This volume covers January 2004 to February 2005
Selection from the text:
October 25, 2004 – Early Morning
You’re pumping hard along 25th to secure Table 4 from the infidels. From between parked cars, a squirrel darts right across your path. No time to swerve. Your wheel passes just shy of its tail. Flash on scores of roadkill along the Taconic yesterday, Gwen thankfully sitting too low down in the backseat to notice. Keep barreling along. Just ahead, a woman stands a few steps out into the street. She’d started across at the same time as the squirrel, saw your near miss, came to a halt. You catch one another’s eyes, and she raises one hand, thumb and index finger tips nearly touching in the universal sign of “whew, almost.” Dazzling smile. Dark-skinned, middle years, unremarkably dressed. Odd sense of recognition – do you know her? Don’t think so – yet she’s just got that quality you value – the French have a word for it: vive.
Round the corner onto Ninth and cut sharp across the lanes to the right hand side. You’ve got a red at 24th, but the crosstown light is flashing, about to change. Nothing’s coming, so you pour it on, try to get ahead of the wave surging downtown. How did you not see the yellow cab – eastward-bound on 24th and flooring it to make the light? You both hit your brakes. He veers to avoid you and screeches to a halt in the crosswalk. You jackknife to within a foot of his fender. Two misses as good as a mile in as many blocks. That kind of morning. Gesture of apology to the cab driver out of whom you must’ve scared the shit. Dismount and walk the bike the rest of the way to the café. Fuck the table. Which, as it turns out, is all yours anyhow.
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