A World Come and Gone

Two nights ago: three police cars, one ambulance, and a lot of uniformed men stood between my walking desires and the Soviet grocery. The small group of onlookers moved restively to my right. I was afraid someone inside the Soviet had been robbed and hurt.

I wasn't there soon enough to see it as a narrative. Instead, someone had set a portmanteau on the ground and opened it, and a new world had popped out, an irregularly shaped cloud defined by red and blue lights.

Every responder's back was straight but not rigid; everyone's face was serious but not grim. They were having a consultation. Something had happened; it was serious enough but manageable, even routine. Still, my jar of fruit preserve and stalk of broccoli were not first.

Someone came out of the store, ponytail bouncing, and crossed through the cloud. I covered her like a guard in a basketball game. "Everything's cool," she said cheerily, and walked away in the dark.

I crossed that world but did not count in it. Ms. King, a store clerk from Jamaica, was watching everything from the front door, her face a mask. A man with a beer gut and a dirty shirt was demanding answers from somebody official.

Broccoli, cucumbers on sale, peach jam. I get in Ms. King's line to gossip. A woman was under arrest for stealing groceries. She was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.  I had a sense, unconfirmed, that this arrest was intervention, in more ways than one. The world I crossed as a ghost was under control.

When I came back outside, all the vehicles had departed. The lamentation was elsewhere, inside that portmanteau. Peace reigned on the street.