashier, his crispy brown uniform tells of a reviving business, with a discreet red rose pocket boutonniere of a restaurant's logo. Francine places her chips on the counter, shy, preventing from speaking. Allowing me to step forward and address the young attendant. “Can we have two coffees, please?”

The young man turns, reaching for the jug of coffee. He returns cardboard cups as Francine’s gaze clashes with the denomination of the green dollar bill in her hand, unlike the various obverse and multicolored New Francs, varying by the denomination. In her silence hands over a ten-dollar to the attendant, cash to the cash register’s drawer. Francine collects the coins, grabs her chips, and turns away, gracing her liberty, backtracking. Halfway to the exit door, Meets and abrupt veers before encountering the chips stand. she encounters the cavernous massive dining hall ghosting of bygone patrons. shortcuts her course, and circles the nearest table. In a sweeping eyesight, she leans over the backrest, places offside her tortilla pack to sit. As I latently mirrored her move. upfront placing her cup, and mine at my seat. She tears open the wrapping amidst our coffees, spreading the chips wide. her invitation to pick chips, while we nibble and crunch, my eyes on the untorn bottom of the wrapper, pecking the letters “T-o-r-t-i-l-l-a-s,” hints at a nascent obsession. 

After savoring the last chip, Francine dawdles, buffering the Aries in her, a gaze over her empty cup in cupped hands, Drawing away from her ghost in symbiosis with Horse in her. She rises with a hand wipe, picking up the wrapper, heading toward the sun bright exit. She clears her hand, passing the trash cabinet. In her wake I discard my cup, step outside away from her figure, pausing against the sunlight. Veering toward the prolonging shaded arcade, continuing our walk toward downtown. In the shaded passageway prolonging the W-columns, alongside the row of opaque plate-glass, Francine sighs. “Je voudrais retourner à l’appartement — I would like to go back to the apartment.” 

Needing to orient ourselves, I’m sticking by the building, turning the corner into a street. But gazing up into the distance, the street bends away, obliterating a perspective as I’m seeking for an awake, bustling street noise, while Francine insists. “Je suis fatiguée — I’m tired.” She raises the urgency, walking the massive bus terminal, which concrete block extends an earth-beaten rear yard. Without a leaf of shade, I fear tracking back finding a bus stop, or a subway, alleviating Francine’s exhaustion in the sigh of voice, as I’m shaking my head as to our whereabouts. Walking the sidewalk toward thick leafy canopies through the bend, a lost sidestreet creeps up to us. The corner post affixed, “175th Street.” To my surprise, lost in the depth of a dead-end street, a subway globe emerges from the shady depths. To my relief, we approached guardrails to the sidewalk hatchway. descend the stairwell, following the blue “A” disk to the platform. A gust of air passes us by, to the train pulling into the station. We board, Francine taking a seat, while I’m standing beneath the map counting down the station street numbers tumbling to 50th Street. I call Francine to disembark. Through a bright crossover tunnel, we embark the “E” train to think, ‘We’re in luck.’ rumbling outbound from Manhattan, at “71st Avenue, Forest Hill.” I follow a worn routine, transferring to the local “R” line for the last leg of our walk home.