Sunset Park

If there were any justice in the world, he should be taken outside and shot.
    Bing has never seen Miles look more distressed than he is now. For a few moments, he thinks Miles might actually break down in tears. Forgetting his vow not to touch him anymore, he puts his arms around his friend and holds on to him tightly. Cheer up, asshole, he says. At least you know you’re the stupidest person who ever lived. How many people are smart enough to admit that? They take a bus back to Sunset Park and walk into the house a couple of minutes before six-thirty, a couple of minutes before Miles’s scheduled rendezvous with Alice in the kitchen. As expected, Alice is already there, as is Ellen, and both of them are sitting at the table, not preparing food, not doing anything but sitting at the table and looking into each other’s eyes. Alice is stroking the backof Ellen’s right hand, Ellen’s left hand is stroking Alice’s face, and both of them look miserable. What is it? Bing asks. This, Alice says, and then she picks up a piece of paper and hands it to him.
    Bing has been expecting this piece of paper since the day they moved into the house last August. He knew it would come, and he knew what he was going to do when it came, which is precisely what he does now. Without even bothering to read the full text of the court order to vacate the premises, he tears the sheet once, twice, and then a third time, and then he tosses the eight scraps of paper onto the floor.
    Don’t worry, he says. This doesn’t mean a thing. They’ve found out we’re here, but getting us to move will take more than a dumb piece of paper. I know how this stuff works. They’ve given us notice, and now they’ll forget about us for a while. In a month or so, they’ll be back with another piece of paper, which we’ll tear up and throw on the floor again. And another time, and another time after that, and maybe even another time after that. The city marshals won’t do anything to us. They don’t want trouble. Their job is to deliver pieces of paper, and that’s it. We don’t have to worry until they come with the cops. Then it gets serious, but we won’t be seeing any cops around here for a long time—if ever. We’re small potatoes, and the cops have better things to think about than four quiet people living in a quiet little house in a quiet little nothing neighborhood. Don’t panic. We might have toleave someday, but that day isn’t today, and until the cops show up, I’m not giving an inch. And even when they do come, they’ll have to beat me over the head and drag me out in handcuffs. This is our house. It belongs to us now, and I’d rather go to jail than give up my right to live here.
    That’s the spirit, Miles says.
    So you’re with me? Bing asks.
    Of course I am, Miles says, lifting his right hand into the air, as if taking an oath. Chief Miles no budge from tepee.
    And what about you, Ellen? Do you want to leave or stay?
    Stay, Ellen says.
    And you, Alice?
    Stay.

Mary-Lee Swann
    Simon left last night, back to L.A. to teach his film history class, and so begins the grind of comings and goings, the poor man traveling back and forth across the country every week for the next three months, the diabolical redeye, jet lag, sticky clothes and swollen feet, the awful air in the cabin, the pumped-in artificial air, three days in L.A., four days in New York, and all for the pittance they are paying him, but he says he enjoys the teaching, and surely it is better for him to stay busy, to be doing something rather than nothing, but the timing couldn’t have been worse, how much she needs him to be with her now, how much she hates to sleep alone, and this part, Winnie, so grueling and difficult, she fears she will not be up to it, dreads she will fall on her face and become a laughingstock, jitters, jitters, the old knot in the belly before the curtain rises, and how was she to know an emmet is an ant, an archaic word for ant, she had to look it up in the dictionary, and why would Winnie say emmet instead of ant, is it funnier to say emmet instead of ant, yes, no doubt it is funnier, or at least unexpected and therefore strange, An emmet!, which leads to Willie’s one-word utterance, Formication , very droll that, you think he is mispronouncing fornication, but she had to look that one up in the dictionary too before she got the joke, a sensation of the body resembling that made by the creeping of ants on the skin, and Fred delivers