I get down on my hands and knees. I put my cheek against the concrete right there on W 47th. Below my eye is a deep black fault. Inside I hear laughing.
“Get up, man,” Tom says twitching behind me. “What the fuck are you doing anyway?”
I get up. “Nothing,” I say—yesterday I read there’s a guy who makes 800 a week looking for scrap gold in the cracked sidewalks of the Diamond District, so I was hoping to get lucky. “You have the backpack?”
“Yea, man. Got it. Let’s fucking do this quick. I can’t get caught. I can’t sit in a holding cell all week until the judge is free.”
“Feeling bad?”
“I need a bag, yea.”
I can tell he’s taken a bit of sherm to get through the last of this dry spell. He’s been talking about how powerful he is and about completing his “goals” for hours now. Also, his face has that far off look like he just got hit in the head with hammer, but hasn’t quite realized it yet.
I have goals today too. Fifteen or twenty more dollars and I’ll have enough to be high all weekend. First, we’ll go get drunk and eat steaks. Some people starve themselves before so the rush hits harder, but not me. I like a nice meal to send myself off.
We get to Duane Reade and head to the aisle with socks and undershirts and trash bags and adult diapers. A row over, drag queens are giggling and stealing makeup. It’s a good distraction since Tom and I have been drinking for a week and smell like shit. It’s not good to smell when you’re trying to steal. When the security guard leaves our aisle to go bust the drag queens, Tom stands in front of me to block the giant rearview mirror hanging from the corner of the ceiling. I quickly unzip the backpack and shove as much as I can inside. It’s best to get this all done in 60 seconds or less. Like the Nicholas Cage movie.
We come out into the brisk afternoon with a backpack full of Hanes white socks, black dress ones, and tagless undershirts. We set up shop. We have a fold-out table to make it all look professional. There’s so many types of people out here today and if you don’t look the part, the type that loves to prey on the desperate will come and snatch you up and pay you to pour lotion all over them. Or something like that. So they can stay supple and soft without getting their hands dirty. In places like this, you really start to understand why there’s nothing more devastating than a soft white underbelly.
At about noon, I see a man pick up a street kid for a twenty and they go off a motel together. I wonder just what types of bellies are hidden under Ferragamo suits. All the Heavens and all the Hells are within the Diamond District—someone said something stupid like that. Maybe it’s true. I see a lot of shit happening here today. In the cracks and on the street. There, through the window of MDC Diamond, the joy of greed flashes like phosphorus guts. By the hot dog cart, scammers perform mukbangs of humiliation for a few hundred. There’s fear and derision. I see people who own this street stepping over the people that live in the cracks. Princesses relaxing in settings of gold on their thumbs. Rose gold statues of Demeter. Bathtubs full of rocks. Whores chained to beds with Cuban links.
Everyone here that feels like they deserve to be higher on the rung is looking for weakness. Locating the smallest of inclusions in people with their Nikon loupes. They zoom in on you, ten times. Twenty. Everywhere else in the country, they use euphemisms to soften reality. But there are no euphemisms here. Weight and clarity are the gods. There are precise names for everything. And 4c is the one who sits above all.
As we keep selling I have to keep dragging Tom off the clientele. His eyes are mad with ambition and more than a few tourists shriek when he paws at them. But the tourists don’t see the real monsters, the ones making deals far above. Shaking hands while simultaneously spelunking down caves. Looking in the darkness for glinting 4cs that will bring them ultimate ease. The ones who will do anything for insane perfection. They’ll eat their own hands for one perfect stone in this sea of darkness. This is what I see in people’s wild bull eyes.
And it’s why I know I’m different. I only desire great and powerful leisure.
I look up into the sky and the sun almost looks pixilated, like it was made with opposed bar cuts.
“You have Large?” a guy asks. He’s got a Gucci polo on tucked into creased slacks.
“Sure,” I say nudging my partner to get the man what he needs.
“Thanks,” he says handing me crisp bills from his wallet.
It’s the final sock sale of the day. We also have a bunch of diamond-coated drill bits we stole from Home Depot earlier that our fence will surely want to buy. It’s only 4:30 and we’re ready to go score and bask. I’ll be happy to be far away from all this mania and frantic desperation. Everyone running around and looking for something that they’ll never get. We got everything we needed for 45 bucks.
“It’s good enough to snort,” my partner says testing the bag.
