So, your shift at your minimum wage nine to five has just ended and you’re thinking that instead of spending hours on the train or blowing your little bit of money on a taxi, you’ll just walk home. Great! An opportunity, at last, to truly know the city in which you’ve begun to make your life. Let us see who welcomes you.
This means passing through the bad part of town, but what of it? There’s not much, she realizes, that separates her from them. If the machine were to break down one week, and she were to have to go without the check they cut her every two weeks, it would be over. If she missed even one of these, it would be over. She’d have to find a home among the hobo bags.
Look them over. It matters nothing, they will not find it rude. They are used to the staring eyes of others and recognize that while every glance brings judgment and scrutiny, it also brings the chance for a quarter, or a wadded up dollar bill. The dollar bill could be straightened out, could buy a coffee. It is worth it.
They are a varied lot, but there is some sense of continuity among them. One can tell they come from the same tribe. One of them wears blue shorts that bear the logo of the 1984 Olympic Games, and a disproportionately large number of them are old men in girls sweatshirts. Black dust from burnt garbage stains them all.
This is just how it is though. She shakes her head and thinks about how thin the brick walls are between the alleys full of the homeless and the shops full of the wealthy, or at least the employed, selling their antique engagement rings and pink pants and pizza by the slice.
But how thin that wall really is. Just inches, really. About as thick as the length of time from one paycheck to the next. Speaking of which, you’re getting paid again next week, aren’t you? Maybe you can afford that taxi after all. Look, here’s one now. Roll up the windows and you’ll find it easier to ignore the yawning maw of agony opening beneath your feet.
This isn’t some future dystopia, either. This is your city, and the day is the current day. One can no longer ignore the consequences of the master-slave system under which we all toil. There is relief to be found, but who will look when looking can be enough to land you in the alley? Who will look?
