Numb

What is there to do when there is nothing to do. But there is, here on this street corner. When there is nothing to do, there is always the grumbling of the stomach that stirs up a gnawing thought. Food for thought? Thought of food, of the feijoada my wife would make me every other Wednesday. When there is nothing to do, there is always the common thought of food here on this corner. A thought that fills our mouths with air, while the stench of gasoline fills our noses.

You can see them, you think you can definitely see them, the outlines of our teeth against our sunken cheeks and our eyes buried above them in folds of skin. You think you can see them, the strands of hair that fall from our heads with the wind to hang on our coats like seams. Coats that drape around us like covers, but that aren’t soft or warm enough as covers should be. All this you see from cab windows, moving along Giovanni Gronchi, spattering mud. And maybe you don’t, maybe you look at the window display of hats, at the tarot flyer for a free consultation tacked onto the street post or the tattered woman on crutches rattling change in a zinc can, maybe you only really notice the bird s**t on the window.

We wait for the bus, here on this street corner, as many cars like yours drive by. Waiting is something to do. On this corner, the people repeat as the hours repeat. We all wait, looking at license plates, at bumpers and exhaust pipes. We wait, looking at our feet under unhemmed trousers, shuffling on the cobblestones in loafers full of holes and flaps, moving but going nowhere. We huddle beneath the billboard of a lingerie-clad Gisele Bundchen.

One of us stepped off the curb as the bus drove down the lane. The screech of the brakes made us take our hands to our ears, and then some of us moved our hands to cover our eyes. His eyes gaped at us, blinking, blood oozing from where he lay under the tires into the gutter. His chest heaved puffs of breath that remained suspended over him in the morning chill. Your car and many cars like yours slowed down, stopped, lights flickering. Some honked, all engines purred. You got out of the cab then. You stood next to the half-open door, the meter running. You stood there and looked at him with parted lips and wrinkled forehead as the Nokia tone rang from his back pocket and echoed off the graffitied walls, rang until someone yelled, “Shut that thing off!”. I walked over to him and pulled out the cellphone from his pocket, pressing the end button.

We waited at the street corner as the traffic light switched from red to green and back again, again and again, hunched under the weight of that morning air, muttering prayers and curses. We waited there for the ambulance to arrive, for the police to take a statement from the driver, for the next bus. We thought about how we were late for work as his blood dried in the cracks between the pavement. What else is there to do when there is nothing to do.